Gaming Style

Comments

• Nine Boomer

  July 2009

  My heart lies in the classic run 'n gun mutant speed gameplay a la quake. Twitch FPS is where I spent a lot of my gaming childhood, and I'm always up for a game of quake/openarena.
  
  However, I've been itching for a game which requires more thought and strategy, something more tactical. I want to play a game in which I am given a level that I must think about strategically, and employ tactical decisions throughout the level (hopefully multiplayer). I'm waiting for the Close Contact HL2 mod to be released, to see if it is well suited enough for my taste. Also, I've realised that Natural Selection offer the layer of depth I want, so I'm hoping to play it more often.
  
  Within the same vein, I've been somewhat interested in more tactical RTS's, such as Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 2. Men of War is one of my favorite in terms of pure game play, despite the click-fest it is.
  
  I've also been getting a rather strange itch. I want to play a simulation/economic management game. I gots me the latest Anno 1404 game, although I can't play it just yet so I'll have to endure some mediocre flash games.
• lackofcheese

  July 2009 edited July 2009

  Personally, I'm extremely competitive. I am willing to play many different types of game, as long as there is sufficient scope to provide a fulfilling competitive experience. I don't just mean strategic or tactical depth; there are many different areas of skill that can give one player a significant advantage over another. In other words, what I mean by scope is the amount of room the game allows one player to competitively differentiate themselves from another. For example, Quake is a relatively simple game, with a relatively small skillset (breadth), but the variance (depth) across that skillset is extreme - the gap between top-tier quake players and newbs is immense - so Quake still has good scope.
  
  I regret not having the gaming background of some others around here. Sadly, I got into gaming rather late, and then it was a while before I got broadband at my house instead of dial-up - this was around when CS 1.6 came out. As a result, I have little experience in the true classics of FPS - one really had to be around at the time.
  
  I've recently played quite a lot of Left 4 Dead. While it's not as deep as some other games, there's still many aspects to the gameplay, some with unexpected depth. It's great mostly because it's one of few games I can play frequently with a good number of friends. Though it has a low ceiling for twitch and aiming skills, teamwork, strategy and tactics play a significant role, and there are a number of associated skills, some of which can be difficult to master. For example, there's more to true mastery of the hunter than you would think. Check the hunter training map if you're not convinced of the difficulty. Mastering such skills allows you to get high pounce damage (often 25) far more frequently, which is critical to hunter play.
  
  In the past, I spent a lot of my time on jump maps in Counter-Strike 1.6 - these were highly challenging, and a refreshingly different form of competition. Its current evolution is this Source mod - I highly recommend trying it. Additionally, I played Dawn of War (the original) competitively for a while.
  
  I intend to improve at Quake Live in the near future. Since it puts me at tier 3, I feel I have somewhat "caught up," but in that kind of game there's still loads of room to improve. The coming of Natural Selection 2 is another resurgence of the old classics that I wish to take advantage of. I've never played NS - will it be a good idea to attempt to get into it with the coming of NS2? Or should I try before then?
  
  EDIT (Since this seems to be a more general gaming topic):
  In board games, I have a few years of experience in chess, which I played before I knew about any other skill-based board games. Though I would love to play other competitive board games a lot, I don't really have a community in which to do it. The best I know of is a club with monthly meetings, to which I try to go with a friend or two.
  
  As for tabletop RPGs, I don't seem to have a group of people with which to play them, though I am very willing to try.

  Post edited by lackofcheese on July 2009
• Rym

  July 2009

  At some or other point in my life, I have enjoyed all possible styles of game. In middle/high school, I played MMOs with a passion. I played freespace shooters through their heyday and a little after. Twitch FPSs consumed me for years, to eventually be replaced by CounterStrike, Tribes, and NS (though I still miss them, and thus greatly enjoy Quake Live). RTSs were my game of choice for a time, though I've lost patience with them and their relative lack of evolution compared to other genres. Platformers are wonderful regardless of the number of dimensions. Board games have been dear to me practically forever.
  
  I am particularly fond of simple, abstract, direct competition games like Pong, Combat!, Air Hockey, or Oshi, especially as they approach the player mastery endgame. They're just so directly and intensely competitive, and they cut right to the core of the contest.
• Walker

  July 2009

  It would probably be pretentious to call myself a "Renaissance Gamer" (more like "Jack of All Trades, Master of None"), but I'm going to do it anyway. I play RPGs (computer and tabletop), FPS games of all sorts, puzzlers, adventures, fighters, real time and turn based strategies, all of them competitive cooperative and solo. It would be faster, I think, to make a list of the games I do not play on a regular basis, which would consist mainly of Japanese RPGs and MMOs.
  
