Never did like pro level (and never had aspirations to do so), but way back in the day, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) had an amateur league fittingly called the Cyberathelete Amateur League (CAL), we had a small team for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars that we competed in, didn’t do stellar but it was a blast, met people from other teams we’d often practice with or just do pub games.
It was total beer league type stuff, if you can find a group like that imo it’s worth it, would love to have that type of experience again, end the day stakes were low and we played for fun, people took it serious but not too serious if that makes sense, it’s really easy to kill the enjoyment if someone takes it too far though.
CAL got somewhat serious at the very top and was basically the precursor to MLG. CAL open was very hit or miss, but at least in CS it got quite serious pretty quickly. Those top players were some of the first ever to get paid semi consistent and were the best in the world at the time.
Just finished The First Berserker: Khazan earlier today. For some reason, the final boss was extremely hyped up in the game’s subreddit, and it ended up just being alright. Overall a good game, I had fun with the combat, but the story is trash and the characters are nothing, not even cardboard cutouts.
I had an amazing run going earlier on Dungeon Clawler using Toxicarl and the kiddo pets. I could stack millions of stacks of poison on the enemies. Got to somewhere like floor 70 or so before dying.
Other than that, I have been on and off with most every other game I’ve attempted to play due to me finding them more boring nowadays.
The exception being a pokemon fangame: Pokemon Decay, which is kinda cool. Whole thing of the region you are in is the result of the first 4 regions being smashed together due to a decade prior the 3 legendary Hoenn creatures causing things to go chaotic and causing lots of chaos. Has new forms of pokemon, new evolutions for some, and for the most part they all look like well designed sprites.
Take my opinion with a grain of salt, for the most part, I’ve mostly enjoyed games released in the third generation and didn’t touch anything past the seventh. The increasing amount of handholding turned me off and degrading mega evolutions from the once advertised evolution of the gameplay formular to a mere gimmick broke the last straw.
That being said: The Gamecube games hands down. The intro cutscene to Colosseum has more story than some generations did in their entirety and instead of you just stumbling into the plot you are actually an integral part of it. As an added bonus, both games feature final bosses that actually fight back. I think Colosseum is the only Pokemon game I ever struggled in.
Of course, taking everything Pokemon into account, Mystery Dungeon is the only true answer, but I wanted to go with an traditional RPG first.
If you insist on mainline games, you’re probably right about the fifth generation. These games have everything you would need, but the execution itself is fumbled - and it has to be, since they questioned their own franchise at its core. Logically speaking, N is right and everyone else is wrong.
There are some interesting things in other generations, but it usually feels tacked on and isn’t actually relevant for 95% of the game. Like, the sixth generation had some nice ideas - but they are mostly implied or retold, without you having any urgency in the matter. Once again why I chose the GC games, two of the few games with you being part of the plot. In the early mainline games, you mostly happen to be there when story happens, in the later games, you sometimes only get told that story happens somewhere.
I finished Blasphemous. I didn’t go through the DLC as I apparently missed the chance for the True Ending by not doing it early anyway, so I couldn’t be bothered as I wasn’t really enjoying the game that much. Also I’ve heard it’s even more annoying. I’ll save it for a hypothetical second playthrough. I did beat the one optional DLC boss I had access to - Isidora - and the difference between the main game and the DLC is staggering. I first tried the last two bosses in the main game, but Isidora took me probably 50ish attempts. And I’m not sure it was “fun difficult” either, that second phase sure was something.
My notes remain the same: terrible platforming (and an overabundance of it) and design elements that are deliberately meant to waste your time and/or piss you off hold back what could otherwise have been a great game. I respect the artistic vision, I just didn’t have a lot of fun playing it.
As a palate cleanser I played through LIMBO, which I bought solely because it is supposedly an indie darling and was being delisted on GOG. I was assured by somebody on here that it wasn’t really “that bad” as puzzle platformers go (I hate platformers) and that it was “mostly vibes”. That was a lie - this is clearly a puzzle platformer. And it didn’t feel like a particularly good one either. Fortunately it was only a couple of hours long or I would never have been able to force myself to finish it. YMMV but it’s a solid 5.5-6/10 for me, I’m glad I only paid a dollar for it. I hope INSIDE is better as I foolishly bought both.
I participated in a local Unreal Tournament competition and won $3k. Was $75 buy in and I think I got somewhat lucky in my match placement. Was allowed to do this solo at 14 🤣.
Lots of terrible players in my bracket while I watched the best pick each other off on the other half. Took second honestly by sitting back and picking off kills from others engagements 🤷♂️.
I did CAL P on in the CS1.6 era with middling success.
I barely can get high in the mid tier leagues today. Too much specialization, meta, guns, characters, and the playing field is literally thousands of times bigger.
Grain of salt, as i havent played the mystery dungeon games or Colosseum, but Platinum had a great amount of story, and a decent amount of post-game content that wasn’t just min-maxing to win.
Everything post-B2/W2 is just too hand-holdy to me.
Don’t knock the Ranger games either, they were fun adventures.
I think most would consider PMD Explorers of Sky to have the the best story overall.
For mainline, Platinum is the way to go. Team galactic has a strong presence and compelling motivation, beyond: we want money/power. I love how you can physically see the evidence of their evil effecting the world - in a couple instances. I also like it’s balancing: it will pressure you without being to much of a grind(big improvement over Diamond/Pearl); and it doesn’t really hold your hand at all, once you reach Eterna City.
Lot’s of interesting side areas as well, and I like the lore surrounding the god pokemon.
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