Dunkey’s Garbage: Part 5
Introduction
Fame is an attractive lie, and obscurity is a harsh truth. I see blokes like Dunkey get so much praise and so much affection for the quality of his work, the entertainment that he provides, and the means to get views consistently in the millions in every video he releases, all of which things I want for my own work, and yet I know it’s not going to happen based on what I’m doing right now. Even if I was to work my ass off every day and release huge articles on this blog, actually making it a daily enterprise as I intend it to be, I still wouldn’t be any more popular, because I find myself on a platform that doesn’t offer me any room to grow and get famous.
Neocities is a brilliant hosting provider, but it remains the smallest of the small fry because of a development team that hasn’t done any advertising, and doesn’t see the site as anything more than a place to dump static content. It has so much potential to be a social network full of creatives, attracting budding talent from all over the artistic scene, especially those artists nostalgic for the way the Web was, and yet over the past year I have seen Neocities stagnate, with no new talent or faces beyond who I’ve gotten to know over the past six months. This is certainly not helped by the removal of comments from the activity feed, the slow development on the Neocities GitHub, and the lack of updates from Kyle Drake — the lead developer of Neocities — on what his plans for the future are.
This website got one major exposé in July 2013, two months after its initial release, and the news after that has been drier than the Ethiopian desert. The lack of marketing done for what is one of the Internet’s most blindsidingly obvious business ideas the Internet is what’s bringing it’s death knell — even if Neocities is a non – profit enterprise, being able to attract investors to this low – cost, low – maintenance enterprise would allow it to blossom into one of the finest places to learn about and host your very own Web design. But the evidence is clear that Neocities just isn’t interested in seeing it grow as much as it rightly should, and its entire userbase suffers because of that.
The Internet is in a tight spot right now, where you’re already firmly entrenched in the current dogma of popular websites and have to crawl tooth – and – nail to desperately attempt to get noticed on platforms like YouTube, Tumblr, and Twitter — a task impossible without a lot of bribe money and knowing the right people —, or you’re clinging onto a young and obscure platform such as Neocities or Mastodon in a gambler’s gambit to get to know everybody in a short enough time that if it does balloon into popularity, you’ll be riding high on the hype train along with all the other veterans. When you see social networks such as Peach and Ello gain uncountable levels of publicity and manage to throw it all away in a week, you understand just how cutthroat business on the Internet is, and how Herculean of a task it is to gain any level of notoriety in the 2015 era. So I suppose all I can do is whine about video games.
Metroid: Zero Mission
The biggest problem I had with Metroid is the exploration. I know you aren’t reading past this sentence, but a game where you can walk right past a power – up because it was hidden in a one – block tile lodged in a wall in the middle of The Incorporated Community of Nowhere that you have to blow up by doing a bomb jump that even after an hour of practice I still can’t get the hang of, is kind of a bum design decision. The 2D Metroid gameplay suffers from the typical old – school problem of being a war of attrition, where you can’t possibly hit every enemy because they’re too fast and you can only shoot in cardinal directions ranging from three to seven, meaning the gameplay just ends up backtracking through each level slowly taking tank after tank of damage until you eventually die and have to restart from the last spawn point. I admire a game that isn’t afraid to let the player explore a well – designed world, but when the world is deliberately labyrinthine, that’s when I draw the line.
Ocarina of Time 3D
The difference between playing this game casually and playing it as a speedrun is like the difference between Stephen Hawking and a guy who can walk. It’s one of those rare games that haven’t been broken beyond recognition, yet still has so much tech going on that it makes the storyline a joke and you have to invent special categories to actually see everything the developers put in there. I can’t even remember how I felt about this game, because I’ve been so indoctrinated into this hardcore way of thinking that I can’t remember the simple fun that I’ve felt playing this back when I was thirteen. I remember being able to ride a horse around this teeny – tiny world, and my little mind was so dumb that I couldn’t even remember which direction I was supposed to go next, even though the maps are so simple and linear today. It was one of those games I could play forever, and that’s exactly what I did.
Donkey Kong Country 2
Dunkey, we get it, you like dong.
Psychonauts
This game fucking sucks. Everybody who ever praised it is working in a coal mine and is leeching off their boss’s Wi – Fi for the sole purpose of bringing their mentally – damaged opinions into the discourse of a game that is the opposite of everything it was described to me as being. In the first place, I was told it would be “funny”, and there are so many quotation marks around that adjective it makes the North Korean army look like the Icelandic coast guard. If your level of humour never evolved past the type of cartoons that would play at 09:00 on a Monday morning because the network saved the awful cartoons until after you went to school, this is the game for you! I bought this game for three bucks on Good Old Games, and I thought to myself, “might as well see what the fuss is about”. I played it for just two hours, and the only time I laughed was when I thought how much the voice actors were getting paid for this. I was also told it would be “wondrous”, if your sense of wonder is limited to the Zany And Quirky® antics of a bunch of Cray – zey People with no indication of how to interact with them to progress. Once the game started implying I was going to need to collect a billion plot coupons through the use of unoriginal platforming mechanics, I just gave up out of pity. I think I can see why this game is a hidden gem. Or should I say… a hidden rock. Wait, gems are rocks, too.
