First Impressions: Bloodstained – Ritual Of The Night (Switch) ~ Middle Ages Magic.

Official website – Nintendo Microsite

So, a new Metroidvania game has been released. The Metroidvania genre is one of my favorite style of games. When I heard that Koji Igarashi of Castlevania fame was the director of this game, I was beyond hyped. I even mentioned this game in my top 10 games I wanted to play in 2019. And, yes, the game was even twice on that sort of list. Anyways, this game was a Kickstarter game were major flops like Mighty Number 9 and major hits like A Hat In Time. Where does this game fall? On the major flops or on the amazing titles part of the spectrum? Let’s find out in this first impressions article. Also, feel free to give your opinion on the content of this article and/or the game in the comment section down below. A small editor note I have to make is that I have played this game before and after the visual improvement patches applied, and I will keep this in mind for this review.

Middle Ages Magic

During the Industrial Revolution, the Alchemy Guild got scared of losing their followers and patrons. So, they decided to create Shardbinders. These are humans who are forcibly fused with demonically charged crystals. Thanks to these crystals, the Shardbinders obtained magical powers. Everything was peaceful until the Fire Nation attacked, well sorta. Kinda. The Shardbinders were sacrificed and abused to summon demons from Hell (let’s be honest, this is a sort of Fire Nation. 😉 ). Now, this whole plan backfired and brought mass destruction over the whole of England. Thankfully, the Church was able to intervene and save some areas of destruction.

Two shardbinders survived the whole massacre, Gebel and Miriam. Ten years after the incidents, Miriam wakes up from her unnatural slumber and finds out that Gebel has summoned another demon to continue the revenge of the Shardbinders on what the alchemists did to him. Miriam starts her journey accompanied by Johannes, who is a former member of the Alchemy Guild. Miriam wants to stop Gebel before the whole world is destroyed.

The story itself is nothing that special. To be quite frank, the story didn’t really grab my attention. Now, I have reviewed two Castlevania games in the past: Castlevania – Portrait of Ruin and Castlevania – Lords Of Shadow – Mirror Of Shadow and of both these games, I don’t remember a lot about the story. It’s a shame since the story has quite a lot of potential to go quite in-depth and in different directions. The story takes a backseat in this game, to a point that sometimes the story is used as a sort of in-game guide. Like, when you have defeated a boss and you talk to one of the members of the Church, she straight up tells you (this isn’t an exact quote but it’s quite similar): “I have heard rumors that one of the high ranking officers can jump again in the air. (…) You need to look for a tower where…”

Now, the cast of the voice actors of this game is just mindblowing. Miriam is voiced by Erica Lindbeck who voiced Barbie herself in a few movies and also voiced one of the leading characters in Fire Emblem Echoes. Gebel is voiced by Ray Chase who’s a voice you can also hear in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as Roy and in Final Fantasy 15 as Noctis. Zangetsu is voiced by a voice acting legend by the name of David Hayter who is famous for his voice work on Solid Snake. You can dig deeper into the voice cast using this page from Behind the Voice Actors. With so much talent on board and pretty good direction, you can be sure that the dub of this game is pretty well done.

Now, what could have improved the story? Well, first of all, a bit more character development. Some characters are quite two dimensional. I barely notice any progress in these characters. Secondly, I feel that too many stereotypical characters were used. A more diverse cast of characters or characters that broke their stereotype would be a great twist in the story. And finally, be a bit less hand-holding. If you want to guide the players to a certain location to gain a new power-up, you can do that by other means. I loved the system the developers used in Monster Tale on the DS. In that game, you also have a guide to where you need to go, but it’s up to you to fight through the enemies and find your way there.

Metroidvania at its finest

In the previous section, I have already mentioned three games I have reviewed that were in the same style as this game. The two Castlevania games and Monster Tale.

If you have played games like Castlevania, Metroid, Monster Tale or Axiom Verge then you’ll know what to expect in this game. In this game, you explore a huge map, defeat different bosses, learn new techniques to make exploring easier and access unknown areas. Meanwhile, you have to fight through a lot of enemies and try to balance your items right in order for you to stay alive.

