Bless GameFAQS

[SharkAttack]

No not for the normally great translations of japanes egames and faqs...but bless them for the terrible message boards! God damn! I went on there jsut now for the first time in ages and started to come up with answers on the GC board to parrot topics about Mature v Kiddy, Next Zelda being Adult Link, Nintendo losing their spark, Mario Kart beinbg great or being bad etc etc. What is the point? You then switch to page 2 of topics and the same topics are there but posted by some other dimwit who couldn't be bothered to check whether it already existed. These people will never be told anything or learn anything because 1 topic can end up having hundreds of ffing threads covering it!

End of rant

[Crispin]

It is futile. Whilst NTSC-UK's policy of one topic fits all sizes and sub topics may seem harsh, it keeps all the information together and thus there is a point to writing several paragraphs about Nintendo's latest strategy.

GameFAQs is composed of two oddly disparate halves. On the one hand you have the majority of reviews being utter tripe and reviewing the first ten minutes of a game (in the mad dog frenzy to get your review out first in order to garner karma). You also have the appalling message boards.

Then you have the FAQs, some of these are brilliant, the result of a labour of love. This is especially true for the more obscure games, simply because they don't have to rush in order for it to be accepted. So they are full of painstakingly gathered information. It might be flawed, but I respect the effort put into it. Through the credits in the FAQs, you begin to build up a sense that they and a few others, somewhere on the net, are discussing tactics and Chao breeding tips that blow your mind.

Then of course, some of the FAQs for the more popular games are silly. A FAQ for a five minute demo. Okkkkk...

For the more obscure games, you can get decent reviews as we're not having to rush. I reviewed Phantom Crash and Doshin under the name of Fused Saiyan. I didn't have to rush. I had spent months playing the first and about 14 days of solid play before returning the latter. I'm more pleased with the former as I could play it to my heart's content. For Doshin I didn't have that luxury as I wanted to be able to return it for what I paid for.

I spent weeks on the Phantom Crash review.

I also began writing a highly complex Snake FAQ, but they don't have mobile phone game FAQs. Oh well.

[mid]

The thing that vaguely annoys me is the "FAQs" that entirely consist of information that is in the manual. Very useful to the pirates, pointless to anyone with a legit copy.

[SharkAttack]

This was the topic that made me snap -

http://cgi.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.asp?board=2000103&topic=11204565

I am SharkAttack on there.

[Sketcz]

No, lets not bless them.

While I love and loathe it, I probably loathe it far more than I love it.

The boards are filled with bizarre and mostly annoying "children" removing any hope for a decent debate. Check the ages of most next gen posters, most are 14-15
As for flaming, it is rife, the slightest thing can set entire oceans of americans raining down on you like a ton of bricks. Apparently I am no better than some wal-mart scum and desrve to be in jail since my xbox is modded. WTF?!
The only vagualy good sections are th secret hidden boards which are small communities of friends. These are quite good, but can be very territorial. A nice friendly open place though has to RJPAGE's psyvariar sections, good place filled with good people. cheers rj!

The site owner is grossly arrogant, and thinks himself at times to be god.

not to mention the mods, who take it apon themselves to be the re-incarnated version of the elite SS complete with leather trench coats and brutal regimes of information censorship and severe penalisation.

The faqs and reviews themselves range from the bile inducing vomit no doubt written entirely to induce anger, to the rare and geniunely well written translations.

I use them for only 3 reasons:

1) It is the easiest and seemingly most reliable way to get my faqs and reviews online, sadly though this also means every other wannabe writer can do it as well.
Though this still hasnt satopped me writing in several complaint emails demanding reviews from an old account be updated to my new one.

2) there is no other site with such a humoungous-gigantic-enormous cache of truly archaic and bizzare tid bits of info on gaming.
Mark my words, no matter how obscure, that info is hidden in there somewhere.

3) at times it can like playing MUD, the whole overgrown boards are times like an online text RPG with leveling up, battles, secret hidden treasure and secret "villages" to discover, filled with wierd colorful characters.

So, to get my work up, and to get hold of rare bits of info, such as long forgotten classics, decent "sites" coughcough, and general other unusualness. Oh, and when im in the mood for online text RPGing.

Sadly it is marred by many, many flaws. One of the most glaring being that any modchip discussion is outflawed apon penalty of banning, meaning no xbox homebrew dicussion, or any import gaming if it means chip discussion. I have campaigned but with no luck sadly.

The final nail on the head has to be the the fact that I have now been banned twice, for the most purile, asanine and truly idiotic reasons ever.
Also, thanks to owners apparent delusions of being god, you cant actually contest or defend such things. My inner thoughts on such things will not be typed, due to the excessive ammount of foul language that would not doubt errupt.

Suffice to say, Ive lost around 1000 karma now.

oh, note to Crispin:getting the first review up doesnt equal any more karma. Ive written 3 exclusive reviews there and recieved no such reward. It states clearly, you gain no karma rewards for writting either reviews or faqs. The only reward is a faq bounty where you can win a gift certificate, though this is only open to US residents.

