Top 10 Worst Games of 2015

2014 was such a shitty year for gaming, if you remember there were very few 'quality' games that came out. So this year, 2015, was a breath of fresh air to see actual quality games like Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid 5, Splatoon, Mario Maker, etc. and at least average games like Halo 5 come out. Unfortunately, we've still had our fair share of garbage come out this year too. For this list I'll be scraping the bottom of the barrel for this year's worst games of 2015.

*Please note: A lot of these games are actually decent/good. That's because 2015 was an amazing year for gaming. Some of these might actually be worth playing. Don't take the ones lower on the list that serious.

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#10. Star Wars Battlefront

While not a terrible game in the least bit (actually above average), this game's potential vs what it turned out to be is extremely disappointing. Having only four planets in the game starting was extremely disappointing, especially in the Star Wars universe when we've seen games like Battlefront 2 and even the role-playing Knights of the Old Republic series have much more planets than this game. Combine that with the copy-pasted Battlefield engine, little overall content, poor balancing, no single-player mode unlike previous Battlefronts and a $50 season pass available day one makes this game hardly worth the $60 purchase. While quite possibly the best-looking game of 2015 right up there with Witcher and Metal Gear Solid, this game fails to keep players interested, so it makes number 10 on the list.

#9. Battlefield Hardline

Dice and EA make a second hit on the list with Battlefield Hardline. What was supposed to be a fun spinoff game from the regular Battlefield formula with a cops and robbers dynamic turned into a trainwreck of a game. Combine a lackluster amount of content compared to BF4 (more expensive than BF4 too during sales), a $60 season pass, and EA/DICE literally abandoning the game a week after the game came out to create more content for BF4 dropped the value of the game to nearly zero. Get it in a bargain bin if you can, I've heard some parts of the single player are actually decent.

#8. Destiny (The Taken King)

Labeling itself as a new game by releasing its Taken King revamp/expansion in September, this one snuck itself into the nominees of the Game Awards, so screw it, it's a part of 2015. And it made this list. Why? Destiny decided to screw over its fanbase by not including the Taken King content in its original 2014 season pass. Essentially, people who bought Destiny in 2014 with the season pass and purchased this Taken King DLC have dropped a total of $130 on the game, a ridiculous price, and if you currently own a base copy of Destiny with no DLC, you'll find that scrapping your current copy for a $60 full DLC Destiny: Taken King Legendary edition is actually cheaper than buying all the DLC itself, Activision essentially saying their base game is worthless. For screwing over its fanbase and trying to label itself as a 'new' game, it makes the list.

#7. Batman: Arkham Knight

Do I even need to speak about this game? A trainwreck of a launch so legendary that it had to be taken off the PC Market. Outsourced to Iron Galaxy Studios, the PC port of Arkham Knight was only developed by a whopping 12 people, which would explain its terrible optimization and a 30fps cap at launch. The game dropped off the face of Steam for months until its inevitable return, and even then it still suffers from FPS drops. Then Warner Brothers even gave up on SLI/Crossfire support because they believe the performance gain would be small compared to the new issues it would create (complete bullshit). For a disastrous launch and a company unwilling to actually fix their game, it makes the list.

#6. Guitar Hero Live/Rock Band 4

Rhythm games were supposed to make a comeback this year. Unfortunately, both Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 failed to deliver an appealing new generation of rhythm games. Guitar Hero went with a much more casual approach, simplifying and redesigning their Guitar style, changing the game to a single-player experience, recycling a good amount of their old tracks from last generation with an emphasis on rock/casual rock, and an interesting take on rhythm games by using real concert footage and literally putting you in the feet of a rockstar. However, with Guitar Hero Live, you can't rock out with friends anymore, as there's no multiplayer whatsoever, no backwards compatibility with old controllers from last generation, no drums/mic/bass support, and no backwards compatibility with old DLC from the Guitar Hero Franchise.

Rock Band 4 does what Guitar Hero failed to do right and does everything wrong that Guitar Hero got right. Rock Band 4 features similar controllers to the old generation and backwards compatibility with old instruments. It also features backwards compatibility with a large amount of the old DLC from the previous generation of Rock Band games. However, its complete and utter fail to deliver online multiplayer at launch (still not available as of today), an uninteresting Band Tour campaign mode compared to Guitar Hero Live, and an expensive band-in-the-box bundle at $250, no official e-drum support, and a terrible setlist compared to Guitar Hero Live makes this game painfully average just like Guitar Hero.

Why is it number 6 on the worst list, and why are they grouped together? Because while both aimed to revive the rhythm industry, none did successfully. I at least expected one of these two to get it right. For an immediate failure of trying to revive one of my favorite series, these two games make #6 on the list. Let's hope they don't oversaturate the industry with games this time.

#5. Evolve

After an entire year of terrible games, this game tries to come out Q1 2015 defending its terrible DLC practices by saying they need to 'feed their families', essentially a pity story to get gamers to buy their game. Evolve is a game that cuts the bullshit and was a prime representation of what was wrong with the gaming industry, and after last year, gamers had enough. Within a few weeks this game literally died, and now no one will play this game or even pick it up in sales for cheap. Its pre-order incentive let gamers skip the lower tier creatures for the upper stage 3 creatures all on day one and essentially left gamers who didn't pre-order annoyed. Combine that with a fun cooperative element that's unplayable with strangers and a company keen on microtransactions, DLC, pre-order incentives, and two (yes two) season passes,this game killed itself as soon as they announced its second season pass. Evolve teaches us you can't try to get sales through pity, and that if you're not confident in the quality of your game and if you're not proud to release it, then don't. We have enough crappy games to deal with.

