30 More Days: Male or Female

This is part of a series in which I try to write a post every day on silly video game topics.  For the list of topics, click here.

Oh boy here we go.  So the answer to this is shamefully easy to answer.  Given a choice, 95 times out 100 lately, I’ll create a female character, which is not surprising considering the entry for favorite name.  See, that was easy, right?

30 More Days: Favorite Weapon

This is part of a series in which I try to write a post every day on silly video game topics.  For the list of topics, click here.

Was there any doubt?

The Master Sword
“Master using it and you can have this.”

There’s really no other choice for me.  The sword of evil’s bane is by far my favorite weapon in any game.  The Arthurian homages, the powers of the sword to reflect evil (Tennis, anyone?) and the various means of acquiring the sword make it one of the most epic pieces of loot.  It was the Master Sword, after all, that really opened my eyes to just how satisfying getting “phat loot”, as it is called in parlance of our times, really is.  Fire flowers come and go.   A new power is dandy, but it’s just a way to beat the next boss.  The Master Sword is a game changer.

 

30 More Days: Game You Love to Hate

This is part of a series in which I try to write a post every day on silly video game topics.  For the list of topics, click here.

I don’t think I have a single answer here.  There are some TERRIBLE games out there, and games that I thought might have looked good, but sucked, but I keep going back to a genre on this one.  That’s right you little mouth-breathing, moms basement living, anti-social morons, I hate multi-player shooters.

Doom, Halo, Unreal, Gears of War, first-person, third-person, in the immortal words of Chris Tucker, I don’t give a fuck.  They all fucking suck.  I hate the engines, I hate the gore level, I hate the level design, I hate that I get motion sickness playing a lot of them, I hate the endless barrage of weapon upgrades, and more than anything else, I hate, I hate, I hate, I HATE multi-player.

angry
Your typical multi-person gamer.

No, I haven’t played a lot of them.  I’m better than that.  Why would I hob nob with short-attention span, shit talking, ignorant, hate-spewing troglodytes?  Spend any time on your X-Box one of these games and you’ll get a sample platter of the ‘best’ humanity has to offer.  “LOL u gt pwnd fggt!  Hhaha ur ghey!!1”  Maybe even uttered aloud over a built-in chat/VoIP system, too.  And there’s no point to these games, really.  Just an endless slog doing the same thing over and over and over, killing the same enemies just so you can have some shiny achievement or points or new look or something.  Fucking pathetic.  Just another example of the deacy of our society and people’s sick urges to live out their fanta…

What’s that?  What games to do I play?  MMORPGs, why do you ask?

30 More Days: Preferred Universe

This is part of a series in which I try to write a post every day on silly video game topics.  For the list of topics, click here.

And I am now finally caught up, doing three posts in one day.  (There it is again.)  I have not yet read TFG’s answer on this one yet, but knowing her, it’s either WOW or Pokemon, or probably both, from what I’ve heard about Mists of Pandaria.  (Really, it’s called Pandaria?  Is their city called Panda Town?  The Panda Palace?  Grumble.)

That’s not really an aside, is it?  That is the topic, after all.  Azeroth, for all its faults, was a great place to inhabit.  The artwork was really well done, even considering Warcraft’s comic-influenced art style.  Khaz Modan, Ashenvale, Thunder Bluff, some of my favorite locations in any video game.  But, as an actual place, it just doesn’t work, and no, I’m not talking about obviously magical effects.  “Lost” continents being discovered conveniently when the narrative demands it is a big part of what is so goofy about Azeroth and the writing thereof.

I think it’s a fitting tribute then that I suggest that fabled Rhode Island metropolis, Paragon City.  The City of Heroes.

City of Heroes recently was shut down and with it, a universe that I came back to time and time again, a word I revisited more often than any other MMO combined.  Hundreds of lives were created and wiped clean, as I endlessly dreamed of new heroes and villains that would do battle along the streets of Steel Canyon, in the slums of King’s Row, and the ruins of Overbrook.  Heroes such as the Emerald Mask, Jason Black, Post Meridian, Red Jacket and the Crimson Vespa would fight epic battles against the Clockwork King, Dr. Vhazilok and the endless minions of Arachnos.  Villains like Sadim, The Dallas Has-Been, Witch-Killer Wren and Duvant planned and schemed, looking to take down Paragon and Rogue Isles for their own gain.

30 More Days: Favorite Boss/Raid

This is part of a series in which I try to write a post every day on silly video game topics.  For the list of topics, click here.

Please allow me to state for the record:  I hate raids.  I have rarely enjoyed myself on raids in any game, so my answer for this will not be a “favorite raid.”  However, allow me to speak some about raid mechanics and “boss fights” within raids.

