Ello lovelies and welcome back to BaicunnPress. It's Monday, and the Breakdown is late. I do apologize for the delay, but I had some unexpected personal business come up last week; and it had to take precedences. I'm working on I believe that I'll have some exciting news for you guys by the end of the week. So as not to delay further, let's jump into The Breakdown
What's more hostile than Mondays? Well Vivendi, if you're Ubisoft. Vivendi recently disclosed that they are looking at increasing their holdings into the video game industry. According to a Reuter source close to Vivendi, the French media giant is looking to acquire Ubisoft, and wrestling control away from the Guillemot family. As can be expected, the Guillemots are not keen on the idea. Especially since Ubisoft has been killing it in the US, in 2017; scoring not only the most triple A sales, but the 2 best selling games. Even more hostile than Vivendi... Apparently, a 20 year old autistic kid with a keyboard. Adam Mudd was just sentenced to 2 years in the UK for operating DDoS services. Mudd plead guilty to 2 charges under the Computer Misuse Act (The UK equivalent to the US CFAA). He was charged with collecting around $498,413 (@ the current exchange rate) in cash and BitCoin, from users of his Titanium Stresser service.
If Titanium Stresser sounds familiar, it's because it became basis of Lizard Stresser; used by Lizard Squad's Christmas 2014 DDoS on Xbox Live and PSN.
In other Internet related news, the FCC and it's Chairman; Ajit Pai are poised to shit all over US Internet users. The flaming douche canoe formerly known as Ajit Pai, recently made comments stating that he would be looking at rolling back key policies of net neutrality. Stating that there would be a vote on the matter at the next FCC meeting currently scheduled for 5/18. (RIP the Internet).
The Flaming Douche Canoe
Formerly Known As Ajit Pai
If the former is as catastrophic as many believe it might be, physical copies of games may become more popular again. Recently, marketing research firm; NPD announced that their research has shown that up to 75% of the video games market in the US is now digital. This is remarkable considering just 6 years ago, 2/3 of the market was still physical. It'll be interesting to see if AAA publishers come out of the wood work if net neutrality is rolled back, as digital copies of games create more profit than physical copies. However, it's unknown whether this will happen; as AAA producers have troubles of their own to handle. At least they have problems according to Boss Key Productions founder and Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski. Bleszinski, recently presented a talk at Reboot Develop. During his talk he claimed that AAA games are stagnating the industry, as consumers are being presented with "category of eight games that are getting repeated over and over again". Bleszinski went on to state that triple A games cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and the cost makes it "too scared to take the risk on new IP" for many developers. Which Bleszinski states, "This is a nearly unsustainable model, unless you're an Activision, 2K or a Sony.", and advised developers to produce "Double A". He clarified that double A games are "games that look and play great but pick their battles in terms of budget and marketing".
Seems like a bit of a bleak future considering the upcoming release of Microsoft's Xbox Scorpio. However, according to Brad Wardell; CEO of "Double A" game dev Stardock; Scorpio has no technical limit with it's 12GBs of GDDR5 RAM. He also stated that the same would be true, even if developers only had 8 Gigs to work with. Further comments indicated that to properly exploit the capabilities of the Scorpio, an engine would have to be "Core-Neutral". Wardell even took the time to plug Stardock by stating "...right now only Stardock & Oxide Game's have a shipping core neutral engine." So maybe there's hope for a future of stunning Double A games.(At this time, there's still no official release date or price for the Scorpio, but it's likely that we'll have that info come E3 in June.) Incase you unaware, E3 will be open to the general public this year. According to ESA VP; Rich Taylor, the 15,000 general access passes are due to direct feedback from gamers. So, good job all of you reddit thread armchair activists! In other E3 news, IGN has put up a list of games that have been confirmed to be playable at E3. The list will likely grow over time.
While on the topic of pleasing fans, Atlas has back down off of their high horse regarding streaming Persona 5. If you remember a few weeks back BaicunnPress covered that Atlas's bizarre stipulations regarding streaming gameplay, and droning on about mysterious "Japanese Masters". Well, it appears that bitchy fans won... At least a little bit. Atlas recently announced that the game can now be streamed up to the in game date of 11/9, and apologized for "the poorly communicated message". A few last topics before we leave off here. M. Night Shyamalan announced on Twitter that a sequel for Split and Unbreakable is in the works. Yes, Split and Unbreakable exist in the same cinematic universe. The sequel is reportedly, named Glass, and both Samuel L Jackson and Bruce Willis will be reprising their roles. And as a final PSA, it took just under a week, and Wizards of the Coast have banned a new Amonkhet card from standard. The ban revolves around using Felidar Guardian in conjunction with Saheeli Rai to amass an army of cats. WotC estimates that roughly 40% of tournament decks will be affected by the ban.
