Confessions of a gamer

I´ve asked this question several times and it seems the answer for me is quite simple, for me it´s a challenge and by beating that challenge I feel like I´ve accomplished something. Well maybe that sounds stupid but facing your fears makes you stronger, so playing survival horror games will make you a stronger person. Mentally stronger of course, I don´t think you actually become stronger by pushing buttons... But why is it fun? Because some people just like creepy things, face monsters or be a monster yourself. It might sound weird to some people but some of us actually like that. I guess we all have our own favourite type of game but survival horror is something I really enjoy playing, mostly because I like to test myself. I mean if I want to relax and play a simple game I´ll be playing some hack and slash or first person shooter (eventhough they´re not all that easy), but with a survival horror game (the more traditional, so without a lot of ammo and not many checkpoints) you´ll h...

We´re so close, within a month we´ll be able to play Dragon Age: Inquisition! But you can already confirm or even change your choices in Dragon Age Keep. What is Dragon Age Keep? This is the place where you can confirm the choices you made in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2, but if you´re a bit less honest you can also change things. Which is a good thing because if you prefer that you did something different then this is the place to do that, it´s also the only way for your choices to make it from your Xbox 360 Dragon Age games to the Xbox One. What can you change? A lot actually! It´s not just the major important parts, also who your love interest was and if you let certain people live. Also the wild night (I won´t go into details but you probably know what I mean) with Morrigan will play a role in the new game, which means if you did that it will change the story in Dragon Age: Inquisition and if you didn´t then it will also change the story. It´s just one examp...

Maybe hate is a bit extreme but they don´t show them a lot of love, why? Who knows, I certainly don´t understand why European gamers get shit on! Because getting the Xbox One almost a year after the first launch was already frustrating and the fact that we pay the same price in Euros as it is in Dollars is also ridiculous (Euros are worth more than Dollars so we pay extra for the exact same stuff). Now the 50 Dollar discount (which only lasts till early January) only counts in the USA, once again European gamers are being crapped on. Is Microsoft really that surprised that so many people decided to move from their Xbox 360 to the Playstation 4? I wouldn´t be... I don´t say that Microsoft is the villain here, but it´s not the smartest way to treat loyal customers. I understand that there is a delay for certain things but that excuse is wearing thin and it´s starting to make more sense that it´s just stupid behaviour on their part. I´m not asking for special attention, just try to ...

Next Tuesday you can play CoD Advanced Warfare, but if you pre-order now you´ll get the Day Zero edition which gives you 24 hour early acces with double experience. This sounds cool and I think for a lot of die hard multiplayer fans this is probably how you want to start the game, to get fast on a high level and get the good stuff. But is this really a good thing or not? I think a lot of people will get the Day Zero edition, which means that a lot of people can benefit from the double xp. But what does that mean? Half of the CoD community will be level 50 at the end of that day? I know that I don´t level up that quickly, even with double xp I doubt I´ll be reaching level 30. But for those that are the die hard multiplayer gamers, they´ll probably reach a high level and will benefit greatly of this boost and probably make things a bit more annoying for those who don´t level up that quickly or didn´t get the Day Zero edition. I hope that Sledgehammer will be able to keep the b...

It´s strange but this game is not really a survival horror game and yet for me it does fit in the same group more or less. Why? Because you have these tentacle monsters that help you devour your enemies (or at least their hearts) and do some creepy stuff to intimidate your enemies. But it´s not your typical survival horror game, so I guess it doesn´t really belong in that genre. Still it´s a fantastic game! You play as Jackie Estacado, not really a bad guy but working for bad guys. When one day they try to eliminate him he gets a visit from a strange being calling himself the Darkness, this being gives Jackie amazing powers and allows him to escape. Unfortunately he can´t save his girlfriend and when she´s killed by the same guys that tried to kill him he wants revenge and you´ll get it one way or another! Your powers are amazing, not just to rip out hearts but also to control minions and use special powers to destroy enemies with. Of course you also have a lot of guns to ...

