T w e n t y S i d e d
Everything is busy but it’s fine.
The past few days have been a blur of Urgent Care and Emergency Room visits followed by crashes of exhaustion. Nothing was ever life threatening, but my wife was extremely uncomfortable. We wanted to make absolutely sure that it wasn’t a heart attack or anything potentially dangerous so we went and everyone’s fine. However in all that excitement I just plainly forgot to plan anything for an article for today. Now I won’t lie and say I typically spend weeks researching the articles I write. I do my best to be as honest and entertaining as I can, but I am a procrastinator and I’m no genius. If anything my brain cells look like this trying to shape ideas that have long since dissolved:
My brain is empty and devoid of wrinkles. So… In lieu of an article, I will leave you with a discussion prompt: What is your favorite game in a genre that you typically don’t care for? For instance, I don’t typically care for racing games but the game Split Second is a classic that never gets old for me. It has a lot in common with many Kart racers but feels more sleek and fast.
Please forgive me for my lack of planning. Next week I’ll have a longer article summing up my thoughts on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 since I just finished 100%ing it and have a lot of (mostly positive) things to say.
Project Button Masher
I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
The Best of 2013
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.
Why Batman Can't Kill
His problem isn't that he's dumb, the problem is that he bends the world he inhabits.
The Disappointment Engine
No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
Maybe Slay the Princess? I’m not generally one for visual novels or horror*, but Slay the Princess is a masterpiece in every sense of the term, from the writing and themes of love, change, death, and conflict, to the hand-drawn art to the incredibly talented voice acting to the devastatingly emotional music. It’s also unfortunately one of those games where explaining almost anything about it to someone will totally ruin it – you have to go in blind for the full experience.
*Visceral, anyway; I’m starting to discover I enjoy more existential horror (both of which Slay the Princess has).
I’ve remembered another one! One of the first few games in my Steam collection, Defense Grid. The first tower-defense game I remember playing, and, other than the sequel, pretty much the only one I’ve ever really been interested in.
Gorgeous game. I need to give it a go.
…Graveyard Keeper? I don’t much care for Stardew Valley “build a life” kind of games, but the macabre theme of Graveyard Keeper helps get past that. That said, I still never finished it.
I loved Graveyard Keeper. It has pretty bad memory leak issue, unfortunately, but it’s lots of fun.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t actually like most factory/automation games, but I did play Satisfactory– in large part because I wanted to explore the pretty alien island, but still. I also like it actually having transport vehicles you can automate, though it’s taken multiple updates past full launch after many years of early access to finally get tanker trucks, ya know, just that incredibly fundamental part of modern industry. After finally going through step by step and figuring out exactly why and how I was chasing my tail on some projects such that I can let go, and with fluid trucks finally in, I may someday return and actually get into the oil refining part of the game.
Survival games also rarely get or keep my attention, but Subnautica does, by not being very strict on the survival and being more of an exploration/surprise it’s actually horror game. The only other “survival” game to grab me has been Ark, because dinosaurs, but that can only hold up for so long before it breaks under the weight of “this is not meant to be a single player game in the slightest and we have no balancing plan whatsoever.”
Subnautica and Ark are both really fun “boot up and play a few hours” kinda games for me. I get bored once everything is established but I like the struggle at the start.
My go-to example would definitely be Mario Kart. I generally do not go in for racing games, but Mario Kart is a notable exception. I’m not sure if it’s because of the weapons/power-ups, the cutesey characters/tracks/themes, or whether because it’s just whimsical, but I actually enjoy playing Mario Kart compared to other typical racing games.
I’ve never been good at 4X, and Civ games specifically, and don’t have much interest in U.S. history but I played the hell out of Sid Meier’s Colonization many moons ago.
Same. Civ is as hard as you want it to be and can be really fun to mess around with. Every other 4X game feels somewhat impenetrable in comparison.
My problem with this question is that there is a number of genres where I very much like the idea of them but I end up not sticking with the actual games, such as “pure” roguelikes without any persistent element or open ended city builders Dwarf Fortress style.
I think I might count Star Wars Episode One Racer since I also don’t normally care much for racing games but I remember spending a bunch of time with that one. On the other hand that was way back when I was a rabid Star Wars fanboy and despite not really liking Episode One was still deeply invested in the franchise.
Otherwise I’m trying to think within the genres I generally don’t enjoy but nothing comes to mind. I could maybe enjoy a rhythm game if it had a really good story but my issue with those is that I am very bad at them so I’d probably watch someone else stream it if I was really interested.
Star Wars: Episode I: Racer is also the only racing game I have in my library. I used to play one or two other racing games as a kid, but didn’t really stick with them. SW:EI:R has an interesting skill aspect to it with the boost mechanic, though; I did a challenge run last year where I managed to beat every race as Anakin without ever buying upgrades, and it was quite a fun challenge that required me to get a lot better at racing.
I generally don’t go for shooters, or PVP, but back in the day I had a pretty good time playing Halo with a friend including both co-op and PVP.
I’m betting I have a few thousand hours of local deathmatch with my buddy and his brother back in the day. It never got old.
Ah procrastination – the only nation I raise the flag to.
On this question I think Starcraft: Broad War is my answer. With cheats on and all. RTS is dead to me, but the story of Broad War is so good, that the genre doesn’t matter.