Gamer confessions

[BoneSnapDeez]

I don't like Souls games
I HATE roguelikes
I almost always play on the easiest difficulty; I game for a power trip, not a challenge
I detest gaming on a PC, and it's my absolute platform of last resort
Kingdom Sharts is obscenely overrated and mid-tier at BEST

Based and I mostly agree.
The original From Software Souls games are alright but 99 times out of 100 I'd rather just play a "normal" ARPG. And I don't want to play any random game that's labeled "Soulslike."
Similar situation with roguelikes. I like the old Epyx Rogue and classic Mystery Dungeon, don't care at all about derivatives because most are trash.
High difficulty doesn't do much for me. I play games to chill and have fun, not to hustle and overcome and feel like a badass. I typically stick to normal mode.
PC gaming is alright. I could never get deep into the classic FPS, WRPG, etc. scenes though. I doubt I'll ever buy a dedicated "gaming PC" ever again.
Never played Kingdom Hearts. It looks cheap and schlocky and stupid. Tetsuya Nomura is a terrible character designer too.

In all fairness, the mainstream PS1 games are subpar experiences.

Agreed. I use the PSX exclusively for JRPGs plus a few random 2D platformers, golf games, and puzzle games. You couldn't pay me to play Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot, or Twisted Metal. So much of that era is just so clunky and janky and ass ugly. Similar situation with the Sega Saturn, though I struggle to think of "mainstream" Saturn games lol.

Hot take / confession of my own: I don't like my strategy RPGs to get any more complicated than Shining Force. Games like Langrisser and Fire Emblem cross the line into tedium.

[Limewater]

Yeah, most games might as well be played on easy: I find that games are a medium for expression. And if the difficulty is too high, the game dictates how the player -must- express themselves. That's bad design.
However, the Souls games offer many ways to tackle challenges, and then it does become a creative and expressive endeavor.

I have never in my life felt like any game I played was a medium for my own self-expression as a player. I find this idea very odd.

[marurun]

Yeah, most games might as well be played on easy: I find that games are a medium for expression. And if the difficulty is too high, the game dictates how the player -must- express themselves. That's bad design.
However, the Souls games offer many ways to tackle challenges, and then it does become a creative and expressive endeavor.

I have never in my life felt like any game I played was a medium for my own self-expression as a player. I find this idea very odd.

Really? Never? You never felt that the way you played a game was a measure of your self-expression? Which path did you take through Castlevania 3 and which characters did you rely upon the most? What was your skill makeup and choice flow for Skyrim? When you play a fighter are you more of a grappler, a rushdown player, or a zoner? In Mega Man do you tend to try for buster-only clears or do you do the bosses in weakness order? Do you ever grate against a game because it seems to want to only acknowledge ONE way to play and navigate the challenges?

[Limewater]

Really? Never? You never felt that the way you played a game was a measure of your self-expression? Which path did you take through Castlevania 3 and which characters did you rely upon the most? What was your skill makeup and choice flow for Skyrim? When you play a fighter are you more of a grappler, a rushdown player, or a zoner? In Mega Man do you tend to try for buster-only clears or do you do the bosses in weakness order? Do you ever grate against a game because it seems to want to only acknowledge ONE way to play and navigate the challenges?

Yes. Never.

I took the Grant->Sypha route in Castlevania 3 because I wanted to see how Castlevania played with characters who didn't control like a Belmont and I had heard that Alucard's path was more difficult. If I had enjoyed the game more I would have tried to cover every path and experience everything the game had to offer. This was not a self expression. The only thing it expressed was that I wanted to complete the game and chose strategies I felt would give me a better chance of success. It was a choice like whether I'll put blueberries or chocolate chips in my oatmeal in the morning. This choice was also affected by the fact that I have hundreds of games I still haven't beaten. If Castlevania III was my "new game" and I knew I wouldn't get another for a long time I would have played it a lot more and in different ways.
My strategy against Death wasn't a form of self expression. It was based upon the fact that I'm colorblind and couldn't see the red pixels indicating where a sickle was about to appear.