Most Metroidvania’s are anything but easy. This game is no exception. This game can be quite difficult. But, the difficulty is fun difficulty. Sometimes you aren’t strong enough or don’t have the right gear to survive the encounters. Now, some people would enjoy the challenge of this game and try to defeat this game with the weakest gear possible. Now, this means that this game has some minor forms of grinding to improve your stats and defeat some bosses easier.

Now, the map of this game is quite huge. Thankfully, there are several warp points that allow you to fast travel to other areas in the castle. These warp points are in special rooms marked in green on your map. A minor nitpick I have is that the warp point to the central base of the game is outside right after some enemy encounters. I think that it would be better inside so I can go with full health to the boss. Yeah, I’m that kind of a player. So, that’s why I mentioned it as a nitpick.

Anyways, the warp rooms aren’t the only special things on your journey. You also have to save rooms. This game doesn’t have an autosave feature, but you can save (and heal your HP/MP) at the various save rooms that are shattered around the castle.

I really love the freedom of exploration in this game. While the story is a minor disappointment to me, the gameplay more than makes up for it. Exploring the castle and the areas around it is a ton of fun. Trying out the different mechanics and abilities of Miriam is just a great experience to have.

Together with the decent controls, this game is a blast to play. Now, I have read in different reviews that the controls of this game have a bit of input lag or are a bit floaty. Thankfully, I find that they improved them a lot in the patches that the game received and I think that the future patches in November 2019 will improve the game even more.

Visually underpowered

Allow me to address the elephant in the room. Look, there it is. His name is Dumbo and he has a movie made about him. Now, let’s be a bit more serious. Visually, this game doesn’t look that great when you compare it to the other versions on PlayStation or PC. The publishers even posted a statement on the rather spotty technical performance. Now, I think that’s a great move to improve technical performance through patches. On the other hand, delaying the Switch port to work on the technical performance would have been an even better move in the first place.

While the Switch is quite powerful, compared to the other consoles on the market today… Well, it’s underpowered. So, I can understand that the Switch version has some fewer animations or visual effects. Something I think that I don’t understand is the inconsistent performance of the game and the input lag in certain areas. Now, these things will be addressed in the patched that is scheduled for November. This is a shame since this game would be an amazing title to play on Halloween night, but they will miss the mark on that completely.

With all that talk about the Switch version having a spotty performance, I do have to say… I don’t find it that bad. The issues are the worst when you play the game in undocked mode. When you play this game in docked mode, this game plays just … decent. In very rare spots, the game has a bit of frame or input lag but nothing game-breaking.

In its current state, the game still looks quite good. I think the visual presentation is great and the animations are quite good as well. Together with the amazing music and enjoyable sound effects, the audiovisual presentation still gets a pass from me. So, I’m a bit mixed on this whole thing.

The game is a blast to play and has some extremely helpful features like the ability to leave markers on your map so you can remind yourself to visit these areas later. The game even has a lot of depth with its own crafting system, various shops, various unlockable skills and builds you can make… Even when you change your outfit in the menu’s, Miriam wears the armor and outfits in the game, during gameplay, and during cutscenes.

But, the whole game is held back by the lack of polish that is now coming in the form of patches. It gives the game a wrong first impression to a lot of players. Not everybody knows that this game’s performance and visuals are going to improve. Also, I have stopped playing this game because I want to replay this game when all the patches have been released so I can experience this game in it’s the best form. And that’s what’s so disappointing to me. I’m already halfway the game and now I have to restart the whole game. Well, then again, it’s my own choice…

So yeah, this article is going to be continued. I think it would be a bit unfair to fully judge the game right now when I know that there are patches to improve the visuals, the controls and the gameplay in the near future. But, I still wanted to talk about this game so here we are. So, for a full review, you will have to come back a few weeks after the patches have been released. If I don’t forget, I’ll also link the updated article here: [TO BE ANNOUNCED.] And maybe I should go more in-depth about the gameplay in that updated article as well.

