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Site Progress Update: July 2017

As of this posting, Guardian Acorn has now been active for its first full month after having started up halfway through May. Okay technically I had made my first post on May 6th, but I don’t feel as though I really got started until about halfway through. I must say, I am surprised I never got the idea to start my own blog earlier considering how much I have been enjoying this so far. Anyway, I will take a brief look back of what I have posted this month, and also the stuff from May for good measure.

May 2017

Introducing: The Guardian Acorn.

Detailed Review: NieR (PS3/360).

JRPG Update: 4/24/2017 – 5/13/2017

Detailed Review: NieR Automata (PS4/PC)

Political Rant: Black Privilege… Are you fucking serious?

JRPG Update: 5/14/2017 – 5/20/2017

Standard Review: Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge (Gameboy)

Detailed Review: Rosenkreuzstilette (Steam)

Standard Review: Darconika: The Cube of Soul (Steam)

JRPG Update: 5/21/2017 – 5/27/2017

June 2017

Anime Movie Review: Midori (Shoujo Tsubaki)

Standard Review: Nekopara Vol.1 (PC)

JRPG Update: 5/28/2017 – 6/3/2017

Impressions & Commentary: Alpha’s Adventures Demo

Quick Review: Nekopara Vol. 0 (PC)

How My Game Backlog Increased by 59 Games in One Month (And What It Means)

JRPG Update: 6/4/2017 – 6/10/2017

Quick Review: Nekopara Vol.2 (PC)

RE: 36 Questions Women Have For Men

Quick Review: Lily’s Day Off (Steam/Ios)

Standard Review: Phantasy Star (Master System)

Standard Review: Broken Hearted: A 9/11 Story (PC)

Standard Review: The Counting Kingdom (Steam/Ios)

Standard Review: Negligee (PC)

Poll: How would you react if i created a Patreon?

JRPG Update: 6/11/2017 – 6/18/2017

Detailed Review: Attacking Zegeta (PS4/Ouya)

I Now Have a Patreon Page.

Detailed Review: Kindred Spirits on the Roof (PC)

Detailed Review: Tales of Hearts R (Vita)

My Plans for Patreon and Rules Regarding Rewards and Goals

JRPG Update: 6/19/2017 – 6/24/2017

Standard Review: Fenix Rage/Fenix Furia (PC/PS4/Xbox One)

Detailed Review: Final Quest (PC)

The Guardian Acorn Steam Summer Sale Recommendations

Guardian Acorn July 2017 Givaway: Highschool Romance

 

I may as well take the time to thank both Ryumoau Juno and John Dolan for supporting me on Patreon this month. I have gotten $17.00 pledged between the two of them (technically 18 but there was a processing fee). I have stated in the page that Ryumoau won the code for Lethal League. However, he has turned it down since he isn’t a PC gamer and John Dolan already has it. As such, it is up for grabs by anyone who would like to claim it. I do not want to trade it on Indiegala because I am not certain that it hasn’t expired after all this time.

As for the money, $12 is being saved towards changing the WordPress Plan while the remaining $5.00 will be put towards the IndieGala Dharker Studio 2 Bundle for the purpose of gaining codes for future givaways and to obtain copies of the 3 that I do not already own, thus making them eligible for request on the 2nd lowest tier level on Patreon.

Speaking of reviews, I may as well speak up about what’s on the agenda. I currently have five, or possibly six games that I have already beaten but have yet to write a review for.

The first of these is Critical Hit, a short indie eroge visual novel with a DnD parody setting. I found this one to be quite enjoyable and I found that Lewdgamer’s review was rather nitpicky and reached MysteriousMrEnter levels of “not getting the joke/reference.” I mean seriously, you’re complaining about sophomoric humor in a fucking nukige? Also newsflash: “show don’t tell” refers to the expression of emotions through a character’s actions instead of words, not “why aren’t there flashbacks, we need to see everything that ever happened to these characters first hand because fuck subtlety!”

