Suck on it!
Social Justice World Warriors
The Social Justice World Warriors at NeoGaf are not happy. With the previously discussed censorship of Street Fighter V‘s super animations they figured it would be smooth sailing for the rest of the game’s development, however this week’s update to the Street Fighter V beta proved to be most triggering indeed. Alternate costumes are now available in game, and one of the most notable new costumes is Laura’s, which comes replete with two massive helpings of jiggly underboob! This is certainly a bit of welcome fan service, but it is truly perplexing as to why Capcom has previously censored character animations. Neither character animation was as gratuitous as Laura baring her lovely mammaries, so both development decisions appear to be completely at odds with one another. Gamers are still upset with the animations being censored, but now SJWs are also upset with the cleavage on display. To top it all off Capcom unconvincingly claimed that the censorship was done in order to avoid getting a mature rating from the ESRB, and then they go and do this, which completely undermines their flimsy excuse. At any rate, with the arrival of Laura’s delectable jugs there is at least the faint hope that Capcom will go back and fix the super animations. After all, it is not like SJWs actually buy games.
In other news, SJWs were also no doubt wracked by PTSD this week when Tecmo Koei showed off their latest feature for Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 – ‘owner mode’. Owner mode will allow players to more effectively ogle their harem of luscious kawaii beauties, interact with them, and have them put on new skimpy outfits. If one is willing to forego the superior visual fidelity and tasty physics of the PS4 release, then the Vita version even allows players to squeeze the girl’s breasts together using the touchscreen and to create gusts of wind by swiping the touchscreen, which can be used to blow up girl’s skirts! All in all Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 is shaping up to be a quality release for admirers of the female booty.
Another Nintendo game that I will not be buying.
Nintendo Censors Fire Emblem
The week has not been uniformly kind to proponents of free expression in gaming however, with Nintendo ruining yet another one of their games, this time by taking a big red marker to its script and removing all content that le Social Justice army has designated as wrongthink. We have already seen how recent Nintendo games such as Xenoblade Cronicles X, Fatal Frame V, and Bravely Second: End Layer have censored aesthetic content in order to kowtow to people who are intolerant of diverse cultures and points of view, but their first title to do this for a substantial chunk of story content is Fire Emblem Fates.
The game in its original form featured a romance option between the protagonist [Kamui] and one of his female soldiers [Soleil]. It is strongly implied that Soleil is attracted to women, and that this attraction is causing her to grow faint and underperform on the battlefield. In order to try and solve Soleil’s problem Kamui slips some magic tablets into her drink which cause her to perceive people as the opposite gender. A side effect of this is that Soleil perceives Kamui as a female and falls for him, and her feelings for him persist even after the magical drugs have worn off. Eventually the two are able to marry.
It is probably obvious to readers why this plotline may have led to the severe arsehurt of SJWs, given the parallels that can be drawn between it and the various faith-based ‘cures’ for homosexuality that were relatively popular in some parts of America until recently. This is not what actually happened though – instead multiple gaming blogs including Destructoid decided to run stories claiming that the game allowed players to drug and rape a lesbian woman, which then led to a massive moral panic within communities of SJW non-gamers. Thus it is easy to see from where the direction to remove this plotline may have come, however the game likely never had a chance given some of the people working on it – Nintendo’s Product Marketing Specialist [Alison Rapp] for instance. When news that Fire Emblem Fates had been censored broke to series fans, Alison Rapp made sure she was around on Twitter to inform them about just how unimportant games are:
“did you know that video games are not the most important things in the world
If u wanna have intelligent convos about games, you need to educate yourself on life & intersectional social issues totally outside of games.”
One imagines that Alison Rapp has never had an intelligent ‘convo’ about games in her life. As usual this will not be a game that one has any inclination to purchase. The content being cut does not seem to be overly integral to the game, but unnecessary censorship should be protested wherever it occurs.
One is intrigued to see the changes that have been made to the battle system since Duscae…
More Final Fantasy XV Tidbits
Given that Final Fantasy XV will be releasing in under a year it would be nice if the development team would just furnish us with all relevant information about the game’s systems, but one supposes the slow rate at which they dole out information is done deliberately so as to ensure a steady rate of news coverage. Perhaps more information would be able to mitigate some of the negative speculation surrounding this game. At any rate, the official English language site for Final Fantasy XV can actually be a source of valuable information on occasion, as members of the development staff are known to answer questions in the site’s forums. When asked about the huge floating city seen in trailers [Altissia], Final Fantasy XV planner, Ishikawa Tomonori, revealed that the location was fully explorable, and so large and labyrinthine that even the game’s developers get can get lost while trying to navigate it. Apparently there are shipbourne cafes and restaurants, markets, and even parks, and players are able to take gondola rides in order to see the sights. Tomonori mentions cafes and restaurants as places that players will enjoy discovering and visiting, continuing the development team’s slightly odd preoccupation with food. With the open world nature of the game one hopes that the team is somehow still able to make locations feel interactive and immersive, as it is better for content to be small but dense than large but sparse.
“Altissia has many and varied locations, such as multiple cafes, ship-bourne market places and parks etc. The city is of a considerable scale, to the extent that even the developers sometimes get lost there!
The player is free to take a leisurely walk around the complex maze of streets, or ride the gondola to see the sights and there is also added enjoyment to be had looking for restaurants to visit!
You are bound to encounter some unique characters when exploring the city streets.
So we have created lots of different things to enjoy in Altissia and hope everyone is looking forward to visiting!“.
When asked about whether the game would feature multiple difficulty modes, Final Fantasy XV lead game designer, Takizawa Masashi, replied that difficulty can be adjusted by changing the battle mode. Apparently Square Enix have designed one battle mode for gamers who like action and another battle mode for gamers who like combat at a relaxed pace. ATB battle systems certainly allow gamers to enjoy combat at a relaxed pace, but one has zero confidence in Square Enix’s ability to make good decisions. Rather, this probably just means that the Final Fantasy XV team designed a version of its action battle system that is slowed-down and boring in order to accommodate the fact that the game’s regular fast paced battle system can feel borderline broken at times.
“The equivalent to difficulty level settings in FFXV is a system where you can switch between different battle modes. By having this ability to switch modes, we want to make it so that both players who like action oriented, technical gameplay and also those who want to fight at a slower, more relaxed pace can all enjoy the combat in their own style. This switching system is a key part of the gameplay that we decided to introduce based on the feedback we received from the Episode Duscae demo. We will go into more detail about the system closer to the game’s launch so stay tuned for more information.”
Sekko Boys is like the junk food of anime.
Anime Spotlight: Sekko Boys
How often is it that one finds an anime series that is its own original property, and not based on a previous manga? Sekko Boys is just that, and moreover it is deliciously funny. Miki Ishimoto is fresh out of art college, and is just starting in her new job within a talent agency. She is shocked to discover that the boy band she is to manage is comprised of four classical stone busts, as the agency prefers to handle stone busts rather than human celebrities. The band is comprised of the leader [Saint Gorgio], the original celebrity [Medici], the multitalented one [Hermes], and the lover [Mars].
The show itself is packed full of excellent humour, and there is an extremely low barrier to entry given that episodes are under ten minutes in duration. Sekko Boys began its run on January 8 2016, and new episodes are simulcast on Fridays at 8:40am PST. There are currently three episodes available, and the show comes highly recommended.
