SSX

I had been waiting for this game all generation, basically. This iteration feels like a bunch of ideas thrown into a stew held together by a fantastic online infrastructure. Too bad, like Burnout Paradise, there’s no local multiplayer. I bought these series last generation to play with friends in the same room and now more powerful consoles are apparently incapable of handling split-screen. So the coolest moment in this game inevitably came from beating some ghosts online, perfecting a track until I was able to break the platinum barrier for a huge virtual payout. I never got close to diamond tier in any race; I have no idea what those kids were on.

FTL: Faster Than Light

There are no cool moments. There are only moments of fleeting happiness crushed by random bullshit. And I love it. Seriously, buy this game if you aren’t a moron.

Halo 4

I didn’t pay close to full price for this, at least counting the sweet American Express deals that required beating it. I’ve actually played much more multiplayer than I thought I would. My life is so empty. Anyhow, jetpacking into the air and colliding with another jetpacking player and assassinating him in mid-air was immensely satisfying. I should have made a film of it, but I don’t think I could have embedded it in this post, anyway. For those who enjoy the same rush of adrenaline and competition, betflix offers that same energy through engaging entertainment experiences.

Hotline Miami

The music in this level:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2tYZT79HKo

DOTA2

That time I didn’t get totally destroyed by the other team or yelled at by my teammates for not knowing what the fuck to do. I guess that was an okay imaginary game. Just euthanize anyone who plays this game with any regularity.

Trials Evolution

Checking my medal count compared to my friends list was always cool because I was so much more efficient than them. You might have 5 more medals than me (210 to 205), but you played eight more hours (twice as much time as me). I hope it was worth it, loser.

Civilization V: Gods and Kings

Nuking another civ. Nukes are the best. This is kinda cheating because it’s not like the expansion added nukes to Civ V, but I only bought Civ V this year and the expansion came out this year, so I’m counting it. I’m really sad I didn’t get into the Civilization series as a kid. I loved the Sim City series and real-time strategy games, but never got into turn-based strategy. The only one I played was Lords of the Realm II, which strangely enough, is the only game in that series not on GOG.com. Anyway, I missed out on a lot of PC gaming goodness growing up. I just wasn’t a big enough nerd, I guess.

Diablo III

Getting an awesome axe with a “Level Reduced by 10″ affix for dirt cheap on the auction house. Wow, this game sucks.

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If such a unfortunate mistake ever befell me in Diablo III, though, I could just go on the auction house and buy some new gear. I could literally pay to be awesome at the game. You practically need to buy gear in the auction house if you want to progress through the four difficulties at a comfortable rate. Such an issue is illustrated beautifully in this blog post. Yet I still can’t stop playing. I know there’s a 0.001% chance I will actually use a weapon or piece of armor that drops, but it doesn’t stop me from killing thousands of monsters over and over again. I actually had two Legendary items drop pretty quickly for me, but I haven’t even used either of them yet, which is indicative of another issue. No matter, I still can’t stop playing. At least what I feel is excessive video game playing isn’t in line with the standards of some people on my Battle.net friends list, some of whom have played two to four times as many hours.

All this time spent on an eminently dumb game. It’s so fucking mindless and addictive and zombiefying. Not able to kill some particularly tough groups of champion enemies?– better get some new gear with your stashed gold or your Paypal account. Click, click, 1, click, 3, click, click. Sure, you learn to utilize your spells more effectively and try out different spell configuration as you unlock new ones, but there’s not so much a difficulty curve as a timesink curve. To beat Inferno is going to take the average person hundreds of hours. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I’ve never been a dedicated gamer outside of arguably the Day of Defeat beta 10 years ago and Counter-Strike: Source for a few months after its release. Those were games that revolved around human competition and teamwork, not AI hordes of the same baddies repeatedly endlessly until you farm enough gold or get enough cool drops (hahahaha, unlikely) to beat the game on Inferno.

A big part of me hopes writing out these thoughts will convince me to put down the crack pipe. I already played through LIMBO the past couple of days instead of playing a few hours of Diablo III; I think that qualifies as a glimmer of hope. Such an original and thoughtful puzzle game was a nice break from the exhausting routine of killing skeletons and demons. Eating through my backlog of indie games on Steam sounds like a better idea than making my way through Hell difficulty with my Monk character. Super Meat Boy, Cave Story, Jamestown, Bastion, Psychonauts, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and Lone Survivor; or, the same set of Diablo III levels I’ve played through three times between my Monk and Wizard characters. There’s little rationale behind choosing the second option, yet I’m convinced my Monk will hit Level 60 (the highest) by the end of the week. Fuck you, Blizzard.