And that’s everything I currently wanted to say about this game. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

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Review: Lucid Path (PC) ~ Let’s Go RPG’ing

Official steam page

Today I want to take a look at a game that got sent to me. The name is Lucid Path. It’s an RPG created by Grevicor. I got a review copy of this game to write this review but the developer asked me to give my 100% honest opinion, so that’s what you are going to get in this article. I’m honestly glad that I’m able to try this game, since looking at the screenshots, I’m quite interested in playing it. Also, the developer told me that this is a very short game that throws the player in unexpected and twisted situations. So, you got my attention. Let’s explore those situations then. And as usual, feel free to write a comment with your opinion on the content of this article and/or the game in the comment section down below.

Misery Loves Company

The story of this game starts out quite simple. You are tired of your miserable life and you go set out on an adventure. Luck is on your side since adventure finds you really fast. You come across a village that has a problem with a nearby dungeon. Now, it’s up to you to solve their problem.

Before I continue, I must say that the font chosen in dialogue boxes fits the theming for the game really well. But, it made it tricky to easily see the difference between some letters like the “o” and “a”. Now, I didn’t mind it too much, since I’m pretty fluent in English (…If you need evidence, in what language am I even writing then?) so, I was able to read it without a problem.

You go and explore the dungeon and try to solve the problem. You meet several characters that will aid you in your quest. In addition to that, you learn that there is a bigger problem in this dungeon than just the monsters.

The writing itself is pretty decent. You meet some other people from the village during your quest. Since the game is pretty short, I don’t want to spoil the ending or any more of the story. If you are interested, I highly recommend that you check it out for yourself.

Chilling in the dungeon

The gameplay of this game is quite relaxing. This game is a casual RPG. The gameplay of this game consists out of playing mini-games, choosing when to use your spells and improving your character. Now, what do I mean by “mini-games”? When your character takes on a quest, you don’t have to do anything. You play a small mini-game on an old computer. Depending on how you do in the mini-game, the faster your character is able to finish the quest.

Each time you go and explore the dungeon, you earn coins and medals. With these coins, you can buy better equipment and with the medals, you can improve your stats at the castle. Now, you can also earn coins and medals by doing quests. There are 3 quests you can do. After you have done those three quests, you have to go inside the dungeon to get new ones.

Before I talk about the dungeon, I want to mention the shop. This part of the game still needs some polishing work. There are two things I disliked about the store. The first thing is that you have to drag & drop from and to your inventory to buy and sell. When you try to sell an armor piece you are wearing, that won’t work. And if you double click on something to buy, that won’t work either. This was annoying while I was using the shop. I get used to it, but I felt like I was doing a click too much.

The second thing I disliked about the shop was the colored items. It’s quite unclear with the spectrum is. The ones without a background are the cheapest and weakest ones. Followed by a green background, yellow background, blue background and those with a purple background are the strongest. Now, why not show “lv.1”, “lv.2”…? This makes it easier to figure out and it also helps colorblind people.

Something I did really like about the store is the fact that the inventory of the store is random each and every time. You can refresh the store’s inventory by spending a few coins. I made sure to check the store each and every time before I went to the dungeon to make sure there wasn’t more powerful gear waiting for me in the dungeon.

The gameplay in the dungeon is a bit too uninvolved. The battle takes place automatically. There are two things you can influence. The first thing is when you decide to use your spells. You can store 4 spells. You have a fire spell, thunder spell, poison spell… There is a handful of them. You can only use each spell once during your session. The session ends when you are out of health. When you are out of health, you go back to the town.

Now, the 2^nd thing you can influence in the dungeon is the speed of the game. Now, you can either pause, play at normal speed or play sped up. You even have a button to leave the dungeon early. The leave button isn’t a temporary checkpoint, it’s like a retreat. When you faint and enter the dungeon again, you start at the latest checkpoint. Every five rooms, you get a checkpoint.