Speaking of bullshit reviews, there is Yooka-Laylee. I can tell that a review of this game will be very similar to my review of Time and Eternity in that I will feel the need to incessantly address “critics” (I’m unsure if I even consider Jim Sterling a critic because of how shallow his reviews are) who levied the most absurd criticisms about the game. Surprisingly, Jim Sterling’s wasn’t even the worst; that dishonor goes to Derek Alexander aka Stop Skeletons From Fighting aka the artist formerly known as the Happy Video Game Nerd, who used Anita Sarkeesian levels of cherry picking and flat out lies about the game’s content. I legit almost unsubscribed after watching that abysmal review of his, and I’m unlikely to ever take him seriously as a critic again; and I say that because I won’t even know if he’s telling the truth. Anyway I’m going to have a lot to say about that one so it’s going to take a while.

Then there is The Beginner’s Guide, which I just played through recently and will say that it is absolutely amazing. I don’t feel like saying anything more since it’s one of those “go in knowing as little as possible” games and because I already went overboard in the last paragraph and want to keep things short.

There is The Legend of Dragoon, which I beat near the end of December and have wanted to write a review for this whole time but had too much on my plate.

Lastly, there are two Steam Greenlight kusoge called Midnight Carnival and FEMINAZI: The Triggering , two games I temporarily got a hold of in a bundle literally called “The Edgy Bundle” and ended up refunding soon after. Not just because those two games were shit but because my computer was unable to run the third game, The Housewife. And thank god for it because that one looked like a shitty walking simulator, and if I played it, I probably would have went over the amount of time allotted between all 3 games and not allowed a refund. But yeah, expect me to tear into those two games, especially FEMINAZI because it just had to bring social politics into things because the game itself is so boring that no one else would play it on its own merits.

As for what’s on the agenda to be played for review purposes, John Dolan has gifted me copies of Worms Reloaded and Contraption Maker for his two requests, while Ryumoau has requested Cosmic Star Heroine, which I just got from the Steam sale.

As such, all three of those games are boosted to the top of the priority list. Of course, I also don’t want to discontinue my current playthrough of Megadimension Neptunia VII. So I will likely finish that before starting Cosmic Star Heroine, while I plan to play the other two on the side once I have cleared up enough of my planned writing projects.

As for other content, my next political rant is about a feud between a certain two trans Youtubers. I have also been wanting to do another impressions and commentary or anime review, but again, all of these reviews in the way, in addition to JRPG Update takes up a lot of time.

Anyway, thank you everyone who has read and supported any of my content and hopefully things continue to go smoothly from here on out.

If you would like to support me or this site, then please support my Patreon if you would like to see higher quality content with more resources to put towards it. If you don’t want to spend any money on me, then you can also help out by simply sharing my blog on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, or anywhere else where others will see it. You can also follow this blog if you would like to be kept up to date on my stuff, or you could follow me on any of my social media pages (listed at the bottom of the page) and could stop by The Guardian Acorn Discord chat if you would like to talk to me and my homies.

0 thoughts on “Site Progress Update: July 2017

  1. This blog has progressed quite quickly in the last two months. It’s nice to see it doing so well after such as short period!

    Speaking of The Beginners Guide, I actually played that today. While it didn’t affect me as emotionally as some other games such as Thomas Was Alone, I do think it was amazing and had a great story. I might review it but I think it would be hard to sum up this 90 minute game that’s really something you should experience for yourself in six paragraphs.

    Huh, I like Jim Sterling and I don’t often read his reviews but I do think a 2/10 is a little harsh. Then again, he is very critical with the game industry but even I think he goes too far sometimes. And I thought I was cynical… Either way, I suppose it’s his opinion and people brought up similar points to him in Steam Reviews. I’ve never actually played Banjo Kazooie or Yooka Laylee though so I suppose I’m not the best person to judge.

    By the way, there’s a massive blank space at the bottom of your post which you should probably fix.

    1. I am glad to see that it looks like my blog is growing from the outside looking in as I have been putting a majority of my time into trying to work on this blog in terms of both content and trying to find out tricks to get more views.

      With The Beginner’s Guide, I shouldn’t have a problem reviewing it since I’ve been able to successfully review much shorter games in decent detail, and I do have quite a bit to say about it.