My experience with raids in MMOs is thus; Everquest’s Planes of Hate & Fear and some Velious stuff.  Dark Age of Camelot‘s Realm vs. Realm keep raids.  World of Warcraft‘s Molten Core & Wrath of the Lich King.  That’s.  About.  It.  So I am very much a raiding newbie.  My experience with raids from the outset was one of idle frustration and boredom, especially with Everquest.  Haters need not even reply – raiding in Everquest was one of the most inane and poorly designed systems ever.  The mere concept of them, waiting for a spawn, hoping that other groups would respect your raid, having no instancing what so ever has always struck me as one of the most shit-tacular ways of wasting everyone’s time.  Coupled with the punitive penalties for failure, I simply vowed never to spend that much time with them.

DAOC’s PvP based raid system was much more enjoyable when it focused on siege warfare, otherwise it was Zerg v. Zerg, or small group combat which was not “raiding”.  WOW’s Molten Core wasn’t much better than Everquest – trading instances and on-demand raids for insane amounts of trash.  But, WOW did something, and expanded on it well; it added mechanics.  Tricks, strategies, things you had to do – whatever you want to call them – boss fights felt more like, well boss fights.  You had to be adaptive.  You had to, essentially, fail a few times, figure out the trick to beating the boss, and then you had to execute.

That’s what’s always fun about boss fights.  On TFG’s site, I answered Ganondorf/Ganon as my favorite boss fight.  That was a great fight, and a fitting end to one of the best games ever.  Some cinematic action, a curveball in the game mechanics coupled with a new fight mechanic (tennis, anyone?), with some cutscenes and mid-fight break back to traditional gameplay before going all-in with another handicap and a bigger, harder boss.

Ocarina of Time had a pretty good boss fight in Ganon, but the more I think about the idea of adaptability, another game stands out for requiring inventiveness and a lot of trial and error.

That’s right, my vote has changed and is going to Mega Man.

30 More Days: Favorite Playable Race

This is part of a series in which I try to write a post every day on silly video game topics.  For the list of topics, click here.

This was a difficult one for me for several reasons.  Given a choice of various character options, I will inevitably choose everything, because I am, as we say in the MMO-world, an alt-whore.  I just want to try everything.  But there are some patterns of races I gravitate to, and races I shy away from.

I am not big on “furry” races.  Tails and clawed feet, non-humanoid faces, nope.  Which I guess does limit me from some cool choices.  Khajiit from Skyrim come to mind being a viable option for a variety of builds, and a genuinely interesting race.  The idea of a “Dragon-Tiger” is pretty Napoleon Dynamite but I’m honest enough with myself to admit that I am just juvenile enough to try it.  Still, if it has fur, tails, claws, no thanks.

Shorties are another no-go.  Perhaps that makes me a horrible person, but I like to see armor and clothes on my avatar in games, and short races tend to be a bit compressed.  I’ll admit, Gnomes are pretty boss, and I do have an Asura in GW2, but they are far from my favorite.  Hunch-backed characters/races fall in this same categories (WOW’s Orcs, Forsaken & Tauren, I’m looking at YOU.)

So what does that leave me with?  Something with a blend of fun powers (or good stats) that meets my aesthetic criteria.  Wood Elves from Everquest, Half Elves from EQ2, Norn from GW2, Bretons from Skyrim.  My two favorite from WOW were my human paladin (mostly because at the time that was the only option other than Dwarf) and my female orc shaman (for reasons I won’t get into here!)

30 (More) Days of Video Games

I’m getting a late start to this but here goes.  I am going to try to keep up with my dear friend the Token Female Gamer with her added list of “Another 30 Days of Video Games“.  The idea is to promote a good habit of posting something every day (which is something that I am terrible at.)  I’m going to be using a list of topics that TFG created.  So, here goes.

TFG’s list;

31) Favorite Playable Race
32) Favorite Boss Encounter/Raid
33) Preferred Universe to inhabit
34) Favorite skill
35) Favorite scary moment in a game
36) A sequel that was awesome
37) Good or Evil?
38) Favorite dungeon crawl or level
39) Achievements, to get or not to get
40) Favorite quest
41) Favorite pet/mount/companion
42) Favorite personal character name
43) Favorite Mini game
44) Favorite reboot of a classic game
45) Favorite combat strategy
46) Favorite art style
47) Favorite game adaptation
48) Game that made you feel the most heroic
49) Sci-Fi or Fantasy
50) Favorite morally ambiguous game
51) Game you love to hate, don’t get, wonder why anyone would buy
52) Favorite weapon
53) Male or female
54) Finish a game or not? How long to do you give a game before you write it off?
55) Multiplayer or single player
56) Instanced or not instanced
57) Best character progression
58) Favorite secondary character/random character/minor character
59) Picture of your game setup
60) Top ten games from your gaming history that you would recommend to someone else