Made the mistake of looking at the Switch eShop tonight and got very angry at the state of slop
A friend lamented that there are no more normal golf games anymore, they always have to have a wacky fantasy twist and be some version of mini-golf. Since he said that I can't stop thinking about it every time I see a new golf game, and there's TONS on the eShop. I found something called "Hentai Golf" and joked it was probably the most normal golf game released in the last year
Turns out: it absolutely is
It is also only rated T for Teen for "Suggestive Themes" so I can all but guarantee you there is no nudity in the game whatsoever. At worst you might get some cutesy "teehee can you help me with my stroke? ♥😉" dialog
There are literally hundreds of "Hentai" and "Ecchi" games like this, if not thousands
a couple thoughts:
- in the last days of the Wii, it got a ton of cheap knockoffs and bootlegs, (although these were released physically so you'd see them whenever you went to the store) which became a running joke and lowered the perceived quality of the wii as a console to the public
- A.I has been an absolute boon to bootleggers, huh. A.I is becoming the style most commonly associated with cheaping out
You could call this the consequence of the last days of the Switch eShop but this kind of junk is all over the PS5 store too. Sony tries to bury it with big promos for important games, but dig even a few inches below the surface and you find a lot of the same AI slop... and even straight up scam games like THE JUMPING BURGER which is just clipart of a hamburger and you can push a button to make it hop. Also featured is THE JUMPING BURGER TURBO for a buck and a half more, which lets you hold the button instead of having to push it every time.
And, again, there are thousands of these.
I've heard Microsoft at least keeps a little more buttoned up than Sony or Nintendo in terms of letting the riff raff in, but again, there's plenty of slop there, too. Nothing on the level of Spin the Book or The Jumping Burger, I guess, but still.
This kind of thing has been going on as long as "indie games" have existed. If Microsoft keeps the gates relatively closed, it's only because they already know the consequences of leaving them wide open:
What's alarming to me is how much AI makes it trivial to make something that looks vaguely professional. Even XBLIG garbage needed someone to draw something.
