I want to get out ahead of this blog and say that I believe that Xbox Game Pass is a fantastic service that people should look into if they have the extra cash and a desire to play more games. That being said, the PC experience for the service isn’t great and I think that Windows is mostly to blame for that. This isn’t me complaining about the games or the value of the service itself, instead this focuses solely on how ironically miserable the PC launcher integrates with Windows.
To its credit, the Xbox app on PC is constantly being updated which is very reassuring but there are still so many things about the application that either don’t work or don’t integrate well with the rest of Windows for one reason or another.
Xbox Game Pass PC Patch Notes
Let’s start with achievements. One of the more endorphin-releasing things that the Xbox ecosystem has provided to us has to be the noise and animation that play out whenever you get an achievement. I don’t give a shit about the achievement itself, but it just feels nice to get them thanks to the way they’re presented. However you don’t get any of that on PC, or if you do I certainly haven’t found a way to enable it. There’s probably something I could to with my notification settings on Windows, but I fear that messing with those might invite every other app to send me notifications about their garbage.
But those are just achievements and their absence doesn’t actively prevent me from playing my games. Updates however, they’ll stop you dead in your tracks. There was a night that some friends and I wanted to play Halo together via Halo: The Master Chief Collection, something I’ve had installed on my computer since it was released on PC through the Xbox app at the end of last year.
I went to launch the game and join my friends but was stopped by a “version mismatch” error. It seemed that there was an update that just never happened for some reason which in all fairness isn’t a glitch exclusive to Game Pass. All I’d have to do would be to launch the Xbox app and update it, right? The app opened, I went to the Halo: The Master Chief Collection page where no notice of an update existed which made me assume that all I needed was to reboot the Game Pass app itself to clear things up.
After relaunching the application, I found that it kept getting locked up on a blank black screen right after the Xbox logo appeared. Not great, but I could probably go to the Windows Store app to check for updates, right? Turns out, the Windows Store app didn’t want to fetch my updates and instead felt like force-quitting whenever I clicked the downloads page. Maybe I can reinstall the Xbox app and it’ll finally work? Nope, the installer breaks every time I hit install ultimately requiring me to force quit the installer all together. This whole situation sucks.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection – 343 Industries
After two days of frantic Googling, the suggestion to check for Windows updates was floated by me and seemed like the last option before reluctantly calling customer service. That actually did the trick. Now I did in fact check my automatic update settings and although they were enabled they just never happened, so thanks again Windows. That update fixed everything, but the fact that everything broke because I was running a version of Windows that was a few months old is insane.
But fine, whatever, I can play my damn games now. There is one last thing that drives me utterly mad with Game Pass though, and that’s how every single time I launch a game for the first time, this slow and laggy dialogue box pops up asking if I authorize the app to use my information. I appreciate that I’m being asked about this stuff, but it really seems redundant when I’m actively paying for this service. I’d honestly prefer some filters to select what I want to be notified about would be better than just throwing a pop-up at me for everything. Also, I don’t need two fucking emails to be sent to me about it when I hit accept on a new game.
A lot of this sounds like nitpicking which it most definitely is, but if the ultimate goal of Xbox Game Pass on PC is to bring the console experience to the PC, then it’s failing. The whole allure of a console is that everything is self contained and just works without much issue, but the fact that Game Pass feels haphazardly bolted onto the rest of Windows makes its integration far less seamless. I love Game Pass as a service but it’s just not fully there on PC yet, and Windows is mostly to blame.
Since their surge in mass popularity during the 2010’s, I’ve been yearning for an Avengers game that would appropriately blend the varied powers of the Earth’s mightiest heroes with actual fun gameplay. Things were looking very promising when Marvel’s Spider-Man released two years ago on the PlayStation 4, but all of those positive feelings slowly drained away as I spent some time with Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers beta.
The beta opens with the San Fransisco demo that’s been shown off before, swapping you between Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk and Black Widow throughout various points in the level. In another, better game, swapping between the heroes every few minutes would be a lot of fun, granted it managed to nail that blend of power fantasy with the cohesion of team dynamics that the Avengers are known for. But based on this beta, Marvel’s Avengers doesn’t succeed at either.
From the start, you have to confront the awkward and unresponsive controls. Everything feels delayed, undermining the brawler feel that other superhero games have done well like the Batman Arkham series or even Marvel’s Spider-Man did. Some of the special abilities and heavy attacks pack a good punch, but by and large most of what I played in the beta felt pretty bland in the combat department.