Not everyone is the super social guy or girl, some people just enjoy playing a game alone or even in a multiplayer game just doing his or her thing alone. Some people find this annoying, they don´t understand lone wolves and often make it their business to try to kick that person out. But is a lone wolf really that bad? It might seem wrong for me to defend them as I´m also a lone wolf, I play a lot of single player games and even in multiplayer games I often go my own way. This doesn´t mean that I´m not a team player, I help defend points in domination matches and stick with others when the other team does the same. But to be honest I prefer to go out on my own and face people in one on one confrontations, that doesn´t mean that I don´t enjoy getting a double or triple kill but in some games that can be tricky. The thing is that a lone wolf isn´t a bad addition to a team, they can actually distract or wreck enemies because not everyone expects them to strike when most of the team is ...

Sooner or later this will happen to most games, the popularity of the game will disappear and so will the people that play this game as they move on to other games. I guess you might keep a handful of loyal fans but sooner or later you´ll have to move on because if it´s an online multiplayer game the servers will shut down eventually. An offline single player game might have a better chance to survive time but then again how many times can you play the same game over and over again? What´s shocking is how some games lost their popularity quite fast, for example Titanfall was super popular in the first month but then three months after launch it was almost completely abandoned on some consoles. Which is a shame because it´s a good game, but somehow people couldn´t enjoy it for that long as most people would move on after a month or two. I guess being able to level up that quickly does have a disadvantage, people reach max rank and then quickly get bored with the game. For me it went e...

There aren´t that many people that actually hate achievements/trophies but I´ve heard some of them talk about the point of achievements/trophies, it´s easy to say that it´s fun to collect them or to keep a game longer alive as some people try to get as many of them as they can but I don´t know if that counts for everyone. You see not everyone is happy with achievements/trophies, I know that I have moments where I hate a certain type of achievement that is put in the game just to annoy you. Of course you can ignore that achievement (or trophy) but that would mean you let that annoying asshole win, never! When I play a game for the first time I´ll look at the achievements and try to get as many when I try to beat the game for the first time, depending how much fun the game is and if I´m confident enough that I can get more achievements I´ll go for a higher difficulty or just try to reach the places where I can get more achievements. It´s maybe not the most fun way to play a game but us...

Good news for all the Gears of War fans, the rumors say that there will be another Gears of War game and this time it will be a lot darker (probably darker as in the story not really the game being underground, for as far as I know). The rumors also say that this won´t be a reboot, this will continue the story where they left in the last game (Gears of War 3, because Gears of War Judgement is a prequel). Is this news you´re excited about or are you done with Gears of War? Personally I didn´t really have that many problems with Gears of War Judgement, first of all Baird is my favourite character so I did enjoy playing as him (eventhough they let you play as every member of Kilo squad). The multiplayer was ok, I really did like that you could get a lot of multiplayer achievements in bot matches which saves you a lot of frustration. People also didn´t like that you couldn´t have an assault rifle and shotgun at the same time when you spawn in, personally I like this because this mean...

It´s Autumn, the sky is gray and a cold wind is blowing through the trees that are losing their leaves, what a depressing time of the year. But wait! Here is Sunset Overdrive to kick some colourful crazy action into your gaming life! Especially after playing the Evil Within this feels so refreshing, just to look at all the colours and the crazy tricks you can do while shooting these strange creatures. But is it enough to keep you entertained for some time? When I first saw this game I thought that it would be a bit like Saints Row but then even more crazy, which is actually not that far off though. Especially when you look at the later Saints Row titles, Sunset Overdrive will take things not too seriously and you can still beat the shit out of enemies. Wether these are zombie like monsters coated in colours or assholes with guns, you can kill them all! The big bonus is that you can do this in style, because on the ground you´re actually quite vulnerable so it´s safer to just grind a ...