The last game I beat was Super Castlevania IV. I'm pretty sure my only self expression while playing the game was saying that it was a disappointment, given the hype.

I never played Skyrim.

I haven't devoted enough time to any fighting game to feel like I have any sort of fighting game "persona" or "strategy."

When I played Mega Man, I always died on the Yellow Devil/Cyclops, which meant I replayed the six robot masters a lot. Initially I faced them in weakness order, but eventually I got good enough at the game to beat them all with the mega buster. That wasn't self-expression. That was me initially trying to beat all of the levels and then making the task of replaying them over again a little more entertaining for myself.

But even if I did sit down with a Mega Man game and resolve to beat it with only the Mega Buster, what does that express? Just that you want to give yourself an arbitrary challenge for your own amusement.

The method for beating a Robot Master in Mega Man isn't even particularly different between using special weapons and using the Mega Buster. You still just learn the enemy's movement and attack pattern and then attack when you can. Using special abilities usually just changes how many times you have to successfully execute this cycle to succeed.

And no, I never grate against a game for for only having one way to play and navigate the challenges. I bought the game to play it and attempt to enjoy and overcome the challenges that it presents.
Day of the Tentacle is not a bad game just because there is only one way to get the fake vomit off the ceiling.
Super Mario Bros. is not a bad game just because you're stuck trying to run past Bowser if you're little Mario by the time you get to him.
Punch Out is not a bad game just because there is only one way to take down King Hippo.
You still have to stab around with your sword and use a silver arrow to beat Ganon. Is the Legend of Zelda a bad game?
Is Donkey Kong 64 a bad game because you have to play as Tiny Kong to get inside King K. Rool's shoe and beat on his toes? Okay, maybe forget that one.

I'm sure Billy Mitchell would love for your to believe that he is creating art every time he plays Donkey Kong or Pac-Man. But it's still just chasing a high score.

[marurun]

Self-expression doesn't have to be limited to big creative efforts, but I think I understand your position. I don't agree, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.

[Limewater]

Self-expression doesn't have to be limited to big creative efforts, but I think I understand your position. I don't agree, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.

If you think I'm saying that self-expression needs to be a big creative effort, then no, you don't understand my position.

All those peole who went crazy with their extra moved while playing DDR were engaging in self-expression. It expresses a feeling, thought, or idea. DDR is still just pushing the right button at the right time.

If I sit down to play "Golgo 13:Top Secret Episode," and I say, "Hey, this game is not nearly as bad as people say it is!" that is self-expression. It expresses a feeling, thought, or idea.

If I type "Get Lamp" at the prompt in Colossal Cave Adventure I am merely performing the necessary tasks to get started in the game. Maybe there is another word pair that will result in getting the lamp. I guess there better be if it's a good game. Maybe if you could get the lamp via interpretive dance...

Most old video games only have one or two strategies that work for any given situation. The whole game is discovering those one or two strategies. For adventure games, there is typically only one solution, even in a lot of modern games. The idea that a game is bad for failing to provide you, the player, the option of selecting between two or more pre-planned strategies that will work in a given situation so that you can "express yourself" is kind of insulting.

R-Type won't let me try to broker a peace with the Bydo! What a crap game! I wanted to express myself!

[marurun]

I'm thinking more in line with things like: choosing your outfit when you go out is self-expression. I would argue the same about play style. When I play platformers, for example, I tend to hang back and play more defensively. Other people may rush in aggressively. I consider a game better when it accommodates different individual styles of play. I don't happen to agree that a game is BAD for being narrowly tailored to a very specific type of play, but I will always consider a game that has more room for varied play styles inherently better, all other things approximately equal. Because that way I can find a way to interface with the game that better accommodates my preferred self-expression.

