Keyrock

The second season of Lucha Underground started on Wednesday. The first season was, no hyperbole, the single best season of a wrestling show I have ever seen. It was amazing, not just the wrestling itself, but the production and the storylines and characters. A ninja skeleton that breaks arms for his dark master, an actual dragon, a biker who started out as a jobber and grew into a cult hero, a teleporting succubus? sorceress? ghost? who can summon skeletons, and the lucha libre personification of death itself, just to name a few. The first season was so ridiculously good that I was momentarily slightly worried that season 2 would be a letdown, that they had blown their wad on season 1. I mean, how do you possibly follow up a season as good as that? Then season 2 starts with Vampiro in some kind of secret mental facility in the middle of the desert trying to get his release while fantasizing about murdering his interviewer and drinking his blood. Cut to The Temple where Mil Muertes is sitting up high watching over the crowd and the ring while sitting in a skull throne. A MOTHER****ING SKULL THRONE (I cannot possibly bold or capitalize that enough). And the show just got better and better from there. Behold the unfathomable badassery. Bask in its glory. Lucha Underground, I'm so sorry I ever doubted you for even a second. It's so good to have you back in my life.

In fairness, that quote was made at a time when most video game stories consisted of "Robot Ninjas Kidnapped the President" and not much more. Gaming has evolved since then. I agree not all games need a deep, well written story. Games come in all shapes, sizes, and varieties. There are story-driven games and there are gameplay-driven games. Story-driven games obviously need a good story with well thought out characters or they will fall flat on their face (/glances disapprovingly in David Cage's direction) since story is the core pillar of the game. Gameplay-driven games don't necessarily need much story at all, though they can still benefit from one.

Fair enough. I'll defer to your Titanfall knowledge since it's a game I know much less about.

Point taken. My point is that there is not a single "right way" to play a game. Obviously, this applies more strongly to a single-player game where the game is confined to only you playing the game. As an example, I spent probably a good 10 hours in Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion (still the single greatest thing Bethesda has ever produced) running around New Sheoth, finding ways to get on top of structures and jumping from roof to roof, finding a place, thinking "can I get up there?", then proceeding to get up there and seeing what places I could jump to once I got up there. I had a blast. In the confines of a competitive multiplayer game, you have other players to contend with, so things change. You can still experiment in those games and try out new and wacky things to do. It's easier in a competitive game where you play as a lone player (deathmatch or whatever), in a team game you have other people on your team depending on you, but even in those games there is room for experimentation. And you don't necessarily have to be a master of the traditional method to do it either. You can do wacky things in pubs in DotA that are completely bonkers and off the wall and without being a seasoned player who has played the game the traditional way for months or years and they may even work. Sure, those cheese strats would never work at the pro level, but if you're not playing at the pro level then who cares? Cheese strats even sometimes work at the pro level, though they're generally refined by the pros to make them work. The pros obviously have an intimate knowledge of the game and all the systems, you have to be to play at that level, but the original idea may have come from someone just starting out who has little knowledge or desire to play the traditional way. A pro saw the cheese strat, saw it worked sometimes in pubs, knew it wouldn't work as is at pro level, but tweaked a few things to modify it so that it might sometimes work at the pro level.

You don't get to decide what "the right way" to play a game is for me. No one does, not even the developer. How someone plays a game is a completely individual preference. People derive enjoyment from games in different ways. In a single player environment I fully agree with this sentiment. Once you step into a competitive online game environment... You play by the rules and styles the game has setup to make you competitive. If you don't then you cannot play the game competitively and you will be at a disadvantage. This is not the game's fault. If you don't care about winning in an online competitive mode then do what you want to do. It's your game to play as you will. Somewhat disagree. It's the people that think outside the box and go against the grain that create the strategies that eventually become accepted as viable ways to play the game. If no one thinks outside the box then you will have a stagnant game with a single style of playing and everyone conforming to it. I'll give you an example from a game I know exponentially better than Titanfall. In DotA, the regular way of winning the game is to group up once you feel your team is strong enough and push the enemy base and win by sheer force and superior team fight execution, often with the help of something like the aegis. Then someone came up with Rat DotA, which goes against all of that. You avoid fights, you pull the opposing team around the map, sometimes sacrificing a hero or two to get their attention, meanwhile another member of your team sneaks into their base while they're occupied elsewhere and does structural damage to it. When it was first attempted it was going against the "right way" to play the game, now it's an accepted strategy since it was proven effective, winning games and even entire tournaments. Never would have happened had someone not thought outside the accepted structure of the game.

If I want to stack the chess pieces into a pyramid and use the chessboard as a dartboard and that's what makes me happy, then that's the right way to play it for me. Sure, I won't win any tournaments that way, but I don't care about that.

You don't get to decide what "the right way" to play a game is for me. No one does, not even the developer. How someone plays a game is a completely individual preference. People derive enjoyment from games in different ways.

More Attractio. I really like the puzzles, but the voice acting is killing me. Dear lord... I can't even.

