Sucker Punch | Lawrence van Rijn

We all have them, yet after a few confirmations I had over the last few days I am hit with self-doubt. I think it is natural for me to have them. You see, to merely contemplate my thoughts, I tend to doubt everything, even my self. As I do that I redesign the ideas I have and further optimize them. This is how I roll. I always try to improve the ideas I see and have, there is always better. As I call whatever I create ‘good’, I know that there is always ‘better’, just out of reach. When you do not take that approach you will soften and others will pass you by with your IP. I think that is why I always try to improve all settings in gaming in my mind. Is there an exception? Yes, of course there is. I cannot vouch for every game to give it the ‘approved’ setting. As such I was too unimpressed with Infamous: Second Son. There are sides that unimpressed me towards a rating slightly less then good. Even though the storytelling in that game is nothing short of sublime. The setting and a lot of elements are exceptional, if it wasn’t for the linearity of the game. The game would have been an easy 90% game. So what is the exception of a game? Well I am not the ‘choice’ on that ruling, but I played a game again which I haven’t touched since its release in 2016, remade from the 2002 original. That game is as close as perfect as a game gets. And my joy feeling I had when replaying that game last week for almost 6 hours straight until I realized it was close to midnight. Insomniac Games really did a piece of fine work on that and it is clear that it deserved all the ratings that was between 80 and 90 percent. The game has layers of achievements and you need to replay levels more than once to get all the goodies. Do not forget that it was mostly OK (the 2002 version) and that was on the Playstation 2, a system that is three generations old. As such the game is pretty fantastic.

Loss
This game also leaves me with a feeling of loss. Why aren’t more games with this feeling? It seems that most games are about the hip, the adrenaline. Not the joy of gaming. Even Sony has made this mistake in their games. Lets be clear there games are mostly awesome, yet the joy of gaming is leaving us. If I get the sentiment correctly Astro Bot (2024) is the one exception to this (I still haven’t played it). Personally for me Hogwarts Legacy (2023) was the last game where the joy of gaming was abundant. It might be me, but I think that whilst gaming firms are leaving it all to business majors, they forgot about the joy of gaming and that is making me sad. And in this the only exception is Nintendo. Not sure what their setting is, but as I see it joy is the larger component to anything they do and they do it well.

So what brings this around. You see, in all my reengineering I often forget about joy, the joy of gaming. I see it and I recognize it, but I don’t follow that path myself. I cannot cater to joy, merely the exceptional need to make the better game. It is a failing in me and I see that.

This also reflects on most things I do. Although I focus on the engineering side of things, I see that the joy part in anything we do is essential. It isn’t merely gaming, it is all we do that requires the joy of more and that is sad.

Reflection
That reflection also hits the Russian side of the Ukraine war. You see, we are made from sterner stuff, unlike the pussies in Washington DC stating “U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of winning all its territory back from Russia and instead prepare for a negotiated peace settlement to be backed up by international troops” (source: AP News). This is the response of a near bankrupt nation that seemingly puts the words of Wall Street as the go getter sentiment. All whilst 11 hours ago we are given “A senior U.S. official on Thursday said the United States had not ruled out potential NATO membership for Ukraine or a negotiated return to its pre-2014 borders, contradicting comments made this week by the U.S. defense secretary ahead of possible peace talks to end the Ukraine war.” (Source: Reuters) As I personally see it different people take a different look at Wall Street politicking their money views against what is right and Russia is a problem for everyone. If only DARPA had taken my word seriously. You see as I see it, the nuclear solution I had for Saudi Arabia, which would take Iran’s nuclear aspirations to their basement was based on Russian nuclear reactors. As such works for party B as easy as party A. And in my (perhaps incorrect view) when Russia gets a second meltdown Russia would need to divert too many resources to their own reactors and Russian armies come to a stand still. Yes Ukraine does plenty of damage, but until summer it is electricity Russia desperately needs and when 46 reactors (plus one on meltdown) are on lockdown their sense of freezing changes and that stops a lot of actions. Call me superstitious, but I believe that Russians prefer freezing over glowing in the dark. But that could just be me. You see, this reflects on the gaming sentiment over warfare as warfare is not about joy. Wall Street will reflect on the essential need of joy, which comes from victory. But Russia left that feeling behind by getting beat by the 20th largest army in the world. When you try to improve things you also gain the ability to make things a lot worse through the view of what was not found. The flaws of a system allows for certain improvements of a personal nature and what is more fun than seeing a Russian reactor melting down? So whilst politicians volley about what ends a war as it is said in Euro News as “The new US Secretary of Defence has categorically ruled out granting NATO membership to Ukraine as a security guarantee to end Russia’s war.” A statement he had to walk back a mere 11 hours ago. So how settled is this new American administration on claims? Their one win seems to be the Gulf of America. As far as I can tell the tariffs on Canada and Australia are being met with consideration and that is igniting the Commonwealth a lot stronger than ever before.

