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thegeneralsnotebook · 4 years

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January Feature: History of Colours Part 1 -- Yellow

Welcome to another year’s worth of articles on The General’s Notebook. The time off in December, as I flew home to be with my family for the holidays, was a refreshing one, and now I have some energy to begin tackling another project. In this case, that’s a new series of posts over here, detailing the history of each colour within the entire scope of the MLPCCG metagame. For many of us, those early days of the Premier Block may be represented by nothing more than the old cards that we know were played with back then, but there was real development and real competition then too. In fact, in my opinion those days were something of a Golden Age for the game, when the subreddit was filled with excited speculation and real discussion. Sure, the cards may have been subpar, but the community was pretty great.

Of course, in my case those days were before even my time, as though I started playing the game around midway through the tenure of Canterlot Nights, I only first started paying attention to the larger trends around Absolute Discord. So some of the older decks were completely unknown to me, and I was lucky to have the expertise of my good friend Bugle to help putting this history together. To start, we’re going to be talking about Yellow, because it’s a colour that’s had a really interesting history, possibly one of the most interesting out of all the colours.

It’s also a colour that is really present in the zeitgeist of the game right now, suddenly a force to be reckoned with not just in Core, but also in Harmony. Indeed, as we’ll see, there’s a little bit of poetic justice in Yellow taking a Harmony crown this year, given its history with the format, but to understand that we’re going to have to take the whole journey first.

Yellow’s fortunes in the game have experienced some significant variations over the course of time, but in broad strokes, the story is actually very simple. In the beginning, the colour was great. Then it was bad, for a long time, and now it’s good again. Barring one or two exceptions, that’s actually a pretty good approximation of how things have gone in the years since Premier. So let’s start with those golden days of yore, when the future was bright, and the metagame barely a new thing.

The core highlights of any Premier Yellow deck.

The Golden Years of Premier

There were two notable Yellow decks in the days of Premier, and while they shared one big card (one that will be a recurring theme through these early days of Yellow decks), aside from that their playstyles couldn’t be much more different. On the one hand, we had the aggro stylings of Blue/Yellow Rainbow Dash Wins, and on the other the Yellow/Purple control of Royal Guidance.

RD Wins probably requires little introduction and explanation. While in those days the game was fundamentally different, with confronting a Problem before anyone else netting you the Problem’s bonus points, functionally aggro was still aggro. That meant that one kept their cards’ reqs low, optimized high impact for low cost, and built an insurmountable momentum through the midgame that carried on through to the end. The biggest feature of Blue in those days was the free movement available from cards like Wild Fire and Holly Dash, and the AT efficiency of Cloudchaser and Two Bits. Yellow pitched in cheap things to make finding the off-colour Problem requirements easier, as well as the best Faceoff trick in the day with Critter Cavalry. And, of course, lest she ever be forgotten, the sheer dominance that was Guidance Counselor. This wasn’t one of those decks that necessarily tried to lock the opponent out of the game with her, as RD Wins was often, er... winning before that would happen, but it was still a huge source of AT advantage, and already well-recognized as one of the best cards in the game.

By the way, those 9 Troublemakers certainly weren’t a mistake, as if you take a close read on PR Rainbow Dash’s text you’ll realize that she needed them, even if the main strategy of the deck was was to confront Problems and go fast. And hey, who would say no to the opportunity for that brilliant double YPS opening? Even if we’re an aggro deck.

To the second example, Royal Guidance was the Swiss Army Knife of decks in those days, and it was one that absolutely thrived on the idea of dropping Fluttergui Turn 2 and basically winning the game from there on out. In fact, that was where the name of the deck came from, since Royal Guidance was the card that enabled either of Fluttergui or Ursa Vanquisher to hit the board early, setting up for an extremely asymmetric early game that would be used to assert dominance through the rest of it. Generally, this would take the form of solid Purple control, hunkered down behind Troublemakers and letting the game draw out. In those days, options against Troublemakers were few, and most decks could only really gather their resolve and hope to take them down in the faceoff, and under those circumstances Purple’s tools were well-positioned to keep the walls secure.

Indeed, some builds of Royal Guidance even tried their hand at the good old Gyro toolbox, even then already in a very well-developed form, though without the Eff Stop support at least. In the late game, the deck would often transition into a farming plan once Fluttershy had been flipped over, and could usually pull it off quite well, netting the extra points needed for the last push to the finish.

The meta as a whole was fluid in those days, with a number of other decks also vying for things (as we’ll get to in future articles), but with these two Yellow was absolutely in contention. This was a state of affairs that was bound to continue, at least for a little while.

These two could kill you with a wink of their eyes.

And The Man at the Back Said “Everyone Attack”

And it turned into a Ballroom Blitz. This one is probably the most well-known Yellow deck of the Premier era. Not only did it represent a distillation of the best that Yellow had to offer from the first two sets, it represented the match-made-in-heaven that was Yellow and White. And, so far as I could tell from the history, this deck was also Rarity: Truly Outrageous’ breakout hit. Sure, it was obvious to everyone that she was an absurdly valuable card right from the start, but it looks like this was the first deck that really hit the big-time with her.