      Jim Sterling I have a lot of issues with. The problem I have is that, while he tends to draw controversy a lot, he never does anything seriously risky that actually puts him at risk of losing money. IE he won’t negatively review a COD title, but he will try and be contrarian by positively reviewing one, but he will bash any games that have just the right reputation he can get away with like Zelda, Sonic, Yooka-Laylee, Final Fantasy XIII, Senran Kagura, Dead or Alive, The Last Story, ect, that will piss enough people off to draw ad revenue but not enough for any serious consequences. Additionally, his criticisms often demonstrate extreme Incompetence (Yooka-Laylee, The Last Story) or he decides he’s going to hate the game before he even opened the packaging and derides those who disagree with him (such as with both Dead or Alive and Senran Kagura, proving that despite his feminist virtue signaling, that he’s a slut shaming misogynist dirtback as well. Seriously, Senran Kagura is a series known for its strongly developed characters, yet all he’s able to see is tits. That shows much more about his mindset than anything about the game in question). On top of that, he is not afraid to go after lesser known game websites like Brash Games, yet you’ll never hear him say a word about the scummy game journalism sites that he shills for.

      However, probably what gets to me the most about him is the immature attitude he takes towards not only other gamers, but also towards game developers themselves. He often goes to AVGN extents of bashing in his reviews of AAA games as if he has no awareness of the fact that game development is a very difficult process, so maybe it would be a good thing to not try and insult an entire company just because they canceled a game he wanted to see. Additionally, several companies have also blacklisted him for the way he conducts himself during reviews, and I really don’t blame them.

      Anyway thanks for the comment, and now I’m going to try and heck out that blank space.

  2. Hmmm, I can’t say I completely understand why you have such a taste for Jim. Most of the problems you seem to be pointing out are things of the past.

    “IE he won’t negatively review a COD title, but he will try and be contrarian by positively reviewing one”

    This example, at least is untrue. He gave COD: MW Remastered his ‘Worst Game of the Year Award’ in 2016 for all the DLC bullshit and recently did a Jimquisition talking about how downright greedy the micro-transactions and DLC is for 18 minutes.

    “that will piss of enough people to draw ad revenue”

    Uh, while I understand your not a fan of his opinions on certain games-and to be honest, I’m not either-the ad revenue thing is again, completely untrue. Both his videos and website are 100% ad free and he’s pretty much 100% funded by his Patreon excluding his Merch store. I understand how you can get angry at his ridiculously harsh reviews but he doesn’t criticise them so harshly for ad revenue, so I think he’s just that much of a cynical bastard it takes a lot for him to actually enjoy something.

    “he is not afraid to go after lesser known game websites like Brash Games, yet you’ll never hear him say a word about the scummy game journalism sites that he shills for.”

    Firstly, even though you hate him, I thought you’d be on his side, at least for the whole BrashGames thing. I’ve heard about how much of a dickhead the owner is and how he mistreats his writers and Jim talked to several former BG’s reviewers about it. Of course, you also used to be a reviewer on the site so you may have a different experience. I’m interested to hear it, if you don’t mind sharing your experience.

    I assume by “scummy game journalism sites” you mean the Escapist? He hasn’t made any more content for them in almost three years now since he left and started up his Patreon. All his old videos are there, but nothing new. In fact, one of the reasons he left The Escapist was precisely because he didn’t like how scummy they were and didn’t like the idea of using ads and sponsorships to gain revenue.

    “He often goes to AVGN extents of bashing in his reviews of AAA games as if he has no awareness of the fact that game development is a very difficult process”

    This is a good point but I think but I think it’s just part of his character just like the AVGN. I think he’s just had so many bad experiences in the industry that he’s incredibly bitter about pretty much everything. Again, I don’t agree with the majority of his reviews but it’s his opinion. As long as you enjoy it, what does it matter?

    Anyway, I’m happy to hear things from your side of view. Maybe I misinterpreted some lines so apologies if I’ve done that somewhere.