So what do these two things have to do with one another?
That is a valid question and there is no clear answer. There are too many optional answers, but my take is that a game creator has no funds and it trying to make it work, America has little to no funds left and is trying to make that work too and in some funny way it is appeasing Russia to make their budgets work and in this it is laughable that the Republicans are appeasing towards Russia, a sight that they tend to blame Democrats for.

And now Canada is shelving American goods and I reckon Australia is merely one step away from that as well as setting the purchasing need on Canadian goods. America has merely made things harder for themselves (This could be my wrongly view on matters).

So in the end we merely need to doubt self to some degree and see what we can do to make it better for us and I understand that America does what is best for Americans. In that same feeling Canadians and Australians need to do what is best for their nations as well as the Commonwealth. That is the uniting side of the matter. Will it bring joy? It is too early to tell, but appeasing Russia and President Putin will not bring any joy, of that you can be certain.

Have a great and peaceful day and try to make life a little better for yourself.

I have looked at games for almost 30 years, and so far in the mode of gaming I have been in, I tend to stand by my position. It has nothing to do with stubborn, or with some kind of elevated sense of correctness. Time has proven me right again and again. Even now as SuckerPunch is regarded as the gospel of gaming (these things happen), I tend to see how things fair and so far I agree with the many voices, but this too made me realise that there is another path. To see this, we need to go back to 2014, a new Infamous was launched. Now, I still stand by my original view, is was above average, but it had failed to be great, even as all the elements were there. Two massive elements influenced it. The game was almost tediously linear and after the final fight you do not get to use the concrete powers to the degree I had expected. These two parts make the game good, but not great and that was a shame. Yet that is not the issue, I reinstalled it today to play it again for a few hours, even as I had completed it 100%, and in almost record time well over a third of the game had been done. This is not due to memory, I had forgotten most of it, it was due to linearity, but that was not the surprise, I know I had updated the game on day 2 or 3 and now another update was there. Over 6 years the game had seemingly seen 7 updates (It installed 1.0.7), the final update and the only one I had to install was less than 4 GB, for a PS4 game that is decent, and here we see the first issue, Ubisoft sets games to dozens of GB’s per game per update and this game from the early days does a mere fraction of this. I personally see this as proper testing was done at Sucker Punch, and Ghost of Tsushima shows this again (and again and again). A good developer will always win and innovation in gaming (a thing Sucker Punch has shown a few times) will always beat iteratively thinking Ubisoft.

Even as I still stand by the view I had, the game was still as enjoyable as the first time I finished it. That is the power of a decent game and this game if not hindered by the two flaws might have remained on the legendary games list. Still, this does not stop Sucker Punch from creating a decent game, an innovative game and this is the issue, no matter how I see this game, I recognised it as innovative gaming, when I revisit this old game, I see just how powerful innovative thinking is in gaming. And whilst we consider just how correct I am, Google Search is filled with all the game magazines that are trying to use Sucker Punch as much as possible, Forbes even states ‘‘Ghost Of Tsushima’ Is The Game Of The Generation’ and it is hard to disagree. They also give the additional text “I am more glad than I expected to be to have a game like Ghost of Tsushima. Rather than giving us innovation, Sucker Punch has given us care and craft with the things we already know. It is a comforting thing to have, here in a moment when my country is still grappling with its failure to contain coronavirus and when the future seems less predictable than it ever has before.” In this I am not sure if I completely agree, I personally see this game as innovative, as such I partially disagree with ‘Rather than giving us innovation’, yet when we look at the separate elements, Forbes might have a case, it is the ‘Sucker Punch has given us care’ that is true, but proper testing tends to get us there (often enough), no matter how we see it, we see that compared to a player like Ubisoft it is a mere dwarf, a dwarf that creates titans, so whilst the news is full of all the things going wrong at Ubisoft, I have stated (for some time), that they have bigger issues, and perhaps these events we see hit the news now is a consequence of stress and taking it out internally. And even as we see the news on all kinds of statements and promises, we see that Ubisoft has a rather large problem, one that Sucker Punch never had, or fixed well over a decade ago, properly testing games. That is the heart of the matter and they do know how to do that. No matter how I see Black Flag, it was near perfect and so was Origins. So as such, I cannot fathom why they cannot hold the rudder right, Sucker Punch shows how it can be done and they have done so for a very long time.

