Refraction Gaming

The recent trailer for Battlefront 2 coming out shows off a female soldier as a potentially leading role for the story. The story seems to be functioning as some storytelling between Star Wars VI and VII, filling in gaps with gameplay story and quite possibly epic battles. However, we now have a female protagonist, again and so far it has gone that route. Jyn Erso, while amazing as a character, was a female leading protagonist and the story of the movie was primarily her story. Rei is a leading female protagonist and very well near being "Mary Sue" status, by my thoughts and the thoughts of my friends and some others that I have spoken with. Now we have another female protagonist and she looks to be an elite soldier. Most everyone is already screaming about this, and I might even go so far as to say that it is entirely unwarranted to be screaming about female protagonists. It's a shift in thought that minorities and females have just as much representation as the white ...

So there's a large issue that is going to become apparent in a number of years from now, or maybe even a few months from now. That problem is the fact that there are large numbers of games going strictly digital, with no physical copies of the game able to be obtained. Steam is a good example of this, and while I have many games on Steam, I do wish I could also own physical disc copies of most of them. The large problem isn't having enough space or anything, or having them able to be stolen simply by someone obtaining my password (though that is a large problem)... Let me ask a question. What if all of Valve's servers and backups were destroyed in a bombing? What if all of their records were burned down? What if every internet database were shifted incorrectly, or data was lost and became irretrievable? Not only is that lots of money for the company gone, but that's also everyone else's data, games, save files, profiles, everything. For a person who has spent hund...

Seeing as Halo Wars has come to PC, and is available on Steam, I thought now would be a good time to come to this issue. It's something that has been in place ever since Halo 3 became a thing. I want to make the point that both Halo 1 and Halo 2 were available for PC, and that the PC versions are, by far, the superior versions of the game. I don't mind the original Xbox versions, but being able to use a mouse + keyboard for first person shooters seems to still be, in my opinion, the best option for phenomenal aiming and movement, outside of VR simulations that allow light gun use or things like that. So why has Halo been shifted to Xbox 360 exclusive? It would make more sense, I think, to continue making it for PC as well and make all of the Halo games available for PC instead of just Xbox. It would expand the market, rather than detracting it, and of late, Halo certainly hasn't been a prime system seller...so why is it that Bungie insists that Halo still shouldn't co...

Before Papers, Please, if anyone had suggested a video game or story based on a bureaucracy, I would have just laughed it off. That sort of thing is generally very dull, with lots of examination and careful study of the facts to ensure that everything is correct, and with lots of people who can have any kind of "I'm right, you're wrong" in the world. I've seen it in the line, I've briefly worked a "bureaucratic" position a couple of times being a student member of the course registration office in college as well as working in the admission's office of the college as well, and I can say that it does get rather dull and stressful. Then I saw Papers, Please and my first thought was "this is a joke, right?" Well, come around to a significant time later, and I finally start playing the game and figuring out what it's all about. The premise is very simple: you are a random person selected from a lottery to work at a brand new border ch...

Why do companies sit on their games and do nothing with them? One would think that if someone held an intellectual property, their desire would be to continue working with it instead of watching it die and then sitting on it. If the world and laws regarding how ownership worked weren't quite so broken, doing nothing with something would mean that no money was made using it. However, the current system in place for copyrights means that most companies can sit on an intellectual property indefinitely, so long as the proper measures are taken to defend it from others using it, and payments are made to renew the copyright whenever the time to do so rolls around. This sort of thing has happened numerous times now with particular IP's sitting by with nothing being done for them for years. When was the last F-Zero game? Is Dead Space ever going to be released and allowed to work again? Will the real owner of No One Live's Forever please stand up? The list goes on and on, and it...

This is something that occurred to me that most people have probably already thought up at this point and figured out before me. So why am I doing it? It's my blog, that's why. I can do what I want! But I digress, let me explain what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fact that monsters rarely move when they're attacking the character, yet attacks come flying at the character anyway. The monsters also don't make much effort to dodge, outside of one particular skeleton that I'll get into later here. Well, why don't they make physical moves? The reason, I realized, was pretty obvious. They use magic, all monsters do. Whether it be bones from Papyrus, laser spears from Undyne, fireballs from Toriel and Asgore...the times that actual physical moves are displayed actually become rather obvious, with the monster above the movement box swinging their weapon down into the movement box, or otherwise making other motions, like Sans does when he's fling...