#4. Minecraft Story Mode

What happens when Microsoft pulls up to Telltale's drive-thru window with sacks of cash asking to make a game? Minecraft Story Mode. This uninspired game seeks to actually add a story to Minecraft but fails in doing so in every possible way. Pandering to its low-age demographic rather than making a story for all ages, Minecraft Story Mode features cringeworthy dialogue and an unepic story that feels like it was written in 10 minutes by unpaid interns. With a company like Telltale who create their game solely based around story and not gameplay, story is everything, there's never a lot of gameplay to Telltale games at all. With a terrible uninteresting story like this it falls flat on its face a foot from its starting line. While the recreation of the Minecraft feel on a different, optimized engine is superb, the rest of the game falls flat and stands as an easily spottable cash grab by Microsoft. Many people weren't keen on Telltale's Game of Thrones series, so with this game we can see a decline in the quality of Telltale Games, as they need to go back to their roots and focus on story and characters (and not taking money from Microsoft).

#3. The Order: 1886

What happens when you price a single-player 5-hour game at $60? The Order: 1886. This PS4 exclusive failed in story, gameplay, and amount of content to deliver an experience as promised. Many PS4 fans couldn't stand dropping $60 on a game they knew would only last 6 hours maximum and even with superb graphics the game failed to last. Even when you factor out the fact that the game is short, the story itself is very bland and mundane, I recommend watching Previously Recorded's The Order: 1886 Review for an analysis by film experts on the story of the game. This game easily lost gamers' interests a week after it came out, and like many others on the list, if you're going to grab it, grab it from a bargain bin.

#2. Godzilla

While this game technically came out in 2014, the American release was in June of this year. This game is actually a movie-licensed game meant to compliment the 2014 Godzilla reboot. Every single level you do the exact same thing: destroy the generator. No variation at all. There's even a point in the game where it asks you to destroy submarines as Godzilla and the game calls it a 'generator'. You do this every mission to collect 'G Energy' which does nothing at all. On top of that, the game can be completed in less than one hour, which I think is a 2015 record for shortest game ever. However, you need to replay the campaign over and over to unlock the other monsters and things along that line. Combine a mundane, short as hell campaign with no local multiplayer and a broken online multiplayer mode literally killed the game as soon as it came out everywhere else in the world. The PS3's graphics are so laughable that you shouldn't even bother if you're even going to play it and have a PS3. Stay away unless you are a die-hard fan of Godzilla.

#1. Hatred

THANK GOD this game died out immediately after launch. After stirring up controversy in 2014, getting taken off of Steam Greenlight, then Valve's Gabe Newell himself apologizing for trying to censor this piece of 'art' and putting it back on Steam, then Twitch banning Adult-Only games one day before the launch, this year we finally saw the release of Hatred. This game is exactly what many predicted: a game that stirred up controversy just for the sake of stirring up controversy (and sales). If you look at the game itself, the game is an unoptimized, uninspired, lackluster isometric shooter designed to try and be as edgy as possible. In the first five minutes of gameplay I saw the same kill animation 3 times. I don't even exactly know why its so unoptimized when running on Unreal Engine 4 but it runs like total garbage. There's nothing to this damn game: no reason behind killing innocents, no exploration into the mind of a serial killer, no creative background behind the game, no other characters, its literally just: I'm sick of the world, let's go out banging. This game falls into the category with games like Manhunt, where there's either a terrible or no story to it and its just killing people for no reason. I'm actually really glad this game died out as soon as it came out, because now it stands as an example: if you try to stir up controversy to advertise your game, and it sucks, then it'll die out immediately.

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Oh man, I need some fresh air after these. If you're one of those people who say that 'Witcher 3 is the worst game of the year because the combat sucks' or 'Metal Gear Solid 5 sucks because the AI isn't that good and Chapter 2's story sucks', well I'll let you know you don't even know sh*t until you play these games on the list. Take it from a man who's played all three current episodes of Minecraft: Story Mode, you DO NOT want to play a good amount of these games. We can see that a lot of these games stem from corporations underestimating their markets and assuming a lot of people would buy the product regardless of quality. Well, I'm glad a lot of these games died out immediately to show these groups and companies that we actually want a quality product rather than garbage from their studios. I feel as if we've gone through the worst of the industry, and from here on out it'll (hopefully) get a lot better. Despite this particular list, I believe 2015 to be one of the best years for gaming, and have high hopes that next year will be even better.

Steam Controller Review

Oh boy, been waiting for this one! So I finally got my hands on the Steam controller, and I've been messing around with it for a little over a week now. It's a strange, strange concoction that I've never really used before. It's ergonomic shape, placement of buttons, and overall design makes it the most unique, innovative controller for years now.

Let's dig deep into it. Now, we've been hearing about this controller for years now, and they've been messing around with the design for a while, the biggest being the implementation of buttons from it's initial 2013 unveil. It went through a bunch of different design decisions and years of testing and engineering  until they came to the final design.

So what do you get in the box when you get it exactly when you buy it? Well you get,

-The Controller

-A USB Adapter with an optional base to house it on

-A micro-USB cable (it can be wired also, but it works with the USB base

Obviously, this controller isn't meant for use on the Xbox or the PS4. It'll only work with your PC, and it works directly through Steam. Upon plugging it in the controller is instantly recognized, makes a beep, and automatically, you can use it to navigate your desktop. This is where you mess around with the thumbpad for a bit and feel how it works. It works, works alright. Not bad, not amazing either though. It's not perfect movement sensor which is slightly disappointing, but it'll make up for it.

