Thank you F:AT...

Yeah, sorry. Jexik. I love the game, but I found that I just can't deal with collectible games of any kind anymore. I don't get enough games in to feel like I'm getting my money's worth out of what I'm buying and then I feel like I'm behind the times when I do get together with the local group and find out that everyone's running the latest new thing that often leaves the old stuff in the dust. I can't do Magic. I can't do Netrunner. I can't do the new Arkham Horror LCG. And I can't do X-Wing. I am looking to sell my collection of stuff up through Wave 5, though...

The reason that I come here is that this place acts as the most wonderful filter, pointing me to the games, movies,etc that are hard to spot amidst the majority of the dross that is produced.

To be honest, in my opinion all gaming sites are much of a muchness. Yeah, there's plenty of dickheads on BGG but then again it's got a massive user base so they're not all going to be diamonds. Given how much of a smaller user base Fortress AT has, it's had more than its fair share of meltdowns and people leaving in a huff over really stupid stuff. If you're not one of the regular dozen or so posters to this site, leave a post in a thread and you might as well be talking to yourself.

Having said that, I'm going through a bit of a GW thing at the moment and I've enjoyed reading the multiple threads going on over here about Shadow War and Age of Sigmar. It's usually worth seeing what Barnes has to say about any given game too.

san il defanso wrote: I also took a surprising amount of guff when I wrote those articles several years ago about the lack of historical roots in the hobby. I don't know why they got defensive about that kind of thing, but there it is.

I remember, some time ago, that I got a piece of hate mail. At first, I was not surprised. I had just written a very negative review of Grand Theft Auto V, so negative that I even compared it to an Adam Sandler comedy. And hence, I expected some hate.

But once I checked the comment I realized something: It was not about my GTA V review, but a small piece I did on Team Fortress 2 and its satire of the cold war. Here's what the comment said:

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOIIINGNGNG

IT'S JUST A GAME!!!!!

And it dawned on me that a lot of people find this kind of deep looks into games are a threat to their "gaming ideology" or worldview. There's a lot of people out there who derive a lot of pride from having the "best console" playing the game with the best graphics or owning the latest Essen release and when they see these kind of articles they go to the defensive because they undermine that.

For example, the obsessive "collectors" that just buy the latest Essen releases we have mentioned in this thread feel threateneed d by a lot of stuff:

1) Praising old games. They are buying only new games because they are "the best". If old games are also great, isn't their "ideology" wrong?
2) Deep analysis of games. They buy games on superficial terms, opening the gates to deep analysis might prove them wrong.
3) Competitive gamers. They play games they don't so they are evil philistines who can't appreciate better things.

The "Netrunner is not a real boardgame" debacle is a great example of this, as are the continuous "should videogames be 60 hours long" debates.

It's a topic I've thought much about and I keep it in mind when writing. I think gamers as a whole are simply not used to these perspectives and tend to have knee-jerk reactions to them, even if it's something very simple or seemingly unthreatening.

Sorry, I'm explaining myself very poorly. Hope the point gets across, though.

some dummy wrote: I had just written a very negative review of GTA V
.

Erik Twice wrote: At first, I was not surprised. I had just written a very negative review of Grand Theft Auto V, so negative that I even compared it to an Adam Sandler comedy.

Whaaaaaaaaa? Okay... this statement has brought me questions. I can certainly appreciate that someone would find issues with GTA V. I personally enjoyed it very much as a whole, but every GTA has its rough spots, terrible missions, etc. What I am wondering is, how did your opinion of it stray so wildly that you think it's like watching an Adam Sandler "film"? It would seem that someone who knows he hates GTA probably shouldn't have bothered in the first place.

I don't post here much, but I don't post on BGG at all. I do still come by to read the threads once in awhile and I occasionally buy games based on advice here that no one even knows they've given me.

For some reason I just can't quit you.

hotseatgames wrote: Whaaaaaaaaa? Okay... this statement has brought me questions. I can certainly appreciate that someone would find issues with GTA V. I personally enjoyed it very much as a whole, but every GTA has its rough spots, terrible missions, etc. What I am wondering is, how did your opinion of it stray so wildly that you think it's like watching an Adam Sandler "film"?

I simply played it and didn't like it at all.

First. It's not interesting nor funny. It doesn't offend me, but when a third of the dialogue is taken by the words "nigger" and "fuck" it's very difficult for me to care about what they are saying. The game constantly throws a barrage of awful, crass jokes at you that are just boring and characters like the white used car salesman that accusses his clients of being racist for not buying his cars. You get "Taco Bomb" and Facebook is called "Life Intruder", which isn't that fun, now having a Zuckenbger/Steve Jobs look-alike make anal rape jokes, that's fun.

Boy, does GTA V love anal rape jokes. I think they ran out of "millenial entitlement" jokes two hours in and decided to go with anal rape from that point on.

I was also heavily bothered by the sexism. It's ok if one character (Michael's wife) is, well, a "bitch" or a "slut". And I guess that it's admissible that her daugher is also portrayed like that. But it's not just those two, every single female character in this game that I remember was portrayed as a "bitch", a "slut", a "whore" or a combination of those. The only exception is the female policewoman whose team aprehends the main characters and she delivers yet another anal rape joke (Haha, shoving a torch through someone's asshole, the pinnacle of comedy!)

Worst of all, the game thinks it's being smart and satirical by portraying women like that, just like it thinks its "torture scene" is poignant. I'm checking my old review while writing this and yep, there was indeed a part of the game in which you had to prevent two dogs from fucking. Yep, exactly the kind of material that you expect alongside a heartfelt criticism. Also, the game is against torture, sure, but have you heard that those suspected terrorists that we supposedly defend got anally raped? Hilarious!