About the controls for controlling the speed of the game, I found it disappointing that it was unclear which button was pressed. It would be really helpful if there is a visual identification to show which button you have chosen.

Besides that, there isn’t a lot to do in the dungeon. I found this disappointing, I wish it was a bit more involved. I also felt that the AI of the monsters attacked my character more than your companion. Thankfully, upgrading and improving your character isn’t hard. Each time I trained my character and bought better items, I felt I was able to progress one or two rooms further in the dungeon.

Alright, I have to be honest about something. There are some additional things to do in the dungeon. But, I would ruin a surprise for that. So, if you want to know what that is, you should play this game. The only thing I would say is that there should be more moments like those that happen in the dungeon.

You are able to heal yourself outside of the dungeon by doing quests. These quests give green pearls that heal you. So, each time you want to heal, you have to play a mini-game. You can’t enter the dungeon without full health either.

Now, there is a more involved version of the dungeon and that is the arena in the castle. You can choose between three different tiers and with that, you can win an item. Now, you have to press the space bar at the right time to deal more damage. It’s that kind of mini-game that you need to press the button when the pointer is in the green area. In the arena, your equipment does not make a difference. So, it’s pure skill-based in there. You do have to pay coins to get in the arena. The more difficult the challenge is, the cheaper it becomes. This makes sense, since that way you can’t easily farm the cheap items to have a huge mountain of cash to easily buy the most powerful items.

Now, if this was in the main dungeon, that would make the game a bit more interesting. Since most of my enjoyment in this game came from the times I was playing the mini-games and messing around in the town…

Vector mini-games

Now, this game doesn’t automatically save, so if you don’t want to lose any progress… Quit the game using the menu in the town. Now, if you reboot the game in full screen, you might notice that there is some graphical weirdness going on. Just go into the options menu, click the full-screen option once to go to windowed mode and click it again to go back to full screen. That fixes that issue.

The mini-games are vector-based mini-games. The first mini-game you encounter is a top-down shooter that reminded me of a lot of Asteroids. Each time you shoot a falling rock, the rocks’ drop speed increases. The faster the rock, the more points it gives to completing the quest. Oh, you have to actually do something in the mini-games or your character won’t progress in his quest. After a few floors, you unlock the possibility to play another mini-game for a good amount of coins.

The 2^nd mini-game is one where you go down and you aren’t allowed to touch the edges. I personally highly dislike this style of mini-games. Now, this is something personal, but I have never been good at this mini-game. Each mini-game has 2 achievements. There is the “Good at” and “Great at” mini-game. Each achievement is tied to your score.

The final mini-game felt broken to me. For some reason, the mini-game didn’t react on my inputs at certain moments making me lose it. But, that might be because it’s a rhythm-ish style mini-game and I’m not that great when it comes to that.

Now the other mini-games I will leave as a surprise if you decide to play the game. They are quite interesting, but for some reason I found myself enjoying the first one the most. In this game, the Asteroids one is called Planetoids.

Now, this game isn’t too difficult. Some people will find this game repetitive, but I found it a relaxing experience. It was a blast to play something where I was able to just relax and I didn’t need to take the game too seriously. The game became even more interesting after a few hours of play, it opened up more. But, I won’t spoil that. This is especially true when you think that the game is repetitive. Don’t worry, something unique and fun will happen near the end.

There isn’t a lot of replay value in this game. After you have beaten the game, there isn’t too much different in a 2^nd playthrough.

This game is also really cheap. So, if you are looking for a cheap enjoyable game; look no further. Yes, I found the game enjoyable. Especially the charm of the visual presentation. It reminded me a lot of Knights of Pen and Paper. The retro feel while not using true 8bit or 16bit visuals is just pretty to me. The game is colorful and lively and just gives off that relaxing vibe. It also has a lot of charm in my opinion. A charm I can’t get enough off.

The animations might be basic, they were just perfect in this game. Like the sound effects, they fit the theming of the game perfectly. The music, well, it’s something I would like to add to my playlist of relaxing music. I really liked the soundtrack of this game.