Marvel’s Avengers combat failings stem from its desire to be a live-service game. Enemies have bloated health bars and can take multiple massive green fists to the face because my gear score or whatever wasn’t high enough. I understand that’s just an aspect of how a lot of these games are, but this decision honestly robs Marvel’s Avengers of letting the player feel like a superhero. The Hulk should not be getting taken to task by some generic robots holding shields.
There’s also the issue of the game not explaining a lot of stuff to you, but I acknowledge that this might just be a beta issue and hopefully will be addressed, but there’s a lot in Marvel’s Avengers that I just never understood. For instance, you’ve got a health bar at the top of the screen with a mysterious superhero specific bar underneath it. What this bar is, I don’t know. What I do know is that while I was getting my ass kicked by a swarm of robots, the bar went down. Was that the health bar? If that’s the case, then what’s the other one for? Are all of my special abilities on a cool-down that might get faster with better gear or skill upgrades, or can I do something in game to impact them?
Maybe all of this is explained in the mess of a pause menu they’ve got, where the landfill of gear, crafting materials and currencies live. It’s one of those screens where your eyes just glaze over because of the sheer amount of garbage that’s on it. Luckily, there’s a button you can hit that will just equip the best gear for you, letting you avoid the nightmare of that entire menu.
What’s upsetting though is how none of your gear has any visual representation whatsoever. There’s plenty of articles of clothing to equip among the Avengers themselves, but none of it actually shows up at all. I actually understand why that isn’t a thing though. Marvel probably isn’t onboard with people making new Iron man armor from welded together scraps you found in a factory or a jungle. They want to “preserve the identity” of the characters or something, and letting you to adjust their appearances to something that isn’t “on brand” is probably a no. Also, I’m positive that buying alternate costumes is the monetization strategy for Marvel’s Avengers.
Ultimately Marvel’s Avengers just feels like a big miss on every front. It’s not a good action game, it doesn’t make you feel powerful, and it seems rife with ways to nickel and dime its player base. I can’t say definitively that it’s a disappointment yet, considering it isn’t actually out. This is a “beta,” and technically everything is subject to change. Sure the full game releases in just a few weeks, but maybe this is an older build of the game. Whether that’s true or this beta is indicative of what you can expect at release however, this was a miserable first impression.
For one reason or another, I found myself really wanting to get behind the kit of a drum set again for the first time in years. Problem is, those are expensive, loud and take up a lot of space, a combination of elements that aren’t great for living in an apartment. So I decided to look into picking up a Rock Band 4 kit to fill that void at a reasonable price. After some research, I think it would genuinely be cheaper to buy a real drum set than the game itself.
It’s absolutely wild how out of control these listings are. On Amazon alone, the only full kit I could find is priced upwards of $1000. It’s even crazier when you remember that a decade ago we couldn’t walk through a GameStop without tripping over 17 plastic instruments that no one wanted. Yet here I am in 2020 staring at plastic guitars that start at $250.
Rock Band 4 – Harmonix
I get that prices skyrocketed once Harmonix and Mad Catz stopped manufacturing the things, but the fact that the official Rock Band 4 website links to the previously mentioned $250 plastic guitar page on Amazon is bonkers. I understand that Rock Band 4 wasn’t exactly flying off the shelves when it launched back in 2015 and it made fiscal sense to stop producing them. I also understand that Mad Catz as a company literally went bankrupt because of dwindling sales over the years, but the Rock Band 4 instruments seemed like the final nail in the coffin.
I just wanna play the drums again, and the Rock Band drums were supposed to be a cheap alternative. I’m also pretty sure could interface with a PC as a midi controller in case I wanted to lay down actual drum beats for songs, which is a plus. I’d gladly have paid $150 or whatever the kit initially cost in 2015, but at this point it’s easier to just buy a real electronic drum set for a little more than to scour the depths of Craigslist for someone’s nasty, dust-covered and probably busted Rock Band 4 drum set.
Back in 2014, Captain Games released one of my favorite mobile games in Desert Golfing. It was a three dollar, procedurally generated 2D golf game that was fairly straightforward. There weren’t any tricks or additional depth to the game, it was just a really simple and well made infinite golf game that might occasionally screw you over with levels that were impossible to complete. It was addicting and calming in a way a lot of mobile games are not. Fast forward to July of 2020, and the sequel, Golf on Mars, was released and it quickly became an obsession of mine just like Desert Golfing did.