It's actually a bit too far to compare Adam Sandler movies to GTA V, they are not as crude. They are similar in that they treat violence, pettynesss or meanness as something inherently comedic. I actually remember Roger Ebert's take on one of his movies and I think it sums up the problem with GTA V well.

"Happy Gilmore" tells the story of a violent sociopath. Since it's about golf, that makes it a comedy."

But while the story, satire and themes of the game are probably the main reason why I disliked it, I wasn't fond of GTA V on mechanical terms, either. In some ways it's a collection of every AAA cliché: Cover mechanics, health regeneration, bullet time, stealth buttons, raising your character’s stats, etc, etc. None of them are good, I criticize them all the time in other games and here they don't build a cohesivo whole, they just pile up as allowed by the game's budget.

In order words, I think the game has a lot of facets and none are particularly good. There's shooting, but it's corridor-like and given auto-aim it's not very interesting. There's driving but it's brough down by strange physics and the "Driving skill" statistic. Stealth, the minigames, the economy...none of this stuff is good. When reviewing a game I normally ask myself "What am I doing? Is it interesting or fun?" and I often thought "No". Acting as a choffeur for assholes wasn't fun for me, and neither was Yoga or pressing X to take jewels. Most levels have the same structure too and it's a boring one to boot:

1) Drive to meeting place
2) Exposition while picking up characters
3) Something bad happens, possible shoot-out
4) Chase with gimmick vehicle (Eg. Chasing the producer with a quad. Or was it a truck? Same thing. The bike race is similar. And didn't you take an aquatic bike at some point?)

Sometimes there are some minor changes, perhaps the guy always escapes and you have to shoot up a place or "sneak in", but it's never interesting to me. It's a shame, because there's a lot of potentially great stuff in this game: driving across the landscape, organizing a criminal gang, creating a character, different storylines...but this potential is never exploited, writers were too busy with bitches and saying "fuck" to care, I guess.

I don't know, I know I'm very far from the concensus here, but I think those are all good reasons for me to give it a very low score. If you can, try to look for the conversation I had with Black Barney on this game, we have extremely different views but it was great to debate the merits of the game with him.

It would seem that someone who knows he hates GTA probably shouldn't have bothered in the first place.

I didn't go in expecting to hate the game or anything, I actually played GTA San Andreas quite a bit when I was a teen and decided to give it a whirl (My cousin had the game for a couple weeks and I loaned it). I had heard about the sexism accussations before the fact because a reviewer got doxxed and harrassed over them but I was actually surprised because I found them worse than (most) critics mentioned in their reviews.

Hope I don't trigger anyone. Ah, who am I kidding...

I bought GTAV because some friends of mine were playing GTAO. I did the first mission or so, hopped into GTAO, Stole a beer truck and drove it into the ocean. That was pretty much it for me. I found it pretty ugly and off-putting and deleted it.

But then, I've played hours of No Man's Sky, so do not listen to me about video games.

Uh oh, ARMS looks like it's punishingly difficult and has tons of grindy unlocks. Paging Dr. Simmons, Dr Simmons, you are wanted in the Switch lobby...

arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/strong-ar...endo-i-used-to-know/

Oops, wrong thread, but on topic here...

GTA is too much of a thing for me. It goes past parody into just being tasteless and gross. Compare to FAMILY GUY.

Yeah, i mean it's crazy how we all seem to approach this game differently. You guys seem to approach it like it's supposed to be a book or novel and yeah on the very surface, it's basically about being a criminal in a big city. But the whole open-world of it goes often unnoticed and that's always been the pull for me. Getting to do whatever I want, whenever I want. Sure, i can do to the top of a building and shoot people, but that's not what I want to do at all.

I think i got into great detail in all this with Eric once, but basically it boils down to: Ok, i need to get way over there for a mission or sidequest or collectable item... how do I want to get there? I think I'm going to drive over to the FBI headquarters, scale that building to get to the roof and steal their little awesome buzzard helicopter. You know..because I can. Then I'm now flying around Los Santos in a little chopper and doing my business that way.

They've perfected the sandbox in that not only can I do all this fun stuff just on my own, but if my buddy from Australia wants to do stuff with me, we can jump into an online lobby and start the long process of planning and executing a major heist (which is all in-game), or jump into an actual organized lobby of fighter jets versus dirtbikes.

Heck, just doing the circumfrance of the island underwater in a sub was one of the most zen gaming experiences I've ever had. Took more than an hour. navigating canyon walls, trying to lose the interest of sharks...

but yeah, the story mode is also basically about a psychopath, a sociopath and a dude that doesn't seem to have much options.

i don't really ever go to the strip clubs either, maybe that's why my experience is a little better.

I didnr like GTA5 either. Lots of sameness, lots of running around pointlessly.

The only think I liked was the ability to commit random acts of crime and the game responded to it well.

SuperflyTNT wrote: I didnr like GTA5 either. Lots of sameness, lots of running around pointlessly.

The only think I liked was the ability to commit random acts of crime and the game responded to it well.

I've never played any of the GTA games, but I have run rpg sessions and even campaigns where the player characters were criminals or otherwise evil. And what I generally found was that they didn't want the usual experience of playing in a somewhat structured story. They just wanted to run around committing random acts of crime and then inevitably turn on each other like crazed weasels. So maybe GTA5 really struck a nerve. They didn't force players into an evil narrative, they invited them to do what they wanted, and the results were predictably nasty.