Well that's it for today. Thank you for stopping by. I always appreciate your support and feedback. If there's ever anything you want me to cover, you need only to ask. I'm out for now, but I will see you guys in the next post. -Chali Baicunn
Ello ello, and welcome back to BaicunnPress. I hope you're getting through the week unscathed. If you've been here before, you're likely aware that I was highly critical of EA and their handling of Battlefront. If you're interested in checking out those posts, the links are below:
With the disclaimers out of the way, let's talk about what you came her for; there's been a disturbance in the Force. Today we get our first glance at Star Wars BattleFront 2, via an alleged 50 second leaked Sony ad. Stick around after the show for further discussion. Enjoy!
So what can we see. It appears that the trailer starts right after the Rebels' victory at the Battle of Endor. In the trailer we can see something else though... looks like this title may just span the Clone Wars up to were "Battlefront picks up?" and even some post Death Star play up to the Last Jedi. Looks and sound pretty amazing right? But let's not forget EA's backhandy bullshit, when it comes to ads. To be fair though, EA has made me feel a bit better about their brand. Battlefield 1 was a pretty solid title. I played the beta. Didn't buy the game out of principal,.... but I played it, and liked it. Then EA and Respawn dropped Titanfall 2 on us, and the game is stunning. Balanced gameplay, and free DLC... that's pretty hard to beat. And I know I've said I was done with EA/ DICE and their shenanigans in the past. But the Battlefront DLC that dropped toward the end of last year really did a good job at trying to salvage the disappointment we were given. So I'm skeptical, but if EA can keep it up... I may be interested.
That's all for now guys. I'll be putting up The Breakdown later this week, but wanted to get this out ASAP. I've also started a Monday series titled Back To School, where I'll be putting up educational content meant to teach you some cool shit. Monday's post was about the laws and regulations in the US regarding Unmanned Ariel Systems (UAS). It's been taken down for the moment, as there are some busted links. As soon as they are fixed, it'll be back up. Thanks again for stopping by. I appreciate all of your support. If you like what you see, please share, and make sure to follow on Twitter at @BaicunnPress. -Chali Baicunn
Hello beautiful people of the Internet!. It's Tuesday. So that means you survived Monday... YAY!, but it's only day 2. To take the sting out of the of the soul crushing suckery of the early business day of the week. The Midweek Breakdown has been coming to you every Wednesday, and due to popular demand, it'll be coming to you every day of the week as The Breakdown. So site back waste clock hour time, and enjoy!
First up, Far Cry Primal released today, and the reviews are out. Across most outlets, Far Cry Primal is scoring at about 80 out of 100 (or 8 out of 10 for the math challenged). The biggest complaints abut the game is the inability to block and parry. A lack of compelling antagonists. As well as having so many side missions that you could fill out your skill trees and still have extras floating around on your map.
Last week at the DICE Summit, we got to see bromance Hideo Kojima and Gillermo Del Toro in full bloom. These two had a chance to do a sit down keynote and it was magic. Although the two speak different languages, it appears that their homies. During their talk, they highlighted the unifying force of media and story telling. I really suggest that you check it out, and a word to the wise, don't be surprised if we see these two working on a project together in the future.
And speaking of other creative works, The Walking Dead: Michone Episode 1 launches today on PC/MAC, PS4/PS3, and Xbox 360/Xbox One. If you some how don't have any of these or insist on playing on a mobile platform, check your market place apps on Thursday to pick it up on iOS and Android.
In other Walking Dead News, it has been reported that Robert Kirkman (story) and Charlie Adlard (art) are working on a 48 page back story for Nagan. No release date info available yet.
And while we're on the topic of things to spend your hard earned money on. Have you ever loved an eSports so much that you'd donate to the prize money. Well that's what happened when the Halo World Championships were announced. Initially Microsoft had offered a 1 million dollar prize for the winning team. However, the masses thought that it needed to be more. Through crowd sourcing the winning purse has been bumped up to 2.5 million dollars. Making the Halo World Championships the largest cash prize ever for an FPS championship. Check back later for more details. Currently the Championship is scheduled for March 18 through the 19th.
On topic with Microsoft news, Bill gates is not a a douche?... It was reported by the financial times on Monday that when speaking of Apple's battle with the FBI over breaking the encryption on iOS, Bill Gates was quoted as saying:
"It is no different than [the question of] should anybody ever have been
able to tell the phone company to get information, should anybody be
able to get at bank records,"
"Let's say the bank had tied a ribbon round the disk drive and said,
‘Don't make me cut this ribbon because you'll make me cut it many
times.'"