I don’t like golf very much as a sport, but I do enjoy it in video game form with 1996 Neo Geo classic Neo Turf Masters being one of my all time favorites. But I find most modern golf games to be a little more tedious and mechanics heavy than I usually enjoy. But Golf on Mars, like its predecessor, doesn’t try to be anything more than a fun way to kill a few minutes at a time. A ball appears, you drag your finger back and release to shoot and do your best to get it in the hole. There’s no par to contend with nor any reward for a hole-in-one, it is truly and endless meditative golf experience – or your version of hell if your really don’t like golf.
Golf on Mars doesn’t innovate too much, but adds in two integral features that will better prevent you from hitting a sudden dead-end in the way you could in Desert Golfing. The first is the ability to add spin to the ball. A small circle will appear that denotes if you’re spinning the ball clockwise or counterclockwise, which is controlled by dragging another finger across the screen while you’re pulled back for your shot. It’s simple and doesn’t really have too many practical applications for a lot of levels, but whenever I’d need to land on one of the many precarious platforms, I was glad it was there.
The other is the ability to skip levels. Sometimes the procedural generation will spit out levels that you literally cannot finish. Maybe the hole is on a platform too high or far away, or an obstacle fell over and covered the hole. Whatever it is, after 25 strokes the game pops up a button that allows you to skip the level. It might not seem like a big innovation, but it truly sucked in Desert Golfing to be on hole 5000 or something, and suddenly be face to face with an impossible challenge that would make the game unplayable. I wish you could just hit that button from the start considering I never need 25 strokes to realize a hole is functionally busted, but it is what it is.
Otherwise, Golf on Mars is just a really solid time waster. It isn’t a game of depth or something that requires much attention, but it’s a great game to pull out when you’ve got nothing else to do. I think everyone who has a passing interest in arcade styled golf games should give it a shot, but I’m not here to tell you how to spend your money. All I know is that I’m on level 2100, and I’m still opening up the app almost daily in the hopes I’ll see a UFO or something.
Approximately 17 years ago at the last E3, the folks over at Devolver Digital had their annual conference(?) in which they revealed among other things, Fall Guys. Looking at that initial trailer, I had no idea what to expect and immediately shrugged it off as some sort of Mario Party clone. Fast forward to just last week when it finally released on Steam and as a “free” PlayStation Plus offering, and it’s completely blown up to the point where the servers couldn’t handle the amount of people trying to play it. It turns out Fall Guys isn’t a clone of a bad game from a bad franchise.
In Fall Guys, you take control of a little marshmallow looking creature who can only run, dive and grab onto things. Using the few moves at your disposal, you wade through several rounds of platforming challenges and obstacles with up to 59 other people in order to qualify for the next round. It can be a chaotic mess at times, but I mean that in the best way possible.
Fall Guys – Devolver Digital
All of the levels I saw were very clearly inspired from shows like Wipeout, Ninja Warrior and Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, all of which are filled with plenty of hazards and obstacles that you need to overcome. I feel it’s important to remind you once more that you are doing this alongside 59 other people, which intentionally leads to some comical physics-based shenanigans. Succeed at enough of these challenges before your opponents and you’ll end up at an equally obstacle-filled level that has a crown at the end of it. Latch onto that crown and congratulations, you’re the big winner.
I’ll be completely honest here and say that I broke my own rule with Gut Check and played less than an hour of Fall Guys, but not because I disliked it. I actually really dig what Fall Guys is doing, catering to both my love of wacky physics and marshmallows. Yet despite being extremely in my wheelhouse, it just feels like a game without legs. Some games blow up in popularity and get to enjoy a long lifespan because of it like Rocket League or even Overwatch, but Fall Guys doesn’t seem like it has the depth or variation to keep things fresh and interesting for very long. It’s simply a game that was fun to play through until I won… which I did… the first time I played it.
Fall Guys – Devolver Digital
I don’t say that in an attempt to brag or anything because I was genuinely shocked it happened as well. I never really excelled at any level to the point where I felt like I was deserving of the coveted crown, but I just kind of lucked my way into it regardless. Two key things happened to me during my one-shot championship run that made all the difference.
The first thing felt a lot like I was cheating. Not every level in Fall Guys is based around individual success, with some levels grouping folks into teams and squaring off against one another. During one of these team levels we were tasked with essentially playing keep-away where we had to grab a tail off the back of an opponent and don it ourselves. With that tuft of fur firmly above my ass, I had to avoid my other competitors till the end of the round to score a point. That’s when the wacky physics of Fall Guys broke, and a spinning baton caught me in just the right position to clip me through the boundary of the map with no way back inside. So there I was in a white void, donning a beautiful tail and a slight amount of guilt attributed to the fact that I had inadvertently cheated in a competitive multiplayer game. Time eventually ran out, my team won under dubious conditions and we all progressed onward.