I think it´s easy to say that Lords of the Fallen is a Dark Souls wannabe, because this game definitely has some cool stuff to make it worth buying it. Sure it borrowed some ideas from Dark Souls but when you look at most games there isn´t a lot of originality and in this time I don´t expect that, as long as the games are fun to play and worth buying then that´s already a good game in my book! So this game is difficult? It´s a challenge, but I don´t think it´s as difficult as Dark Souls because that game makes you hate everything while this game will probably make you smack your own face. Death isn´t the end in this game, it just means getting back to the spot where you dead as fast as you can so you can pick up your experience, the longer you wait the more of that will vanish so you might want to run towards it. The problem is that the enemies you´ve killed are back and won´t let you get past them just like that! So hopefully you´re good at evading assholes because this game is full...

Of all the Silent Hill games this is probably my favourite, because it took all the creepy shit from the first game and added some more just to make certain that you wouldn´t feel comfortable playing this game. But of course also one of the first bosses I met in a game that couldn´t be killed! Sure you could beat him but he would always come back, just hearing the noise of metal scraping on the ground still makes me feel uncomfortable! Same town different story? That pretty much sums it up, eventhough you don´t go to the area of the first game, you´re now in another part of town where things are just as fucked up as in the part you explored in the first country. You play as James Sunderland that is looking for his dead wife, yes you read that right his dead wife. He got a letter from his dead wife in which she asks him to go to Silent Hill to meet her. Any normal person would´ve just ignored that but not James, he goes to Silent Hill and meets monsters...and Maria. Who´s Maria? Maria...

The Musketeers would say: " one for all and all for one!" Unfortunately these days things are a bit different, people don´t care that much for others and your own needs seem to be more important than the needs of others. This is how it works in the offline (when you don´t play games or go on the internet) world but definitely also in the online world. It´s up to the point where people act in such a way that their presences disrupts everything else. But who cares? As long as you get what you want, right? Wrong! As a kid (at least I certainly hope so) you learn how to share, it´s not all about you and sometimes you get a bit less so others also have something. There is nothing wrong with that, because why would you want everything if you can give some to others and make them happy as well. For some people this is easy, for others this is difficult. I guess it depends who you are and how you were raised, I think an only child might have more issues with sharing as he or she pr...

As much as you want to complain about shops and a bad economy things are hardly as bad as in games, because shops usually ask a small fortune for items and if you try to sell something (sometimes an item you just bought there) they only give a handful of money for it. Ridiculous! But why do developers make these shops so unfair? If you would get everything at a cheap price and get everything you always wanted then that would make the game ten times easier, it would also mean that you´d probably beat the game in a day and that wouldn´t really keep the game alive for a long time. Things need to be hard, items need to be earned and you can´t just give them away. It´s all part of the experience, like it or not that´s just the way it is! Sometimes people try to be clever, they steal or even kill the shopkeeper just trying to get stuff for free. Unfortunately this hardly ever works because all the items usually disappear once the shopkeeper is dead, apparently the developers realized tha...

It seems weird, scary games that are popular. But it´s actually not that weird, people seem to have a thing for things that scare them. Teen slasher movies have a lot of popularity and those movies are considered as classics by a lot of people. With games it´s pretty much the same, the more blood and disturbing shit that goes on the more likely people will want to play it. But why? People are weird? I´m not even going to deny that, people are weird but I don´t think that´s the main reason why a lot of people enjoy playing survival horror games. I can´t speak for everyone but for me it´s a personal victory to beat the monsters and make it out of the game alive. Well not every game has a happy ending, yes I´m looking at you Silent Hill 2, but it´s nice to know that you made your way through the game and beat it. Preferbly on a high difficulty because beating a game on easy still doesn´t mean much to me. I think for other people it´s also some type of victory, to face your fears and mak...