    1. In regards to Brash Games, I will say that my experience was significantly different from how it was described. Paul was very respectful of me and was actually rather lenient and understanding regarding reviews and only expected me to update him on progress. I had a 2 month gap between my review of School Idol QT Cool and NieR Automata and he didn’t seem to have much of an issue with that as long as I was updating him on the progress. I never felt like I was being taken advantage of or screwed over, and the only reason I left the site was because I thought that it was being shut down after Paul said he was selling it, and by the time the site went back to normal, I already created this blog and wanted to pursue this. Jim made the claim that Paul paid his writers in “exposure” but the main draw to his site was the review codes, for which there were a very large amount available, more so than a lot of gaming sites of similar status. Additionally, as stated, the standards are a lot more lenient than most review sites. I had previously wrote for Oprainfall in late 2014 and early 2015, and if anything, the standards for writing there were a lot higher despite the fact that writers aren’t paid there either (although in their defense, I am pretty sure that the site is entirely fan run and I don’t think the owner makes any real money off it either). I ended up getting taken off the review team because I took a month to get out reviews of both Tales of Hearts and Criminal Girls Invite Only respectively while under a state of grueling depression and having to handle schoolwork. I later had my focus being anime commentaries and VGM of the Week articles, but I eventually got burned out when I realized it was a requirement to cover some stuff from E3 when the journalism aspect is really not my forte (that’s probably why I’m banking on my own site becoming a thing as I don’t feel like repeatedly making dozens of individual articles about specific game announcements while needing to complete 40 hour games in 2 weeks). I should clarify that I don’t hold anything against Oprainfall as it is kinda necessary to have some kind of quality standards to meet demand, and I have still regularly visited their site since then and have eve sourced them. Given that Oprainfall is a smaller site, I can only imagine that kind of standards there would be for any of the big professional sites like IGN. Also when I said the “scummy game journalism sites” I wasn’t specifically referring to sites he writes for. It does often seem like her rarely goes after these bigger sites like IGN, Kotaku, Destructoid, etc despite the fact that most of these sites have done much worse than Brash Games has, and he was on the anti GamerGate bandwagon right from the get go when it started up. While I have had a lot of issues with GamerGate as a whole, the fact is that rather damning evidence of collusion was brought forth between game journalism sites such as the game journos pro website, and the fact that a lot of small time indie developers got their games covered simply because they were friends with journalists (contrary to what people are saying, no one was ever saying Nathan Grayson reviewed Depression Quest, but rather he gave it positive coverage in more than one article without disclosing his relationship to Zoe Quinn. Additionally, there was an arguably worse example regarding the coverage of Analogue: A Hate Story in which Patricia Hernandez wrote an entire article about it while she was dating its creator Christine Love) yet most of them simply tried to derail discussion by focusing on the sexism issues (and GG supporters fell right into their trap by deviating from their focus and letting themselves get co-opted by douchebags like Milo Yiannopoulos for political gain). The worst that Brash did was the thing about removing names from the site, and Paul has stated that it was because of a site error an he has been actively trying to fix it. Also according to what he told me, he has been suffering from symptoms of dementia that has been causing some serious difficulties with memory loss, which would explain why he can’t remember the names of everyone who contributed. In general, yeah there are some questionable aspects of Brash Games, but it’s even more suspicious that Jim seems silent about the stuff done by the bigger game sites or is often white knighting them.

      Also I should clarify, I don’t “hate” Jim. There are still some things he says that I can agree with. It is rather the way he goes about his actions and his content that I dislike. There is more that I can say on other parts of this topic, but I’ve been typing this for close to or possibly even more than a half an hour so I’m gonna stop.

  3. Seems you have had quite a different experience at BrashGames which I’m glad to hear. It’s good that at least someone had a good experience with it.

    I believe Jim mentioned the free game codes and still didn’t think it was good enough to excuse the idea of being paid in exposure rather than money though I suppose that part is debatable.

    Other reviewers said they had very bad experiences with the owner though I won’t go into too much detail here. The worst thing I think he did was writing about Meg Read’s disability in his ‘apology’ post. He said that they had been “extremely lenient with Meg due to her mental health issues”. Not only is trying to use someone else’s health as a shield to defend your actions without the person’s consent immoral, it’s also illegal according to law, hence why the post has been edited and significantly shortened since then.

    As a side note, I’ve watched videos about GamerGate, I’ve researched GamerGate, I’ve looked at both sides of the argument and the GamerGate reddit, I’ve looked at the wikipedia page and I still have no idea what the fuck GamerGate actually is lol. Something about one of Zoe Quinn’s ex boyfriends writing something unsavoury? I don’t know much about it and I don’t think I want to know.

    Anyway, I’ll leave it at that since I assume you’re getting tired of typing all this out like I am and probably have better things to do. It was nice having this little debate, especially considering how damning everyone else on the Internet seems to be of a friendly discussion.

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