Kenri rants about upcoming games and stupid people
As somebody who places a lot of worth in knowing things - the short of it being that if you know more than me, I'll instantly respect you - one thing that particularly pisses me off is people who act like they know a lot about a certain subject, but then, as you listen to them, you slowly realize that they're what doctors would call "completely full of shit". The best way to deal with these people, henceforth called "idiots", is to simply ignore them and hope they go away. Unfortunately this isn't viable on the internet, because idiots have an infinite audience of other idiots, and no matter how many leave, the audience remains infinite. This audience of idiots will gladly stick around indefinitely and engage Idiot Prime in conversation, and half of them will encourage him by complimenting him, while the other half will encourage him by calling him a stupid fucker. There will be a very, very small number of people who will gladly point out exactly why he's wrong, why he's a stupid fucker, and will even source their statements, but the truth is that nothing short of a bolt of purple lightning from the sky will make Idiot Prime shut the hell up - and bolts of purple lightning are in short supply these days.
I'm not sure if the video game culture has exponentially more idiots than other hobbies, or if I just notice more of them because I pay more attention to it, but either way, we're going to examine three recent examples, all relating to upcoming Nintendo games. This is not in hopes of changing the opinions of any idiots out there, but an appeal to you, my reader, to not listen to their bullshit, should you stumble upon any idiots like this. Oh, and before I forget, if you're looking for something to read that doesn't involve rants about pointless crap, or unnecessary swearing, or anything that this is not, now would be a fantastic time to look elsewhere.
The first game we're going to talk about is Donkey Kong Country Returns, a reboot of the DKC series by Retro Studies, makers of Metroid Prime. Now, this game is being subjected to the same dumbassed school of "I think I know what I'm talking about but I'm actually less informed than a sack of turkey basters" as previous entry in the series Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, but I was fashionably late to the party on that one, so I'm trying to get ahead of the curve here in hopes of maybe, maybe, just maybe, making some sort of small difference.
We have to go back a fair bit to get an accurate history for this stupid, stupid complaint (which I will get to in a minute). The first Donkey Kong game, the arcade game simply called Donkey Kong - which featured Jumpman, who would later become Mario, seeking to rescue Pauline from the villainous Donkey Kong - was created by Nintendo, as I'm sure you already knew. Now, there was no game called "Donkey Kong 2", but there was Donkey Kong Jr., which saw the son of Donkey Kong seeking to rescue his father from the villainous... Mario. It seems crazy today, but this back and forth rivalry between DK and Mario was the driving point of the first two Donkey Kong games. Donkey Kong 3 - which was less of a platformer and more of a shmup, actually - was released later, and allowed you to play as Stanley, a pest exterminator who was trying to drive Donkey Kong out of a greenhouse. No, this doesn't make sense, but it's important to know about, because now we're getting to the next installment of the series. You might be familiar with this one.
Donkey Kong Country was created by Rare, back before Rare was bought by Microsoft, and released to critical acclaim. It starred Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong trying to retrieve their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Rool and his gang of Kremlings. Everything Donkey Kong Country did, Donkey Kong Country 2 improved on; it starred Diddy Kong and his girlfriend Dixie Kong trying to rescue Donkey Kong, who had been kidnapped by Kaptain K. Rool. Donkey Kong Country 3, which one's mileage tends to vary regarding, saw Dixie Kong and her young cousin Kiddy Kong team up to search for the missing DK and Diddy, and to stop Baron K. Roolenstein. There was also Donkey Kong 64, sometimes thought of as DKC4, but you probably get the idea without me having to go into it.
As you can probably guess, the DKC series was a total reboot of the greater DK series, with the sole exception of the character Cranky Kong, who claimed to be the Donkey Kong from the original game called Donkey Kong. The implication was that the Donkey Kong in DKC was the original DK Jr., which led to hundreds of flame wars about whether Cranky was DK's father or grandfather... But suffice to say, it really, really doesn't matter.
The point I'm driving at here, and I've mentioned this before on the message boards, is that when some idiot starts bitching about how Nintendo and/or Miyamoto and/or Retro Studies are soooo meeeaaan to poor Rare to reboot the series that Rare rebooted, it pisses me off. I mean, it's not like Miyamoto owns the series and can do whatever the fuck he wants with it, right? And it's not like what Retro is doing, by all accounts, derails the series significantly less than Rare's "fuck everything" approach that didn't even resemble earlier games. I'd call this a double standard but I don't want it to get a high opinion of itself.
Now, you might say, "if it pisses you off, then the idiots win", and, well, congratulations, you summed it up right there, and it's why I'm directing this article at you, my reader, and not the trolls/idiots themselves.
The next game we're talking about is Kirby's Epic Yarn, and wow, I wouldn't have believed that a series as simplistic as Kirby could create such a shitstorm if I hadn't witnessed it myself. I guess that's my own fault for assuming stupidity has limits. The complaints leveled at the game are as follows: WHEREAS, Kirby does not inhale enemies, and WHEREAS, Kirby does not copy his enemies' powers, and WHEREAS, Kirby cannot fly, and WHEREAS, Kirby is made of yarn, and WHEREAS, there are nits that can be picked, it must therefore be determined that Kirby's Epic Yarn is not a "real" Kirby game.