That’s everything I wanted to say about the game. I think it’s high time for my conclusion and final thoughts.

Conclusion

The bad:

• The game can be a bit repetitive.
• Some minor visual issues in full-screen mode when booting the game.
• The shop needs some polishing work.
• The exploration of the dungeon can be boring.
• Some UI improvements are needed.

The good:

+ Enjoyable writing.

+ Great music & sound design.

+ Great visual presentation.

+ Fun mini-games.

+ ….

Final thoughts:

At certain times, I felt that this game could make for a perfect mobile game. At certain points, I felt like this game isn’t really meant to play in long sessions. This game could be enjoyed more in short sessions.

This game has a lot of potential. There are some flaws that could be polished and patched out but they didn’t stop me from enjoying my time with the game. If you are looking for an enjoyable cheap game, I wouldn’t look any further. This is a great time-wasting game.

The biggest issue I felt that this game has is that the game didn’t have enough gameplay. I wish there was a bit more to do, especially during the exploration of the dungeon. Oh well, not every game can be perfect.

I do recommend that you give this game a try and just relax and enjoy the experience. Since, that’s, in my opinion, the best way to enjoy the game.

Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

Score: 70/100

NekoJonez Wins Unique Blogger Award

So, thanks to Games With Coffee, my blog is an award richer. In total, I got 2 awards from other websites. Feedspot and MarketInspector gave both gave me an award. In addition to that, my gaming blog got a few other community awards. The Versatile Blogger in 2013, Liebster Award in 2014 and The Blogger Recognition Award in 2017. So, this is the 6th one. Now, thank you so much for the recognition! So before I go in the community part of the reward, allow me to say a few words. 

A few words

So, besides working on my own content and blog each and every week, I like to help and support other bloggers behind the scenes. In 2013, I started with this blog, but I have been blogging since 2010. In 2010, I wrote a Dutch blog that now got deleted and got replaced by this blog: NekoJonez’s Gaming Blog.

While I just enjoy writing articles as a hobby, the fact that people do read my content, like it, comment on it, share it… just makes me happy. It gives me a special feeling when I got support from anybody.

I’m just a hobbyist writer who loves to talk about my game collection & my opinion on the gaming market.

In any case, I can talk about this for hours, but I’m not going to let this part drag on for too long. Thank you for this award and I can’t wait to see what 2018 will bring. Be sure that there will be a lot more collabs and guests featured on my blog!

Question time!

What qualities or characteristics in a villain from your favorite game or series do you admire and why?

I have a few favorite villains, to be honest, but talking about their characteristics might spoil the whole experience in some cases. I do enjoy villains with an amazing twist, something you don’t see coming like in Zero Time Dilemma or in Bioshock Infinite.

Another villain I really enjoy is Sachiko Shinozaki from Corpse Party. The false sense of security she lures you into, that’s something I really like in the Corpse Party series.

To be honest, I really like villains that have a reason to be evil. Those stick out more to me. Even when you see the identity of the villain coming from miles away, like in A Hat In Time I honestly don’t mind.

Even when you know the big bad guy from the start of the game like in Tomb Raider, I enjoy that he has a reason to be evil you know?

What I don’t like in villains is that when near the end somebody betrays you since he or she was the big bad guy all along. Or a bad guy who is just there to be the bad guy. Except when I’m playing a kids game from my childhood, then I can excuse it.

But, that’s not an answer to the actual question. My answer is the villain in Zero Escape Time Dilemma. Without spoiling too much, I’ll say this. After playing the three games in order and getting surprises, twists and turns left and right; the ending to the series is pretty good. It actually stuck with me for a while and made me think about the whole series for weeks after that. The reasoning and the ideology of the bad guy are so screwed up but logical at the same time, it’s something to think about you know? That’s all I’m going to say without getting into spoiler territory.

 

If you could choose any character from any video game to become for a day, who would you choose and what (with their special abilities or powers) would you do in that timeframe?

It was tempting to cheat here, to say something like Hat Kid from A Hat in Time or Link from Majora’s Mask. The reason why is that they can both manipulate time and I could restart the day easily when it was almost over.