Final Fantasy XIV has a working controller scheme that allows players of the game to actually play the game on console or on PC using a controller, rather than the tried and true keyboard+mouse that most every other MMORPG has. Of course, saying that it works is all that I can say about it. The controller system...having experienced it firsthand and tried very hard to work with it, is very flawed. Some might disagree, but I tend to think that if there were fewer buttons that needed to be pushed and abilities that needed to be used, the controller wouldn't be so bad. Now, of course, this comes to a point about MMORPG's and the fact that most thrive on the fact that there are lots of buttons to push, lots of abilities to use, and what have you. It defines classes, it defines the MMORPG genre as a whole, and opens up quite a few freedoms. However, that being said, it also comes at a severe handicap for trying to make any of these games work for a controller. Could one imagine Wo...

I recently watched Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as it's officially called, for the first time. It's a thriller like we've come to expect of Star Wars and it's certainly great fun to watch, with good writing, fun characters, and a firm establishment of the mythos fans have come to yearn for from the universe. However, there is something that really doesn't sit well with me, but before I got into that, I want to warn anyone who is reading this that there are going to be spoilers ahead. If you haven't watched Rogue One and don't want to be spoiled, don't keep reading past this point. If you just don't care, have seen it, or what have you any reason that you don't mind the spoilers... My largest reason for disliking the movie is simply the fact that Disney didn't seem to really want to commit to having these characters, or having to explain where they fall into the storyline. Rather than do that, they instead opted to kill the characters off. E...

So, I've talked about Ori and the Will of the Wisps being a rumor that's floating around the internet. I've also talked about how I was disappointed slightly that there may yet be a sequel to my favorite game of all time, which might sound odd, but once again, it's because I think that Ori and the Blind Forest works well enough on its own. It's a solid, self-contained story. I wouldn't think that Ori would have much reason to go adventuring afterward, even if he is the adventurous spirit. There's also the fact that the reason Ori worked so well, was that it caught gamers off guard, myself included. It's got such a heartwarming to sorrowful introduction, with a mix of phenomenal highs and lows, gorgeous music mixed with frantic, fast-paced and beautifully designed platforming action...it has so many things done right. In fact, if there were a thing it did wrong, it was that it was too good to have a sequel! (Before reading on, consider that this is assu...

This is something that I've been trying to figure out at this point, but this has been getting ridiculous. Getting weapons with any kind of strange as a sort of a "gamble" can become incredibly infuriating. For the most part, I have fun progressing after some time, gathering more strength and being able to run more content, but at the same time, getting to the point of progress can feel like hitting my head against a brick wall. I've been stuck with my current demon hunter at Torment IX. I think I recently got enough strength to go into Torment X, but that's still dubious. I don't want to say that this feels unfair in any way, though. In fact, the rolling system is a fair way to make people have to spend roughly the same amount of time grinding for gear, farming for legendaries...and the legendary drop rate going up as one plays the higher difficulties helps that as well. Paragon leveling can fix some of the other issues that come up with the legendary drop ...

So I started going through looking for what Moon Studio is going to do next with Ori, or what game they're doing next. Ori and the Blind Forest is my personal favorite game of all time, so I am eager to see what Moon Studios produces next and whether they can match something so beautiful and well done with another game that they choose to release. Well, there were talks of a movie, but that was two years ago now...then half a year ago, approaching on a full year ago...there was talk of a sequel, apparently. "Ori and the Will of the Wisps". A title just as intriguing as "Ori and the Blind Forest", to be sure, but upon going through the links, looking for the full stories and what not...there's nothing to be found. Either they were elaborate April Fool's jokes done far too early, or they were simply never meant to be in the first place. I haven't heard anything from Moon Studio, though I am certain they are working on something so far. I just don...

Some of my fondest memories come from games that are from an older generation. Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Playstation, Nintendo 64...and so on. Throughout all of the games that I have played, there has been a question that has come to mind. As music gets more progressive, more and more complex themes come to the forefront and I find myself unable to hum the themes. But, is that a bad thing? I would argue that it most certainly isn't. Just listen to Ori and the Blind Forest for a few moments and explore it's beautiful soundtrack, or listen to Breath of the Wild's new orchestral score and the such like...in fact, there are many games now that has wonderful, sweeping orchestral scores that are complex and don't revolve around being something simple and "hummable", like the past games. But I won't deny that I miss some of that older, simpler style of music themes. Mega Man X, Super Mario Bros. 3, A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, most of the Megaman games...