Let's talk about the feel of the controller. It definitely feels slick, and is really ergonomic. I thought I'd have a problem reaching the buttons as they're in the place of what usually is the right stick, but the ergonomic design really blew me away. I was able to reach the buttons no problem. The extra buttons on the back... well they jut out a bit, so I've hit them more times than I would've liked. Haven't hit it lately yet so that's alright. The triggers mimic the Gamecube controller trigger which a lot of people like, but the bumper/shoulder buttons are waaaaaaay too big and a lot higher than the triggers. They take some getting used to.

Let's go over some pros. Every single option you could ever dream of is customizable by the software in the steam controller. There's sensitivity options, flick options, edge speed options, button remapping, mapping for the gyroscope button, etc. The sky is not even the limit with this damn thing. The back buttons are nice, as they add extra buttons which you'll need when transitioning from a keyboard to controller. You can even set a button so that when you hold it it'll shift your buttons to do something else, called a "mode shift" button which adds much more customization than something like Xpadder.

A lot of games surprisingly have official steam controller support by the devs available for use immediately which is nice. For other types of situations though you'll have to make your own, I imagine something like Civilization 5 will never have official controller support so you'll have to make your own with that one. Community-made controller profiles are generally labelled to what they aim at accomplishing. One for MGS5 aimed at adding a dual aiming system using the triggers. Pretty interesting.

Time to go over some cons, and trust me there are a bunch of em. One major con is that it takes batteries to operate. While its nice that you can directly wire it so that you don't have to use it wirelessly, I would've very much appreciated a chargeable controller. Another problem is that in order to edit any settings with the Steam Controller, you need to be in Big Picture Mode. Why? Why can't I use the Steam settings regularly? Why does it need to be in Big Picture Mode? Even to edit the desktop configuration for browsing your desktop you need to go into Big Picture Mode. Then you realize that in order to go into Big Picture Mode you need to be on the Store Page. That's ridiculous.

Another problem is you need to have the Steam Overlay on in order for the controller to work. So if for some reason you can't get the Steam Overlay you'll have to set up a desktop configuration to get those to work, so there is a workaround I guess. It won't be easy setting it up with non-steam games (though possible), and it's been giving a few emulators some trouble so definitely be careful if you're buying it for use in emulators.

I thought I'd have a problem with looking around with the Steam Controller (which I still kinda do) but messing with the settings and turning off the flick option, upping the sensitivity, and using edge speed really, really helped to make it a lot better than I originally thought it would be.

Overall, for almost every fault in this controller, it can usually make up for it either in messing around with the settings or just taking the time to get used to its unusual design. It's really an anomaly of a controller. It will never be as good as an Xbox 360 controller, and never be as precise as a mouse and keyboard. But the things it can actually do, it does well. If they can iron out some of the kinks with the Steam overlay always being on to use it, add a Steam controller option in the regular settings so you don't have to go to Big Picture Mode, better non-steam game support, better emulator support, and maybe release a chargeable version, this could very well be a solid controller to go ALONG with a keyboard/mouse and a controller.

That being said, I can't recommend it to someone who thinks it'll either completely replace their keyboard and mouse or thinks it'll replace their controller. It's not meant for that. It's meant as an alternative to those two. Not a replacement.

I rate the Steam controller a 6/10 currently. Fix some of the software bullshit, and it'll go to a 7/10.

New GPUs for the Holidays, Insight into next year's PC Hardware

Sorry I missed last week, had too much going on to write an article. Hope you guys understand.

It's been a pretty good week for PC Hardware, as a new card was just released by AMD in time for the holidays and some insight into what Nvidia's been working on with HBM 2.0 to release next year. It's been a good ride this week, so without further ado let's get into some of this.

AMD just released a 'new' card into their r9 300 series family, the r9 380x. As you would expect from the name, it's a little better than the r9 380, and not as good as the r9 390. That's to be expected with the starting price of the card at $230. Very solid pricing, as every one of these 380x cards comes with a 4gb GDDR5 memory standard, whereas with the previous r9 380s and GTX 960s we saw a lot of 2gb variants floating around.

Checking out this graph (thank you Anandtech), we can see that the new r9 380x is definitely a refresh of the r9 280x, with the 380x boasting the same amount of texture units as the 280x. However, it features an extra gig of GDDR5 memory standard over the 280x and a much smaller power draw over the 280x.

If you're interested in purchasing the r9 380x, perhaps for the holidays or that you need a mid-range upgrade, at the moment there are a couple different options. You got two XFX versions of the card to choose from, the standard Double-Dissipation edition for $230 and a Black Edition factory overclocked (40mhz higher than stock XFX card) version for $250. You have a Gigabyte Windforce version at the standard $230, a Sapphire Nitro Dual X version for $230, a Powercolor version for $230, and two ASUS Strix versions priced at $240 and $260 (no MSI Twin Frozr?). Definitely not a bad selection.

In Team Green news, Nvidia unveiled plans for their next generation of cards. Their Pascal series, set to succeed their Maxwell power-saving series (the 900 cards) is featuring HBM 2.0. HBM stands for High-Bandwidth Memory and is a faster, lightweight, and much more efficient memory solution than the standard GDDR5 memory we've been using for a while now in most GPUs. HBM is not only faster, but it's able to support a higher bandwidth than GDDR5 and takes up much less space on the PCB board, allowing for smaller versions of cards to card out. You can definitely see the advantage of taking up smaller space when you look at AMD's HBM 1.0 r9 Fury Nano, which is only 6" long and can fit in smaller form factor cases.