Why would I choose Hat Kid? Well, because I want to live in her adventure. I fell in love with the charm of the world and I wouldn’t mind living in it for a while.

Why would I choose Link from Majora’s Mask? Well, I played Majora’s Mask when I was pretty young. I had a fascination with masks/suits that provide you with special powers. This was because I recently saw The Mask movie with Jim Carrey before I played Majora’s Mask.

I was about 9 years old back then, so I always imagined that one day I would find a mask that transforms me into a certain creature when I felt like it. Oh, innocent child imagination is interesting is it not?

Actually, I made up a sort of sequel to the game with more masks and transformations and puzzles. Too bad I lost the papers I wrote it down on to a bottle of water. Yeah…

If I’m allowed to choose a character that can’t mess with time, well, currently I would have to go for Indiana Jones from the Indiana Jones games. I know, I know; he is a movie character in the first place. But, he has appeared in a whole slew of games. And, if I would be able to be him for more then one day, I would love to go through one of his gaming adventures like The Infernal Machine.

And if I have to choose a character that only appears in gaming; well, Frederica from Etrain Odyssey Untold. Oh yes, her personality and all that is so similar to mine in some aspects and her role in the story feel just right for me to be for one day.

And what would I do in that day? Well, just explore the labyrinth with the rest of the gang and have the biggest adventure of my life that only 24 hours can give.

In your mind, what constitutes a Mature, Distinguished Gamer?

A pretty simple answer here, in my opinion, somebody who is able to keep an open mind about gaming. Somebody who plays retro and modern games. Somebody who doesn’t play the latest of the latest game because of the hype train, but plays the games he or she wants to play.

Somebody who helps other gamers with their problems but also sharpens their skills so they look “cool for the young kids”.

If you want to talk about the big names in gaming who for example run the big blogs or own the big YouTube channels, I think that the people who get furthest are the people who stay true to themselves. Somebody I really look up to is Clint aka LazyGameReviews. His gaming skill and maturity he presents his content is just an inspiration to me.

In my mind, people like him are mature distinguished gamers. People who aren’t afraid to say their own opinion. Caddicarus is also a great example.

Somebody who stays true to themselves and don’t go talking about the latest new thing but talk about what they want to talk about. Also, mature gamers don’t talk down to younger gamers or games meant for younger audiences you know.

That’s the short version of my answer, I could talk more about this, but this article isn’t the place for that.

My nominations

While I could nominate a few people Games With Coffee did, I decided to not do that and give a few of my other blogger friends the spotlight. To keep the list a bit short, I decided to pick a few at random, but to be honest, if I could this list would be miles long.

1. OverThinkerY
2. DoubleJump
3. HundStrasse
4. HungryGoriya
5. FalconGameReviews
6. OtakuGamerZone
7. Sheikah Plate
8. LaterLevels
9. IPlayedTheGame!
10. Reaper Interactive
11. AdventureRules
12. RealOtakuGamer
13. AnjimPlays

Amongst a lot of others. Seriously, you all deserve more awards for creating a better community and the work and effort you put into your blog, support me and other bloggers, it’s just fantastic.

So, these are the rules for this community award.

1. Display the award. (See above).
2. Thank the individual(s) who have nominated you and include a link to their blog. A little promotion for their blog is also welcome.
3. Answer the questions asked by the individual who has nominated you.
4. Nominate an arbitrary number of bloggers and have them answer three questions you put forth to them.

What are my questions then? Feel free to answer how much detail you want! Ready, set, here we go:

1. If you were able to erase all memories from one game to be able to fully experience it again, which game would it be and why?
2. If you were allowed to help in the production of a game, which role would you take on and why? The role of producer, voice actor, writer, designer…?
3. What is one of the earliest video game memories?

Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing this! Thank you for the award Games with Coffee for the award! The fact that you got it too is well deserved in my opinion.

I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care!