The new Fluttershy Mane represented a huge speedup in the early game, especially since at this point Starting Problems were almost all small ones with easy confront requirements, and thus CN Fluttershy could ensure a quick confront and bonus points as soon as Turn 2. Remember those first confront bonuses plus the faceoffs, and a dominant early game could easily put the game out of reach, especially once it was followed up with the White-powered midgame, consisting of Stand Still to keep the opponent off-balance, and of course RTO to seal the deal. The deck could even (and often did) obtain the extra efficiency of using Staring Contest to self-bounce a cheap Friend like Forest Owl. Why, after all, would one spend 2 AT to move it when one could transition it through the hand instead and only pay 1 AT? All of that combined to make a lightning-fast juggernaut that tore up tournaments all across the country.

Of secondary note is a list that Bugle brought to my attention which I had never even heard of, a Yellow/Pink creation of the time that went by the semi-official name of Ploofy Critters. Fundamentally, this deck is working to much the same principles as the one above, but replacing the White integration with a somewhat lighter Pink package instead, and taking more Yellow weight as a result. Pink certainly does offer a bit of more permanent removal, but this deck’s success was something of a mystery at the time of its origination, especially with this list missing the crucial power that was Snips & Snails: Problem Solvers. (Which, it pays to note, was an even better card with those old first-confront rules.) Still, this deck in combination with Ballroom cemented Yellow’s status as one of the strongest colours in the game.

Unfortunately, though, that pride was coming right before the fall.

Something tells me this isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of these two in this series.

Rock & Ruin

Crystal Games started out shaping up to be a great set for Yellow. In fact, there was a deck shaping up that looked about ready to dominate the whole meta, and it was indeed powered by a Yellow card. But it got banned. Even so, for at least a little while the old guard was able to keep on with things, mostly overlooking the cards in the new set. As time went on, though, a couple of Manes who had been introduced in a small supplemental set made their presence felt more and more, and started defining their own era, which we’ll cover in more detail once we get to the articles about Orange and Pink. Most important to this story was the final nail that came with the banning of Guidance Counselor. Yellow had lost its biggest weapon, and in a world now filled with farming and Pile combo, there just wasn’t any space left for it anymore. It fell away.

So began the Long Darkness for the colour. Indeed, it got so bad that at the second NA Continental tournament, there was a grand total of just 7 Yellow cards across the entire Top 16. The one bright spot, in its own ironic way, was the popularity of Seabreeze’s Flower, which was kind of a Yellow card, even though nobody was using it for that purpose.

From here, the history gets a little dull, because yeah, the Long Darkness continued for a long time. Years and multiple sets passed with the colour being little more than a footnote, with few good Manes to its name, no true bombs that could form a deck’s foundation, and little prospect on the horizon too.

Which isn’t to say that attempts weren’t made. A few of them even bit at the edges of viability. Equestrian Odysseys especially offered quite a bit of hope, with Fluttershy, Backup Vocals finally being the card that could maybe make Bubbly Mare work, and Bedtime offering the chance for a Yellow/White control deck. Both of those saw real experimentation, but came up short, especially in a meta that was now quickly falling under the sway of the Apple Queen.

Then, suddenly, a spark. From a most unexpected direction, the colour came to life in High Magic, this time partnering with Purple and White in the form of Zipporwhill control. Granted, it was a mere 4 Yellow cards that made it into the deck, but that was the most that had been seen in a top deck in years, and more importantly they were the key cards that made the deck work. The piles of critter tokens that often accumulated over the course of a Zipporwhill game were a testament to that. The deck’s ability to turn a merely efficient Power Event in Rise and Shine into a control tool was its main strength, and cycling it repeatedly with Eff Stop turned out to be just the ticket. While Zippo’s time at the top turned out to be brief, with Defenders heralding the rise of Pink decks with more removal than she could stand, it was a bright, shining moment. Maybe, just maybe, Yellow was back to being something worth playing around with.

The heralds. Surprisingly, it still took a few sets for Yellow to emerge again.

A Silent Renaissance

Defenders of Equestria absolutely was the point of rebirth for the colour, though one wouldn’t necessarily have known it at the time. This was, after all, the meta made famous for Hot Wings and Vinyl’s Bag of Tricks, a time of Pink ascendancy almost unparalleled save maybe for the grand old days of Pile (again, more on that in the Pink article). But quietly, important seeds had been sown for Yellow’s resurgence later. Most importantly, after literal years of waiting, the colour received not only one but two exceptional Mane Characters in Nurturing Nature and Thorax. With that came extremely efficient point acceleration in the from of Tri-Horned Bunyip, and new tools against both Resources and Troublemakers, themes that had been building in the colour for a while, and were now getting close to a critical mass. Indeed, the colour was getting back to its roots for the first time in a while: prepping for a game plan of speedy confronts and aggression.

You might think, then, that it was only a matter of time before things turned around. Seaquestria & Beyond certainly had enough good cards that one would think the colour couldn’t help but see play. Day Shift once again gave the colour some brutal AT efficiency, its efficacy against Resources became unmatched with the introduction of Brian, and we even saw multiple effective multicoloured cards added in: like Pirate Fluttershy and Treading Water. Yet even so, Yellow remained under the radar, with the Seaquestria meta being first dominated by the Apple Queen (prior to her forcible removal) and then by Tempest Shadow and Purple/Pink.

