games

I was thinking about saying Void Stranger is too long, but I can't decide if I actually feel that way. Indie games doing weird and esoteric things is a big part of what makes them cool. If there wasn't anything annoying, it'd be boring. Idk, it's not an easy thing to articulate.
The snake puzzle is bullshit though

you can only play outer wilds once

New Vegas could be even more trans. Also, i've never liked the look of the games done with that Bethesda engine.

Dark souls 1's second half low-key sucks ass.

Okay. Fine.

Counter-Strike. Where do you want me to begin?

In the good old days when I started playing you had to download like 20 zip files to get the latest version of CS. You know what they did? They forced us to install a piece of software called Steam. CS was the thin end of the wedge that drove Steam into every true gamer's operating system.

Now there's good and bad aspects of Steam as a platform. Good and bad aspects of Valve as a company. But that move, funneling all us OG dial-up using CS players who were there since the beginning onto that janky ass platform that ate up system resources we didn't have to spare? Well a lot of us didn't like it. I didn't like it. But we went along with it because we wanted to keep playing our fucken shooter.

Now I have what, 21 years on Steam per my "veteran badge"? It's been longer than that, I guarantee it. I wasn't even using Steam 21 years ago, so I had to have been forced onto it earlier than that. I have a library of games I spent money on that I will never play. Slop.

But that's off-topic. Lets talk about CS.

CS is a game of rage and frustration, triumph and victory, it's play hard, play well or get brutally tormented and humiliated. Long before the horrorshow that CS has become today, it was already a torment nexus. You get killed early in a round? You're out. 15 minutes of watching everyone else have a good time while you wait for the next round to start. Get AWP'd thru the doors on Dust 2 a couple of rounds in a row? Shit I have seen people destroy expensive hardware in the fits of rage that CS can produce in its most passionate gamers.

CS is a game that will have you training with the intensity of an athlete while your body rots in a chair.

CS is a game where you better do your fucken research, you BETTER know your meta, you better not break the unspoken rules of the economy as it phases from round to round during a match or you will receive a torrent of abuse from your team mates even if you go on to clutch out the round and turn things around against the odds and have them all buying full loadouts in the following round because you dared to P90 rush B on a hunch and totally destroy the opposition. Even when you play well, if you play unconventionally you will be harassed.

You're a woman, playing CS? Forget about voice chat. Unless you want to grift. But that comes further down the line. CS has always been toxic, paranoid and intense. I remember playing CS 1.4-ish with a microsoft ball mouse that I knew so well that I could whip 360+ degree spins just from the momentum of the mouse ball and slam my mouse down on the mat to put my crosshairs on the head of someone unfortunate enough to come up those stairs on the CT side of Aztec too early in the round and catch a .50AE to the dome. "Obviously" I'm aimbotting. No fool, I have just been playing far too long and my brain is wired to work this system.

Fast forward, we'll skip CS:Source because I didn't even fucken bother. I was touching grass and washing dishes for shit pay during that period of the game's history. I returned for CS:GO. That was damn near a decade ago and I was "aged out" of peak performance. I played better than I had in my teens, I was actually good.

But then came the crates and the keys. Teenagers who were introduced to me as the children of family friends would add me on Steam, we'd queue, we'd rock shit. All femme trans team just beating gamerboy ass every night after work while doing mad drugs. But those kids, man, no life experience or education to teach them about the risks of the loot crate system, the total fucking black hole of gambling that they were playing with. I watched children cheat, grift and steal thousands, literally thousands of dollars worth of cosmetic skins from incel gamers who just liked having a girl to talk to while they played. "Hey hehe can I borrow your bayonet for a few rounds it looks so cool" and then yeet it's onto the gambling market, then gone, nothing to show for it but broken hearts and gambling addictions. Violations of the social contract, violations of the heart. A soulless situation.