Also, remember if you aren’t reading this on NekoJonez’s Gaming Blog (https://arpegi.wordpress.com), this article might be stolen. Yes, this is a test to see how much theft is still going on by a theft website. So ignore this section, please. Okay? 

Quick Update on January and more

Hello, there dear readers of NekoJonez Gaming Blog. Thank you so much for reading my blog in 2017 and all the support I got and getting in these times when two blogs seem to steal my content. So, after a crazy December with a lot of articles too, I wanted to write a quick update for you guys and girls! 

Small break

It’s quite possible that the following weeks won’t have any articles or just short ones. No, I’m not bitter or thinking about quitting since my articles got stolen. Don’t worry about that. As a matter of fact, here is the reason why.

There are actually three. The first reason is that the holiday break is over and that I have returned to my full-time job. So, that means I have less time to play games and work on articles. The 2nd reason is that my theater group started to practice again for the upcoming production in April. So, I’ll need some time to study my lines and practice the play to perform. And the 3rd and final reason is that I’m entering exam time. Next week, I’ll have a final test and the week after that, I’ll have the final examination of the subject I was following.

So, my apologies if I’m a bit absent on social media or on posting new content on my blog.

Content theft update

In December, I haven’t given anybody permission to use my full articles on their blog. In fact, I didn’t even know that another blog was doing it. The past few days, I have been mailing around and trying to get every trace removed.

As a matter of fact, I don’t give permission to copy this article to any other blog. If you copy this quick update to any other blog then my blog that is NekoJonez’s Gaming Blog, you admit taking content from other blogs without permission. Most likely you are a bot as well since no sane human being would forget to cut this part out when copying this part.

But, I give permission to share the article’s link over social media, if only it’s a direct link to this article without any changes to the link.

I’m so thankful for all the support and attention that the PSA got. Thank you for sharing it around and making people aware that this isn’t okay and it should be stopped! That’s why I’m announcing that Drakulus and I are working on another article to support other bloggers into fighting back content theft like this.

So far, we were able to take a few accounts of one theft bot down. Both the WordPress and Weebly pages have been taken down. Currently, I’m working on taking two other accounts down of that same bot.

Besides that, I’m working as well to get my content taken down from that other website that is stealing and copying content. While the theft isn’t too bad on that website, I still want it to be taken down to make a clear statement.

If you ever wonder what I allow and don’t allow on my blog, I would like to refer you to NekoJonez’s Gaming Blog new page! It’s called the DMCA page! In addition to that, you can also see a “DMCA protected” badge at the side of my blog. Yes, that means that my blog is protected by copyright.

If you feel that I misuse any content that doesn’t belong to me, please, do contact me over my contact page. I’m always open to working out things behind the scenes without any issues.

Closing off & TL;DR

In summary, articles might slow down or stop for a few weeks since events in my personal life (job, working on getting down the theft of my articles, theater group, and college) are taking so much of my time. This might be better in a few weeks.

Also, I’m still working on taking down the stolen content from my blog, so far I’m making progress bit by bit. Thank you for your support and I’m so glad for all the support. There will be an article with helpful information for bloggers in the near future.

Besides that, remember that my blog is protected by DMCA now, so I have the legal right to make a DMCA take-down if you steal or abuse content from me. If you feel I abuse content that is written/created by you, please contact me on my contact page and I’ll do my best to work things out behind the scenes.

So, thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article on my blog but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

NekoJonez: Are digital downloads really a benefit for the market?

Are platforms like Steam and Origin really a benefit for the games market? Must everything now go digital or is that something that might doom the market? Let’s think about it. I think that this movement is a double-edged sword. It’s good but there is a big “But”. Cap was intended. I can’t deny that platforms like Steam and other have many advantages. But clearly, I have also a blaming finger to raise. I talked and discussed with many of my friends about this. From people in ButtonSmashers, Arpegi and outside of both of them. And after many rewrites, I think it’s time to voice my view on this. Feel free to debate with me on this in the comments. Flame comments will be removed of course. 

