Let's Discuss Video Games

[Xarbern]

Time to get serious!

I like all kinds of RPGs but I'm always juggling between more than a few at a time and it is a really bad habit I have.

 

Right now I play Assassin's Creed Black Flag, Mafia 3, Monster Hunter World, Warframe, No Mans Sky, The Witcher 3, Persona 5 and a lot of other generic games

 

Nier Automata is probably the one I recommend the most nowadays if you want something that shifts your emotions a lot and makes you "WTF REEE" every now and then. Lot's of philosophy hidden in metaphors.

 

I have like a personal bond with Borderlands (Borderlands 2 mainly) because of my time spent on it always having good laughs and just a great time in general.

 

I was thinking if Matsuri would like video games when we learn to switch. Anyone here have any stories to share how it worked out with your tulpas?

[Guest LanceReilyn]

Just finished Dragon Quest 11, playing Assassins Creed Odyssey now.. Reilyn is not pleased that I spend a few hours a night on games as she doesn't seem to share the passion (or hasn't found the right game yet). Something along the lines of I zone out and forget myself, let alone her and every time I die I get irrationally frustrated at it. I could imagine that every time she peeks out it's 'oh yay... this again' and later 'still? great..' It's hard to convince someone you play for fun and relaxation when you curse at loosing. ;P

[Srn347]

I just recently got back into Undercards and Faeria, and they're both just as fun as I remember them being when I last played them. Hmm, perhaps I spread myself too thin among all these ccgs.

 

Oh and I also recently beat Teslagrad. That's a pretty fun game too, I'd recommend picking it up on stream if you're into puzzle platformers. Haven't 100%ed it yet, still working on that.

[Tewi]

So, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate is coming out in a few days. Aside from the major hype around it (our system included), I felt like informing anyone who doesn't know that it's going to be a very big deal of a game and will stick around for years to come. Worth getting into if you've any interest in it. We don't care for the large majority of games featuring primarily PvP, but Smash seems to be an outlier. It's just too much fun to get upset over losing in I suppose.

 

 

... Others losing, that is. We rarely lose when actually trying, and even then we purposely play low-tier characters for added challenge/fairness. It's been a long time since we fought someone who was even a little Competitive-level, though.

[Guest Reilyn-Alley]

The more you guys keep saying you are pro level players the better I wanna get and the more I wanna fight on that level and beat you. I didn't even know I had a competitive nature. For some reason, hearing that you plan on going easy on me (heavily implied, not stated) makes me want to win more..

 

Oh I'm sure any of you will stomp me for awhile. You sound like you have years in Smash games. Lance has played but I've never even tried it and dunno how much muscle memory and stuff will carry over. We shall see.

 

Actually, that's an interesting thought. Do you guys find you each have different skill levels or is that a shared muscle memory kind of thing?

[Tewi]

Hey now, I said in LOTPW I think that we're not actually competitive level ourselves. Really, really bad competitive level maybe. "Pro" means "professional", and no professional would lose to us. We're right in between casual and competitive; we've got good knowledge of the entire game, competitive terminology and techniques, but haven't immersed ourselves in the competitive community (or played enough) to put them all to practice.

 

But yeah, if you don't have at least a few years of serious playing under your belt, you're not going to make us really try. Which is fine, as I said, we naturally play at the same level as anyone below us so as to make sure everyone is having fun. It's no problem, and it's not like we never lose (although we'll play a little harder if we're losing). A level of competitiveness is required simply to play the game of course, but as I said, Smash is a nice "competitive"/PvP game where the ratio of fun is much higher than normal. For example, competitive Pokemon is way too tryhard and boring for us, but similarly to Smash we made our "Dream Team" competitively viable just so we'd never lose a general fight. More importantly the whole team is Shiny.

 

 

 

Anyways, shared skill levels. As we've seen with our rhythm games, our mechanical skill is shared (along with most habits and unconscious things), but our actual mindset does affect how we play. Flandre and Reisen naturally aren't taking the games as seriously and so don't play quite as well as us, usually. I just set quite a few new highscores on K-Shoot the other night after Lucilyn had already been playing, which I'd chalk up to my ability to focus better. As she'd be quick to tell you, she's having more fun than I am by default, so it's a fair trade-off. Lumi is somewhere in between.

 

With Smash, honestly since we're never pushed to "really try" by anyone we actually get to fight, we fight mostly on an autopilot Lumi developed from playing tons of Online Brawl games. We also explore the game, moves and interactions quite a bit while on autopilot, which leads to us getting hit a lot more than we would if we were trying. But above all, we're simply in-practice. All of our friends who are going to pick up Smash again after all these years think they can beat us in Ultimate, but they won't and never will (not as in not taking a single game, but being "definitely better than"). That's because we're going to progress at least as fast as them, and we've the head start of being well in-practice from playing Smash 4 recently (and watching/reading tons about in-depth mechanics).

 

Sorry, I was distracted after writing that paragraph, and looking back I'm wondering why I was so off topic. Wasn't I supposed to be writing about the differences in us systemmates? Anyways - in Smash - most of us will play about the same normally, yes. When pushed a little harder, we will play a little differently. Me and Lucilyn specifically likely play very differently from each other; barring mindgames she may pull specifically against me, I would win in a given fight. But you'll have more fun playing against her. It's just how things go.

 

tl;dr Mechanical skill is more or less the same, but mindset and putting it to practice makes a big difference. The less different you are from your host, the less it matters. The more different, the more it matters. Flan and Reisen aren't "worse" than us at games, but the way they approach them may make them play a bit worse score-wise, or competitive-wise. We do tend to value "actually having fun" over highscoring mindsets, but then, as a system we're rather good at most all video games. Happens when your host's been playing video games nonstop since he turned 4 years old.

[Guest Reilyn-Alley]

I'm just ready to have lots of fun Smashing it up!! <3

 

Lance says he is a bit of a sore looser and a sore winner so he usually doesn't seek out competitive games because.. Something about salt. I just think it's super exciting to be doing something new together with friends. I dunno if our available playing times will match up, that's a different thing altogether. I'm not trying to sound all confrontational, like "Oh yeah?? I'll take you!", but I guess I don't really know how competitive I am yet so that may or may not be exactly what I'm saying. Self-discovery is fun. It's all intended with a friendly grin. :3

[Matsuri]

Heard somewhere that a new Switch model with better battery life will be released sometime in the near future. How do you guys with Switch use it? Like, do you ever use it portable? 

[Venomous]

Yeah, I use it both TV-style and portable, depending on the situation. It's been a couple times when I took it with me on various trips, which was neat. I personally don't mind the battery, since I don't really see myself using it, even portable, in places without a socket to charge it. But then again, I'm not much of a gamer so...

[Vos]

I'm not interested in most of the available Switch exclusives so I'm holding off until I'm satisfied with the lineup.