Bunch of information I'm too lazy to look up the definitions of

HBM 2.0 overcomes the 4gb memory limitation of HBM 1.0, and Nvidia plans to take full advantage of this because they unveiled plans for 16gb of HBM targetting 1 tb/s bandwidth. Now, I'm pretty certain that we'll never fully utilize THAT much VRAM for gaming, and it's a pretty good possibility that that kind of high-end card might not even be available at launch with the other mid-range series cards, but as an enthusiast card and a card for 3d rendering and modelling, it's pretty dank.

Even though there's only really been two things going on in PC Hardware this week, that's still pretty good considering we sometimes go weeks and weeks without official information regarding PC Hardware/Software. With Thanksgiving coming up (or should I say Black Friday/Cyber Monday), the holidays are fast approaching. Getting something for yourself? Buying some hardware for someone you know? Leave a comment or tweet at me, I'd love to know. Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Minecraft Story Mode Review

I usually don't do this, but for this week's blog I'm going to actually be critically analyzing and reviewing a game for the first time ever. From gameplay, to "story", to action, to overall replayability, etc. I'm going all out for this one, hope you guys enjoy this.

What happens when a huge corporation makes a deal with a good company to forcefully push out a game no one wanted? Minecraft Story Mode.

Minecraft Story Mode is essentially a cash-grab by both Microsoft and famed Telltale Games masked as an attempt to add story to a pre-existing Minecraft franchise. It's a strange idea to begin with, as Minecraft never had a need for a story, it's just a sandbox game about building things with no (real) goal to it. But you would assume that Telltale, a company known for it's story elements in gameplay, would be able to save this game, right? Right?

Superb Recreation of Minecraft on a new, optimized engine.

So right off the bat let me get this out of the way, Telltale Games did an amazing, superb job of replicating the Minecraft feel of the game even though the game runs off a different engine. The attention to detail is superb as almost every single thing about this game, from actions, building, hell even the redstone engineered mechanisms in the background all look and stay 100% true to Minecraft, and that's something I have to give credit for. But that's pretty much it for the pros of the game.

The story is... fucking weird. It's actually pretty cringy. You as the player take control of either a male or female Jessie. You and your two friends Axel and Olivia are (I guess?) the laughingstock underdogs of the town. You start the game heading out to a building competition where you and your two friends plan to build a structure to win this competition to have their structure shown at Endercon.

Right off the bat in the first 5 minutes of the game you can tell something is off. You may be asking yourself: 'Why the hell would I care about a building competition? Is this the best you could come up with Telltale? A minecraft town and a building competition?' All of which are completely legitimate questions, but to no answers, I'm afraid.

Well anyways, you get to the competition, and there's a bunch of stereotypical bullies who call your crew "losers" like 20 times in a 2-minute time span making you feel like you're back in the 1990s. You build and win the competition, get lost in the woods, get saved by an average character named Petra. Later she makes a deal with a shady guy who looks like a rapist and ends up getting had, so you hunt him down to get her item back only to find the guy does some other shady shit with wizardry and potions and shit. Then you meet this guy who's in some elite order, then you find out the shady wizard guy was originally part of that order but isn't anymore, he sets loose this ender thing, then you get away from it by running through a nether portal, then start an "epic" quest to save the world.

Like I said, it's fucking weird. The story literally feels as if you set down a whopping 4 interns in a conference room, locked them in, and told them they needed a full-fledged story in one hour or they would be fired.

"What does Minecraft have, QUICK!"

"It has potions and enchanting"

"We'll put in a wizard!"

"There's an Ender Dragon"

"Put in an Order of Knights! They slay dragons!"

"There's a Nether Realm boss!"

"Put in a creature that kinda comes from there!"

Seriously this is a terribly written story, and I didn't even mention Episode 2 for the sake of keeping the review short, but let's just say it's just as, if not more underwhelming than Episode 1.

Mash Q or A if you're using a controller to win.

As for gameplay, it's even worse than something like Walking Dead. The walking around portions are extremely pointless, half the time you're just mashing the A button to get through the crappy building montage of whatever the characters are doing, and the choices pretty much don't impact anything, except for a few minute details. Now to be fair, that's true for all Telltale games, but at least in the Walking Dead, there were memorable characters, a dynamic relationship between the protagonists (Lee and Clementine), and subplots brewing between characters along with the regular plot going which made it feel like an actual story even if there wasn't that much to the gameplay. None of which is present in Minecraft Story Mode.

There's nothing enjoyable about this game, besides mashing the A button to continue through the game, making mundane dialog choices to characters you don't like, then seeing those characters forcefully fight for no reason at all. In the off chance you even got through the story once it isn't like Walking Dead where the story's so good you can ride along again. There's no real replayability to this game, because, again, the choices don't matter at all, even more than in previous Telltale titles.

Let me give you an example of such a thing. At the end of Episode 1, you're asked to either find the engineer person in the Order or go find the demolitions expert. But, no matter what choice you choose, you find them and bring them back only to realize the other character brought back the other choice in Episode 2! So it literally doesn't matter who you choose because they both end up meeting up anyways. Pointless!

And that's all I really gotta say about it, there's nothing really more to say than that this game is corporate bullshit aimed to make money first rather than create a decent, coherent piece of art that stands with the other games of this year. If I had to rate this game, I'd give it a 2/10, mostly because every character made me cringe in some way, shape, or form. I wouldn't wish this game on my worse enemy. Definitely stay away at all costs.

Total War and it's Bad Pre-Order Practices

To me, pre-ordering is something no one should do. Really though, why would you ever pay for a product you have no real knowledge of? It's a concept never made any sense to me personally. That's why most companies will give a small incentive for pre-ordering because they know a pre-order is a guaranteed purchase by the consumer.

At least it used to be small.