Nay, it was indeed not until Friends Forever that the colour finally threw off its bonds and re-emerged as a true contender. Little wonder that this was accompanied by a true monster card in Mage Meadowbrook. In this set, Yellow was not taking any prisoners, and it was time for everyone else to feel the weight of the long years it had spent in irrelevance. Suddenly there were more Yellow than one could shake a stick at, with the most prominent being the Thorax/Orange aggro pioneered on the West Coast, and the pure mono style that first made waves in the Midwest. It also featured, at least tangentially, in the alicorn tribal that saw some play around this time.

Fast-forward now to Leaders & Legends, and suddenly the colour is everywhere again. It has prospects with Purple thanks to Pegasus Royal Guard, is still going strong in Orange, where it now regularly trots out Novo for the surprise faceoff edge, and even just captured a tournament in Harmony, at this most recent Vanhoover Pony Expo. Remember how I said there was a little poetic justice in Yellow’s tourney win this year? Well, Yellow dropped off in the old CG meta due to the prevalence of Pile of Presents and Orange farming. Which deck did Yellow have to beat to take the crown at Vanhoover this year? Yeah, it was Pile, albeit in an updated form. What was taken first from Fluttershy, Thorax has now reclaimed.

Conclusion

That thus wraps the discussion of Yellow for this month. Truly, this colour has had a very bumpy ride over the course of the history of the game. Yet, at the moment, the horizon looks bright. It’s a future that once looked nearly impossible, but those of us with a soft spot for the colour are now happy to see it come. May many more like this follow!

As for this series, the next colour in the line will be White, as we walk backward through the normal colour order. That may be in February, or later if something else demands attention first. But in any event, I’ll see you all back here next month for another post!

#mlpccg #history

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neon-serpent-llc · 7 years

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Here’s to 365 days of polygonal worlds, shot point-blank at our grey matter, some catching fire, others fizzling to the void! It must be that oh-so-pointless time to give out video game awards! For the third year running I present a cheeky list of spills and chills like no other (spoiler: Overwatch wins nothing). Anyway, blahblahblah, here's the awards already:

Game I Forgot Existed Until I Looked Up "Game Releases of 2016" Award

Quantum Break

Like previous winners Watch Dogs, and Evolve, this is a shining example of a game that simply vanished after it was released. Probably took hundreds of Artists four years to make, and then *poof* gone overnight. But alas, most games do, eh? Was the TV show any good?

Best Case for Virtual Tourism Award

The Division

Say what you will about the game itself, but this lovely facsimile of NYC is killer. And super accurate. If it weren't for all the invincible, hoodie-wearing street thugs it would be a pleasure to cruise this digital remake of my favorite city.

Genius or Madness Award

Zero Time Dilemma

A game that walks the line perfectly between the two. So clever, and yet maybe too clever? The twists are ridiculous when they work and outrageous when they don’t. Even so, its sheer confidence of going eight steps beyond everyone else, narrative-wise, is so refreshing. Truly a piece of Art that only works in the video game medium. Speaking of Art...

Most Unplayable Work of Art Award

The Witness

Conceptually, The Witness is flawless. Especially once you've seen the "real" ending, that perfectly frames the point of the whole experience (I watched it on YouTube). Unfortunately, to get that real ending is a monumentally painstaking chore. But, this isn't "difficult" Art in the sense that its meaning is opaque or it’ll challenge your worldview. Its simply that I have zero patience for puzzle games. If The Witness is an encapsulation of what it means to be Johnathan Blow, then it's clear that he and I couldn't be more different. And that's why it works as Art.

Don't Want to Be the Guy That Says, "I Told You So," but.... I Told You So Award

No Man's Sky

Even with its countless features, the spiritually-similar Spore got boring fast. How, then, was this bare-bones knock-off, No Man's Sky, going to keep people interested? And that was with the assumption that it would at least look nice. However, it absolutely did not. The novelty of seeing procedurally generated ANYTHING gets old fast, and it's made far worse when you're presented with a never ending stream of ugly, barren planets made of mud and more mud. Next year’s winner: Star Citizen?

Biggest Social Phenomenon Since the Wii Award

Pokemon Go

It didn't last long, but for a month this summer, everyone was out hunting in the parks of the world. Sure, we still mostly ignored each other, but there was a touch of bizarre camaraderie knowing we were all playing the same giant meta game. Like the Wii before it, it was a game-related subject you could talk to ANYBODY about, and they'd not only know what you meant, but have an opinion on the matter. How often does that happen? How odd was it to see a fifty year old business man asking where the nearest Clefairy could be found?

Welcome to the 90s Loading Time Award

Deus Ex Mankind Divided

I think I spent more time riding the subway in this game than I have in real life.

You Don't Know Your Audience Award

Metroid Prime Federation Force

As a new Nintendo IP this would have got tons of attention. Who doesn't like crazy new Nintendo ideas? But as a Metroid game it could only possibly get bad press. Why play as Samus when you can play as more-generic-than-Master-Chief, chibi space marines instead? A top tier faux pas.