Fall Guys – Devolver Digital
The next thing that happened came at the very end of the final level. After navigating through falling rocks, spinning batons, swinging hammers and more, I followed the path and several other marshmallow people up towards the golden crown. The crown hovered between two platforms that you’d have to jump from in order to snag it in mid air. It also bobbed up and down to make it a little dicier for everyone involved. I watched about a dozen people in front of me mistime that jump and fall into the chasm below. So instead of leaping frantically like dope I just kind of stood there for a bit, unhampered until the crown was in my reach and I was able to snag it.
I won my first match of Fall Guys and I felt like I really shouldn’t have. It felt like a fluke from top to bottom, but I won the whole damn thing and in return I was granted some cosmetic items and the feeling that I had beaten the entirety of Fall Guys. With a little bit of patience and a ton of luck however I got to feel the “thrill” of winning, which was less of a feeling of accomplishment and more a feeling of suspicion, like I was going to get in trouble for winning it all by accident.
I can’t see a lot of people sticking with Fall Guys because it just doesn’t seem like the kind of game you can really get better at. No matter how good at platforming you are, you’re still vulnerable to the obstacles in the level as well as the other players themselves. I’m not trying to diminish the fun I had with Fall Guys because it left me with a sense of fondness towards it, but failed to hook me in a way that would make me want to break my undefeated streak. I bet they’ll hang my jersey in the rafters for this victory someday.
A few days ago I was gifted a copy of Borderlands 3, the latest entry in a long running loot driven shooter series I’ve always been lukewarm on at the best of times. There are a lot of reasons that I didn’t rush out to purchase the game when it released last year, but a friend of mine displayed his overwhelming generosity by purchasing me a copy in our latest attempt at finding a game that we could play together. At the time of writing this we haven’t actually been able to synchronize our schedules and play together, but I have put a little bit of time into Borderlands 3 regardless.
I initially didn’t intend to ever play this game considering that the idea of supporting Gearbox Software CEO and magician, Randy Pitchford, a colossal tool that’s no stranger to controversy, was just not something I felt comfortable with. But despite my feelings about the man at the top, I know there are genuinely good people who work on these games that wish their boss would just shut up and stop stealing focus away from the product they’ve worked on for years.
The first thing I ended up doing in Borderlands 3 was turning the volume down to the point where I don’t have to hear any of the dialogue. I’ve never thought the narrative in Borderlands games were anything worth a damn, but I know some people would disagree. The real reason I silenced the game however, is solely because I generally find these games deeply unfunny. Sure there are a few jokes that land, but for the most part I just find a lot of the dialogue to be grating. Often times the humor tries trade on this concept of everything be over the top and wacky in a way that just feels desperate. Like they’re begging you to chuckle at something to the point where literal shit is flying out of toilets when you open them, something I’m sure someone finds deeply funny.
From the little bits of story I’ve reluctantly picked up during my playtime, it seems like the whole plot revolves around two twins who are post-apocalyptic Twitch streamers, which is one hell of a premise to bank on. I’m genuinely terrified of how many times I’ll hear a phrase like, “and don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe, or else I’ll blow your brains out.” I’d love to be proven wrong, but the series doesn’t exactly have a great track record in that regard.
But once you mute the dialogue and just follow the quest markers towards the next group of things to shoot, Borderlands 3 is a mechanically sound and fun experience. In my opinion, the Borderlands franchise has never excelled at much outside of being a really fun cooperative game that gives you a lot of ways to dispatch your enemies. The variety of powers, guns and grenades at your disposal are seemingly infinite, and you’ll get so many of them that you’ll find yourself drowning in what I imagine a Second Amendment themed wet dream might look like.
Ultimately I can’t really see myself playing much of Borderlands 3 on my own, but when I’m finally able to sync up with my pals I’m sure I’ll have a much better time. From what I’ve played, Borderlands 3 isn’t a bad game by any metric, it just doesn’t seem like something I would want to experience on my own. I’d rather talk to my friends and make actually funny jokes over what I can only assume are the in-game characters making old meme references. And I don’t need a game to do that for me when I can do it just fine by myself.
I’ll never forget the first time I played Dungeons & Dragons. It was a few summers ago and one of our friends offered to run us through a single session campaign, otherwise known as a one-shot. It was a ton of fun and is the event I attribute to getting me hooked on the game. But there’s one thing that will always stand out to me most about that experience, and that was when we finished the game and our DM pulled me aside and said, “Ari, I play with a lot of people and I can tell when they’re hooked, and you’ve got it.”
