A Note from CK: This was originally planned to be posted on April Fool's 2014. But shortly before the due date I found there was some... how would you say, turbulance going on at an affiliated forum, and I was afraid posting this would throw fuel onto the fire. So I put it on hold and talked it over with one of the concerned party. It might not be timed as well as it should be, but here it is in all its venomous spite.
~ March 23, 2014 ~ | |
 | ... |
 | ... what? |
| Don't you think this is kind of petty and nasty even for you? |
| Possibly. But I paid $56 for a game that was about as enjoyable as dropping the cartridge, clamshell, and manual into a blender with some Mountain Dew and drinking the resulting slurry, and I'm damn well going to wring whatever giggles I can out of these fucks. |
| Haven't you already made your point? Look, you're just in a crabby mood, and it probably isn't helping that you're not exactly at your most patient time of the month right now. Take a few days to cool off. Read a Discworld. Maybe finally play Mass Effect? |
| TMI, Lemmy. But maybe you're right. Tell you what, I'll only upload this MOREC if they send out another one of those completely unfunny April Fool's Day newsletters. |
| I'd hold you to that, but we both know you're going through with this one way or another. |
| Hm, nothing. Welp, no sense letting this go to waste. Bombs away! |
| *sigh* |
GlaDOS was right.
So when I went nosing around the WaterMelon forums after writing my review for Pier Solar, the first thing that struck me was the lack of actual discussion; everyone just wanted to know how to get a copy, and what little discussion I could find was, well, baffling. Another thing that struck me was the new batch of avatars from upcoming WaterMelon projects, and how uncomfortably familiar one of them was:
Maybe I was wrong about the "thick enough to beat goats to death with" line having to do with Zero Puncutation itself, and somebody at WaterMelon just really likes The Witcher.
I... wha... th... they've released one fucking game. And if you think Pier Solar's storyline was innovative, I'd hate to see what you'd consider cliche.
Well, over here they call what they do "AAA", so either they are a major corporation than can print a million copies and sell them for years, or they don't know what the term actually means. And what, you want to see WaterMelon buy out and and shut down other studios, put out homogenous first person shooters, and set themselves up to get voted the worst company in the world? How do you think EA got to be so big in the first place?
I also love that he chose the two companies that have done the most harm to gaming culture, though feel free to argue that Activision deserves a mention.
Oh dear, is there trouble brewing in WaterMelon Town? Can't say I blame WaterMelon for not wanting to push the third reprint; look what they got for going through with the second. I wonder how are the others going to react to DivineCombat's suggestion that Pier Solar may not be all it's cracked up to be.
Hm, so DivineCombat wonders if WaterMelon is afraid that an increase in negative press for the Genesis version would affect the HD version. Radchek here thinks DivineCombat is telling WaterMelon to post those negative reviews and not sell the game. Let's look at Wikipedia's article on the Strawman Argument, shall we?
...a common type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on the misrepresentation of the original topic of argument. To be successful, a straw man argument requires that the audience be ignorant or uninformed of the original argument.
Hey, Radchek, did you happen to notice that the most scathing of those reviews was from somebody who once jammed a verbal cigarette into a WaterMelon member's eye for saying stupid shit? If your counter-argument is "Well, I liked the game" and a wall of text that completely misses the point of the original argument, you're pretty much asking for a snarky comment about your intelligence and why you like the game.
Also, I imagine somebody who hasn't played the game could still read my writings and get a pretty good idea of what's in store. Unless other people who have played the game would like to come and suggest I doctored all those screenshots with the repeated enemies and dodgy English, mislabeled the sound files and the songs I said were from Cthulhu Saves the World are actually from Pier Solar's enhancement disc (although before anybody gets any bright ideas, they might want to check the free download of Cthulhu's soundtrack at the official site. Actually, do that anyway, it's awesome), and somehow hacked that video I got the Zero Punctuation image from? Or that there isn't a Bomberman knockoff? Or that I'm lying about the game's ending? Hey, maybe you thought the ending was a tearjerker rather than a great big "fuck you for your time" to the player, but the ending itself is pretty objective.
I really didn't expect any of these people to read through my review and scraps MOREC and think "Wait, that one line was from Zero Punctuation? You guys seriously quoted Yahtzee Crowshaw in a JRPG??" or "Holy shit, Bethina's second form DOES look a lot like Easytype Zeromus!" or even ask about that "SNES is 8-bit" thing (though I doubt they read any of it to begin with), but if these people had done just a shred of detective work before rushing to WaterMelon's defense they might have caught onto something; yes, DivineCombat's posts can be read as somebody who hasn't played the game and doesn't believe it's worth playing based on some negative reviews. But they can also be read as somebody who doesn't think it's worth bothering with because they have played it and thought it was utter garbage, and is just saying, you know, based on those reviews the game sure does seem pretty awful, doesn't it? And no, you don't need to put rotten food in your mouth to know you don't want to eat it. And they can certainly be read as a seriously pissed off customer who doesn't give a monkey-flung shit about "consumers who never asked for help" and just wants to spray venom through a laughably thin disguise.
(Nobody's asking, but the songs I was blasting were typically "Thine Wrath..." "Enmity of the Dark Lord" and "My Innermost Apocalypse". I just selected "Divine Combat" because it came up on my player while I was trying to figure out what handle to go under, and it sounded like a nice, pretentious name for a "White Knight" to have)
The question you all are asking, no doubt; why the fuck am I still going on about these guys? Mainly, I'm still bitter that I gave them $56 for a new Genesis game and they sent me what I would charitably call a pile of sticky Sonic-patterned tissues burned to a game board, and uncharitably call a bad webcomic in video game form. So I guess I'm saying Pier Solar is the Dominic Deegan to my John Solomon, and wow, talk about your dated references. And at least Terracciano didn't charge as much as a major game release to come look at his bad animu artwork and cliched writing. Oh right, did I forget to mention that they upped the price to "only" $59? Christ, you can get the Elder Scrolls Anthology for less than that.
(Oh, and for the love of God, Zeus, Ra, Odin, Vishnu, Azathoth, Blind Io, Arceus, whatever other gods you want to throw into this pantheon, and your own eyes, do not check that "Magnificent Milkmaid" site in the comments of the YWIB link. If you looked at it anyway, well, I warned you.)
| You're a real piece of work, hon. |
| Thanks, but I think the masters would be disappointed with my effort. |
 | HOOHOOHOO HOH HOH! Oh dear dear no, do you really think you'll ever be able to compare yourself to moi? |
| No, Zizzy, the other masters. |
| Ohhhhhwwww... |
| Is anyone who hasn't played MDK 2 even going to know what that means? |
| If it's that important to them, they can get it at GOG.com for only six bucks. And while they're there, they can get Sam and Max Season One, Planescape Torment, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, and all those free games you get when you sign up. |
| You're just plugging a bunch of games people can spend their $60 on instead of Pier Solar, aren't you? |
| Damn right. |