They Finally Got it Right Award

Dragonball Xenoverse 2

After decades of awkward DragonBall games, they finally hit the sweet spot for over-the-top action with fun controls and interesting content (granted, I never played the first Xenoverse). In the year of Street Fighter 5, who would have thought I'd prefer the new DragonBall fighting game?

Well Deserved Retirement Award

Dark Souls 3

Still fun despite almost no alterations in what is clearly a formula now, but I'm glad this is the last hurrah, at least for a while. As I said when Dark Souls 2 came out, the magic is less pronounced with each additional entry. None will have that Demon's Souls impact anymore. But when it returns in 5 to 10 years, it'll be nostalgic to see the old tricks in action again.

Everyone's An Asshole Award

Dishonored 2

At least that's what the talking Heart makes it seem like. Half the populace has secretly killed their husband/wife, whereas the other half have burned down orphanages or something.

Late to the Party Award

Steins;Gate

Another game I played years after release. And damn it's good. Far more novel than game, but I don't mind for a story of this quality. Why wasn't I reading this earlier? Haven't got to Steins;Gate 0 yet, but I'm working on it.

Xenogears Disk 2 Award

Final Fantasy XV

Like Metal Gear Solid V last year, another all-around excellent game that suddenly sprints to the end, jumping vast stretches of story in an instant, clashing hard with the slow burn style of storytelling established before that. Much like Xenogears of yore, this is a game that tried to be far bigger than time/budget allowed.

Honestly, I wish these overly-epic games would get chopped in two, a la Kill Bill. At the point where the story would start getting rushed, end part one. Just end it. Then let its sales fund part two, the remainder of the story. Then again, you run the risk of a Too Human situation where you announce a trilogy and then don't sell enough to finish it. But honestly, Final Fantasy and Metal Gear would handily sell enough. I’m sure they’ll make a FFXV-2, but at best it’ll attempt to reassemble the pieces of its predecessors fractured ending.

Didn't Burn the House Down Award

Uncharted 4

The writers said the ending would "burn the house down" in terms of closure. But it didn't, at all, even slightly. Uncharted 5 could EASILY be made based off this exact ending, with no retcons and no changes to the game’s formula. They'd just have to make Drake constantly say, "I'm too old for this shit!!"

It Shouldn't Work, But it Soooo Does Award

Dragon Quest Builders

I don't like Minecraft. As a professional level designer, I find Minecraft‘s game building tools too crude to enjoy using at length (what a snob, eh?). And I don't like Dragon Quest. Too much grind, not enough story. Too simple. But for some reason when you combine the two it's fucking great! Dragon Quest adds the personality, charm, and flavor Minecraft was sorely lacking while also bringing enough story and tangible goals to make the building feel like a game and not like a chore. Plus, the game’s worlds are fairly handcrafted and feature proper level/zone design, which is greatly appreciated. The surprise hit of the year.

Best Game Industry Trend of the Year

Virtual Reality

I'm glad we're all working on it seriously now. Sure, the current headsets are uncomfortable as fuck, (can’t emphasize this enough), but its a step towards sunglasses-size VR in about ten years or so. Plus, by then everyone will be over their VR sickness so we won’t have to keep watering down the experiences we create. It’ll be sweet!

Worst Game Industry Trend of the Year

Infinite Sales

Between Steam, Good Old Games, Humble Bundle, Greenman Gaming, PSN Store, etc there is always a massive, store-wide sale going on somewhere. Wait a year and any game you want will be a mere $10. Why buy an unknown indie game when you can get a supremely polished, lengthy triple-A game for the same price? Indie developers basically need to charge $1 to get anyone's attention. Or make their game free *cough* ULTRAWORLD.

Best Game Awards of the Year

Obvious

Worst Game Awards of the Year

The Game Awards

A transparently corporate affair, the winners have all be carefully selected based on what needs to sell at Xmas. Companies won't even show up if one of their high profile games doesn't get an award. Even setting those complaints aside, it's hard to get interested or excited about a 2016 award show that happens with over a month of 2016 left; when wonderful games like The Last Guardian haven’t even been released yet. Speaking of which...

Game (Experience) of the Year

The Last Guardian

There's a layer of disconnect between the player and Last Guardian. The boy, Trico, and the camera all seem to disobey the player constantly. Many marked this as a flaw, but I think it's 100% intentional and part of why the game is so cohesive, thematically. For me, there's an added sense of surrealism when things are out of control. The chaos of physics interactions seem like they shouldn't work, yet suddenly you've made it to the next section of the castle. Did you really play that last section, or merely guide the chaos? Since you’re playing as a helpless child, lost in towering labyrinthine passageways, this obtuse disconnect feels entirely appropriate.

I feel it's intentional because Fumito Ueda and his team have managed to capture this sense of surreal play for three games in a row. Everyone manages to get to the end despite the feeling of disconnect. Trico is so aloof, yet will always get you where you need to go. Eventually. If everything functioned 100% predictably, God-of-War-precise, it would be FAR less memorable...as an experience. You, like the boy, legitimately struggle to escape the castle. Who has the guts to purposely make their controls imprecise to service the game, and theme, as a whole? It's amazing. A true work of Art. Game of the Year.