Rayman Legends
I remember Rayman as but a brief glimmer in what was otherwise an uneventful childhood, at least from what I haven’t repressed. Rayman 3 was like what every kid wanted: a platforming game featuring a bright and chipper world with a marketable character who would later sell out and produce lowest – common – denominator garbage. In this case, that would be the Rabbids, which were the Minions before the Minions were a thing. Speaking of which, remember the Mario × Rabbids crossover that’s coming out in a desperate bid to piggyback a dead franchise along side a much – beloved decades – old property widely considered to have saved the entire games industry? That’s right: Mario’s living off the Rabbid’s paycheque. In non – stupid Rayman news, a kickass Rayman TAS popped up in April, getting a much – coveted gold star and a 9.0 rating from a userbase even pickier than yours truly. Imagine what you can do, what you can animate, if you have the dedication to create a game with as much fluidity and charm as this series.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
There are some games that playing with a mouse and keyboard is like holding a fifty – pound dumbbell above your head as you go to sleep. Then there are games that suck even with a controller, such as Vice City, which controls. It sure does. Going on a motorbike for five seconds only to crash it into a tree instantly isn’t what I call good physics. Having gunplay that’s like controlling one of those bonus playable characters in tower defense games isn’t good gameplay. To top it all off, you got a game with graphics like a college student who just discovered 3DS Max and is trying to convince himself the $200 monthly subscription fee for his proprietary, DRM – infested, piece – of – shit piece of spyware wasn’t a complete waste of money, as the guy using Blender next to him is wondering why he keeps complaining about debt. The cult of personality that has developed around this functional – though – uninteresting experience is one which has always escaped me. Perhaps this is what we convinced ourselves “good” games were like, before the Saints Row series clowned on GTA so hard that it — oh, GTA V made two billion dollars. WHAT THE FUCK —
The Last of Us
Did you know you don’t even need to play a game to have an opinion of it? It’s true! You can derive so much information just by watching footage of a game, reading other people’s opinions of it, and boning up on TV Tropes to see whether or not it’s one that gets a thumbs – up, or one that makes two billion dollars. You don’t even have to play it to understand the gameplay: gleaning what’s being presented on the screen already provides a good enough abstraction, and the controls are just a conduit for what is being displayed, which more often that not ruin the supposedly good gameplay. For instance, when I was thirteen and had my laptop in repairs, I watched the entirety of UberHaxorNova’s Last of Us Let’s Play (don’t judge me). In contrast to the significantly bribed reviewers who declared it better than three anime sex slaves and a Big Mac combo meal, I saw the uninteresting exploration, trite story, dumbed – down gameplay, and thought to myself: “Boy, I’m sure glad I didn’t buy a PS3!” even though I had no intentions whatsoever of buying baby’s first Blu – ray player. It really is interesting to see just how much hype — sorry, I mean pre – planned marketing — went into this garbage, only for it to be completely forgotten about by 2014. That was a bad year to live through. On the plus side, 2016 was pretty chill (if you aren’t a normie, that is), and 2017 is showing strong signs of furries making their way in the world. Oh, baby, baby!
Uncharted 2
I played this for thirty seconds when I was thirteen at EB Games and couldn’t figure out how to jump on a crate. Now, having grown up with video games that allows one to jump on crates at any given time, given the majesty of the dedicated “jump” button, I was sufficiently confused as to why this game wouldn’t let me jump on that motherhecking crate. A dedicated jump button? Madness! Next you’ll tell me there’s a dedicate pause button, too! I later saw my cousin play Uncharted 4 when I was thirteen (who had a very conspicuous Minecraft foam pickaxe alongside his LED – laden water – cooled PC), saw him sidle along ledges for three minutes while a white girl gave him some uninteresting exposition, and thought to myself: “Wow, this series looks like crap!” Remember when Naughty Dog made games about furries instead of thirty – year – old white guys with facial hair? Those were the days.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
Damn howdy, this game was the shit. If there was ever a series that defined the 2000s, this would be it. Forget about all that garbage like Half – Life 2, Metroid Prime, and Pokémon Ruby. When you busted out Tony Hawk and brought some tasty jams with you while doing the 360 doodlybop across the Lincoln Memorial’s dick, you got only a glimmer of what you felt back in the Good Old Days of gaming, where you had to actually go into a magazine to see what was hip and happening. I haven’t subscribed to a magazine ever since Nintendo Power shut down when I was thirteen. It’s one of those games where either you played it and you understand just what in the world all the fuss is about, or you go the rest of your life blissfully unaware of what it was like to pull off a million – point combo as your favourite rock song came up just as you were finishing. This is nostalgia at its finest, and gaming in its purest form: just plain – old, no – bullshit, fun.
Tetris
Never heard of it.
Conclusion
You know, I think I learned a lot. I learned about my own biases and what I consider good… it seems I don’t suffer fools lightly, and am too pragmatic for the majority of blokes. I learned that even in games I haven’t played, I have at least known them by reputation, if not experienced them indirectly, and it is fascinating to see the stories I can tell within this young medium. I got nostalgia, I got memories of things I didn’t even know I remembered, memories of just how much gaming meant to me and all it’s done for me across my life, and how much I want to inspire people to see the examples I have set forth, to weigh and measure them with a keen eye and a sense of how to make games that matter, in order to go forth and to do as I do.
But the biggest thing I learned though is just how brilliant Dunkey can be. He already has editing that makes mere mortals weep, with directing that beats almost everything else on YouTube, being called “JonTron with a darker sense of humour” by one YouTube commentator. His opinions may be funky, and he may not have any strong stated philosophy for gaming beyond what he enjoys, but he’s got discourse that can be just plain brilliant at times. When he brought out that Undertale recommendation in his Best of 2015, and he said: “Undertale is an emotional rollercoaster, and here are the tracks”, followed by a cut to the music within the game? I was ready to shit myself. Of course the story was worse than the marketing copy for a goddamn Rolls Royce, but being able to bring out so much drama in such a small video is something that makes me want to go into the long, hard, arduous task of video production myself.
If somebody can make being a fucking YouTuber seem appealing? Damn. That’s someone who’s earned his popularity.