I think the last update in Destiny made several people upset, especially people that just unlocked the Vex Mythoclast because that gun would destroy people in PvP! But no more! Oh it will still do hurt but it won´t be an unfair advantage as it once was, now you might actually stand a chance with another weapon. But is this really fair? I think this isn´t a fact but just an opinion, because those that have the Vex Mythoclast will say it´s unfair and those that don´t have and probably never will get it will find it quite fair. That´s exactly the problem as well, when some people have acces to a powerful gun and other don´t then there is an unfair advantage to some people, these people will win most of the time and the others won´t. Which means they won´t enjoy playing PvP anymore and that part of the game might eventually die, this is something Bungie doesn´t want and thus the weapon got nerfed. The same counts for the Suros Regime, another piece of shit weapon almost every douchebag...

Recently I talked about how survival horror games are slowly starting to become scary again, after playing the Evil Within I´m pretty certain that this is true! What starts as another day on the job as a cop turns out to become a nightmare for Sebastian Castellanos! From the classic serial killer scene where he chases you with a chainsaw to horrible traps that you could find in a Saw movie and disturbing stuff you´d only find in Silent Hill. This is the Evil Within! What´s so scary about this game? I´d say the realism of it, not that everything is so believable but you´re not Chris Redfield that can shoot or punch his way out of trouble, you´ll have to be smart and find ways around problems and be clever to overcome an obstacle instead of trying to punch a giant boulder into lava. This kind of shows you the big difference between Resident Evil and the Evil Within, both are survival horror games but they take different paths. The Evil Within wants you to think before you act, as Resid...

I´ve heard people talk shit about Assassin´s Creed Rogue, because it´s just dlc for Assassin´s Creed IV and that it´s just a bone to chew on for everyone with the last gen consoles. Wrong! Assassin´s Creed Rogue is so much more! You play as an assassin that leaves the order after something terrible happens, so he joins the templars and hunts down his former friends and other assassins. This is already something I like, being on the other side and see things from their perspective. They already teased with this in Assassin´s Creed III and I´m glad that they finally decided to make a full game out of the templar experience, hopefully we´ll see more of this in the future! The tools you use to take down assassins is quite interesting, because you have high tech (for that time of course) gear that helps you take down enemies and always be one step ahead. You don´t wear the hood anymore, but you do have an awesome looking trenchcoat! Personally I´ve always been more interested in templar...

Have you played the Gamecube version of Resident Evil? It´s a remake of the original game on the Playstation but with some cool extra stuff in the game, for example new areas to explore and a new monster that is almost impossible to kill! This game was one of the main reasons for me to buy a Gamecube at that time (and I bought the Wind Waker to get the Ocarina of Time on this console as well). But how good is this version of Resident Evil? Everything looks so good! Even now ten years later the game looks pretty good, I mean for that time it was amazing to see this in a game. It made scary even scarier and even when you knew things would happen there would still be surprises. For examples zombies you killed came back alive, but now they´re stronger and faster! This really freaked me out the first time, because I knew I killed that zombie and yet he stood up in a second and attacked me on sight. That was a nasty surprise but brilliant! But it´s the same story? Yes you still play as C...

I guess it´s not a big surprise, when you´re frustrated you´ll get angry (maybe not everyone responds this way but at least it doesn´t make you happy) and this leads to an unpleasant gaming experience. So why do so many developers make games frustrating? The problem is often that people these days complain about almost everything, it´s too easy or the graphics look like crap and then there is always a need to just hate a game to annoy others. People are impossible to please these days, well maybe some aren´t being scumbags but a lot of people complain about almost everything. Eventhough we live in a time where things are pretty good, well when it comes to technology at least. We can play games in our house, play with our friends eventhough they´re on the other side of the world and we can communicate from almost any location. But it´s never enough, good has to be better and when something is better a lot of people expect the best. For developers it´s not easy to please people, becaus...

It seems so innocent, letting someone win in a game. Maybe you have a kid, your boyfriend or girlfriend, a younger brother or sister and you just want to be nice. But is it really a good thing to let them win? Let´s take a closer look at this kind gesture! My father never let me win and when I got good enough with chess to beat him he refused to play against me anymore, of course that´s not fair but that´s how it went for me. Of course I did beat him with other games, but the fact is that he never let me win and that pushed me to do better. Something I still value this day, because if people give you a victory then it´s not earned and it feels empty. Maybe a kid doesn´t see it that way but it takes the beauty of the victory away and can even ruin a nice memory. So you have to be an asshole? I´m not saying that, you don´t have to crush them and then make fun of them, that´s being an asshole. But you can tell them what they did wrong and motivate them to do better, this way they´...