The incentives for pre-ordering games is getting so out-of-hand that these pre-order incentives are now even ruining the core gameplay experience. These pre-order incentives now consist of large chunks of the game originally developed as a full complete package, that when separated, create a less fulfilling core experience than the original vision of the game, and the latest game to hop on this train(wreck) is the new Total War game.

I'm not going to even bother talking about the horrible state of Total War: Rome II in this article, let's for a minute let bygones be bygones. The newest Total War, Total War: Warhammer, set to release in 2016, has given a pre-order incentive in which an entire race will be given to the consumer as a pre-order incentive. The base game without a pre-order will include 4 races, and a 5th "Chaos Warrior" race is included with copies of the game that pre-ordered the game. Non pre-order copies will be able to buy the race at a later date, the price of which is not known at the moment.

I actually referenced this on my twitter as Total War locking off an entire race at launch and ended up actually getting a response from Total War themselves, stating:

Interesting, so it's apparently not "locking off" something to have it in the game at launch and not give it to people who didn't toss money at you before the game comes out. You're not locking off content Total War? Because it's available Day One, is it not?

Look, just because you don't tell people that there would be a 5th race at launch, doesn't mean you can classify it as DLC. DLC is known as Downloadable Content, and is supposed to extend the life of the game by adding extra content after launch to keep the game going. It keeps developers working on a particular project for a longer time, generates revenue for said developers, and keeps people on the game longer. It's supposed to be a win-win situation, extra content produced by the developers after launch for a small fee that's supposed to enhance an already content-filled game.

However, this idea doesn't apply to content that is ripped out of the main game and is either resold later or given away as an incentive for pre-ordering, or let's just face what it really is, guaranteed sales of the game.

Now you might say, how do I know it's content that was part of the original game? Well, consider it for a minute: why is Total War announcing DLC months and months before launch, and even worse, why is it available Day One? Because it isn't DLC. It's not content that you download after launch. It's content that's available on Day One that is in fact locked off to people who didn't pre-order. If I don't pre-order your game Total War, I can't use the 5th Race. If I do pre-order, I can use the 5th Race. That's locking off content, and there's no getting around it, even if you think you can classify it as DLC and not tell people there would be 5 races months in advance to try and justify the act.

You may also claim; 'Why am I freaking out, there's still four races to choose from'? Well if I remember correctly Total War is a strategy game similar to Sid Meier's Civilization franchise where you pick a race and start playing strategically until you beat all the other empires. In these kind of games, every play session is going to be different depending on what race you choose. I've never actually played a Total War game but I'm going to assume that each race has its own strength and weaknesses. Thus, players would have to change their play styles to accommodate these changes and it builds to the strategy aspect of the game. Removing a race and limiting the player's choice to four races would limit the variety of the game.

You know that DLC unlocker files exist for these type of situations? They're generally less than 1mb files that you literally shove into the main game folder, and boom, all the locked off content becomes unlocked. I actually saw a lot of these files circulating around when Alien Isolation released back in 2014, where this DLC unlocker file would unlock Day One content locked off to people (extra 2 missions in Alien: Isolation) who didn't pre-order before launch. Obviously, a one megabyte file can't hold an extra 2 mission's worth of content, so what did that company do? They locked off content to people who didn't pre-order, but people got around it, and I fully expect there to be a DLC Unlocker file floating around the internet when Total War: Warhammer comes out next year.

I said this last article and I'm going to say it again: we need some damn reform in this industry. As it stands, any company can pretty much do whatever they want without any repercussions. The thought process of a single company is most likely that they think they can slightly push the boundary of what can and can't be done and think it's okay, but when almost EVERY single company is doing something, to the point where I have something to write about every week, that's poor quality control. Continue the fight for good games, gamers. Because no one else will.

Payday 2 is Slowly Killing Their Fanbase

You know, I go into every week thinking 'what the hell am I gonna write about this week on the blog?'. Then there's always something that pops up or I find out about something and then think 'welp, there it is. My topic of the week.'

This week is pretty much no different. So it's been publicly known that the developers of Payday 2 have made it clear in the past that they do not want microtransactions in their game. In 2013, one of the producers of the game, Almir, stated in the Steam forums that: "We've made it clear that PAYDAY 2 will have no micro-transactions whatsoever (shame on you if you thought otherwise!)". On another occasion before the launch in 2013, Overkill Software stated "No. No. God, I hope not. Never. No."

Welp, I'm sad to say that Payday 2 has introduced microtransactions into their game as part of their annual free-to-play Crimefest event going on. This led to a complete backlash by the community, rightfully so since they just broke their promise they made 2 years ago about the game.

Now, let's talk about microtransactions for a bit. Most games tend to use microtransactions as a way to boost revenue, and with the growing trend of AAA games using microtransactions, many of these companies tend to only use microtransactions for cosmetic purposes, in-game items that would not at all affect the core gameplay. Of course not all games tend to do this (Evolve's level 3 skip, anyone?) and free-to-play games definitely add a few "pay to win" aspects of the game to keep their game afloat, but regard AAA gaming, that's generally how things are done.

Welp (again), I'm sad to say that not only was this the worst way to implement microtransactions into the game, but they made it so that it would alter the core gameplay in a terrible, terrible way. You essentially get safe drops in the game now, and buy a drill from Steam to open them (essentially the case and key system of Counter Strike). The safes will contain a random cosmetic skin, or you would think they would just be cosmetic.

Unfortunately, a lot of these skins, when slapped onto the guns, have stat boosters. Here's a picture of one scenario I literally ripped off the Overkill Software site.