My biggest problem

Many people see this as the way of the future. Everything needs to go digital. It makes things so much easier. Yet, there is a big issue that comes with this. Security. Think about this, that your account is hacked and you lost all your progress and games. Or worse, they got your bank information. I have no doubt in my mind that this is something hackers in the future will be able to achieve.

Another issue is the fact that privacy is gone. Some people want to hide that they game since for some companies that are a big no if you want to be hired. Gamers have a big reputation thanks to some events that the media blew out of proportion. So, you have to hide. In addition to that, you can’t really hide your “guilty pleasure” games anymore. You know, those games that make your reputation of “hardcore gamer” go poof as snow for the sun.

And don’t get me started about abusing the system. There are some many ways to cheat the system and make fake money that can be used to buy games then. I wouldn’t be surprised if a good percentage of the sales on those digital platforms are actually illegal purchases gone undetected.

Android market feel

 

I’m not going to lie, I bought a ton of games on Steam the past month. But I really man, a lot of them. And my fear got actually confirmed. I felt like being in some online app store. Where you can easily download games and install them. And I kept playing a part of the game and when I got a bit bored of the game, I downloaded the next one.

Isn’t that a bit harsh? There can be boring moments in a game but when you wouldn’t have this Steam or Origin, it was your newest game and then your motivation was higher. At least in my case.

Also, as a retro gamer, I saw that nearly all the games I played in the past are on Steam as well. I’m afraid I won’t survive any sale if one happens of a game on my wishlist.

My point here is that it became too easy to find new games and you start to think less about your budget. It’s not new that I hear people say that they got a ton of games from a sale but if you really look to it, how many games are actually played and or finished from the ones they bought? Probably not all of them.

Big dogs smelled money.

Before I explain my next point, I want to talk about another thing. I’m a big-time collector. If I’m at a garage sale, my mood is like: “Buy all the games!”. If I had the money for it, I would. Yet, going to a garage sale and trying to hassle or look for a game. That feeling of going home with a new stack of games felt so rewarding. And that’s a feeling I have lost with Steam and Origin. You just push in some numbers and do one or two clicks. You can’t hassle or try to lower the price. And looking for a game is just a search away.

But this is actually a nightmare for collectors. Physical copies are a thing of the past. I love being able to hold a game in my hands and showing it off to my friends and being like: “Hey, look I got this new game.” That might be a bit bragging but hey, who doesn’t do that from time to time?

But what in the name of the good games are big companies like Atari and Square doing on Steam? Selling their big titles like Call of Duty, Final Fantasy and various other franchises. Honestly, I don’t think it’s good for that. If I would be Steam, I would have only allowed indie or start-up developers to make their big entree in the market.

Scary

I’m also afraid that the ease of DLC for developers on Steam might slowly be the new norm. The satire game DLC Quest might become the future reality one day. In this game, you can’t even go left at the start of the game. You have to buy the DLC for it when you have enough in-game coins. And I have this one game called Tomb Raider that has a big load of DLC and yeah, I bought it all. Just because I hate when I don’t have the complete package.

One of the final issues I can come up with is maybe one of the scariest things. The fact you and those developers become independent (Edit: Thanks for noticing my mistake here BloodCat.) from one company. Image how big of a catastrophe it would be if Steam went bankrupt. Or when they couldn’t handle the server load and much data is lost. Scary thought no? Or that they become so big that local game stores go out of business. Many jobs lost.

In conclusion

I can’t deny that platforms like Steam or Origin are great things. Many indie developers can show off their games. You can also buy games that your local game store might not offer. And if those stores are too far away, you can easily buy them on those platforms.

But if you look at it, there are big flaws in this system you can’t deny. I won’t go explaining them again since I talked about it in this article. I’m sure that I forgot some things in my article but I’m sure that I got the most crucial written down.

Maybe a good message is that you shouldn’t forget that there are retailers and various other things to get your games outside of Steam and Origin. It’s such a nice thing in our gaming culture so let’s not go to a culture where we sit in front of a computer and don’t much a muscle to get our games since you can easily get them on Steam.