It never takes long for people to complain in first person shooters about balance in competitive multiplayer. Some guns are overpowered, other guns are too weak and then there are guns that are just right but get nerfed anyway. Enough fuel to make people mad and massively assault the developers, but is it actually possible to bring balance to a first person shooter? I don´t think you can bring balance to competitive multiplayer in a first person shooter, because there will always be a gun that´s slightly better than the others and if that gun is nerfed then another gun will that place of being the best. So that means the developers shouldn´t do anything about it? I´m not saying that, because when a gun is clearly overpowered then it´s not fair towards anyone else that doesn´t have that gun or can´t use that gun for whatever reason that might be. You want to keep things fair and as close to being balanced as possible. Because no matter how good your skills are, if someone with an over...

After seeing the Revan dlc for the Old Republic it made me think of a game that was never made, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 3. I really like the first one and the second game was also pretty good, the ending was a bit weird but it´s definitely not a bad game! But somehow the third game was never made, oh sure we got the mmorpg but I don´t think this is what most people were hoping for. So this raises a question, do you know more games that were never made? I think there are a lot of games out there that never got a sequel, there are several reasons why this happened but it still comes down to the fact that you´re not getting the sequel you want! After the legend of Zelda: the Ocarina of Time I really wanted a game just like that, unfortunately Majora´s Mask was a bit different. Sure it´s the same type of gameplay and style but you play as Link junior and that´s a bit lame after having played as adult Link in the previous game. Eventually Twilight Princess came out but it wa...

Maybe you´ve played in the Iron Banner event in the beta but now you´ll have to face people that are (almost) at their peak with level 29, which means tough times for low level characters and good times for high level characters. But is it all worth it? For low levels it´s worth trying to earn some legendary armor but it might take some time because people don´t want to play with low levels in their team (which usually mean they leave the match) or you´ll just have a rough time facing people with better armor and weapons than you! Because they´ll do full damage and that might destroy you before you even get the chance to get near them. Of course a level 29 isn´t invincible, you can kill them but it´s just tougher and you really have to ask yourself if you want to go through that frustration just to get some legendary armor you can earn in so many other ways that are much easier than this! So the Iron Banner event is a waste of time? Absolutely not! You can test your skills against ...

I must admit that I was excited for a moment when I first heard the news, but then the rest came. Revan does return but as the leader of a cult that tries to destroy both the republic and the empire, sigh... What happened? I remember when I first played Knights of the Old Republic, that was amazing and I really enjoyed the story and talking with the other characters in this game. It was my first experience with a Bioware game and after Knights of the Old Republic I kept an eye on them in case they made more fantastic game, I think Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins are good examples of that! But now we get this, after a lot of fans screaming for Revan they get a version of their favourite jedi/sith which they probably didn´t expected and probably don´t want. If you couldn´t play as Revan then you want him (or her, I guess some people prefer a female Revan) to be a member of your crew or at least someone you could talk with and hang out with. But things look grim from this point ...

How can you talk about Street Fighter without mentioning Mortal Kombat? Well here it is, another legendary fighting game from the past. I guess if you didn´t like Street Fighter but you do like fighting games then Mortal Kombat was most likely one of your favourite games. You could have many reasons for that but the main reason for a lot of people is the fatality! Do you remember the first time you played Mortal Kombat and you just beat your first opponent and then out of nowhere you saw the text finish him appear on scream and said by a menacing voice? At first I had no idea what to do, so I´d usually just uppercut the guy (or girl if it was Sonya). Then I heard about fatalities, which looked cool but for me are usually frustrating to do that quickly and without mistakes. But if you succeed you get a brutal animation how your character rips the other character apart or does something else that is completely over the top! Does this also count for the female character? Yes you can a...