I'm not gonna pretend I was above it, I bought keys. Why wouldn't I? I was an adult, I had disposable income back then and a drug addiction that made gambling feel even better than it normally does. I somehow managed to unbox stuff so rare and desirable that it once paid off my entire real world debt before I ran it back up again.

CS was the backbone of competitive shooters. The REAL deal, the hardcore shit. At least that's how we saw it. Everything else was a joke to us. We only had to tune into the international competitions to confirm it for ourselves. Suddenly gaming was legit. Suddenly we resented our families for chastising us for gaming when really, we should have been gaming MORE, that could have been US winning hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

Gaming. Leisure activity to unwind. Morphed into an economic monstrosity, corrupted youth minds, a whitewash for brutal regimes who hosted the tournaments. And you'd still get called a slur if you spoke in mixed company on mic.

CS:GO2? I haven't indulged yet. But I already know it sucks. I have made up my mind without playing it. I know they changed map geometry. I know they "fixed" the quirks that made each playing field unique and special and to which we dedicated tens or hundreds of hours to learning and discovering obscure boosts and 'nade techniques. But you gotta churn right? Gotta add something fresh or you'll stop growing in the market... right?

Well I dunno.

Peak for me was 1.5 with the WoW mod run on independent ISP servers over dial up internet where I could pick a class and grappling hook around the map. I wasn't at my most performant (a metric that makes no sense when it comes to how you enjoy your leisure and off-work entertainment hours) during that era, but it was chaotic and fun, our shitty internet connections meant it was always the same people queuing for the servers. You'd get to know each other. Mask appropriately and you might even be accepted and make friends.

You bring in ELO matchmaking, country-wide or even region-wide players meeting, randomly, never to see each other again? Mix in the promise that one day you could make it into the big leagues? Add in a mechanism to gacha-gamble at the micro-level and then mega-bet on the competitions?

I saw a game, a creation of love and labour that used stolen Deftones music as the loading music for some of its levels become the most monetised and commercialised franchise in existence.

Now I don't play games.

There's a lot of reasons for that, most of them are related to my broken mind, my traumas, the way I was raised. But deep down. Despite having beaten multiple drug addictions. It's because I know. I KNOW. That all roads, for me, lead back to CS. It doesn't matter what it is. I will go back. At this point I'm resigned. Will I still beat the pubes at 40 the way I surprised myself being able to do at 30? I dunno. I fear finding out. I fear the learning curve, the meta study, the pitfalls of gambling vice, the conniving, the harassment, I fear that if I cleverly ninja my way past all those laser traps I will land on a pressure plate at the end that confirms to me, finally: you're too old to game.

CS. The start and end of gaming. The only true game. Haters will disagree. I will allow them their perspectives. Hell I still aspire to create my own video games, as I have since before I graduated highschool and now after my career burnout as a software engineer. But the real game? the only game? I fear it. I respect it. I keep it at arms length or further, for the psychic damage it carries inherent to its designs which have been iteratively honed over the decades to become more and more exploitative.

I love you, Counter-Strike. I always have, since I first played you at a LAN party on novelty maps scaled such that we had the perspective of rats in a kitchen or play room, to the last time I played you before my brain broke. But you ruined games for me, you ruined the minds of many younger gamers. You will continue to contribute to the moral decay of our neoliberal dominated world.

You are the first skinnerbox I truly found, not the last I have to escape, but you might be the salvation, the salve, the cope that I need to scratch the itch that I have replaced with other addictions, more brutal lifestyle choices etc.

But you are evil. I see you, Satan. Volvo plz, etc.

GG. No ree. I am beyond ree. I am partially defined by the final defeat, as I sit out all of the metaphorical rounds now, enviously watching other gamers enjoy their time.

I wish my parents had just bought me a fucking console.

I forgive you, GabeN. Despite all the harm you have caused. The years of enjoyment you robbed from my years gaming and the years I could have gamed that I lost due to the way your co-opted and perverted versions of CS shaped my mind. I forgive you, because it is the healthiest thing for me to do.