Non-Game of the Year

ULTRAWORLD EXODUS

The expansion and finale to whatever the hell this thing is. I liked it, but I think I'm literally the only one.

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So that's the year, says I. Looking over my list, its clear I didn't play many indie games, even though I complained about people not buying indie games (which is bad Karma for me, but I'll live). As always, if you disagree: good. All awards are pointless, just fluff opinions with a bow on top. Your awards are as good as mine, good as the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, etc etc forever. Til next year!

2015 Awards 2014 Awards

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sven-kroosl · 7 years

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My Top 10 Games of 2016

Man I'm glad 2016 is over but the games were good...

Some years play rough and 2016 was one of those years and I am very happy for it to be over. On the other hand in terms of video games, and only video games, this was a really great year. From a really solid resurgence in the quality of triple A shooters, to the Juggernaut that was Overwatch, and some really solid indie releases, there were actually too many good games for one person to play. Also there was a massive update to DotA 2 this year which is always welcome. So here we go, my top ten games of 2016.

Honorable Mention - The Final Station

Of all the games I played this year I had the most intense reaction to The Final Station. Upon completion of this game I set aside my controller, turned off my monitor, not the PC, just the monitor, then I went for a walk around the block. I was moved to this act not by any great aspect of the game’s production or by some jaw dropping set piece but instead by the oppressive weight and bleakness of The Final Station’s world. A dangerous world where even the simplest task can expose you to being torn apart by brutal attackers. A world where infrastructure is crumbling and the people normally trusted with protecting everyone have secretly betrayed the trust of the people. After the way 2016 played out, the bleak outlook of The Final Station resonates even more.

10 - Pokemon Go

I am not a Pokemon fan. I fully recognize the good and great qualities of the Pokemon universe, but the games and cartoons have just never done much for me. The runaway success of Pokemon Go demanded that I give the game a shot despite my usual lack of enthusiasm. What I found was a really solid AR experience filled with tons of excuses to get me up and about in the real world and a great new icebreaker to start conversations with people I would otherwise have nothing in common. Oh yeah, and some weak ass Pokemon.

9 - Reigns

Reigns is a truly fantastically simple game. Of the two mobile games on this list Reigns is the one that fit into my life the best. In that way Reigns was the anti Pokemon Go; Pokemon Go was the mobile game that changed my routine and Reigns was the game that fit into my routine. When you’re waiting in line for the movies or whatever you can’t go running after that stupid Zapdos. But you know what you can do? You can live the lives of half a dozen Medieval Kings, you can meet the devil in the form of you dog, you can fight skeletons in a dungeon, and even more cool stuff. Also it’s a mobile game that you just pay for up front and it never bothers you for money again, which is always nice.

8 - Darkest Dungeon

Fun fact: for most of my 2015 Extra Life Marathon I was having internet service issues and about the only game I could reliably stream was the early access version of Darkest Dungeon, so I have more than a little experience with the game. The way that every part of The Darkest Dungeon works together to to create a gothic horror landscape is just fantastic. The way the cartoony artstyle contrasts with the animation and sound design is just dissonant enough to be unsettling. The way that the psychological maladies effect the gameplay and can just straight up end a dungeon run or in some cases even end a game is a risky gamble that really adds a sense of tension that works incredibly well with the tone of the game. Ultimately Darkest Dungeon is a really great, creepy, game. Be ready to grind a bit though because you'll definately need to.

7 - The Banner Saga 2

In a year when the second entry in the XCOM franchise was a disappointment there was a shining star in the turn based strategy genre and that star was The Banner Saga 2. Where XCOM 2 made the mistake of assuming players had maintained their skills from the first game The Banner Saga 2 eased players back into the combat system with a few easier battles before dialing up the difficulty. It also doesn’t hurt the game that it has some of the best hand drawn style art and animation of any game ever. Bottom line: The banner Saga was the best turn based strategy game released this year and I really like that type of game.

6 - Overwatch

I really enjoyed my time with Overwatch this year. Zarya is top tier A-plus defensive tank, and is also just the best. The way that Blizzard has built not just a great multiplayer game but also the UI framework around that game which celebrates every player’s contribution is a great accomplishment. I think that the characters in Overwatch are all really fun as is the game itself. It’s just a shame that there’s really no good single player experience in the game and that the story exists entirely outside the game, and that the community for that game is becoming toxic in spite of some masterful design efforts to combat that. Also shameful is Blizzard's decision to add the worst free to play practice, blind loot boxes with repeats, to a full price retail game. Overwatch is a really great game that is slowly getting worse over time and that’s kind of sad.

5 - Dark Souls 3

Dark Souls 3 is my first Souls game so I was unprepared for the absolute savagery with which this game assails players, even in the tutorial. Once I played for a while, though, patterns began to reveal themselves and a game that seemed ferocious at first became simply challenging but fair. The appeal of Souls games was lost on me for a long time. I couldn’t understand why people were so excited to play blatantly unfair games. Now that I’ve played one I understand that these games aren’t really unfair or even onerously difficult. Souls games simply operate at a different tempo from other games and learning that tempo is the really difficult part of mastering them.