This actually makes sense when you play a single player game, you´re the star in the game and it is all about you. Especially when you play as the hero in the game then it´s up to you to save someone or the world. But in multiplayer games you´re just one of many players in the game that probably tries to do the exact same thing as you, unfortunately some people can´t let go of the single player idea that it´s all about them. This sometimes leads to unpleasant confrontations between people in a game. What´s mine is mine, what´s yours is mine as well? It makes sense that you want to level up and make progress in a game as fast as possible, but it´s not nice if you do this at the cost of other players. Because you might have a great time but you´ll ruin the fun for someone else. If this is in PvP then this makes sense, but in a PvE setting this is a douchebag move. Especially in MMORPGs you see a lot of people being selfish bastards, trying to steal kills or items just so they can make ...

Have you seen the latest trailer of Dying Light? Just like the game evolve you can become a monster (some type of super zombie) and hunt down a group of survivors (played by other people). As this super zombie you can invade someone elses game and then try to kill him or her. But are you really interested in this? Hasn´t this been done before? As a matter of fact it has! Several times this was an option in other games and it seems this keeps happening where people can invade your game and try to mess with you. I don´t know who thinks this is fun or that this is a good idea, but I don´t like it! When I play a single player game I don´t think that it would be more fun when a random stranger can invade my game and try to kill me, where is the fun in that?!!! Developers think you like to be an asshole? Sometimes I´m getting this idea because you have to be a real asshole enjoy messing up the fun of other people, unless there is an achievement or trophy tied to this and you desperat...

How many times did you get screwed over with a blue or purple engram? Somehow nine out of ten times it would be something less useful, which was probably one of the most annoying things in the game. But Bungie claims to have fixed this, now you get the same type of item as the colour of the engram or better. Doesn´t this make the game too easy? Perhaps, but getting all the materials to upgrade your armor completely will take some time anyway. Even if this means everyone will be in legendary armor by the end of the month then who cares? Isn´t it more fun to make progress and actually feel like you´re moving forward instead of being stuck with the same shit all the time? Which is why I´m not going to complain about this, eventhough my titan is already in full legendary and exotic armor I still have a hunter and a warlock that could use some. Hopefully now things will go faster and I can level up a bit faster after level 20. Because without rare or legendary armor it´s not going to ...

If this is true then you should play games for only a week and then never play them again, because it sucks when a game you loved from day one turns into a game you start to hate. Maybe it also has something to do with the way you play and the amount of time you invest in playing the game. But it often still leads towards games being less awesome then you first thought. First impressions are important? When it comes to people then that´s a yes, but with games this is more deceptive. A lot of games look amazing at first but when you play a certain game for some time you´ll notice things that are just annoying, I wouldn´t say that it ruins the game but it adds frustration to your game experience. It´s often for that reason why I´m sometimes very excited about a game and then a couple of weeks later I´m less positive about the game, GTA V was a good example of that. The agressive cops was nothing new but the whole GTA Online thing was just atrocious! This actually became a bit better mo...

I bought Lord of the Rings games before and so far I wasn´t impressed, I guess it didn´t help that those are movie games that are often not of the greatest quality. The Lego game was funny but nothing new to be honest. But now there is Shadow of Mordor, a dark story about revenge and tactic. Not the type of tactic you would expect in a game of chess but still it has some depth. But how good is this game really? Let me first say that I like the style of the game, it´s dark and ominous and exactly how I would like to see it. If you´ve seen the movies then this will probably one of the darkest things you´ll encounter in Middle Earth. But working with a wraith you wouldn´t expect things to be cheerful and I´m glad it´s nothing like that. It´s brutal action where killing is nothing new and executions can be extreme! Isn´t this just an Assassin´s Creed rip off? I´ve heard that before and I must admit that I see similarities, but it´s definitely not a rip off! This game borrows some ideas...