That single phrase always stood out to me because of just how accurate it was. He saw something in myself that I never thought would be there, and even as he said it, I thought he was full of shit and just stroking my ego a bit. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. Regardless of his intent, he was a thousand percent right.
In the past few weeks, I’ve heard his voice echo in my mind louder and more frequently than ever. That probably has a lot to do with the amount of Dungeons & Dragons related purchases I’ve made in that time, a trend that tragically shows no sign of slowing up.
I’ve bought so many fucking dice and I have no idea why. Even before the pandemic, all of the games I played were online, so why the hell did I buy a ton of plastic dice along with a fancy set of metallic ones? Why did I buy a dice rolling box? Why did I buy several digital rule books and modules, and then also buy their physical editions as well?
Because I need them.
Every time I hear my friend’s voice in my head, reminding me that “I’ve got it,” I can’t help but feel like he cursed me. Right there and then, in the middle of our mutual friend’s kitchen, my DM cursed me to an eternity of buying books filled with adventures I will never experience and dice that I’ll never roll.
One day in the future when we’re allowed to congregate once again, I’d like to believe I will actually make use of these physical items that now occupy my bookshelves. But the odds are these will just be items that I’ll be pissed about having to transport when I inevitably move away from here. I just hope that I don’t start buying miniatures next. Like, yeah they’re cool and you can paint them to look like your characters and stuff… Yeah, definitely don’t want to buy those little guys.
A few days ago Microsoft went ahead and revealed a ton of information about upcoming games as well as announcing a few new ones. They showed off Halo Infinite, a new Forza game, Jack Black singing through a trailer of Psychonauts 2, and plenty more for their upcoming new console, which were all fine announcements. But the one that I’m most excited for is the new Fable game that was confirmed to be in development.
For those who don’t know, the Fable franchise is one of ups and downs, with people ardently praising and condemning various entries in the series. To me, it follows the same trajectory as the Mass Effect series where the first one was good, the second was the best, and the third had some neat ideas but didn’t really make good on the promise of its predecessors. I can hear the sound of a friend of mine texting me in violent disagreement, but that’s okay because they’re wrong.
New Fable – Microsoft
Fable was always this cheeky action-RPG that always seemed like it was a sequel away from really nailing whatever it was going for. What it was going for no one can be quite sure of, but Fable always felt like a series with ambitions of much grander elements than were feasible at the time. Everyone likes to angrily point to the creator of Fable, Peter Molyneux, and chide him for his constant over promising and under delivering when it came to the franchise, but in hindsight it often sounded like the technology just wasn’t there to make good on his vision.
But it doesn’t matter what Molyneux says anymore because he’s no longer involved with the franchise and hasn’t been for several years. Instead, this new Fable is being developed by the people behind the Forza Horizon series, Playground Games. I don’t think anyone has any idea how this new Fable will turn out with the developers of a racing franchise calling the shots, but the Forza Horizon games have all been received really well in the past which makes me hopeful that they’ll do right by revitalizing the Fable series.
Fable II – Image Credit: Giantbomb.com
I don’t really have much in the way of expectations for the next Fable game, but I would hope it does a few things differently than its predecessors. There’s only a handful of specific elements I’d like to see this new game to incorporate, but overall I’d like to see a vast departure from the formula of the old Fable games. That isn’t because I don’t like those games, I just think those games only worked at that time in history and trying to recapture that again would feel uninspired and outdated.
Aside from general modernization, I think it should be a true open-world game with one big contiguous map. In the past, Fable had big areas to explore that were separated by loading screens, so having a cohesive world would be a nice change that would make the world feel more whole than it ever did before. I also think we’re at a point where Fable needs a good character creator in it. I don’t want to be a generic boy who chases chickens and either gets a halo or a pair of horns on his head. I want to be in control of my character and their appearance and not just turn into some weird demigod.
Fable III – Image Credit: Giantbomb.com
It would also be nice to see the game make good on some of the more esoteric promises that Molyneux made back in the day. A lot of what I recall him pitching was the idea that all of your choices and actions had reactions and consequences. Maybe they weren’t immediate, maybe they were, but nothing you did was done in a vacuum and that’s where I think that’s something a new Fable can do to differentiate itself from other RPGs. The series was always supposed to be this very customized and reactive experience, but it never manifested that way. But with the Xbox Series X, the power of modern PCs, and the strides in open-world game design, having a world react to you in the way Molyneux once envisioned seems more possible today than ever before.