4 - Stellaris

Just. One. More. Turn.

Getting you to say that after 8 hours is the ultimate goal of all games like Stellaris. What Stellaris offers you that others like it don’t is freedom. Freedom to design your own civ, freedom to find your own way to win the game, freedom to be weird. Games like Stellaris, most notably the Civ series, tend to force players into a few basic strategies. Sure you can try a pacifist playthrough in a Civ game but good luck actually winning or even surviving very long that way. Stellaris has a way of making all playstyles viable by making them all just flawed enough that really drew me in to an extent greater than any other game I played this year. That said I tend to be fairly biased in favor of this type of game in general so it’s not a huge surprise that it affected me this way.

3 - Doom

Doom is a game about momentum which is important because that is the way it is different from practically every other game this year. The new hotness in games lately has been agility; letting players flit about the environment hither and thither. Doom ignores this trend, almost with disdain, forcing players to keep their feet mostly planted on the ground but letting them move at unheard of, in recent years, speed across it. What this means is that Doom isn’t a game about not getting blasted so much as it is a game about blasting things. The whole point of the game is to treat enemy encounters the way the Kool-Aid Man treats walls. This isn’t just a return to form to the series because this year’s DOOM added a new piece to the old formula; storytelling. In DOOMs of yore story was an afterthought for the most part. This DOOM, though, actually has a story with a plot and everything and actually interesting supporting cast members. This game even managed to give the “Doom guy” a little bit of a personality and for that alone it will go down as maybe one of the best shooter campaigns ever. In a year where the most popular game is often about five opposing team members finding ways to keep you from killing the sixth Doom is a breath of fresh air, letting you really cut loose against a horde of angry demons released by the worst kind of short sighted corporate greed.

2 - Hyper Light Drifter

I’ve said this a lot this year and I’m going to keep on saying it, because apparently it needs to be said. Everyone, play, Hyper Light Drifter. As a medium video games are often criticized, occasionally correctly, for being too over the top. With that being the case Hyper Light Drifter is possibly the exception that proves the rule. Which is to say sublimely simple and quiet but also incredibly fun and engaging. It doesn’t hurt that the game has the what is probably the best pixel art and sprite work in a game since Fez, an amazing synth heavy soundtrack and great sound design overall. The real beautiful aspect of Hyper Light Drifter, though, is the gameplay, specifically the combat. Few things this year have been more satisfying than mastering the combat in Hyper Light Drifter. The combat is just different enough from other similar games to be challenging while being familiar enough to not be off putting. But more than anything about the game it is the quiet tone of Hyper Light Drifter that impressed me. So what are you waiting for. Go play this game!

1 - Titanfall 2

Titanfall 2 is a truly magnificent accomplishment in game design and execution. Every bit of the game is impeccably well done, it looks and sounds amazing, plays like a dream and most importantly is a joy to play. While a lot of games have the kinds of traversal mechanics that Titanfall 2 has, nothing feels like Titanfall 2. That is what makes this the best game of the year, the way it feels. More than any other aspect of the medium, feel is what defines and differentiates games. In a year where great games were built to make you want to gamble on a loot box or increase accuracy of your favorite GPS app, the relative purity of Titanfall 2 makes it stand out. Instead of trapping players in a restrictive character class Titanfall 2 lets people customize almost every aspect of their multiplayer loadout. The game is even more distinctive on account of its campaign, remember those, which is a masterclass in how to pace mechanics. Titanfall 2 is constantly introducing and discarding new, interesting gameplay mechanics and consequently never gets dull or repetitive. When the mechanical brilliance of the campaign is put together with Titanfall 2’s solid “A boy and his robot” story and one of the year’s standout new characters, BT 7274, and you get, arguably, the best campaign of the year.

As parts of video game industry more and more often leave out parts of their games so they can sell them to us later or add sleazy free to play hooks to games they also expect us to pay for up front, it becomes important to celebrate games for simply being complete experiences on release. Unlike some games on this list Titanfall 2 is at that and more, the best game of the year.

#Titanfall 2 #Hyper Light Drifter #DOOM #Stellaris #Dark Souls 3 #Overwatch #The Banner Saga 2 #Darkest Dungeon #Reigns #Pokemon Go #The Final Station #Top 10 #Game of the year

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samanthasroberts · 6 years

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5 Things You Grew Up With (Your Kids Will Think Are Insane)

At this very moment you are living in the future that your ten-year-old self was pretty sure was going to be up to its nuts in robot butlers and cyber ham. Unless you’re ten right now in which case what the fuck? Your parents let you read this? I could literally start talking about dildos at any moment. I hope you go to them with any confusing questions you may have so they can assure you I’m not real and there’s no reason to take anything I say seriously. That aside, you’re also living in a time when today’s ten-year-old will have no idea what you went through to get to this point. Just look at all this non-dildo stuff that has been lost to history.