First of all, I'm going to go ahead and ask when the fuck it was decided that a Kirby game was defined by any of those things, and I'm going to support this question by pointing out/stealth bragging that I have played, beaten, and usually 100% completed every Kirby-based platformer ever made. The series contains a number of traits that drift in and out depending on a number of factors, including which "style" of Kirby game the game in question falls under - the slower style of Kirby's Dream Land 3, Kirby 64, etc or the faster style of Kirby Super Star, Kirby's Adventure, etc. Needless to say, the slower style, being somewhat less popular, lacks a lot of the elements that people tend to associate with the series as a whole, which says nothing if not that these people are full of crap. To give you a for instance, fan favorite Meta Knight never appears in any of the slower style of games.
Now, regarding the traits listed above, it's somewhat of a tougher sell, but I'm feeling up to brute-forcing this matter. Let's start with the copy power. Hey, you don't have to look far - this didn't show up until Kirby's second game! Wow! You can almost see the tradition they're not defiling at all by leaving that out! Next: inhaling enemies. Ignoring that Kirby seems to have a functionally similar lasso-esque maneuver, this didn't appear in Kirby Canvas Curse. Flight? Kirby can't even jump in, again, KCC, to say nothing of all the games where he has multiple jumps instead of true flight. The funniest thing is that Canvas Curse received a similar shitstorm when it was announced, and said shitstorm died out right around the time it was released and everyone realized it was fucking awesome. On the other hand, Kirby's Dream Land 2 and Kirby Squeak Squad contained just about every element these idiots are clamoring for, and, well, let's just say I'd forgive you if you didn't even know there was a Kirby's Dream Land 2. I'm not even going to dignify the other complaints with a response.
I think what really sums up this whole school of thought (other than "dumb", which is perhaps a better choice due to its brevity) is one idiot I saw, who, having been exposed to the argument-destroying Kirby Canvas Curse, responded by claiming that KCC, being a handheld game, "doesn't count". This is a person who was trying to argue that Epic Yarn tramples over the Kirby tradition. I reiterate the point of this rant: if you don't know what you're talking about, shut the fuck up.
Well, this monster has already been going on for over two pages and doesn't seem to be in any danger of ending anytime soon, so I'll try to make my last topic quick. No promises, though. This one is about Metroid: Other M. In some ways, it's the least obnoxious of the three, because it's at least sort of understandable. On the other hand, the idiots who have been bitching about this one are people who should really know better. People who write for major gaming sites. People who stand a decent chance of reviewing the game when it's released, and having their reviews read by thousands of impressionable people. Apparently the practice of hiring a fact checker has become a dead art form?
I'm talking about the complaints about Other M's story. Don't worry - this won't contain any spoilers, though if you really care about incidental stuff you might want to leave. Other M's focus on storytelling was met with skepticism early on, and the skepticism has persisted even as we've learned more and more about the game. My official position on storytelling in video games is that it usually sucks, which is unfortunate, but then it's generally not very important to the quality of the game anyway, so no big loss. So, when I read a critique of the storytelling in Other M, I expect to see complaints about the dialogue being unrealistic, the events being unbelievable, that sort of thing. Instead, what I get - and I need to stress that this happens nearly without fail - is people who know jack shit about the story of Metroid attempting to talk about how Other M has ruined Metroid's story forever. The one that really stood out to me was a complaint about a scene in the game where a younger Samus gives a thumbs down to her commanding officer; the writer/idiot made it clear that he found this out of character for Samus.
Now, I'm not going to claim that the Metroid manga is mainstream, being something that one must go out of their way to acquire, and which has no official translation. But if you're going to start talking about Metroid characters, I would assume you'd at least go to the Metroid wiki and give the summary a skim. I'll be blunt: having read the manga, nearly the entirety of Teenage!Samus' character can be summarized as "fuck authority 'cause they're stupid". When you criticize certain traits as being out of character, you should make sure you're talking about the actual character and not the version of them that exists in your head (AKA the "Draco Malfoy is a hottie" rule). Additionally, when you criticize certain events or characters for any reason, in a way that attempts to devalue the game in question, you should make sure the game in question actually created these events or characters, and didn't, for instance, copy them wholesale from previous works in the series.
I'm not trying to be one of "those guys" who nitpicks tiny plotholes in episodes of Star Trek, but the fact is, if you're going to go out and shout to the whole world about the absence of minor plotholes in Star Trek, you might want to actually know what the fuck you're talking about first, or be ready for the nitpickers. This is stuff that can be picked up by skimming summaries for god's sake. You don't have to put a lot of effort into this shit, and it comes with the bonus of you not looking like a colossal douchebag to anyone who actually does know their stuff. Again, this stuff is obscure, there's no debate about that - but we're on the goddamn internet! You could at least plug "metrod" into TVTropes and skim their page before making claims that are easily seen as horseshit by fans of the series - who, by the way, are the intended audience of your previews/critiques! Jesus Christ.
Kenri of the Yuri is just this guy who writes silly things, sometimes. He is profoundly embarrassed about a good 60-70% of the stuff he's written. You might know him better as your friendly neighborhood Level 43: Editor. View his or her author page or author profile.
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