Diablo II came out 8 years ago at the turn of the century. With the addition of its expansion pack Lord of Destruction in 2001, it became the most addictive game ever before the existence of WoW. But I believe it still holds the title for most people killed in internet cafe marathons — and the victims didn’t even need to pay a monthly fee. I’m going admit here and now that I shamefully never actually played Diablo II with LoD.

My D2 experience is almost solely limited to a summer where I broke my left thumb, leaving a mouse-click fest such as D2 as my only gaming choice. Not that it was something I resented — it was obviously addictive and fun as hell — but I may never have sunk that many hours into it otherwise. Nevertheless, I didn’t even finish the game, because of the worst gaming mistake of my life. I dropped the wand I had built my entire necromancer character around in town so I could pick up some other stuff or whatever. I don’t remember the specifics of why I fucked up so bad. Needless to say, I saved and exited while my wand lied on the ground. It was gone. I had just opened up the portal to Act IV, nearing the very end of the game, when I fucked it all up. This occurrence just so happened to sync perfectly with my cast getting removed, and I pretty much never picked up the game again.

Since then, the only similar game I’ve played is Titan Quest, and while playing that I’ve often thought to myself, “Why the fuck am I even playing this game?” I just run around, killing dudes by clicking on them, picking up the shit they drop, making a portal to go back to town when my inventory is full, trading everything for gold, and then rinse and repeat. So do I even want Diablo III? It’s going to be the same core gameplay, as this is Blizzard we’re talking about. They’ve released videos and the graphics don’t exactly impress. Do I really want to sink hours of time into just trying to get increasingly progressive loot? I guess it’d be more fun with other people, but isn’t that just what WoW is? And fuck WoW.

On the other hand, Starcraft is quite possibly my favorite PC game of all-time. The day I got my mom to buy me the Starcraft Battle Chest at Price Club (now known as Costco), was one of the most glorious days of my life. This was almost 10 years ago. I didn’t even know what the game was, but it sure looked cool. When I got home to play it, I had a game that blew away C&C:Red Alert and Age of Empires. Sure, I loved those two RTS games, but this was the combination of every cool sci-fi thing ever! Actually, I take that back a little bit — Red Alert was still awesome. Just the three totally different, yet balanced, factions of Terran, Zerg, and Protoss was an incredible feat to me. Not to mention the cutscenes were badass and the Battle.net multiplayer was both fun and simple as hell to use.

I repeat: This was TEN YEARS AGO. A decade. Starcraft is arguably still the most balanced RTS ever created. Actually, thinking about it, I’m not even sure if it’s debatable, considering the massive of amount of Koreans that still play competitively. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less archaic. The unit path-finding is beyond godawful, the A.I. is a cheating bastard, and it’s 10 YEARS OLD. I played the game in middle school; I am now a college graduate and I don’t have my hands on a sequel. I need it. Millions of people across the world need it. Red Alert 3 won’t satisfy our urge. Dawn of War II – no matter how awesome it may look — won’t satiate either. We need our Blizzard overlords to fill the hole in our lives. We need to kill lings and hydras without mercy in 3D and in a resolution higher than 640×480.

Starcraft II is just needed more than Diablo III. If you feel differently, vote to make me feel wrong. If you agree, vote so the Diablo fans know why their game is coming after ours.

I was going to embed the poll in this post, but I think a better idea would be to place it on the sidebar so no matter what post you’re looking at, it’s there. I want as many people as possible to vote. This is important stuff we’re doing. So look at the top right of my blog. And vote. Or die.

Here is the 20-minute gameplay video is hi-res glory.

Actually, I’m not quite sure what to think of the game just yet. It’s incredible that they’ve been working on the game for 3 years already, and you can tell in the polish shown in every aspect of the game already. Blizzard must have an “under penalty of death” clause in their employee contracts, as nothing is ever leaked.

On the other hand, the graphics are a bit underwhelming, much in the same way as Starcraft II‘s. I’m not even sure if it looks better than Titan Quest, a two-year-old game (and also the best Diablo 2 clone out there). Also, as a forum poster has pointed out, the colors just seem a bit off for Diablo.

This picture sums it up.

The physics and cool stuff shown off in the trailer more than make up for however many polygons are missing from player and monster models, though. Blizzard never fails to deliver, so of course I have faith the game will rock my socks.