  Surely I sometimes favor one sort of game over another, but the trend never lasts long enough to be called a style. I'll play Quake Live for a month, switch to Fallout 3 for a couple weeks, and then become obsessed with Ninja Gaiden or Civ 4 (again). All the while I'll play pickup games of whatever anyone else might be in the mood for, and whatever strikes my fancy when I've got a few minutes to kill. As a result of these habits I never become particularly good at any game, and I can only think of one or two that I'm confident in my a ability to beat people at.
• Loganator456

  July 2009

  At some or other point in my life, I have enjoyed all possible styles of game. In middle/high school, I played MMOs with a passion. I played freespace shooters through their heyday and a little after. Twitch FPSs consumed me for years, to eventually be replaced by CounterStrike, Tribes, and NS (though I still miss them, and thus greatly enjoy Quake Live). RTSs were my game of choice for a time, though I've lost patience with them and their relative lack of evolution compared to other genres. Platformers are wonderful regardless of the number of dimensions. Board games have been dear to me practically forever.
  
  I am particularly fond of simple, abstract, direct competition games like Pong, Combat!, Air Hockey, or Oshi, especially as they approach the player mastery endgame. They're just so directly and intensely competitive, and they cut right to the core of the contest.

  I'd like to know some more of your opinions on Trine since the episode Scott mentioned it in. I really like it.
  
  For me, at least, since I started playing them, FPSes have been far and wide in my top 3 styles of games. CS:S, NS, L4D (although it's getting stale, I'm looking forward to L4D2), Eternal Silence, and the entire HL series have been near and dear to me for a while. I think I'm the only person that doesn't like the twitch-style FPSs though, but I have mad respect for the talent that some of the awesome Quake players have. HL2: Deathmatch (which I've been getting into more and more lately) has a really cool mixture of CS:S style gameplay combined with twitch-style gameplay with the crazy Half-Life 2 physics. Watch this for a kind-of example:
  
  
  
  I kind of agree with Gunter and Rym when I say that I've been engrossed with most kinds of different styles of games at one point or another in my life. I would love Pokemon as a kid, and gradually evolve into the Japanese-style RPG's with Tales of Symphonia (which I still love to this day). Afterward, towards mid-middle school, I got into Magic the Gathering due to one of my close friends, although it was short loved for the both of us after a couple of local tournaments. I also played a little bit of Black & White 2. That's when I got into FPSs. I'm also right now kind of branching out into games like Trine. I, for a time, got really into the platformers, and was addicted to Castlevania for a while. I loved the sidescrolling fighters. I love the platformers (Mario 64, Banjo Tooie, and most others). I also like the console Japanese visual novels, but NOT the hentai ones, I mean stuff like the DS games that come out from popular anime like this, this, and this. The kinds that have lots of minigames in them as well as a random story or some shit. It's the serious, PC visual novels that you see made into anime that I don't like, those are really boring to me.
  
  There are a few styles that I haven't gotten into, mainly because I either don't have the resources or don't have enough interest. I'd kinda like to get into the miniatures board games, tabletop RPGs, stuff like D&D; and Burning Wheel, and sometimes RTSs, but with those I get bored with them fairly quickly. I would probably try out WoW if I ever got really bored. The only styles I am not interested in are puzzlers (not like Plants vs. Zombies, I love that game. More like, say, Pokemon Puzzle League. ALL OF THEM), a lot of the sports games, some of the actual Nascar racing games (I love the Mario/Nintendo ones, though), and I don't really like the super casual games you see coming out on the DS a lot.
• Dkong

  July 2009

  As a whole, I am a split gamer. For some games, I am competitive as fuck, and in some genres I really don't care.
  
  Genres I like: Music, platformer, RPG (traditional turn based, tactical), strategy, some puzzle, some fighting.
  
  For music games (mostly DDR and ITG, but a little GH and RB), I'm really competitive. At the local arcade, I'm playing for fun and all, but all my friends compete for top scores. It's fun.
  
  For other games, I don't give a shit usually. I typically play by myself since I'm mostly playing 1 player RPGs or platformers. I don't speed my way through them, either. I usually take a long time on my RPGs since I usually have other shit going on.
• Starfox

  July 2009

  I am particularly fond of simple, abstract, direct competition games like Pong, Combat!, Air Hockey, or Oshi, especially as they approach the player mastery endgame. They're just so directly and intensely competitive, and they cut right to the core of the contest.

  This is a big part of what I like about sports. The game may be solved, at least for a particular situation, but that just boils it down to who can do it better. Can you get to the finish before him? That's competition.
• Kate Monster

  July 2009 edited July 2009

  As far as video games, I prefer games I can pick up and put down quickly. I use video games as light diversions and prefer not to play for more than an hour at a time.
  I like the idea of FPSes, but for some reason they make my eyes go wonky and the controls (both keyboard and hand held controllers) always feel incredibly limiting and hyper sensitive. I know that sensitive controls can be good for experienced players, but they make it difficult for a twenty somethings that has never played that type of game in the past.
  I enjoy playing fighting games, short puzzle games, and the like. I have played a few RPG video games, but I've never finished any of them (despite getting rather close a few times). Overall, I guess my gaming style is "quick, light, and occasional".

  Post edited by Kate Monster on July 2009