Speculating about Fable right now feels pretty pointless at this time though. All we saw was a tone setting CG trailer that was very cheeky and that’s it. Who can say what the game actually turns out to be or when it’ll even come out? My bet is that it’s a 2022 game at the earliest, but I’d love to be wrong about that and get my hands on it earlier. Now that Microsoft is bringing Fable back and EA is bringing Skate back, I’d like to know what the fuck is going on at Ubisoft and why Splinter Cell hasn’t come back yet.
Have you ever seen a trailer for a game and immediately knew it wasn’t for you? This happens to me consistently, and all it usually takes is a trailer or screenshot for me to see the mechanics at play to know a game isn’t for me. While I try to keep an open mind about every game, it’s a challenge for me to look at certain mechanics or genres and still feel compelled to play it despite what the critical reception is.
There’s been a lot of great games that have already come out this year, but I honestly haven’t played most of them because of this inherent bias I have against certain mechanics. It isn’t a qualitative judgement about the game or the mechanic in question, it’s just something I know won’t jive with me.
I guess you could just chalk it up to personal taste and knowing that every game isn’t made with me in mind, but sometimes I feel like I’m doing myself a great disservice from not giving these games a fair shake. That’s why I wanted to do a deeper dive into the elements and genres that immediately rebuff me, and try to get to the bottom of why that might be the case.
Starcraft 2 – Blizzard Entertainment
STRATEGY & TACTICS
It’s weird to start this list off with something so broad and nebulous as “tactics,” but allow me to make my case. There are phenomenal tactics games out there that people have raved about for years that I’ll never play. Games like the X-Com series, Starcraft, and even the Divinity series all seem so interesting from a distance, but rebuff me the second I get a little too close. It’s hard to nail down exactly what it is about these games that’s kept me away, but honestly it’s less about an inner conflict with the mechanics themselves and more about me being incapable of properly strategizing a coherent plan of attack in these kinds of games.
Quite frankly, I’m miserable at these games to the point where they just feel overwhelming. Usually I end up walking away from these games feeling like an idiot because I’m just so bad at applying foresight to these combat encounters. There’s also the issue of learning the internal mechanics that make things work in these games. For instance, when I played Divinity: Original Sin II, not only was I having trouble figuring out a good plan of attack, but I was also trying to learn what spells and attacks were effective against the enemies and the environment. It felt like I was learning two games at the same time and failing at both.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 – Larian Studios
I’m not great at strategizing in general, which is why real-time strategy games like Starcraft and Warcraft never appealed to me. My only tactic is to build my army as fast as I can and click on enemy troops and buildings in the hopes something happens that I like. There’s also a lot of plate spinning in these games, where I’ll have to contend with a multi-pronged attack plan, while managing the defenses at my base, while making sure troop and supply production lines are working and so on and so forth. It’s a lot for me to focus on at once, and I inevitably fail miserably at each of them whenever I try to play one of these games.
There is one glaring potential exception to this however. At some point in the next few weeks, Baldur’s Gate III is supposed to enter early access. Now, I’m incredibly excited for the game for numerous reasons, but the main one at this point is because I know the inner working mechanics it’s going to be using. It’s running off of the Dungeons & Dragons 5e rule set, something I’ve become very familiar with over the years. It’s led to me looking at Baldur’s Gate III as less of a strategy or tactics game, and more of a way to play D&D by myself. There’s a lot of mental gymnastics going on in my head to make me feel at peace with Baldur’s Gate III, and I completely acknowledge that.
Magic: The Gathering Arena – Wizards of the Coast
DECK BUILDING
Like most kids in the 90’s, I was a big fan of Pokemon and would consume everything it touched, from the show, the games, the toys, and of course the cards. The thing is, despite owning a ton of the cards and organizing them into a nice binder, I never actually did anything with them. I’ve never once actually played Pokemon as a card game before. I just wanted cool little pictures of them to collect.
That mentality has shifted as I’ve gotten older, but not in the direction of actually playing card collecting games (CCG) whatsoever. I’ve moved in the other direction, away from collecting cards and even further away from playing CCGs. There is something incredibly boring to me about building a deck of cards filled with spells, monsters and other stuff, and playing against other people with it. I’ve had people try to get me into Hearthstone and other games before, but I just don’t have the patience for any of them.
Hearthstone – Blizzard Entertainment
The CCG genre is incredibly popular and beloved by so many people, and I’m not trying to take anyone’s enjoyment of these games away from them. Focusing on games like this are extremely difficult for me because of just how slow and methodical they inherently are. You’re supposed to take your time and strategize, but as we’ve discovered earlier, I’m bad at that.