As of yesterday Bill went back on the record to walk back his previous statements, saying that he "disappointed" by the reports that he supports breaking the encryption. He also made the following statement:
"I do believe that with the right safeguards, there are cases where the
government, on our behalf — like stopping terrorism, which could get
worse in the future — that that is valuable."
So maybe he isn't a complete douche canoe, but personally, I think Bill Gates is talking like a man with paper asshole, but I'll leave the judgement of this to you fine/ borderline anarchist people. That's all I have for today, stop back by later for more content. I really appreciate your support. Please share, and make sure to follow BaicunnPress, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.
Hey guys! How's it going out there in the spaghetti western that is the Internet?
Well it's a new day.. and.. I have a confession to make that's been eating at me for a few weeks. I haven't really told anyone because I feel foolish, but I've just got to get it out there, and the haters can judge me... I let EA put it in my butt, metaphorically speaking that is... There I said it; I admitted it. You see what happened was that EA took me out a few months ago. They let me play with their blasters, and we hung out every night for almost a week. Then EA told me that they had to go away on business for a few weeks. And while EA was away, all I could think about was how much I really wanted to hang out with them and their Imperial armor. Weeks went by and we finally got to hangout, it was fun but the date cost me $60. Halfway through the date things got a little steamy until I realized that I was participating in our very own Tijuana donkey show; Like a drug fueled night in Bangkok, I was being bent over. Then when I thought it was all over, EA asked me for another $60 to finish up!...
Dramatics flare aside. I'm pretty pissed at EA and myself at this point. I bought into the hype, and got sold a Star Wars scented bottle of snake oil. And since EA was totally OK with pedaling this turd for $60, I'm totally OK with publicly reviewing their product for free. I'm really going to try to be fair with this, but it'll be hard at this point.
To fully understand my point of view, I need to take you back in time to June 2013.... It was a hundred and stupid outside on that fine day in Oklahoma, and it that seemed nothing would break the drought. I remember fondly the joy I felt when it was announced that Battlefront would making a return. At that point, it didn't matter that the sun had seemed to park itself on the surface of the Earth, because I had found a drop of water in the desert. I resolved to survive the droughtpocolypse at least long enough to play it.
After E3 2014, time seemed to fly by. The sun had returned to it's normal point in the sky, and it seemed that every couple of months, more of its secrets were revealed. And the videos. Oooooo!... Shiny! They glistened in highly polish polygons, like blood diamonds in southeast Asian black markets.
You see, I had been itching for a new shooter for a little while by that time. I had left the caustic communities of competitive FPS/shooter gaming, resigning myself to a quiet retirement of RTSs, survival, and fringe indie games. (A man can only listen to so many unfounded and baseless accusations directed at his mother's honor. All the while dodging the vollies of pejoratives spewed forth from the mouths of 12-year-olds.)
With The Force Awakens just around the corner, the release of the Battlefront beta made October of 2015 feel so hopeful. The week of the beta seemed so right at the time. Walker Assault on Hoth felt like Star Wars. Drop Zone less so, but I was optimistic. It was a time of bonding with my 5-year-old. You see the Battlefront beta was his first shooter. He quickly decided that Vader is by far the BAMF-Y-EST BAMF that ever did BAMF. This set a light in him, a truly deep interest in the Star Wars universe. As we played, I was able to regale him with the lore from long long ago in a galaxy far far away. (feels....)
I had resolved myself to getting Battlefront. Christmas was coming up. The kiddo was on board. I was on board, and the wife approved. (Oh snap!) Then it came, bundled up nicely in it's bland brown Amazon.com box. The wife immediately deemed it to be a Christmas present, and threatened the life of whatever hero should try to liberate the fair maiden from her tower keep; known only as top of the closet. I protested! (Fuck it! I'm a grown ass man, and if I want to play the game I will!)
So Christmas day came, and the boy and I cracked the cellophane on the case. (I know... I know... What happened to all of that I'm a man shit? Do you want to piss my wife off? I don't.) Disc goes in, queue epic Star Wars Theme Song, and draw the shades... It's time to kill me some Imperial scum! To my surprise there appeared to be content missing, and I was already being hit up to drop $60 more on Season Pass DLC, all before I had started a single match. And there are no details given about the Season Pass. I ignored the instant irritation surging through my body, because it's Christmas, and I simply verify that there is not a missing companion disc in the case. I get a prompt that there's an update. Download it, and restart... Nope no more content than before. (I should have prefaced this by saying that due to the aforementioned cockblocking by the misses, I had decided to not go digging for details about the game after release.)