These two players need to be shown for the mere reason that one player relies on hypes and marketing, all whilst the other does not and gives us great games. So whilst I am getting a little weary of messages like ‘Ubisoft teases us with…’, I would rather see that they cleaned their company from top to bottom, because no matter what we see on certain people, the failings there go to the very top. It angers me, not because of whatever, the fact that they had good games and they wasted 2-3 franchises is a real drag, all whilst the products show that there is graphical talent and the music as applied is close to legend. As a gamer, does that not upset you? And even as I remain cautious on Far Cry 6, does it not sound like something we played before? Now, this is speculative so do not treat this like gospel, but what the internet gives us is apparently nothing more that Far Cry 4/5 in a Far Cry 3 setting. I hope that I am completely wrong, but Ubisoft does not have the greatest track record when it comes to innovation, all whilst my idea on WatchDogs 4 is a setting that is completely innovative and I wonder if all that innovation would fit into a new console (I just do not know) but is that not the foundation of gaming, to be on the edge what is possible and see if it can be done? MGSIV in the beginning of the PS3 and the Last of Us at the very end show me to be correct, In that same view Black Flag in the beginning of the PS4 is in that same foundation, so why are these franchises developed too short for their own good?

Even now, games like Breakpoint might ‘sell’ high end graphics, but it lacked joy, joy that a GameCube game (Metroid Prime) had in abundance. Even now 8.5 years later, I can still find joy in Skyrim (originally released 11.11.11), apart from AC Origins, what Ubisoft game released since 2017 has that (I am personally not considering Rainbow Six as that is not my kind of game). When you see how short that list is and how many games Ubisoft released, we see the flaw of iterative game releases. And this is not merely Ubisoft, how many think fondly back to the Mass Effect Andromeda, after the release? All issues that proper testing could have avoided and it took less than one day to come up with Mass Effect based IP that surpassed Andromeda, it is that flawed and we need to get angry, because a life of good gaming depends on it, for all of us.

Even as we need not worry on Sony and Nintendo, a Microsoft pushing boundaries would keep Sony innovative, that too is a given, when there is no competitor the remaining players tend to relax, history has shown that part a few times, so I prefer that Microsoft wakes up fast, but reality is not in my favour, as such here is every chance that after the PS5, the PS6 might not be as advanced as we hope (unless Nintendo really changes the game).

If we look at the past, many have heard of Melinoe and the nightmares she brings, but who remembers Makaria? When we consider Makaria and according to the scrolls of Nikolaos of Damascus her meeting Ares, what was the result? When we see all these greek god based games, we tend to see the big three and the direct dependants, but what of some of the others? With the exception of series like Xena (PS1 game) all based on Lucy Lawless and her formed fanbase of life under greek god reign, nowadays we see covers of ancient greek books, but we forgot to pick them up and read them. Yet the foundation of RPG and sandbox games is larger than that and I see a lack of grasping the unexpected by many developers.

And this is not some console war, a game war can be fought on many fronts, as such the setting of google Stadia versus Apple Arcade is not over, not by a long shot and these systems have limitations, it matters, because the days of the CBM64, a system with 38Kb of RAM, a 64Kb system showed an entire generation how cool gaming could be, 10-17 million units sold and 99% bought it for the games, no matter what excuse, like ‘I want to learn to program’ they gave (I was one of them). Innovation comes with limitation, and that is where true treasures are found. I feel certain that browsing through the Amiga 500 list, I will find at least half a dozen that will make it and become successes on a system like the Google Stadia, in this, even Ubisoft has a few titles, neglected titles that would be a good match to the iPad, a system at times forgotten for the games it can play and if it does it there, it will be wanted on the Google Stadia and the Apple version. Even later than that, anyone who remembers the Microprose titles would instantly try them on these systems in a new jacket, games born from limitations and they could be upgraded to fit a whole new generation (and please the previous generation as well).

I stand by my point of view and as I see Ubisoft buckle and Sucker Punch become one of the most revered software groups, I see the options of games and how they can be on several systems between now and 2023. Time has proven me correct a few times now, I wonder when some developers wake up, as I see it, they have little time left.

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