[Max M]

Now this is a quote...

xbox is great luv it 2 bits its gr8 n gorgeus better then gamecube n it can sell as it proved it in america & europe u ppl r useles unsocial ppl who crawl on forums to make urself feel better get ovr u jealous waste of spaces wat wud a bunch of trols know abt style n class of xbox go buy a life n live it n stop envyin others such as j allard, robbie bach, bill gates who r beautiful n talented thts why they all hav millions in their bank account and u dont, if uv never owned the console then dont bitch abt it saddos

The actual GameFaqs site can be useful at times, for instance I printed out the Wind Waker sea map from there so it saved me going in to the map constantly when I needed to get somewhere (I'd already filled it all out).

[Moodmon]

I find it useful, but then I tend to follow certain authors around (like Nemesis's Zelda guides). Never would have finished some games without the walkthroughs.

[Vaipon]

The only time I really visit the Gamefaqs boards is when I need help with a Japanese game translation. There are some very helpful people on their boards, but there are also many idiots. I would never really go there to actually "discuss" anything, merely to gain information required. I've got nothing against the site really, but I prefer talking about games on a site with a more mature outlook like this one.

[mattSix]

hang in there, SharkAttack. i've seen numerous ntsc-uk'ers on GameFaqs, attempting to keep up the quality of debate there; rjpageuk most notably. you're not alone!

[SharkAttack]

Thats a good point. We'd feel like semi heroes to slowly but surely turn the tide of gamefaqs with decent and thought out responses to everyday mundance questions...hmmmmm. Bit tough though, at present its like wasps attacking a herd of cattle. We get a few to take notice but the rest of them go on chewing the same old ****.

[mattSix]

at present its like wasps attacking a herd of cattle...

i prefer to think of it as a small squadron of fighters approaching a vast, heavily armed, space station infested with an evil, dogmatic, tyrannical regieme...

but they do moo much more often than stormtroopers!

[razu]

The final nail on the head has to be the the fact that I have now been banned twice, for the most purile, asanine and truly idiotic reasons ever.
Also, thanks to owners apparent delusions of being god, you cant actually contest or defend such things. My inner thoughts on such things will not be typed, due to the excessive ammount of foul language that would not doubt errupt.

Ah, but the sweetest thing the internet has to offer is a ban from a forum filled with morons and run by ultra-morons. It separates you from them.

[rjpageuk]

I wondered how that thread turned into a get together of ntsc-uker's.

Now I know .

Just make sure you dont go near the MK: DD board.

[Crispin]

No, lets not bless them.
oh, note to Crispin:getting the first review up doesnt equal any more karma. Ive written 3 exclusive reviews there and recieved no such reward. It states clearly, you gain no karma rewards for writting either reviews or faqs. The only reward is a faq bounty where you can win a gift certificate, though this is only open to US residents.

I know that, just that there is a common myth that you do gain more Karma. I've seen multiple threads about it during my trawls through some of the odder boards. The Ikaruga one is good, but the Half Life 2 one is full of horror and blind hate as confused teenagers lash out at one another.

Let's see, times modded that I remember:
Describing mission objectives in Gregory Horro Show (They weren't obscene, and another topic on the same board about how a person's mate touched the poster's genitals during a game of Soul Calibur II managed to reach dozens of pages in length as well.)

Jokingly calling a few Americans, "carpet baggers". Someone really should do their research, the phrase is used repeatedly in Gone With The Wind, no one objects to that. Indeed it is perceived to be a very good book.

Quoting an example of how C&VG stars out swearwords and quoting Deathrow literature. This sort of thing happens all the time to me. They really should enter these into a filter to warn you before posting. Considering it raises alarm bells when you type in "pachinko", this really should be possible.

Jokingly referring to kids as "annoying gits".

Other stuff, the mods have no sense of humour. You can always tell when a mod gets his wings as on a board, even the most marginally offensive or individual opinion is heavily punished. I have noted that moderations to me occur over a course of say two days, and then never again for a few weeks, till the cycle starts again.

The anti French thing gets me down. They are complete n00bs when it comes to trying to pick a fight with the French. We've been feuding for over a thousand years, and the French are still there. Not a good idea to pick a fight with the French as they have one hell of a lot of practice at bearing a grudge. It is akin to watching a kid try to pick a fight with an experienced Karate master. It isn't even amusing, you just laugh at the kids' ignorance.

Plus it is full of blatant hate inducing racism and manages to go unpunished. **** like "the French will be too scared to play Half Life 2", pff, at least they didn't chicken out of most of the two major conflicts in the 20th Century.

[Sketcz]

thank you crispin, that was arguably the best post in this topic.

and as for HL2, oh dear god that is so true, so many horny teenagers, unable to get the game, and now filed with hatred for their fellow man. I luckily survived with all my limbs after posting there once.

<sigh>

good points, all them.

where do you normally hang out crispin?
I tend to chill out at RJ's topics, or the NES and home programming sections. The smaller boards seem to lack somemore of the unpleasant posters and mods.