As you can see, this specific skin increases stability of your this weapon by +4. Don't forget that there are plenty of mods in this game to customize stats the way you want, so essentially with the right "Legendary" skin and right combination of mods you can essentially have a tank gun and break the game from its original design.

And as if THAT isn't bad enough, the final nail to the coffin in all of this is that if you open up a case and it's a skin for a gun that's part of a DLC pack, you will not be able to use that skin until you purchase that specific DLC pack to use the gun in the first place. Wow.

I don't think I've ever seen a company punch its fans in the gut so hard in a single update. The entire community is just infuriated with this system to the point where the Payday 2 subreddit tried to gather enough people together to bring its Steam and Metacritic ratings down. That's really, really bad.

So after a few days, Overkill Software actually did respond to all this controversy, and around Day 6 of the annual Crimefest, they added the special drills into drop tables into the game. Essentially, you can get some of these drills in-game without having to spend any money, which I guess is nice. I guess you could just stack up drills and open up a bunch of cases every now and again, I'm not exactly sure how the drop tables work as I don't own Payday 2.

BUT the 2 other points still stand; the fact that Overkill Software broke their promise and the fact that you'll still have to buy DLC packs for skins that you get for weapons you don't have access to with just the base game. I've also read up a lot on the whole Payday 2 situation, and it seems that the company is reluctant in ironing out the bugs that its still had for months now, yet keeps pushing out DLC for people to buy. I can't exactly confirm that this actually happens myself as I don't own the game but I've seen A LOT of people complain about it.

All in all, I'm just sad that companies are able to just get away with this. Like what's to stop Destiny from not including their newest expansion to season pass holders? (Oh wait, that happened). We need some quality control in this industry. Any company, any individual, any content creator can do whatever the hell they want, and essentially that means any and all our purchases have no buyer protection. Tread carefully, gamers.

Hitman Pieces the Game at their Customers? (Accidental Repost from September)

How do you guys buy games? Through Steam? Through the Xbox Live or PSN Market? In a store? Other means of digital download that are inferior to Steam? In any case, it's usually the same. You buy the game, pay once, and that's it. If you're getting it Day One it'll most likely be a $60 purchase, but you get whatever they give you in that price.

Well, can't really say the same for Hitman.

One of the strangest things I've ever seen, the new Hitman scheduled to release next year is planning a system where they piece-by-piece sell you the game. This chart will help you understand what I'm talking about.

Well for one thing, I can't believe I have to read up on how to buy a game, but anyways, this basically states you pay $35 as a "try before you buy" (even though you just dropped $35 on it... do these guys realize Cities: Skylines is only $30?) and you essentially have half the game right there, 3 geographical zones. The other three zones will come out later, one zone per month at a time for the next three months. Then you can drop another $30 on it to upgrade to the full version, or bypass all that and drop $60 at launch for the "full experience".

Now before I begin I'm gonna point out right here that the whole "let me try it out" reason to getting the intro pack is a terrible, thinly-veiled attempt at hiding an unfinished game. If the creators, or publishers, or whoever came up with this terrible system actually wanted us to do a sort-of try before you buy scenario, they would release a zone either for free or for a small fee like $5 for you to actually try the game and all of its mechanics. Dropping $35 is not a good price in the least bit for a "try before you buy" run. Even EA, voted worst company in America two years in a row, would let you try games like Battlefield and Titanfall for 48 hours completely free before asking if you wanted to buy them.

So now that we've established that the game is going to be unfinished at start, we need to look at what'll happen in both situations.

If you go with the $35 "let me try it out" package, you get your 3 zones at launch, and as time progresses and new content releases, you'll be locked out of that content until you drop an extra $30 on it. The zones are being released a month at a time, and there's no way to buy a zone at a time, it's either 3 zones for $35 or 6 zones for $65 ($60 if you go for the six right away). So essentially when a month's time has passed and a new zone comes out, you'll have to pay the price of three zones (the $30 upgrade package) to only access one zone while the others get ready to come out in the coming months. There's no increment system, it's either you get half the game or the full game. Then when the full game is released, you'll be stuck until you drop that money, and essentially customers will get a butchered experience of what the original vision of the game was by having content locked off behind this paywall.

If you go with the $60 full package, then you're essentially paying full price for half a game at launch, then just waiting around for things to come out as time goes by. That's not something you want to do to someone who just dropped a full price on your game, piece them the game as time goes by until three months afterward when they have the full content.

We also have no idea the sizing of these zones at all. While information about the 'base' $35 half game has been released, nothing, and I mean NO INFORMATION has been released about what will be in the other three zones. Are we actually going to get the other 50%? Or is 75% of the content in the original three zones and that the later three will have lacking content? We as the consumer have no idea at all what they're going to do. There could be a severe lack of content in these next three zones, and if the developers packed the first three with content, it would have the consumer assume that the same amount of content would exist in the upcoming content, which it easily can lack. It's a terrible system because they can bait the gamer with a good amount of content in the first three zones and then just give up once they get the gamer to upgrade on faith alone.

Whether you think this is an alright idea or a terrible idea, the entire situation reeks of pushing the game out the door before it's ready. Whether the developer studio wanted this to happen, or if the publisher of the game is making this decision, we probably won't know. The best bet is to just wait to see if the content will be worth the money or not. This kind of stupid iffy bullshit is the reason I don't preorder games, and if you were looking forward to this game, well, all I can say is I'm sorry companies care more about money and the business side than the actual piece of art they're creating.

Does Anyone Need Antivirus Anymore?

I'm not sure about you, but none of my computers have any sort of active antivirus on them. That doesn't mean I'm in the dark, though, I do keep a program like Malwarebytes on my computer and run it whenever I'm bored. But a very important question can be asked regarding this situation. Do we need antivirus anymore?

