There’s a lot of issues I have with gaming. Lack of time, for one. I’d really like to have a lot more time for gaming, and blogging about games. But then I think — hold on, wait a second, I work. And if I wasn’t working, then I’d be broke, and unable to play games (or at least, unable to enjoy playing games), and then I’d lose the house and be on the streets and be miserable and clutching the Othello set my mom bought me when I was a kid, my last remaining game.
But a lot of people do manage to juggle a full-time job, a family, all sorts of real life commitments, and also have time to game but also time to write long and insightful posts about it. I know this because I have Twitter and am daily exposed to precisely the sort of people who are fantastic at everything I’d like to at least be slightly good at. But instead, it feels like I’m always chasing behind.
But, you know, I’m a gamer and gamers gonna game, no matter how much or how little time they have. And I do occasionally actually play games other people are playing (though you’ll pry my Chocobo Mystery Dungeon game out of my cold, dead controller. I don’t care how few people play it; it’s my favorite).
Fall Guys
This game was free with PSN this month, so I downloaded it on a whim, played it a few times, had a decent time though I wasn’t really all that good at it.
Then I get on Twitter, and for some reason started following the Fall Guys sarcastic, trolling Twitter account. I dunno who started the trend of companies actively stirring stuff up on social media instead of placidly pushing the corporate message — I think it was maybe Burger King (that have been doing something of the sort ever since the Subservient Chicken back at the start of the century).
Then all the streamers my BF watches are doing Fall Guys streams. And so I pick up the controller and move around a bit. I now know, from watching streams, that you’re supposed to pick people up and toss them over edges, which would get me an achievement in Ghost of Tsushima…
Avengers Beta
This is a game I only picked up because people on Twitter were playing it. I don’t really have a lot of interest in Marvel stuff. I play DC Universe Online every day — if I count my hours, it’s probably the MMO I’ve spent the second most time in over the past several years, only coming in behind Final Fantasy XIV. This one was free on PS4, too, and I understand it’s just an extended ad for the actual game. But that’s fine.
The game is fine. I guess that’s damning with faint praise? I haven’t gotten too far into it, only having unlocked the first two heroes, Hulk and Kamala Khan. I can’t call Kamala by her hero name because the Marvel family is DC, and I have to stick with my loyalties.
Avengers Beta is a lobby game, where you sit in a lobby (the helicarrier Chimera, which is destroyed in the opening cutscene but somehow miraculously resurrected later). From the lobby, you pick a mission and then try to find people to mission with you.
I have never had a good experience with group missions — I don’t think I’ve completed even one. Usually people drop out. I was in an elevator last night in one of them and couldn’t move, was just totally stuck until the other two humans (one human having already quit without warning) were kicked out, at which point the elevator began running and I could move around. Unfortunately, the three bots that replaced the human players couldn’t complete the mission objectives and so we lost again.
It’s not really worth it. Not a fan. Won’t be playing.
But for a few minutes, I was playing a game other people were playing, and that was enough 🙂
