I used to play League of Legends, then they completely threw out the premise of the game, taking away any agency the player had. (To be honest, they painted themselves into a corner with it, but hey, a story's a story. They could've went about changing the premise in a much more tasteful way, such as a retcon or a revision that upends the original premise.) But the nail in the coffin was when I found out that Riot's parent company, Tencent, helped the Chinese communist government develop Sesame Credit. Before this time, I actually bought RP from them to buy skins. They will never get my money again. I cannot stand by a company that supports this kind Orwellian system of oppression.
I would've killed to work for Riot before I found this out.
Peace Walker. The only Metal Gear game that really makes sense to me, gameplay-wise, is the original MGS. I never really understood how to not get spotted by the guards when they can see you from so far away. Fighting the guards when you get caught feels wrong, but waiting for 2 goddamn minutes every time gets old fast (MGS3). You get stuff to use (magazines, grenades, etc.) but there's never a really good or bad time to use any of them; I just used the tranquilizer once in a while, and wasted a few years of my youth waiting in grass or something. By the time I got to Peace Walker, not even Kojima's writing could keep me going.
I actually did briefly try VR Missions, but I didn't have any difficulty. I never got far in the game, but I struggle with the later-series map design and enemy mechanics, so MGS1 guards and maps didn't give me any grief.
As a for-instance: in MGS1, you can lead a guard around and around a small building by knocking on walls, without setting off an alarm or anything, forever. If you get caught, the maps tend to have smaller side rooms with lockers or something to hide in. And once the alert mode is over in 30 seconds (iirc) you get a fresh start, with normal guard patterns. In MGS3, a guard sees me across the map, so I run back a little and lie in the grass. Then I wait in the grass for like a minute for the caution phase to end, and if a guard walks near me, it's over. I could try to make a break for it during caution but it's way harder, so why not just get caught and start again?
It's such a drag because I want to love every game in the series, but I can't figure out a gameplay loop for the later games. Something is wrong with my brain I think.
Exactly. Thought it got worse than MGS3. And yes, the first part will always have a special place in my heart. Think they could've made the gameplay better with each successive iteration but the only two things that got an upgrade were visuals and kojima's perversion.
That Vice City remote controlled helicopter, oh god why did I have to be reminded of that.
It's been a while but I still remember some examples:
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines - for f*cks sake...
Dwarf Fortress - vampires.
Army Men II - I can't remember what it was, but I can remember the rage. AI was dreadful.
TES IV: Oblivion - was expecting as much "freedom" as in Morrowind. I'd rather go back to getting raped by cliff racers. It soon turned into a boring gate-closing simulator. I couldn't explore in peace for 5 minutes without bumping into a gate. And I couldn't just ignore it because I thought there would be like 5-10 gates tops. If the environments weren't so monotonous, I wouldn't have gotten bored. Shivering Isles were brilliant though.
My old LAN party buddy loved the 'physical challenges' but I always struggled and would hate trying over and over. I memberberry Doom3 was a pain in the ass.
What I do like are the physical challenges that scare your fear of heights. Like Wolfenstein and FarCry.
Hahaha!!! Yeah, the genome soldiers weren't exactly the best and brightest. They must've been the initial batch.
Don't remember what you're talking about (oh wait, you mean on Xen?) but I like some puzzles in my games.
??? Oh, you mean Return to Castle Wolfenstein? Cause the original is just flat. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call them "physical challenges" though.
In that game there was a high up cable car tram scene.
. I am re-playing 'Wolfenstein: The New Order' and I am on the blown up Gibraltar bridge level. It has tilted slabs and railways cars hanging at strange angles and falls.
. In 'FarCry 3' one had to climb to the top of radio towers. They were tricky puzzles.
I've never played a MGS game before but I got this one free with the purchase of a graphics card so I thought why not play it and see what the deal with this game series is.
After the first hour of playing I was more lost and confused than I think I've ever been. So many questions, so much insane randomness. Very little makes any sense and Googling for answers was no help and opened even more questions than answers. Asking a friend who is a big fan of the series from the beginning made me even more confused as it seems this is just part of the "charm" of the series?