Now before I really get into it I want to make it clear that Antivirus, Anti-Malware, and Internet Security programs are very important and serve a purpose whether we use them or not. They're there for all around protection for your system and important files, and that will always be important, especially to people who work on computers and workstations for a living, and if your field of work lies somewhere in the realm of working on a computer a few hours a day, antivirus and internet security should be a priority.

However, for us enthusiasts who use our computers for gaming and know our internal file system and operating systems in and out, is it even necessary?

Like I said, none of my computers have active antivirus running on them, and I have Windows Defender and Windows Update disabled on all of my PCs. At any time something weird's going on with my computer, like a random program popped up in my taskbar and won't close out, it's time to go to good ol' Task Manager, find the exe, kill the process and delete the exe. Simple as that.

Of course sometimes that's not enough, and that's where Hitman Pro comes into play. This crazy program can kill off the virus if you're not able to do it yourself no problem, and has a nice feature where it can scan an unknown file through its cloud system across five different antivirus databases to find out whether its safe or not. Pretty dank.

Then there's the sort-of rare experiences where you get the chain of viruses on your PC, where a single virus or malware will start putting other viruses on your computer. Again, Hitman Pro or something like Malwarebytes works perfectly in these type of situations.

And, well to be honest, that's pretty much it. There's very few system-killing viruses anymore to the point where the chance of you coming across them is pretty much nil, and as long as you have a good idea of what your filesystem generally looks like you should be able to spot something fishy pretty quickly.

With the popularity of Adblockers in the past few years using those while browsing the web will keep a large amount of popup ads off your computer that viruses generally come from. If you need to access a certain site and are unfamiliar with whether it's safe or not, you can use the site webutation.net to find out whether it's safe or not. Also, surprisingly, the new Windows 8 and 10 version of Windows Defender works a lot better than the Windows 7 version and can actually detect viruses on your computer, and that comes default with every Windows install.

So do we need antivirus anymore? Well, not really, as the tools to combat viruses have significantly increased in the past few years to the point where they're pretty much integrated already whether you realized it or not. Again, I must stress, if you have important data on your PC or use a PC for work, antivirus and internet security should be a must have, and there exist many free antivirus and internet security programs out there for you. Comodo Internet Security (Firewall + Antivirus) and AVG Antivirus are both completely free and can serve you well in your battles.

Now for the enthusiasts who would rather not have antivirus eating up RAM in the background, here's some tips and tricks on how to combat these bastards.

1. Viruses almost always hide in temp folders. Both your Windows/Temp and your Local Temp folders are favorable places for viruses to hide. An easy solution is to clear them out every once in a while, or use a program like CCleaner to do that for you.

2. If you can't close an intrusive program, use task manager. Open it up, go to the processes tab, and find it in the list and close it there. If you've never seen it before and want it removed from your PC, before you remove it, right click it in the list and open the file location, then kill the process in task manager and just delete the exe.

3. Keep a backup program. Whether it's Hitman Pro, MalwareBytes Anti-Malware, or something else of your choosing, keeping a backup on your PC is something everyone should do. It doesn't have to be a full-fledged antivirus program, but something light that you can run whenever to quickly scan your PC and remove that garbage is a generally good idea.

And that'll pretty much cover most problems nowadays! We made it guys, you pretty much never have to worry about 'em anymore. (for the most part)

Destiny is Single-Handedly the Worst of the Gaming Industry

If there was ever a game I could pin all my problems on, a single game I could ever blame for DLC, Season Passes, unfinished at launch, unplayable, every single unbearable part of this damn industry, it would have to be Destiny. Just thinking about this game makes me sick, and I gotta write a blog post about it! So, let's dig right into this.

If you live under a rock, you at least know that Destiny was extremely underwhelming at launch, with an extreme lack of story content, multiplayer content, locked-off and unfinished on-disc DLC, the works. So weren't the DLC going to fix all that and continue off of the story? Well, I guess they did, but that in no way forgives for the travesty that was Destiny at launch last year.

But that's not what I'm mad about.

I'm mad about how bullshit Bungie and Activision's marketing and pricing tactics are on people who purchased Destiny. With the release of the new Taken King expansion/revamp of the game, you'd think that things would be a lot better from here on out, right? Welp, I can pretty much say no to that, at least from a pricing standpoint.

Let's take a look at the pricing of Destiny. The base game at launch was $60, and the game with the Season Pass was priced at launch as $90. That's standard (unfortunate, but standard) with most games at this point. Their first expansion, The Dark Below, cost $20 to those who didn't have the season pass. Their 2nd expansion, House of Wolves, followed the same suit, $20, covered by the season pass. HOWEVER, this new Taken King expansion is not only double the price of the earlier expansions at $40, but it isn't included in the Season Pass. Essentially, anyone who dropped extra on the Season Pass would have no choice but to purchase The Taken King. On top of that, to even access the new content of the Taken King, you HAVE to have both previous expansions. So let's do a bit of calculating if you can't follow so far:

Without the Season Pass:

$60 + $20 + $20 + $40 = $140 to access the Taken King from the base game

With the Season Pass:

$90 + $40 = $130 to access the Taken King

Now this only applies to those who already purchased the game. For someone who doesn't own the game such as myself there is a Destiny Legendary Edition that includes the base game, all the previous DLC, and the Taken King for a flat $60. So it's not exactly bad if you don't have Destiny.

