Never video games, but I came in second my only ever Magic the Gathering competition, was probably 1998 or somewhere around there. Was a counter spell/horseshoe crab deck. Lost against a very similar deck.
Not always for the overarching main plot, but a lot of the games have decently written characters. The main story of Ruby/Sapphire is pretty dumb (let’s flood the entire world!/let’s get rid of all of the ocean!) but Wally is a pretty fun character to watch grow.
It’s kinda the beauty of the franchise. There’s a lot for everyone. I mostly play because I’m a completionist who wants to complete the Dex, some people want to shiny hunt their favorites, some people want to get into competitive (and even then there’s tiers/which gens you play, which are all vastly different strategically), and sometimes it’s just to see all of the different character designs.
Reading Playboy for the articles was 100% legit btw. They published stories by Arthur C Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury…
StarCraft and Brood War were amazing, but the writing quality took a nosedive in the sequel. StarCraft 2 felt like poorly written fanfiction that didn’t understand the existing characters or their motivations at all.
Completely agree. The whole tone and setting changed. SC:BW went for gritty realism. Obviously, there’s a suspension of disbelief when you’ve got psionic aliens, but it felt like three scrappy factions barely surviving in the endless dark of space.
SC2 went full Warcraft. Ancient gods, portals to other worlds, all the same kitschy fantasy elements that are fine in the campy context of WC but really clashed with the established character of the SC universe. I get that they wanted to raise the stakes in the sequel, but I really disagreed with how they went about it.
And Kerrigan should have stayed evil. That’s my “Han shot first” of the franchise.
And Kerrigan should have stayed evil. That’s my “Han shot first” of the franchise.
Agreed 100%, how Kerrigan was handled was the worst of StarCraft 2’s many sins against prior characterization. They spent an entire expansion setting her up as an irredeemable monster and the new big bad of the setting alongside Mengsk and whatever Duran was up to, only to undo it all because NuBlizzard wanted their waifu.
And there is no way Jim Raynor as of the end of Brood War would ever ally with Kerrigan again after her betrayal, yet he goes from having sworn to get revenge for Fenix’s death to helping Kerrigan “redeem” herself with little more than a mention of past grievances.
When I was very young and video game places were a thing, I entered the nation wide Tron contest. It was fun, I won lots of tokens, and came in second to the winner over the whole US. :)
I need help enjoying this game. How can I get past what feels like certain tedium. I’m very early in the game and I don’t really enjoy the time spent walking, riding, or looting, is that essentially the core of the game and maybe it’s not for me?
I am interested in and excited by the story and the environments. I also really enjoy a game with choice, and so far feels quite one tracked.
Yeah that tedium doesn’t go away, imo. There’s a mission that seems inconsequential at the time, but has huge implications for the main character that I really didn’t want to engage with, but the story is the story, there isn’t much if any player agency.
I suggest going on the hunt for the Klan rallies that happen in one area of the map before putting it down. Incredibly satisfying killing those pricks in exotic ways.
The looting you can skip with cheats. Technically you can skip a lot of traveling that way as well. But That’s a bit part of the game, imo. If you don’t enjoy spending time in the game, then all you want to do is shoot people? There’s better games for that.
The game is essentially a trudge from shooting gallery to shooting gallery, with a large open world to do very little of consequence in. There isn’t really anything more to it than what’s on the surface. Either you enjoy the slow burn cowboy experience or you don’t. It doesn’t really get any better.
Metro Exodus. Opening up the map was a mistake. The linear levels were fine, that gives you tight pacing and you always know what’s next. The confined underground spaces were part of the soul of that series. I only played maybe 8 hours of Exodus and can’t be bothered to play more.
It’s so damn good. I must’ve replayed it like six times since it came to pc. The story, the voice acting, characters, graphics, everything is absolutely top notch. Except for the goddamn controls (and the menus). I’m not sure if it’s due to it being a console-first game or just a rockstar thing as rdr1’s were also crap, but holy shit they’re infuriating. The amount of times I shot people by mistake, lost missions because of a wrong key, or just plain ended up with an unpayable bounty is too damn high.
To answer the question I think you are asking: No, I’ve never done any of the modern game competitions or leagues. I am not nearly good enough to compete against anyone who is remotely good enough to compete in gaming competitions. I’m also a completely different gamer these days and prefer to just play more meditative single player games that have bursts of action.
To answer the question in a very literal way: Yes, back in the 80s I made it to the regional finals of the Nintendo World Championships (at the time when the Fred Savage movie The Wizard had just came out). I was up on stage in the central throne chair with the 100ft TV screen behind me projecting my game to 1000s of people in front of me cheering us on. I was roughly 10?? at the time, so I thought I was fucking amazing. I just barely missed out on making it to the next round in some other state because I screwed up placing a long piece in Tetris. I won a hat out of the thing.
I also played in a Tetris tournament at a bar in LA about 15 years ago. I fucking crushed it and won $100.
I haven’t spent a dime on GOG since this happened. Fuck them. Not only is their professed anti-censorship stance fucking laughable in light of the Devotion débâcle, their game preservation efforts are even more laughable when they literally excluded a game from possible preservation because of a hoard of thin-skinned CCP hostages.
Even without that episode I would have stopped using GOG eventually, because they also went against their one selling point - no DRM - more than once. They sold Witcher 3 hard copies with online verification (you had to link it to your account with a serial number, you couldn’t just install it and play it from the disc offline). They included a little card in the box with an apology for this requirement, citing their need to protect their sales. Which is fair enough, but don’t pretend that this isn’t DRM. The fact that it was one of their own games shows how much hypocrisy they have when they complain about other developers doing the same thing. Being able to share the downloaded files freely makes me wonder why they bothered with any DRM, but bother they did.
Then they sold Hitman (2016) which has literally the most egregious and hateful DRM in the history of gaming. If you don’t submit to it, your game is essentially a very expensive demo. Most content and even basic game features like saving and progress tracking is disabled unless you’re connected to the DRM server. GOG users complained and the game was delisted, but the fact remains that they fucking tried. If GOG doesn’t even believe in being anti-DRM anymore, then I see no reason to use their [apparently] CCP-curated games library.
GOG may have started out as a plucky band of disruptors and idealists, but that dream died about 10 years ago. They’re EA cosplaying as Che Guevara. I wouldn’t even mind if they behaved like every other storefront, but it’s the pretence and the morality-washing that makes them especially despicable. I mean EA and Ubisoft aren’t feigning to be motivated by some grand political or societal good; they’re malignant capitalists who would sell their own children, and would tell you as much. GOG dons the robes of a grassroots pinko activist while dancing to the exact same corporate tune.
How is a disk copy of Witcher 3 a GOG problem? Also an always on save system sucks, it never made sense when Ubisoft tried it, still makes no sense now. But it’s not DRM, and had nothing to do with GOG.
GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt
Sure… But disks are not part of GOG and have nothing to do with it. It would be like complaining a corner store sold you can of coke for 10 bucks but the coke vending machine outside says $1.
Prototype 2. I loved the main character of the first one and the idea that even a monster was not as evil as human corporations. The jump to him being a main villain in 2 was too abrupt, there needed to be more story reasons to justify the change, or they shouldn’t have made him a villain at all.
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