Never really understood competitive games, for a mixture of reasons, and among those reasons is:
if you excel at a game, you kinda narrow down who you can enjoyably play against, and doesn't that kinda suck?
Personally I've never found it much fun to wipe the floor with opponents, AI or otherwise, so I don't get wanting to excel at a competitive game. In my mind you're undermining your own enjoyment of it somewhat.
This was brought to mind again as I played several rounds of Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition online for the first time, despite having played the original off and on for a long time, and as I expected, I got wrecked each time.
I let my opponents smash up what little I'd managed to build since that's some of the fun, but I can't imagine steamrolling me was much fun otherwise.
So, given the kinda joke about people hating phone calls, yet using voice chat in games, I can't help wondering what people's preferences may be on chatting in games.
When you play online games, which do you lean towards when it comes to text/voice chat, or other options I didn't fit here, contextual pinging (e.g. Apex Legends), emotes, or voice/chat commands (e.g. Team Fortress 2/AoE 2)?
Does Proton for games on Linux work without using Steam? 🤔
I know vaguely of stuff like Lutris, so I'm still wondering how gaming on Linux looks if you're not completely bought into Valve's pseudo-monopoly. That should be in line with Linux thinking, right?
If it does, hell yeah. Then the other trick might be controller stuff outside of Steam, but one step at a time.
@ChrisFerguson i keep writing occasionally that arguably the smartest move to make with a Switch successor would be slyly reintroducing a revised Wii U.
So make an improved "dock" that can work like a console on its own & stream games to existing Switches and act as a dock to upgraded "Switch 2s" or whatever they call them. Best of both worlds, especially if they worked out backwards compatibility for existing Switch as well
@ChrisFerguson the idea behind that is for it to be an option rather than the primary method of play
It comes from both the Wii U and PlayStation Vita's remote play options that enabled local streaming which mitigates some of the issues with remote streaming. It would also help relieve handheld bottlenecking which has driven some devs to release their titles only as remote streaming versions
This approach means you wouldn't have to wonder when a company might drop streaming your games to you
I feel like I need a site or some way to easily relate in any post concerning big video games/video game companies how despite whatever interesting/decent experiences may be found in their games their publishers/owners also flatly suck.
Yes there may be exceptions, but this would be applied to those making the rule that they broadly suck.
Something like web3isgoinggreat but for bad games industry behavior.
I've noticed there are some folks writing at length here on their experiences playing games, so this felt like a good place to ask. Do you take notes as you play, and/or after each session, then write out full thoughts upon completing a game?
Or are your reflections compiled only after finishing a game, no notes?
I've dabbled with different approaches, and haven't really settled on a consistent process personally.
Interesting approach, and I get it for those more involved or longer games, as some don't even have all their systems in play till awhile into the game (which is worth noting in itself!).
Thanks for your perspective!
Oh yeah, and here's to Outer Wilds! Absolutely a game for the ages!
Hey yeah, appreciate the detail in how you go about it! I'm kinda surprised by the responses saying they don't tend to write anything until further in and/or completion, but it's reassuring in a way, as that's been my approach too for some time.
I also dig that you try to engage with the "soul idea" as you call it of games. It resembles what I've read elsewhere of a reviewer trying to evaluate in part on whether a game achieved what it set out to do or not, which I thought was interesting.
Heya, I dig the walls of text sometimes! I also tend to bounce around a variety of games, so I like the idea of short notes about each. Until recently I was writing similar notes digitally as separate notepad files and littering them throughout my computer, but I've been trying to make a habit of using stuff like Zim or Joplin to keep them better organized. 😅
Also right there with you on covering weird jank and "subpar" games, so thanks for writing about them!
As I was doing a little more digging around for discussions of note-taking and games, I found a forum that was still online, and one of the posters mentioning they'd written on their blog about their habit of note-taking in games.
Despite the thread only being 13 years old, I expected the link to be dead. To my pleasant surprise?
Also in case anyone else happens upon this thread somewhen down the line, I've found where the person writing RVGFanatic is still around!
They've since switched their blogging over to Wordpress, which is a mild bummer (none of that classic web style, sadly), but cool to see they're still active!
I bet someone thought that selling on the most hated store on the PC realm, without physical copies, sold exclusively for current gen consoles on their exclusive storefronts, would never lead to unprofitability.
@darkghosthunter Another detail I'd add to this are the PC system requirements, which further limited the game's reach on top of the store exclusivity.
I really enjoyed Alan Wake and Control, but I couldn't run Alan Wake 2 with my hardware and I'm not about to upgrade for a single game (or even a few games).
Ngl, sometimes the "Sea of Thieves" community sucks pure and utter ass.
I get that it's a pirate game and part of the experience is pvp and robbing and killing each other.
BUT chasing an empty ship across the whole map, just to make others feel miserable and destroy their experience, goes too far, imo.
Those are the exact people who were whining about the implementation of the "Safer Seas" feature, complaining there would be less players in the open seas, then.
@KazuShuSora Yeah...I've never really understood the appeal of doing that. Part of the appeal of PvP is supposed to be a fight, not some drawn out hunt and execution, or griefing.
I don't know how those players don't get bored of those antics personally. Might as well just farm easy AI enemies with that approach.
It may seem simple, but if taking notes during play, the stop and start of it seems distracting, and it's not really viable with many online games.
So I'd guess for those writing about their experiences with games it's probably primarily reflective with few notes from during play depending on the games involved?