The Gaming Confessional Booth

Kontra Kommando said:

I'm very good at Madden games, even though I seldom play. This really infuriated a lot of my friends.

This happened to me both ways. My brother often wanted to play Steel Panthers with me, I didn't really want to, and yet I won like 90% time. Later on he stopped asking me to play it. I wanted to play Kult card game with my brother, and he won about every time. Well, I still wanted to play it, but eventually he didn't want to play it anymore. Then there's also 2 board games with similar things with my brother. I always win in Checkers, and he always wins in Mills.

In X-Com series games I've often played with really heavy save/load abuse in the missions. Pretty much save before/after every move, every shot, start/end of turn. The aliens have no chance against my Heavy SaveLoad Cannon. Maybe it has made me a better player, at least I don't make fatal mistakes so much. I still use it anyway. Makes all those super risky moves possible, as I could just load until the alien miss the shot...

In Apocalypse I don't do it so much in the tactical combat, because the aliens are stupid and I can just wait for them to come out of their ship and get killed from 8 to 12 soldiers autofiring 2 weapons each. But in the ship vs ufo combat, I do it, because I want the ufos to appear at the right places, make the ufos cause a lot of damage into the city and also to shoot them down without losing any of my ships. And then it gets boring, because they never have a chance to infiltrate the city, and the city missions are more fun than the ufo missions.

Jimi said:

This happened to me both ways. My brother often wanted to play Steel Panthers with me, I didn't really want to, and yet I won like 90% time. Later on he stopped asking me to play it. I wanted to play Kult card game with my brother, and he won about every time. Well, I still wanted to play it, but eventually he didn't want to play it anymore. Then there's also 2 board games with similar things with my brother. I always win in Checkers, and he always wins in Mills.

I really love civilzation iii, and have played it for many years; developing strategies and tactics. One of my exs played a game only a handful of times, and she had completely surpassed me, with a very simple strategy of spamming horsemen early on. She only did that because she likes riding horses, not even because it was something she really deliberated on. Another gf I had was better at civilization than i was as well; she compared the game to gardening. Maybe women do make for better leaders.

Umm I have 976 hours in KOTOR 1
And I have played aleast 500+ hours in Mass Effect 3.................

I have to admit that call of duty is pretty fun in multiplayer...for 10 minutes.

- I love games like X-Com, TEW and FTL, because I force myself to live with mistakes rather than quick load.
- I say that, yet I grew up forcing myself to play Doom on Ultra Violence living off save files.
- I refuse to play games like Minecraft with permadeath, because I don't invest dozens to hundreds of hours in something just to lose it all.
- I am loyal to my open world created characters and will never make a second character just to see how things play out a different way.

I tend to prefer early 90s graphical adventure games to FPS's - obviously have a soft spot for Doom (although I'm the worst fan, 12 years membership and still under 15 posts on here!)

Another confession,

I've never played any of the Fallout games. I hear they're very popular, should I try them out and which one is the best to start with?

I always consider it a big plus when a game offers a level editor, but I rarely do more than mess around with said editors on trivial/goofy stuff that never goes beyond my hard drive.

Piper Maru said:

Another confession,

I've never played any of the Fallout games. I hear they're very popular, should I try them out and which one is the best to start with?

Fallout 3 is a good starting point.

If turn-based isometric gameplay is up your alley, the first two are certainly worth a play, but they haven't aged all that well, IMO. If you can't get into the early games, skip 'em and read their synopses/etc.

40oz said:

I've always been envious of people who are really good at button mashing fighting games like street fighter, virtua fighter, king of fighters, tekken, marvel vs. Capcom, etc. [...] For some reason those feel like the ultimate test of being a better gamer than someone else. That said, I also consider games like quake 1, quake 3, unreal tournament, counterstrike, age of empires 2, and the extreme bullet hell shooters to be the top tier in testing gaming skill.

I've always been a big Street Fighter / Mortal Kombat / Super Smash bros fan, but I can say I wouldn't call them button mashers at all, at least not if the player knows what they're doing. That's the thing, someone can be amazing at MK but pretty much terrible at SF because along with the button combos you have to remember, there's also totally different "sweet spot" timing required from game to game. Smash Bros is in a league of it's own with fighting games too, while the speed and reflexes required are similar, the game phsyics/gameplay approach are vastly different.

Each game is only a "gamer skill" test for it's own genre, and even then it can only be a portion of that genre :) Someone who's great at ALL fighting games isn't any "better" of a gamer than someone who's great at games with a totally different, not-so-fast-paced apporach. I'd get my ass handed to me in all these DOTA and Diablo games because I don't have the drive to get good at that kind of stuff. (See: They bore the shit out of me)

40oz said:

I'm really disappointed that the grand theft auto series devolved into more of a role playing game than an action police chase gang banger game.

+1, but people are eating the new shit up, and to be fair I still do enjoy it. Like you though, I prefer the focus of the older entries in the series.

40oz said:

I have no interest in tactics-style rpg games where you get into battles and navigate a menu and take turns selecting attacks until one side loses. This includes Mario rpg, final fantasy, and Pokemon. I feel like they all suck.

As far as I'm concerned, these games exist because you don't always want to be showing off your incredible reflexes and timing while gaming ;) Sometimes you want to be taken on a nice, lax little adventure. That's why I really enjoyed Mario RPG and Gen 1 Pokemon games. I think the only two turn-based RPG games I've ever beaten are Pokemon Yellow and SMRPG, because the formula itself bored the FUCK out of me, but those two games in particular - For whatever reason - really appeal to me. I think the music plays a big role in this.

Piper Maru said:

I've never played any of the Fallout games.

And I never intend to.

Half-Life is terrible overrated and Half-Life 2 is the most overrated game ever. No replay value, poor story, absolute trash boat and coast ride chapters.
There is only one series that is (much) worse: BioShock.