You might ask, “why not learn to play them so you can get better?” A good question to be sure, but I’ve only got so much time on this planet, that I’d rather not try to force a square block in a round hole for more of it than I already have to. CCGs are great fun for the people who can focus and really wrap their minds around them. Hell, my Discord channel is currently filled with Magic: The Gathering Arena optimal deck links and people constantly playing it. While I’d love to be able to engage my friends on this topic, I know it just won’t happen and I’ll end up just grousing about how much I dislike everything about CCGs to them.
Outlast 2 – Red Barrels
HORROR
To be completely honest, I don’t know why people enjoy the horror genre in any aspect, whether it be games, movies, TV shows, or even going to haunted houses on Halloween. I don’t like any of it, and it’s because I don’t enjoy being scared. Nothing about the emotion of fear seems fun to me at all, and I don’t get how some people are so eager to get frightened.
I get that some people get a great adrenaline rush out of a scare, or can appreciate a nice haunted tone in a movie or game or whatever, but I’m not one of those people. To me, fear was something I wanted to avoid and steer clear of as best I could. I don’t enjoy feeling on edge, I don’t admire the artistic talent it took to evoke that spooky tone, I just don’t like any of it.
Resident Evil 3 Remake – Capcom
Call me a coward or whatever, but fear was just never something I actually wanted to experience. That’s why when people clamor about the latest Resident Evil game or talk about the masterpiece that P.T. was, I can’t even begin to have that conversation with them. They might be stellar games through and through, appealing to everything a horror fan wants, but to me they’re just an expensive way to feel uncomfortable and have nightmares.
Once again, you can enjoy and praise the horror genre all you want, but none of it is going to make me willingly pay money to be scared. We haven’t even talked about games that like to throw in a jump scare in it just to shake things up. Bioshock Infinite had one of those and I’m still angry at it for including it.
Final Fantasy VII Remake – Square Enix
JRPGs
If I’m being honest here, JRPGs combine two things I’m really not that crazy about into one package that I don’t have any reverence for. As far as anime goes, I think I’ve enjoyed maybe one or two of them in my life, and they’re pretty mainstream if I’m being honest. I know that people really enjoy anime, and I’m not here to take that away from you because I truly believe that certain anime media can be really cool, particularly in the badass fight scenes that I’ve seen posted online. Anime can be cool is what I’m saying.
But the other half of that equation, the turn-based RPG part of it? That’s the part that I can’t handle as much. In my life, I’ve played part of one Final Fantasy game, and watched a childhood friend blast through large sections of Final Fantasy VII when it came out. Both of those experiences were pretty agonizing for me. And I know it’s unfair to target the Final Fantasy series here, but they’re one of the few touchstones I have in this genre of games. I never had the urge to play anything in this genre, so I’m well aware that there might be something that I might find interesting somewhere out there.
Persona 5 – Atlus
Similar to my issues with tactics and strategy games, I’m just a poor planner when it comes to gaming… and probably everything else in my life. So making sure I’ve got the right party members, items and buffs never really appealed to me in video games. I used to point to the fact that taking turns in combat made no sense to me, but that’s a pretty juvenile argument that I no longer use especially considering my recent reverence for D&D.
The reasons I won’t play those games today has changed significantly since I was younger, but they basically boil down to the fact that a lot of JRPGs are way too long and dense for me. Those games usually have so much going on in them that I can’t keep up. It’s the same way I feel about intense classic RPGs like the old Fallout games or last year’s Disco Elysium. They’re highly regarded games that I just don’t have the patience for.
The Long Dark – Hinterland Studio
PLATE SPINNING
There’s the concept of “plate spinning,” or the idea that you need to manage and keep tabs on a lot of moving parts at once. I notice this mostly in survival games where you need to worry about your food, thirst, stamina, temperature and so on. Both this and time limits feel like two sides of the same coin that I want to just throw into a storm drain.
Sometimes these mechanics are intrusive and steal the focus away from anything else in the game. When that happens, a switch flips in my head that instructs me to stop any forward progression and just hoard everything I can find for the next few hours. Maybe that’s how you’re supposed to play the game, but it just feels like paranoia-fueled busy work to me.
Minecraft – Mojang
There are some exceptions to this rule however, and it only occurs when a game isn’t too intrusive about it. For instance, Minecraft has a hunger and stamina meter, but it’s such an afterthought that you really don’t need to do much aside from carry a few steaks on you at all times. The ‘survival’ portion of the survival mode in Minecraft mostly applies to you not dying in whatever monster-filled chasm you inevitably arrive at.