I declare myself, the most stable, most normal CS veteran with this post.

Binding of Isaac can be unfair, and while yeah that's kinda the point and mastery can overcome most of that, some rooms are laid out in a way that it's impossible to avoid damage. For example, a closet filled with spikes and a large troll bomb spawning and immediately homing in. This never feels good even if damage is avoided through pure luck (such as flight or explosion immunity).

Also most bosses are fine but they do love to add at least one bullshit boss per version. Rebirth brought us the dreaded Bloat, then in AB they added Hush, a bullet hellish, tanky completion mark boss that can only be attempted if reached within 30 mins or less. That wasn't bullshit enough, so in AB+ they added Delirium, another mark boss that is hidden somewhere on the largest map in the game among 6 other bosses (which included other end bosses). Before Rep there was only 1 way to guarantee access and that was by killing Hush (2 bs bosses in a row!) Oh and the fight itself is a disorienting chaotic nightmare and honestly never fun.

I don't think anything added in Rep compares to Delirium, though I'm never happy to see Scourge or Colostomia. Mother is difficult, but honestly getting to that fight is more annoying than the fight itself. Then Rep+ added the most devastating boss of all: barely functional online co-op that can delete your save.

Fallout 4 is a terrible disappointment of a game. The writing is downright awful, especially following New Vegas. The factions are nonsensical, most of the companions are not interesting and the world building is so lazy (the institute just so happened to simultaneously invent FEV on the other side of the country from the Master). The combat is clunky at best. The base building is far to limited and inconsequential. Why can't I stop playing this game.

Mai won't STFU when you're doing difficult enemy battles in FF7 Rebirth. The camera won't stay locked to the enemy you are fighting so a kot of battles are framed sideways or away from thr enemy as they charge, mow you on your ass or repeatedly strong strike you. You can't know when they are about to because the camera is not showing the enemy it's showing you.

Oh you just finished a section. Let's FATAL ERROR even though the game so still going. So hopw "fatal" was that error actually? Ok let's just wait for them to stop talking get control....menu....save and a crash. But at least the game autosaved at the transition.

The gameplay loop was developed in the 80s for the sole purpose of munching quarters and dick all has changed despite how much gaming has evolved

Majora’s Mask is too short

Real answer, Termina Bay is such a buzzkill to play through. I enjoy the associated temple but I groan upon seeing that sickly teal ocean. Woodfall/Southern Swamp and Snowhead imo had a better art direction and map layout. In comparison, the Bay has those hostile green land turds, while the water is nigh-on empty except for more enemies. The Pirate’s Fortress is fine but going back-and-forth for the Zora eggs is another buzzkill. The area fees dilapidated and empty but not in the weird or creepy way as the rest of the game (the ranch with the Flatwoods aliens, Ikana Valley).

To use a tired cliche, the area needs more “mystery” and even “Lovecraftian” influences. It’s otherwise just a polluted beach inhabited by the local Zora and pirate populations. Bloodborne did it right with the art direction of the Fisherman’s Wharf.

As a side note, I wonder what the venn diagram looks like for Majora’s Mask enjoyers and Disco Elysium enthusiasts. The mask sidequests are the best part of the game imo which translates over to DE’s.

StarCraft is too hard to play with friends and StarCraft 2 made the wrong things easy making the big army fights take 2 seconds.

Magic the gathering not only has power creep but rules and mechanics creep making the game even more complex over time. Also the focus on printing cards specifically for EDH/commander makes the format less interesting.

Pokemon TCG none of the meta decks use guys i like and it's because the ones i like all suck.

DotA and mobas are basically entirely suffering and the games are often prolonged by people who enjoy suffering.

CrossCode

The desert temple and the jungle area are too tedious even if they are as quality as the rest of the game. The story ending in the DLC was ass and didn't resolve some things that needed to imo, mainly:

Rabi-Ribi

I can tolerate the fanservice because I have terminal weeb brainrot since childhood, but I can't recommend the game to anyone else even though it is a great metroidvania with awesome bossfights and music.

