There is a continuing trend of off the wall games that are coming out that are using gaming thought leaders and personalities to launch a shock assault into our wallets. The likes of the Game Grumps and Pewdiepie are finding this great influx of views from playing these off the wall games and highlighting them, which in turn is bringing in revenue.

I decided to take some time out of my very busy day of playing WildStar and try out one of these games - Shutshimi. So this game, with a name I’ve yet to figure out how to spell, is essentially one of the most bizarre and random games you’ll find. Not really, with titles like Shovel Knights and Broforce, it’s really a tough market at this point - most boundaries, within the terms of being civil and PG, have been broken.

The basic concept of the game is as follows. You’re a fish with memory issues, but you know one thing which I don’t really remember, but you have muscles and guns. The game has a very simple and novel gameplay system in place - you have 10 seconds of battle, then a short period of time to choose an item. The description and visual reference of the item mean nothing - the actual effect is listed somewhere in the description. Different modes highlight it better. Some effects are good (more damage, better weapons) and some are bad (worser weapons, negative effects, more enemies).

As far as gameplay goes, it has a lot of, hrm, lack of anything to it once you get past the whole WOAH BOY it’s a fish with a gun. Then it sort of sets in on you that it’s ultimately a flash game, brought to life as an executable, that you paid for. Then it sort of sets in even more - a lot of the casual industry and a lot of even Steam Greenlight are these games that are ultimately flash games from the time before repackaged as early access games and sold at a profit.

Now, Shutshimi is different, it’s a dollar and doesn’t have any DRM, so it’s not really like you’re getting ripped off. But it does tell you that there is a dangerous state that gaming is looking at - this idea that some crazy wacky simulator game or some off the wall crazy bonanza of a 8-bit game is totally cool and you need to not only Kickstart and Indiegogo it, but also throw your money at the early copy of it.

Anyway, back on topic, Shutshimi was fun, it was worth the dollar, but to be honest once the novelty is gone and you play through the same level over and over again it gets old fast. Which, a lot of these “wacky” games are getting to be for me. Maybe, I guess, I’m just old. Or perhaps, people are just happy throwing their money at silliness for the sake of being silly.

In the Bush with Xerin

Today in the bush we’re going to talk about the mechanics of WildStar and people charging to carry people. Recently this has become a rather interesting issue, even our own Lewis brought it up in his blog-o-rama, but I do want to just throw my word salad out there for the world to digest and say that I think that games need to make it where these top-tier arena players, these people who make it past a certain rating, don’t get some unfair advantage with gear in the arena.

We need the arena to give everyone a specific amount of PvP offense and defense, then, in the battlegrounds, let’s just say the practice grounds and even warplots, let the actual stats of the gear affect everything. So someone who owns butt in the arena and gets this legit rating, can just go into the BG and “pwn” everyone with their 1337 gear (sorry Weird Al, I can’t help it).

I’m getting tired of these arena systems where you just ugh, have to get a certain rating to just be at a fair level with someone else in a very intimate battle setting. In the BG, it’s ok, people with 1800 gear can decimate you, but it’s not like it’s that big of a deal since you’re one of ten others.

In the arena, it’s a little bit different, their gear matters, and while skill can triumph gear sometimes, you’re still going to run into the issue they do more damage and do less to you, and oh since they’re carrying they’re at your rating.

Anyway, I do hope that we can get a game like WildStar to implement a setting in which there is an arena of choice for people to show off their gear and have a ton of fun, while at the same time make things like the 2v2 and 3v3 arenas something other than 1800 pub stomp ground (that’s a good WC3 reference there, eh).

I’ll hush up now, but I figure I’d throw my two cents out there.