However, if you just have the base Destiny game you'll find that literally scrapping your current copy for a Legendary Taken King Edition of the game is actually CHEAPER than buying all the expansions seperately. Seriously, do the math. If you dropped $60 on the base game, and drop $60 for the new Legendary Edition, you only dropped $120. If you drop money separately for all the content you end up paying $140 total.

Is this what you want us to think of your game Activision and Bungie? That your base game is so worthless that it's actually more worth it to re-buy the game? That's terrible! You essentially beta tested everyone who made up that $500 million profit revenue on Day One of your damn game, and then expect them to at least drop the same price again for the expansions.

And yeah, there's a story floating around that originally Bungie had planned around 5 games to launch within 2 year time windows starting at 2013 for around 10 years. I believe the writer quitting or something like that impacted the game significantly to the point where they had to scrap their entire plans and start with a new plan and push a game out within a year. But that DOESN'T EXCUSE this. It doesn't excuse continually charging your customers for the same game over and over again. There are companies like CD Projekt Red that actually know how to treat their customers. There is no value in this game from a company, whether Bungie, Activision, or even both, that doesn't know how to treat its customers and expects you to keep throwing money at them over and over.

With how messed up this industry is, I originally found it hard to pinpoint a single game as the worst of the industry, but after this whole Taken King fiasco, it takes the cake as the worst of the industry.

How I'm a Terrible PC Builder

For my first blog post ever, I'm gonna keep it a bit light-hearted and tell a little bit about how I'm quite possibly one of the worst PC Builders of all time. This post'll be full of facts, stories, and everything I can think of to prove to you that I am a terrible PC Builder.

Now before I begin, I want to say that there's a difference between being a terrible PC Builder and being an expert PC Builder. I would honestly consider myself an expert as I've developed the tricks of the trade at this point, can navigate my way in and around a PC and its BIOS, I've installed closed liquid cooling loops, peripherals, large and small heatsinks, almost everything at this point. There's not much more left besides custom liquid cooling loops for me to learn, so at this point I would consider myself an expert at PC Building. That doesn't mean I'm good at it though...

Let's go over some of the things that make me a terrible PC Builder so that you can feel better about your own skill as PC Builders yourself.

1. I have no regard for ESD (Electro-Static Discharge).

At all. Yes, I know they destroy boards. Yes, I know the dangers of ESD. However, the chances of ESD frying a board, especially nowadays where most boards now even have ESD protection, is next to nothing. In general, I just don't want to deal with it. I bought an anti-static wrist strap a while back, but I HATE using it. It's one of the most restrictive things I've ever used. Plus, if you're building a PC for a friend then they end up obtaining a fear of ESD, thus not being able to work on the PC alongside myself. Just screw it, I don't care. Any and all electrostatic can be discharged by holding the computer case itself. Maybe I should invest in an anti-static mat, but then I'm restricted to working in a singular place. My setup DOES NOT allow for that. In conclusion, I just don't even bother.

2. No workspace.

As I just said, my setup doesn't allow for an anti-static mat. Mostly because I don't actually have a setup. I have no actual place to work on computers whatsoever. Any and all work that needs to be done is getting done on the ground, right up next to the carpet with all that electrostatic buildup ready for me to touch components with. Relax, relax, I discharge myself by touching the case for like 10 seconds before working, I'm not THAT ignorant. But it does leave room for more buildup as I'm sitting on the ground working. I do have another setup, using my old computer desk to do quick things inside my PCs but there's almost no space there for anything. I really don't have any means of storage either besides a box I keep near my general "workspace". I don't even have any sort of light close to my workspace. It's dark as hell where I work on computers. I'm honestly at this point considering getting a giant yellow construction zone worklight off of Amazon so I can see what I'm doing. Most of the time I'm just using my phone's flashlight and that's it. I've amassed a good amount of tools and hardware over the years, but that's really it. Overall I have no area to do whatever I need to which kinda sucks.

3. My overall "ghettoness".

Well, you can already tell by my workspace and lack of ESD care that I'm what they would call a "ghetto" PC Builder, if that even exists anywhere besides me, but the fun doesn't stop with just that. To clarify, the term "ghetto" is a sort-of loose term to describe something being done in the most dirt-cheap, quick way possible without any regard to long-term side effects of the actions in question. I've posted many of my "ghetto" actions on my twitter but some of them I've never mentioned before. So I'm gonna make a quick list of my ghetto actions. Over the years, I've:

-Installed motherboards with only 4 screws

-Installed graphics cards without any screws

-Used painter's tape to mount an SSD into a case

-Overclocked a graphics card 500mhz over its initial clock and almost destroyed it

-Installed a liquid cooling radiator with its fans only mounted with 2 screws each (4 screws total vs proper 8)

-Have done the worst cable management job in history on a $2000 Titan Build

My most recent "ghetto" action was putting my old graphics card in my friend's computer. It wouldn't fit in the ITX case so I bought a PCI-e extender cable and was supposed to mount it outside the case, but the cable was so short I literally grabbed a piece of plastic similar to a hard drive cage from the case (it's supposed to prevent people from doing things to computers but can be taken out) and plopped it on it upside down and called it a day. I have pictures if you don't believe me.

Overall, I just wanted to give you a little insight into how I do things. I'm just a typical PC Enthusiast, nothing more. I don't have more, nor really ask for a lot, but what I do have is a lot of experience dealing in the dead-end problems of computers, the likes of which almost no one has heard of, and troubleshooting is something I deal with more than any sane human should. Remember, this is my hobby. NOT my job. I don't build computers for a living. Anything and everything I do is for fun or to help out others. So now that you know a little more about how I function as a PC Builder, after that atrociously-awesome piece of art photographed above, all I gotta say is this:

Welcome to PCBuilderProbs.