Fast forward to today. I'm now several hours invested in the game, and I've built out the following list of my likes and hates:
What I like: 1) It looks like Star Wars. The terrain and models are beautifully presented and pretty well polished. 2) It does feel like you're in the Star Wars universe, especially when playing on Endor and Hoth in first person. 3) The sound engineering is pretty spot on, with one exception that I hate (keep reading for more on that)... And that's about it. 4) Kid friendly. 5) Fun for a few matches here and there. What I hate: 1) There is a complete lack ofinteresting or populated game types; even Walker Assault is really just a moving point domination game. The populated exceptions being Blast (classic deathmatch) and Fighter Squadron (deathmatch with spaceships). 2) There's no campaign.. Nothing! Nada! Not that I was expecting a whole lot but seriously, nothing? 3) The maps are pretty, but there's basically only four maps to play on for any one game type. 4) With no campaign, this game is really forced to stand on large scale objective based combat. However, I find the lack of team chat disturbing. It's like playing Battlefield 2 circa 2004 with people running everywhere trying to figure out what to shoot next. 5) Remember how I mentioned that there is an exception to the quality? Well that exception happens to be the voice acting for the Heroes. They do not sound in anyway close to their movie counterparts. They really couldn't have just used one liners from the original trilogy? Come on EA! Is it too much to ask that Vader sound like Vader, and Han to sound like Han?! 6) So "deathmatch with spaceships" or as EA calls it, Fighter Squadron. I'm willing to concede that it can be a fun mode to play for a short time, but for whatever reason the devs saw it fit just not set up decent controls. There's no real roll command except for an evasive maneuver that has a god damn cool down timer before it can be used again! Oh, and your spaceships never get the opportunity to, you know, fight in space! 7) The spawns are terrible, and I don't mean that in a dramatic way. I mean that they are genuinely awful. With issues ranging from spawning in the wide open, and spawning in on a gun fight. Or my all time favorite; spawning in basically where you died! You know, so you can immediately die again, and your respawning teammates can also die with you.
8) There's no accuracy penalty for not going ADS, and there's no accuracy buff for crouching. Because fuck game mechanics. So basically it's just running around and hip firing. 9) Vehicles feel like an after thought. No Snowspeeders flying out of hangers on Hoth or TIE fighters dropping from the belly of a Star Destroyers. Not even an AT-ST being unloaded from a dropship, Instead teammates are stuck racing each other around the map trying to pickup floating blue "coins" in order to use the vehicles. And even then the vehicles feel forced at times. 10) There's a dick load of unlocks in this game. Unfortunately, they're mostly character customizations and, well.. lazy! Here's a video post to illustrate my point:
11) Did I mention that when playing as Palpatine, you're squishier than the level 5 healer you took on your last dungeon raid? And as a plus your only real attack is force lightning, which conveniently has a cool down timer. 12) So there's a ranking system, but it really isn't anything more than a timer used for your unlocks. It means nothing in the grand scheme. It doesn't prevent a noobie from being fed to the wolves and their much more powerful loadouts, as all ranks are tossed in the same lobby. And not having a real ranking system pretty much destroys the possibility of the game being recognized as a competitive shooter.
There's more, but I'm honestly just tired at this point. My son is still into it (It's just a shame his "first love" is so basic), and I guess I'm just playing the game out of spite at this point. If you have young kids they'll probably like it. Or if you're just looking to play a new Star Wars game, you'll probably like it. However, a franchise title from this publisher, with this title, and with the budget this one had, has absolutely no reason to be this lacking in substance.
I once had high hopes for Battlefront. In hindsight, I'm not real sure why. @PonStory had warned me to not get too excited. I'm also keenly aware that in recent years EA has become more and more hostile to their customer base. Hammering out title after title, with very little change or innovation, and then flooding the market with paid DLC. It seems that EA's marketing strategy is a pump and dump scheme; they push the hype, sell you half a game, and then extort you for the other half, year after year in a seemingly endless cycle of communal profiteering.
I guess what I got is what should have been expecting. To be honest, I would have been satisfied with re-skinned and updated Battlefront 2. Instead, EA's Battlefront appears to be a clear downgrade from a game made a decade ago. I think that a picture of EA's executives flipping you off--instead of the content on the disc--would have been more intellectually honest and less lazy then what they gave us.
I don't know who made this, but it paints a telling picture. It's a little old and is missing the game modes that are available
Thanks again for stopping by. Let me know what you think of my review. Was it fair? Was it not? I think it is fair to say that I fell prey to nostalgia and pageantry.
If Titanium Stresser sounds familiar, it's because it became basis of Lizard Stresser; used by Lizard Squad's Christmas 2014 DDoS on Xbox Live and PSN. 
