God fucking damn it.
We have once again entered the horrible purgatory of our hobby known as the "Summer Drought" in which no games come out ever and we must scrape by with but the barest of offerings. We salivate at even the smallest of scraps tossed to us like rabid animals fighting over a leg of meat after being forcibly starved over several weeks because we are owned by the proprietor of a dog fight and this metaphor isn't going anywhere.
I could probably make some real poignant statement about companies bleeding us dry in the summer to make us ravenous to eat up whatever shit they put out if I wasn't bored as all hell.
The only things even worth looking forward to are downloadable games and shit that already came out like Xenoblade Chronicles. I guess Diablo III is coming out at some point? Yeah, like that will happen.
Anyway, the point of this thread is I am bored and need shit to do, amuse me with your horrible tastes in video games as I justify it within the context of talking about what you are playing right now.
Here is my clever canned example to bait you into falling for my devious trap.
Tribes Assend:
I keep telling people to play this and they don't listen to me. Why? Probably because they are terrible people, terrible people who hate video games add are part of a secret society dedicated to destroying the industry and plunging Nintendo into bankruptcy so as to get closer to their true target, Satura Iwata, the last true son of man.
Tribes is really fucking good you guys. It's really fucking good. It is the best multiplayer FPS to come out since TF2, and I don't say that lightly. I played TF2 and little else for two years straight and I still have been known on occasion to boot up for a game of Dustbowl or Hightower. It's kind of incredible how much they have in common. They're both fun as hell, they're both like no other shooters on the market, and they both have an incredible sense of humor despite there being absolutely no good reason why either of them should. Admittedly much of the humor in Tribes is outside the game, but then again at some point they had to know 16 grown men sitting in an online server spamming "SHAZBOT!" and "I AM THE GREATEST!" wasn't exactly going to be the most serious of affairs.
But yeah, it's kind of hard to catalyze what makes Tribes so much damn fun. In a lot of ways it bends to modern design philosophy perhaps a bit too much, but it still manages to feel like is pulling all the right strings to get that classic FPS vibe. Maybe it is the super fast pace that games simply don't have anymore, maybe it is the slightly higher but still accessible level of entry, maybe it is just having to use weapons that actually require you to aim. It is hard to pin point it, but Tribes is just as satisfying as it is fun to play. You don't just have a good time, you feel like you've actually done something skillful and praiseworthy despite just playing a fucking video game about mecha-men flying across a space beach yelling at each other over a flag.
I like it.
Also I guess it technically comes out this month so fuck maybe I invalidated this entire thread.
Legal Legends:
In a lot of ways DoTA 2 has made me appreciate League of Legends more. DoTA feels like a game that has been completely locked in time, not changing or improving, not learning any lessons or trying to fix its flaws. It feels very old, and having never played the original WCIII mod that still came through very strongly for me. Certainly there is value in that, just as there is value in re-releasing classics like DOOM, but at some point I think it is a bit strange that there is so much fanfare over what feels like a multimillion dollar graphical update to a terribly outdated game,
I really just like everything about League. I like how easy it is to slip into a new character you've never played and still do well, I like that the map is completely constant so it really feels like you are completely in control of a match, I like that every role on a team is very defined and fun to play, and I like that no matter how or what I choose to play I can feel like I'm making an impact on the game and helping my team to victory or defeat. I think that's what I like so much about League that other multiplayer games just don't offer. An average match is so long and arduous and each member of your five man squad has such an impact on how things play out that it never really feels like you lost, or won, because of a fluke. It's entirely in your control. A lot of people will cite that as the reason the community can be so hostile, as even one bad player on a team can shift the odds dramatically, but I've always seen it as an incentive to actually communicate with my team and try to improve our play and strategize.
I really hate how detached mutliplayer gaming has become. Often will you get into games now where everyone is just sitting there, completely silent throughout an entire session, as they move from objective to objective not even stopping to figure out who this guy standing next to him is. That's just an impossibility in League. If you choose to ignore the other four players on your team you are going to lose because there is absolutely no way you can carry the game on your own. It adds a real human element that I just don't find in games anymore. Often it can bring the worst out in people, as I'm sure more than a few can attest, but if you have the stomach for it you'll definitely have an interesting experience and maybe even meet a few stand-up chaps along the way.
To get back to the game though, I really do enjoy it. I like how paced it is, how each game has predictable phases that it inevitably enters yet they never play out exactly the same. There are so many variables, yet it still manages to feel constant. That's probably why League is the first game I've ever really followed a competitive scene for. Here are these guys playing on the same map I have spent hours on, doing the same things I have done, but in a completely different way. I just love how creative you can get with things like team compositions and strategies despite it all feeling so binary, it's really quite incredible. Riot has succeeded in creating a game that is the very definition of hidden depth. I am always learning more. The times for jungle creep respawns, the gold amounts for last hitting minion waves, the perks and duration of Baron buff. That probably doesn't even look like English out of context. Every time I sit down with League I'm learning something new about the mechanics, it's always getting deeper and more interesting no matter how much time I choose to invest in it. There really just isn't a huge diversity of multiplayer games that are so knowledge based yet so accessible at the same time. I found it so easy to get into, yet at the same time the League I am playing now and the League I was playing less than a year ago are almost two entirely separate entities.
It really is quite a marvel of good design sense and balance. I'd probably write about it more if it weren't so damn addicting.
Devil Survivor 2
Also I got 400 Followers
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