ZeroRanger

Breath of the Wild

It would have been a perfect game I could play forever if it had bigger dungeons and more than 10 enemy types.

rolling people up into a ball does bring them closer together, but it's rude to abduct people in the middle of their day (katamari)

Dwarf Fortress has a very silly difficulty curve consisting of an initial cliff followed by not that much, and all of its options just increase the size of the initial cliff.

Earthbound has some quest chains that can get stuck in really obtuse ways, particularly in Twoson and Fourside.

Crosscode's DLC has that fight where Apollo is way too damn hard all of a sudden.

UFO 50 has ~5 perfunctory games in genres that clearly nobody on the team really cared for, and it's worse for it. That's Fist Hell, Star Waspir, Caramel Caramel, Campanella 3, and Block Koala. There are worse trash fires in the collection, like Hot Foot, but those are at least bad because they tried something interesting and failed.

In Super Metroid, the entrance to Kraid's hideout is poorly telegraphed.

Mario Odyssey giving you moons for every silly little accomplishment is great, but giving the same reward for korok-tier stuff and actual challenges cheapens the reward feeling of actual challenges, and they should've done a tiered system.

Prey (2017)

• Poorly balanced in some ways. The Typhon Neuromods give you some nasty diminishing returns, requiring more and more Psi to the point that it's not worth it to max them out. Same with some of the standard Neuromods. It's to the point that I always recommend the Core Balance mod you can find on Nexus.

• Really blows its wad with the mindfuckery early on and doesn't take more chances to layer it further, ending notwithstanding. When I first broke out of the apartment my jaw genuinely dropped. It surprised me in a way few games or even other pieces of media have. Then it just kinda peters out. It had the potential for more.

• Poor pacing on the plot. It kind of herds you through every sector of the station and implies an urgency that can undercut the exploration if you take it at face value. It also locks you out of half the station for half the game. Not a great thing to have in an ImSim.

• Visual variety on the Typhon is lacking. The Weavers look super cool and the way the Phantoms move is pretty unsettling, but the Telepaths and Technopaths are just big black blobs that kinda float around mind-controlling other enemies and hurling annoying projectiles at you. Likewise with the variant Phantoms just being tougher versions of the base one with different damage type auras.

Still my favorite goddamn game it is so fucking amazing

Kenshi: after hundreds of hours put into the game and going thru multiple cycles of starting a new game, struggling to make money, fighting, losing, fighting again, building and automating a base, etc, and all the emergent storytelling that comes out of that -- I feel like it was only the combat-related systems that were fully fleshed out and ultimately, the only way to interact with the world in a meaningful way is through combat. Though the visuals and worldbuilding do great of offering the promise of a lot, the dialogue system is not developed enough to allow for any dialogue mods that integrate well with and impact the world or player characters. Animations systems are similarly limited, with the system allowing for minute customization and replacement of combat animations, and very little room for any animations not combat-related.

Trails is lib as hell with a focus on Good Monarchs, just like most JRPGs. There are also a bunch of anime tropes, although I think this has been exaggerated and people play Persona and Xenoblade, both of which have just as many if not more tropes. Barely anyone dies in the story even though there are multiple wars and one plot point muddles the anti-imperialist themes. Missable quests suck and the soundtracks used to be amazing, but are now mostly farmed to one composed who is mostly just okay.

Ys is usually either way too hard or way too easy with little middle ground. The same complaints I already had about the Trails soundtracks also apply.

Yakuza has too many nonsensical plot points, even though some of them have become memes because of how dumb they are.

The turn-based gameplay sucks because it makes every fight against a level 1 enemy a slog that lasts forever because you can't skip or speed up the animations. There's also nothing as satisfying as doing a heat action in that whole gameplay loop.