Phones Used To Buzz Into Your Earhole When Nobody Was On The Line

You have a phone, right? There’s a good chance you’re reading this on your phone. There’s a better chance you use your phone as a phone far less than you use it as a device to type and read making it kind of bizarre they bother to call it a phone when that’s probably third down the list of things it does. No one calls a cat a “sand shitter,” even though that happens more than you use your phone as a phone. But pooping in sandboxes aside, remember dial tones?

You probably haven’t considered this in a while, and if you still have a landline phone, maybe you still have a dial tone? I wouldn’t know, I don’t have a landline phone. But I know I don’t have a dial tone and legit haven’t heard one in years. Now imagine the kid born after 2010 who while vaguely aware of the concept of phones that have squiggly, pig-tail wires attached to them would have no idea why the damn thing drills a ceaseless robo-fart into your ear every time you pick it up. If a kid picks up a phone today and hears a dial tone, they’re going to assume it’s busted. Like bad busted, too, because it’s never made that sound before.

In days of yore when everything had to be plugged into something, the dial tone was a friendly reminder that your phone worked, because there was literally no other way to know your phone was working. It didn’t do anything. There wasn’t anything to look at or charges to adjust or battery life to keep an eye on. It was an ugly-ass lunch box with a plastic half brick you pressed to your flesh. The dial tone was the phone saying “Hey friend, why don’t you give grandma a call? Also waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!”

Those days are gone now and they never need to come back. The next generation is not just going to be unaware of a dial tone, they’re going to have to Google the term because it means nothing.

Credits Meant The Movie Was Over

When I was a kid, nothing sucked more than watching a movie on TV and waiting for the next show to start as the damn credits rolled. Nothing. Not war or famine or Full House. You watched the credits only because you wanted to see what was on that channel next and were too lazy to leave the room or, you know, live a life. If you’d rented a video, you pressed stop as soon as that first name started to scroll up because credits were how you knew the movie was over. Did all those people work hard to make this film? Sure, but I don’t know them or anything, they don’t need me to read their names. Your parents didn’t stick around to watch the school play after your part was over, they threw their beer cans on the floor, yelled at you to get off stage, and went the hell home.

Nowadays, thanks mostly to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if you see a film in the theater you’ll notice that just about half the room stays as still as statues when the movie ends. For any comic-book or action-type film, and even some comedies, you want to stay put because surely there’s a post-credit bit of awesome, or some sweet bloopers running through the credits. The movie isn’t over when it’s over, it’s just dribbling away like those last vexing droplets of whiz after a night enjoying gimlets at the bar.

The future is going to be rife with movies that make you five minutes later for everything you do thanks to this phenomenon. Kids are going to be expecting it all the time and they will wait, reading the names of each and every gaffer, best boy, and second-unit caterer from Quebec where they filmed all those Bigfoot-takes-a-forest-bride sequences. I showed my niece The Goonies and she asked me to turn it back on after I stopped the Blu-ray so she could see the final scene. It’s in their heads and there’s no getting it out. But also, don’t you wish there was a post-credit scene in The Goonies and it was just Corey Feldman singing “Ascension Millennium” with Chunk and Sloth? Because I wish that.

Phone Anxiety

There are two kinds of teenagers in the world. There’s the kind who are self-assured, know everything, and are featured in PSAs on how to be awesome — drag-racing and smoking that reefer. And then there’s the kind I was. I can’t speak to that other kid in his varsity jacket and five-o’clock shadow, which, in retrospect, might be just the memory of a few high-school sex comedies I saw in the 80s and not a real thing, but never mind that. I can speak to the gut-butt-fucking fear I felt as a 14-year-old calling the girl I liked from French class and having her mom answer the phone.

I can’t even think of the last time I called any individual and got anyone else answering the phone. If you called someone now and someone else answered, your first instinct is either their phone was stolen or they’re dead. The days of having a house phone are drawing to a close and even if you have a landline, you probably have a cell phone anyway and that’s how people call you. No high-school kid is calling their friend’s house and getting stuck chatting to Mrs. Friend’s Mom.

In a reasonable world it wouldn’t matter if you had to talk on the phone to a person’s mom for 30 seconds, but that’s not the world a teenager lives in. Getting mom or dad on the phone is psychologically on par with being caught masturbating. It’s harrowing and earth shattering in ways that are hard to account for and the children of tomorrow have no idea how lucky they are that human interaction is so limited now. You don’t have to talk to the pizza place if you don’t want to, you don’t have to go to the bank to pay your bills, and you never have to talk to that hot girl’s mom knowing full well that she knows you’ve been staring at her daughter’s exposed bra strap in the back of second period every goddamn day.

The kids of tomorrow are losing a healthy sense of fear and self-loathing that previous generations were saddled with. That illogical and fear-born sense of inadequacy that plagued you at every turn because you were sure someone was judging you, even if you didn’t know why. Now everyone’s that varsity jock just high on their own sense of unfettered phone confidence, calling people left and right and only talking to them like some kind of majestic phone barons of a future telecoms utopia.