You'll never believe this, but Mighty No. 9 has been delayed yet again.

Well, the first game came right down to the wire. The second game, not so much.

Granted, I've only played a few AC games and not the complete 8237 games in the series, but from my rather limited experience, I enjoy the story and the games overall the most when they stick to the self-contained story within that particular title. When they go into the overarching Pieces of Eden, Minerva, etc. stuff I lose interest.

I took a few days off from Satellite Reign. It's a fairly long game. I've mostly been playing Attractio. Hilariously bad voice acting aside, I'm really enjoying the game. The puzzles are challenging enough to get my cognitive juices flowing, but I've yet to encounter any puzzle that's gotten me really frustrated. I feel the difficulty curve is pretty good so far. Hopefully the difficulty keeps ramping up and I run into some truly devious puzzles toward the end of the game.

Is there anybody left from the Baldur's Gate days now?

It was the same way in Black Flag. I think they were called berserker darts or something in that game. You just hid in the bushes, shot a dart into the beefiest enemy around and he'd just kill like 3 dudes before they killed him. Lather, rinse, repeat. Super easy.

At the moment, it's okay for making simple dungeon crawls but woefully inadequate to make anything story driven. Much needed features (branching dialogue, static level enemies, etc.) are coming in the near future for making story-driven, non-linear campaigns. I think you're pretty much confined to Sword Coast and Underdark right now, but I haven't messed with it much, so I could be wrong.

I love the look of the game. I purposely skipped around and didn't let the video play for more than a minute at a time, because I'm avoiding spoilers like the plague until I get my grubby little fingers on the finished product, but I saw enough to appreciate the visuals.

No key remapping? What? Are you ****ing kidding me? I know that may sound like a nitpick, but it's really not. Custom hotkeys are crucial to a RTS. That is either an oversight of epic proportions or one heck of a boneheaded design decision. Hopefully, it's something they can patch in.

It will have a much bigger impact on compute applications than it will on gaming. Still, it's a step forward and progress is always good.

The Codex is a mysterious place where even those that in other places would be considered grognards are mere n00bs and the surliest of the surly teach the young the ways of the dismissive sneer.

I started playing Attractio. It's a first-person puzzler that seems to revolve around gravity. The game takes place on a game show in a dystopian future (dystopian future seems all the rage for a setting these days. I guess it beats standard Tolkien fantasy). I've heard the game described as Portal meets The Running Man. Too early to tell if it lives up to that. I'm liking it so far, but it's a puzzle game and puzzle games are my jam (probably in no small part due to the fact that it's one of the few genres of games I can honestly say I excel at), so that's expected. The voice acting, though... /kisses finger tips Next-level cringe.

In fairness, Seattle scored all their points during garbage time. The game was effectively over at the half, the Panthers just took their foot off the gas pedal a little too much and it wound up being closer than it needed to be.

Cool. I can't wait to give the finished product a spin in about a month. As for what I'm playing, still Satellite Reign. I now have a quest to both extract a person and to get a person in. Both those quests throw a serious monkey wrench into my usual send my infiltrator in solo gameplan, since the person I have to escort can't cloak. I guess I'll have to go full on bloody for both of those. Of course, I could just skip those missions entirely, they're not mandatory. I also started playing TERA again. The whole loli and furry thing creeps me out, but it still has far and away the best combat of any MMO I've ever played, it's not even close. It's a good looking game too. It's just too bad that the quests are so incredibly dull. I'm talking the absolute most bog standard kill x monsters crap you can possibly imagine. Oh well, at least the game seems quite solo-friendly.

The game is basically complete now, right? I haven't played it in a year, maybe longer. I very much liked it when I did play it. Not surprising since it's the spiritual successor to my favorite loot em up ever, Titan Quest. Supposedly the final release is in about a month, if I recall correctly. I'll start playing it again once that happens.

I'm playing Satellite Reign right now and I'm enjoying it. It's a proper spiritual successor to Syndicate, stealth-focused (you don't have to go stealth, but it tends to be in your best interest to do so), real-time, squad-based tactical game. [shameless plug] There's a link to my YouTube channel in my sig. I'm doing an LP of the game if you want to see what it looks like in action. [/shameless plug]

I finally ran into a mission in Satellite Reign that I don't think I will be able to stealth. I need to extract a researcher from a very deep location in a heavily guarded compound. I can get to the researcher unseen without much trouble, but they can't go invisi-mode like my Infiltrator can. So, once I feel I'm properly equipped, I'm going to do it bloody style. There are 2 gates into the compound. I'll hardwire the main gate shut then go in through the side entrance and hardwire that shut once my team is inside so reinforcements can't come in from the outside. Then I'll ninja stealth kill as many guards as I can to thin the ranks, but eventually I'll get detected and I'll need to just start shooting. I'll then murder every single guard inside that compound. Once they're all dead, I'll get the researcher and we'll calmly walk out. That's the plan, anyway.