Dem Middle Ages

When my user handle is already taken somewhere on the 'net, I usually add "81" to it, because that's the year I was born. And when I see people on the internet, who were born in the '90s, I tend to picture them as annoying twelve year olds. Then I do the math. Some of these kids are legal adults. I had one of those "holy shit, I'm an adult!" moments this week, which threw me off a bit. I mean, when I was a kid, I kinda just assumed that becoming a grownup kinda just happens over night. When you turn 18 or something. You know, one day you wake up - BOOM: Adult. Instant beard and/or appropriate bodily hair.

Yeah. That's not really how it works. Maturity creeps up on you. I was tricked by Capcom when I took care of gaming-related news. Capcom have released a statement to their investors, telling them that the waning popularity of Resident Evil has nothing to do with the poor quality of their recent releases. It's the target demographic, which has slowly turned into decaying zombies over the years. Resident Evil is 17 years old now, it's drinking, driving and shagging other teenage games. The lucky bastard. And Capcom revealed insights such as: "Fans of Resident Evil are in their late 30s and 40s now and some of them have outgrown games altogether." Stupid bastards. If anything, I have a steady income now and can afford all the games I want. Outgrow gaming, my fucking ass.

Anyhow. Apparently, they seek to appeal to a younger audience by advertising in fashion magazines and opening Resident Evil themed restaurants. Because the sight of rotting zombies makes most normal people want to eat. Or something. I got a bit annoyed with all that bullshit and, after sharing the news, commented on how the younger generation of gamers isn't a bunch of idiots and they're insulting "us old gamers" and younger gamers alike.

Those fuckers got me by appealing to my elitism. I can't be somebody who played the very first Resident Evil back in the day and a young gamer at the same time. So I teamed with team retirement, without even thinking about it. It's a bit weird. I used to consider myself relatively... well, young. You know, some tv ad saying, "Hey! Young people!" and I'm all ears, even if the advertised product doesn't appeal to me at all. Because, let's face it, nothing ever appeals to me. That's not because I'm too old for new shit, I just find it generally difficult to like things.
The truth is, however, that I'm old enough to be the father of many of my readers. I'm not just old enough to be some teenage gamer's dad, I am a teenage gamer's dad! Eep!

It's easy to hate a bunch of 16 year old smartasses, whose entire gaming experience consists of Mario Galaxy, some stuff they quote from Wikipedia and a bunch of Youtube videos. It's fun to hate young gamers. Because our generation is better. Superior. We still used dialup modems! Stupid kids with their DSL and Cable and fibre optic broadband! Stupid generation CoD. Right. What did we play before Call of Duty (which we also play, like all the stupid kids do)? Counter Strike. Because that was so much better. It's also our generation that first came up with camping, aimbots and less sophisticated stuff such as spike models. So let's not start pointing fingers.

You kinda had to be there.

Yes, yes, I know. Quake. UT. Server browsers. No stupid matchmaking. Certain things have changed for the worse since then. But how much of that can we blame on younger gamers and how much of that is the industry's fault?

I think what really gets to me is how everyone is a fucking "gamer" these days. Back when I was a teenager, gamers were social outcasts. Like an exclusive group of sorts. We didn't have gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people, who celebrated a strange culture of dressing up and writing disgusting fan-fiction and what not. Maybe I'm also a bit annoyed that it's not about the actual games anymore, but the stupid cosplay, special edition consoles sold at three times the regular price because there's a fucking triforce on it and what not. That the actual games, the stuff we grew up with, fade away and become underappreciated.

What a load of horseshit. Lots of people love "retro" gaming, no matter what generation. My son collects ancient consoles. I gave him my own original Gameboy Classic for his birthday. It hurt to part with it, but it stays in the family. He'll never know what it's like to wait a whole minute for some god-awful Angelfire website full of stolen animated .gif files to load. He probably prefers matchmaking to a good server browser. The ignorant fool! But you know what? He appreciates the Game Boy's very first Super Mario Land, Turtles in Time on the SNES and the Megadrive version of Golden Axe as much as I do. Because he played that shit.

Many younger gamers treasure all of our old crap. They're curious about it. There's a reason for all those retro-looking indie games today. Low budget and lack of talent, mostly. But, you know, some younger gamers aren't total dipshits, who don't know shit about the games we used to love, even with their urge to dress up in shitty costumes and everything. The gaming industry is still fucked if there's no end in sight for countless reboots, prequels, sequels and the exact same shit we've been "enjoying" with the movies for way too long now, but that's a different story. There. Look at me. Going all, "Ooo I totally get it now, they're not so bad" and shit. Brrrr!

Oh well. On to more Warframe! That game

looks

too

fucking

amazing!

Warframe is the number one reason why I absolutely detest so-called "next generation" garbage like CoD: Ghosts or NFS Rivals. Rivals looks kinda pretty and teaches us that next-gen means moist cars, Ghosts looks absolutely disappointing, both of them perform like shit.

Warframe looks so insanely good, if it was a girl, I wouldn't even fantasize about fucking it, because it's so far out of my league, I'd feel pathetic just trying to fap to it. AND SWEET FUCKING JESUS CHRIST, THE PERFORMANCE! The damn game runs so incredibly fast it melts my brain! How does a gorgeous game like Warframe perform at a solid 60fps (or higher if your screen handles it), while relatively unimpressive stuff like Ghosts dips down to 15fps and less in multilayer?

Meh.

Unfortunately, we've reached a point in the game where we're slowly running out of stuff to do. We've killed the game's current biggest, final boss and now we're just crafting and leveling up more stuff.

Warframe simply isn't overly difficult at the moment. Any weapon in the game can be powerful enough to one-shot most baddies with the right upgrades and modifications. Some gear is a bit more difficult to obtain, some weapons are ridiculously powerful out of the box, but it's entirely possible to stick with your lowly level 1 starter rifle, upgrade it as you go and beat every single mission with it when it's fully beefed up. Which is a good thing, because you're not forced to obtain certain items in order to succeed, but it ultimately makes the whole thing a bit pointless. I've recently replaced my "one shot kills everything" shotgun with a "one shot kills everything with even greater damage" one. Makes me feel good, but there really wasn't any reason. Probably still better than being forced into constant replacing.

-Cat