[ElkinFencer10]

Re: my deep and abiding hatred for Kingdom Sharts (my perpetually middle-school brain thinks that's the funniest thing I've ever said, so I'll never use the real title), my only true hatred with it is the segment of its fandom that insists it's some groundbreaking and era-defining game rather than a mid-tier Final Fantasy game with a Disney skin on it which is what I consider it to be. I've played through all of the original game. I've played a couple of hours of the second game. It's okay. I have zero interest in Disney, so that right off the bat makes me not the target audience, and the story, while not as utterly incomprehensible as memes make it out to be, is unnecessarily convoluted and absolutely nothing particularly noteworthy or original. Sora is as generic a JRPG protagonist as they come, and while the story connection is clever, a giant key for a weapon is just...dumb in my opinion. It's an okay series, but it's not to JRPGs was Age of Empires was to RTS, what Metroid was to adventure games, or Halo was to shooters. It's what Call of Duty is to shooters - competent but generic, largely unoriginal, and inexplicably super popular.

[o.pwuaioc]

Re: my deep and abiding hatred for Kingdom Sharts (my perpetually middle-school brain thinks that's the funniest thing I've ever said, so I'll never use the real title), my only true hatred with it is the segment of its fandom that insists it's some groundbreaking and era-defining game rather than a mid-tier Final Fantasy game with a Disney skin on it which is what I consider it to be. I've played through all of the original game. I've played a couple of hours of the second game. It's okay. I have zero interest in Disney, so that right off the bat makes me not the target audience, and the story, while not as utterly incomprehensible as memes make it out to be, is unnecessarily convoluted and absolutely nothing particularly noteworthy or original. Sora is as generic a JRPG protagonist as they come, and while the story connection is clever, a giant key for a weapon is just...dumb in my opinion. It's an okay series, but it's not to JRPGs was Age of Empires was to RTS, what Metroid was to adventure games, or Halo was to shooters. It's what Call of Duty is to shooters - competent but generic, largely unoriginal, and inexplicably super popular.

I often feel this way about Super Mario RPG. I think it's because it was the entry point for so many people. It's the first RPG my ex-wife played, for example. In that sense, it's not bad, even if it's not for me, and I understand why so many people like it, but because it was so popular the fandom is excessive.

That said I never got the appeal. Seemed the dumbest thing ever to me when it came out.

[RobertAugustdeMeijer]

Self-expression doesn't have to be limited to big creative efforts, but I think I understand your position. I don't agree, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.

If you think I'm saying that self-expression needs to be a big creative effort, then no, you don't understand my position.

All those peole who went crazy with their extra moved while playing DDR were engaging in self-expression. It expresses a feeling, thought, or idea. DDR is still just pushing the right button at the right time.

If I sit down to play "Golgo 13:Top Secret Episode," and I say, "Hey, this game is not nearly as bad as people say it is!" that is self-expression. It expresses a feeling, thought, or idea.

If I type "Get Lamp" at the prompt in Colossal Cave Adventure I am merely performing the necessary tasks to get started in the game. Maybe there is another word pair that will result in getting the lamp. I guess there better be if it's a good game. Maybe if you could get the lamp via interpretive dance...

Most old video games only have one or two strategies that work for any given situation. The whole game is discovering those one or two strategies. For adventure games, there is typically only one solution, even in a lot of modern games. The idea that a game is bad for failing to provide you, the player, the option of selecting between two or more pre-planned strategies that will work in a given situation so that you can "express yourself" is kind of insulting.

R-Type won't let me try to broker a peace with the Bydo! What a crap game! I wanted to express myself!

Games do indeed have more qualities than "play as an expression". I love Super Hexagon, but I'm not at all creative, just trying to survive. Perhaps the expression I'm outing is that I want to endure and have the last word (after 20 hours I beat it: I say that with pride!).
Many popular difficult games have an aesthetic that go in tandem with its challenge. I would argue this aesthetic is part of the dialogue the designer wants to have with the player. They are offering a narrative and it's up to the player to go along or not. In Castlevania, I enjoy expressing myself as the vampire slayer. In Ninja Gaiden, I get to express myself as a cunning ninja. In Punch-Out!!, I love it all the more when I get to fight against Iron Mike. And in Super Hexagon, I feel my humanity overcome this sadistic code of onslaught.