Even Red Dead Redemption II had some light survival mechanics that were easy to fulfill. If you find yourself in town, you might as well snag a hot meal and a bath and refill your dwindling meters. Both of those last for days as well, and you’re never really in danger of starving to death or passing out from exhaustion. It’s that kind of light touch approach that I can deal with when it comes to plate spinning, but games that are designed around your ability to multitask efficiently just stress me out.
PLAYERUNKNOWN’S Battlegrounds – PUBG Corporation
BATTLE ROYALES
Remember back in 2017 when we could go places and do stuff but ultimately decided to stay inside and play PLAYER UNKNOWN’S Battlegrounds instead? I do. In fact, I played a whole lot of PUBG, to the point where it started to get tiring which ultimately led to me falling off of it about a year later. It was a marginally better time.
But now if you asked me to play a battle royale game with you, I’d probably find any excuse I could to avoid doing so. I don’t necessarily have anything against the genre itself, but I have played enough of one of the most popular ones out there to have had my fill with the genre entirely.
Ring of Elysium – Aurora Studio
This feeling was cemented when I tried to play Fortnite a few times, and bounced off of it almost immediately. From PUBG, to Fortnite, to Apex Legends, Ring of Elysium, Radical Heights and The Culling, I’ve played a lot of these games, and I think I’ve had my fill of the entire concept itself.
These games can still offer up a lot of entertainment and satisfaction, but they can also be sources of immense anxiety and stress. I’ll never forget the tension that would fill the air when you’d hear a gunshot ring out in the distance during a round of PUBG. Hell, everything in PUBG was incredibly tense when I think about it. The sound of a car, the sight of already opened doors, the literal ring of death that’s slowly closing in on you, it was all designed to be stress inducing.
Stress inducing as it was though, it was a lot of fun. But I just don’t think I need that in my life at this point. I like having stakes in games, I like tense moments, but battle royales seem to luxuriate and bask in these moments to the point of sensory overload for me.
A lot of what I’ve talked about here are just some personal examples of things that turn me off when looking into new games. They’re not value judgements or statements about the product itself or the people who actually enjoy them, they’re just my personal proclivities and nothing more.
Something also interesting to note is that just about everything I’ve listed here plays into my personal issues with anxiety and attention span. It’s weird how you can know all these various facts about yourself, but not be able to see how they’re all intertwined until you actually write them out and try to find a connective thread.
Ultimately I’d like to impress upon you that liking these things is totally valid and I want you to keep enjoying whatever it is you’re playing. If everyone felt the same way as I did, then these games wouldn’t be made anymore because people would stop buying them. The world is filled with different people with different tastes, and while some of these mechanics and genres aren’t for me, I celebrate the people who garner enjoyment from them in my place.
For the past few weeks now, my partner and I have been looking for something to play together that could momentarily distract us from the misery that is 2020. They had some preferences as to what kind of game they wanted to play, but we both agreed that we wanted something cooperative that we could progress through together. After a few suggestions, we ultimately landed on 2008’s Castle Crashers, a game which is still very much worth playing 12 years later.
Being that we both own Nintendo Switches, our choices of games weren’t exactly limited considering the vast amount of options available on the platform. Up till now, we’d been bouncing between several of the classic NES and SNES games that were included with the online subscription like Dr. Mario and Panel De Pon, along with full priced games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons. But we needed something fresh, fun and accessible.
Turns out, Castle Crashers is still an extraordinary game that managed to meet both of our needs. It also has revealed to me that my partner is a gold hoarder in video games, and will prioritize collecting money over defeating enemies or aiding me in combat. It’s fine. It’s definitely not something I poke fun at them for doing every single time or anything.
It’s also a great game to play while talking on the phone because it doesn’t really require you to focus too intently on, so that’s been nice. I personally wanted to pick up Diablo III with them considering I’d heard tremendous things about the console versions of the game, but it’s still a full priced game which was a bit too steep for us. Also, it certainly had more going on in it than Castle Crashers, which might have ended up being a little too complex for what we were looking for.
Look at this adorable little shit
I still love Castle Crashers 12 years later, and am glad I get to introduce it to my partner for the first time. I don’t know if they’re as ecstatic about it as I am, but we keep playing it together, so they must enjoy something about it. Maybe it’s the art or the satisfying combat, but I think we mostly just end up fawning over the cute animal companions you get. They’re pretty freaking adorable.
The Bonus World 