Late Fees

In the realm of gaming, look at what the Go-Gurt gobblers of tomorrow are missing out on. When I was a kid, I had to go to Blockbuster to rent a new Playstation game and so help me God if I was late bringing that thing back, lest the dreaded late fee be put on my bill. Try to explain that to a kid in ten years, that there was once a time when you not only needed to go to a business to rent a piece of physical media which is probably going to not exist in a decade’s time thanks to streaming and online gaming, but my playing the game meant someone else couldn’t play it. Some poor schlub had to wait for me to bring it back and if I was late, Blockbuster charged me again because Jimmy Guntstubb was desperate to play Battletoads and I fucked up.

Basically, gaming in any practical form, for any kid whose parents weren’t rich enough to buy every new game on a whim, was a community endeavor. Everyone had a tacit agreement to work together for the joy of the game, or the whole system was fucked harder than a Fleshlight thrown into a prison yard.

There was literally no way to see gameplay outside of a commercial unless you caught an episode of Video Power with Johnny Arcade, so renting was the best way to test the waters and see if you were up to the challenge of Contra. You and every other kid had to be orderly and patient. You rented that game, you put in your time, and you took it back. Every late asshole threw the whole system into chaos.

The very idea that you couldn’t play a game or watch a movie today because the kid down the street’s parents refused to vaccinate him and now he has polio is damn near absurd. Why should someone else’s shitty punctuality affect your gaming? It shouldn’t. But dammit, it did. The struggle was real and the only defense that existed against it was Blockbsuter’s unshakable adherence to the rule of late fees, the most strict punishment and deterrent they could muster.

If A Game Failed, It Was Likely Your Fault For Being A Filthy Slob

Obviously technology today is a hell of a lot different than tech from the 80s, or 90s, or from about 5.27 seconds ago. Rest assured technology in 2027 is going to be full of brain-wave-activated toasters that can give you a hummer while making Pop-Tarts for you, the way Edison intended. But that doesn’t mean toasters won’t exist in the future. There is, however, a good deal of stuff kids are never going to get to see or experience. It’s not evolving or getting updated, it’s simply been rendered obsolete.

The big issue with physical media is the general maintenance and upkeep. If you had a VCR you probably remember the thrill of adjusting the tracking when your video inexplicably just started oozing down the screen and tweaking like it hadn’t had a drink since this morning. Or how about that VHS copy of Splash you watched too many times that eventually became so worn out and static-riddled it was like watching garbled porn on a cable station you didn’t get (which is another thing your kids will never know about).

Gamers went through this, too. When I bought vanilla World Of Warcraft back in the day, I think it came on five or six CDs because the idea of actually downloading the game was as silly as the idea of eating a ham sandwich with no bacon on it. If even one of those fuckers got scratched, you were screwed. Or let’s say you installed it just fine, but in the middle of a big boss fight, your mouse suddenly spazzed out, and the cursor shot up to the corner of the screen. That old style mouse had a ball and rollers in it. A little, grey ball that sucked up desk-based schmutz like a magnet. You’d have to pop the bottom of your mouse, pull the ball out, swab off the layer of dog hair, dust, and dried tears on it, then do the same for the tiny little wheels inside. That’s a lost art now, like polishing your monocle (the real way, not the euphemism for sticking Pop Rocks in your pee hole).

The point is that the game failed because you failed. You took such poor care of the components, it crapped out. Already today that can be circumvented thanks to a having a hard drive to store games, and in the near future, companies like Sony and Microsoft will just drop the idea of physical media altogether so you have one less thing to get sticky with your Mountain Dew. Because, as we all know, true gamers Do the Dew. Everything will exist in the cloud, and if a game failed, it’s not on you — it’s all them.

No more discs means no kid in the future is ever going to have that moment when they take a scratched copy of Earthworm Jim and try to rub peanut butter across the bottom of it because someone somewhere once said that will repair surface scratches … even though I’ve never actually met anyone who got that to work and it mostly left my Final Fantasy VIII smelling like a middle-schooler’s sandwich from back when middle-schoolers were allowed to have Final Fantasy VIII sandwiches.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/5-things-you-grew-up-with-your-kids-will-think-are-insane/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/05/09/5-things-you-grew-up-with-your-kids-will-think-are-insane/

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adambstingus · 6 years

Text

5 Things You Grew Up With (Your Kids Will Think Are Insane)

Phones Used To Buzz Into Your Earhole When Nobody Was On The Line

Those days are gone now and they never need to come back. The next generation is not just going to be unaware of a dial tone, they’re going to have to Google the term because it means nothing.

Credits Meant The Movie Was Over

Phone Anxiety

Late Fees

If A Game Failed, It Was Likely Your Fault For Being A Filthy Slob

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-things-you-grew-up-with-your-kids-will-think-are-insane/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/173719664232

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allofbeercom · 6 years

Text

5 Things You Grew Up With (Your Kids Will Think Are Insane)

Phones Used To Buzz Into Your Earhole When Nobody Was On The Line

Those days are gone now and they never need to come back. The next generation is not just going to be unaware of a dial tone, they’re going to have to Google the term because it means nothing.

Credits Meant The Movie Was Over

Phone Anxiety

Late Fees

If A Game Failed, It Was Likely Your Fault For Being A Filthy Slob

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-things-you-grew-up-with-your-kids-will-think-are-insane/

0 notes