By the time I got to the desert with a horse I'd had enough... the game is very pretty visually, the sneaking around the hospital with terrorists hunting for you was actually fun... the rest of it though, WTF?
Well it was less how to do things and more about why am I doing them and how did things come to be the way they are and all that. Ghosts and demons appear out of nowhere, I'm forced to shoot at them with apparently useless guns... there just doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to much of anything.
The same thing happened with me when I started from MGS3. played, kept getting detected and kept dying. Eventually, I walked away from it. A few months later, I began MGS anew, this time with the original, vanilla MGS. Then played all the titles in the order of release.
I've had this happen twice. The first was a PS2 game, rainbow 6 something. I got about halfway through the campaign and hit a level where I was supposed to sneak through an apartment unseen. I tried for 3 friggin' days, rage quitting every hour or so, about 10 hours a day. My only wish at that point was for the game developers to die a slow, screaming. and agonizing death. And I had to buy a new controller. The second time it was Socom4 on the PS3. Having played the earlier one's on PS2, I figured it was a no-brainer. So I pre-ordred it about 4 months in advance, even went all out and bought the PS motion controllers and the gun with the socom stickers:) Once I got the game, I found out motion controllers suck, and putting one on the plastic gun made it seriously front-heavy and tiring. Then I played the campaign and online, and I was devastated. Everything about the game that made it awesome on the PS2 was replaced by a call-of-duty simulator with a fucked-up cover system. I never played it again, and I will never pre-order a game again EVER.
Perhaps not walking away from a game but walking away from a game series.
COD series. One of my favorites. Started with the first and it seemed they only got better and better each new game that came out.
...that is until Modern Warfare 3. Less than 5 hours campaign/story for full price.
I don't play these games online, I'm a parent with a full time job, I just can't compete online anymore because I don't have the time to devote to keeping my skills sharp. I was once able to best all my friends in college in Duke3D death matches and later on Unreal so I wasn't too shabby at one time. For you youngsters, it will happen to you too.
Anyway, the single player expirence in MW3 was very poor by comparison to MW2 and I was so let down I just said that's it. I am done with this series and haven't been back.
The last level of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2
I don't know what the fuck they were thinking. You get dropped out of the helicopter, while under fire from 2 .50 cals. The helicopter's gunner does fuck all and whether or not your teammates survive going down the rope is a matter of sheer luck. Why the fuck would they drop you off in front of fucking machine guns? Why the fuck?
After a couple of tries I just said 'fuck it' and walked away.
The game frustrated me anyway, because the teammates were entirely too chill. Listen fucker, when I say 'run over there' I expect you to fucking book it! Don't stop to smell the flowers, you insufferable fucknugget!
I played this for a little over a year. The grind was real. I guess if you've played COD, you're familiar with the gameplay. You die really fast, and the game has a steep learning curve, and until you get the hang of things, you will die...a lot. In order to get better gear, I started grinding as an engineer and medic. You can earn XP by repairing vehicles and turrets and healing and reviving your comrades, which is a lot easier than killing people and blowing up vehicles or turrets (objects also give XP, but if you're good, you can earn way more from tactical achievements). XP earns you something called certifications or certs for short which you redeem for better gear. But then you want to be more efficient at repairing and healing, so you can get those certs faster, so you invest your certs into your repair and healing gear (Spend money to make money, you know?) only after maxing those out do you bother upgrading your gun, sights, armor, etc,...maybe vehicles. I hit many dead-ends and points of diminishing returns along the way. The only things you needed to spend real money on were cosmetics (which claimed to not have an advantage, but many disagreed on that, regarding the camouflage) loadout slots, so you have preconfigured loadouts for different situations, and of course, boosts, if you were into that sort of thing.
After about a year of grinding, I was finally at a point where I could contribute to the game as something more than just an engineer and medic. I took a liking to the light assault class, which had light armor and jetpacks. Their primary role was flanking the enemy. I became somewhat proficient with the class, but I just tired of the whole thing, and then someone I met online introduced me to League...and I never looked back again at Planetside 2.
I heard they've relieved the grind a bit now and also made it more newb friendly, as in they give you some items now to start, but I just don't give a fuck. Sony can suck it!
