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GAMING NEWS
Forza 50 millionth time…
This week it was Bethesda who were cavorting all over YouTube going, “Look at our stuff that’s going to coming out literally sometime!”
There’s a new Forza game. Yes. This one is a new updated Forza Motorsport. It’s got snow levels and desert levels – the first time a driving game has ever featured those. No, of course it’s not, but Forza is one of those franchises that are critic-proof really. So, it doesn’t matter what I think about racing games. Even if it is that nothing has ever topped the Burnout games as serious driving simulators, and nothing ever will. And if you are sitting there thinking that Burnout is not a serious driving simulator because it has takedown boosts and points for aftertouch during impact time? Well, you have never driven in Calgary, because that is exactly what commuting is like out here. Anyway, it looks gorgeous but, everything does these days, doesn’t it?
I was thinking that the other day, as I found myself writing “the graphics are fantastic” for the fifty krazillion time in my life. Are we not living in a post-fantastic graphics world? In much the same way as I can’t really notice the different between watching football in 4K ultra HD and 1080 HD once I’m into the game. I think we just have to accept that all the graphics in all the games are amazing now. When was the last time you looked at a game and went, “Yeah, the graphics aren’t great? The horizon shading in this isn’t quite infinite. And I’m sorry I cannot see as many individual horse’s hairs on the tail splaying out when the horst farts, this is a real step down from Red Read Redemption 2.”
With the old machines with proper technical limitations: your SEGA Megadrives and Super Nintendos? You could genuinely look at a Sonic the Hedgehog and go – wow that is a quantum leap in graphics. Whoever managed to squeeze THAT into a cart is a legend. You could look at Donkey Kong 64 and you would stop breathing, it was so impressive. And I remember when I saw Perfect Dark and I thought – no! This isn’t an N64, someone is beaming this in from an Alienware PC via Bluetooth, and then I realised it was 2000 and we wouldn’t have Bluetooth phones for another year.
So yeah, I’m going to stop saying something has amazing graphics now UNLESS it’s something trying to do graphics in a particular style like Little Nightmares or Cupcake or Superman 64. What? You are telling me the graphics on Superman on the N64 were NOT an artistic homage to the 1830s? Damn.
Anyway, that said? Forza Motorsport? Great graphics.
MODERN GAMING WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING AT?
In my house I have an erection that is twenty-seven feet tall. It is a pyre-like erection, resembling bonfires built around Guy Fawkes night, except it is made entirely of old broken Xbox gamepads. In every case it is the same part of them wot got broke.
The LB Button.
The good old Left Bumper. Some call it the L1 button because that is what it is called on the PlayStation because there just isn’t enough division in the world with religion and race, we have to get tribal with videogame controllers too. Basically, that little sliver of plastic in line with your left index finger.
Every year I would go through two or three playing FIFA, basically. The LB button is used to change the player you control, as well as adding a lob or chip to passes or shots. Now I don’t think I was particularly lobmental or chiptastic when I played, so I suppose I must have played in state of utter indecision to keep hammering it to change players.
But it would always follow the same pattern. The more I touched it, the stiffer it got, until it was eventually rock hard solid and immovable. Then I would slam my index finger on the tip of it in frustration, there would be an almighty crack and then the LB button would hang there, utterly limp. And sometimes it would fall right off.
I have no idea why this would happen in a Microsoft product. I can’t believe that Bill Gates, the man who put a computer on every desk in the western world and has almost irrigated and eradicated malaria from Africa would fuck up something as simple as a plastic hinge that can withstand a dogged Scottish finger.
Maybe the construction of Xbox gamepads is split into two groups. Left and Right. Those who work on the right side are the cream of that year’s Microsoft engineering intake, those who work on the left are stoners whose lips move when they read, and Bill brings them all together at the end as another attempt at global philanthropy.
Or maybe the conspiracy theorists are correct, and Bill Gates is Satan incarnate. Maybe when he isn’t busy funding genetically modified vegetables, hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein and fleecing the world with Covid vaccines that secretly implant chips into us he sits there every night sawing through the hinge of Xbox gamepad LB buttons with his cloven hooves.
The thing is I have never so much as had one broken button with a PlayStation controller, and I have a Kempton Joystick I used on the ZX Spectrum that I currently use as a jack to hold up a load bearing wall in my house.
Am I right? Am I wrong? Let me know by emailing ddpurplecolumn@gmail.com
Still to come…
I have got a fantastic entry into my quest to find out which games people have given up really quickly, following on from the 4 mins I lasted with Heavy Rain.
This week’s TOP FIVE – which is Five Things in Life that are as slow as playing eFootball2022 even WITH the 50 billionth patch and update.
I have the Mystery Game MamesGaster Challenge, which I have to make sure I say correctly cos of lawyers.
Another beat poem about a retro arcade game.
I’ll be saying EXACTLY what I thought about the game people are getting their pants peed the most over this week.
All of that lies in the PAID version of the column podcast, if you pay you also get into the comments section where we have a nice wee community forming in there AND you get entry into monthly prize draws where you can win signed and graffitied exclusive GamesMaster set photos and zoom calls with me.
See you on the other side of this sentence, Paid Subs, otherwise until next week Free Subs keep it little, keep it old, keep it purple.
Dominik's Little Old Purple Column #7 FREE