#i think it has something to say about singleplayer also

[k9catastrophe]

A BIG list of entirely free games therians and alterhumans can get !!! This isn't like an ad for them or anything, but when i was younger i never really had games that fit my theriotypes :( so why not start now!! this is in no real order.

These are all games where you play AS the animal, most of them being semirealistic? They're all free, so they aren't super realistic sorry!!! These are all also games i find on my tablet, so im not sure if they're available on pc!!

Wildcraft: As of today, Wildcraft updates every once and awhile, usually for the Wildpass thing they do almost weekly[? i took a large break from this game, forgive me if im misremembering.] Wildcraft was made by Turbo Rocket Games in early 2018. The multiplayer servers arent as active as they used to be, but it's still fun to play with friends sometimes!! I usually play in singleplayer though!! (Also, there is a settings option to make it first person, and one to hide the buttons!)

Playable Animals: Right now there are 12 land animals: Wolf [Default], Fox [Common], Lynx, Bear, Lion [Rares], Cheetah, Horse, Eagle, Crocodile, Tiger, Gorilla, and Kangaroo! [Ledgendaries], all of which are obtainable through the chests!! There are also 9 transformations [which are more difficult to get !!]: Raccoon, Deer, Hippo, Giraffe, Gazelle, Hyena, Rhino, Parrot, and Snake! There are also 5 Sea creatures: Dolphin [default], Stingray [Rare], Shark, Seal, and Sea turtle! You can have up to eight family members for every animal, who are also customizable! [not including transformations]

Customizability: There are TONS of skins and accessories for every animal, and you can adjust the size of their body parts, making your character entirely customizable! There are also LOTS of pets!

I give it a solid 10/10!! I've loved this game since it came out!! Me and my brother @whisperrdrrop [hii] played it like the year it came out!! I highly recommend playing this one ! >w< The community also has tons of fun creepypastas, and though the only real one is 'Niddhogg,' it's super fun to just learn about them!

Wolf Tales (Home & Heart (IT MIGHT BE 'WILD ANIMAL SIM' NOW IDK)): (The icon may have changed, my ipad doesn't update icons very much!!!) As of Today, Wolf Tales has basically stopped updating from what i can see. However this doesn't take away from the fun of it!! The game was created around 2020 by Foxie Ventures. Servers are multiplayer by default, but there is a singleplayer option!

Playable Animals: There are currently only 5 animals: Wolf, Fox, Bear, Wild/Big cat, and Dragon! All are unlocked by playing through the quests, though you can use moonstones (ingame 'rare' currency) to auto-buy most of them! Your families/packs are grown through opening chests and breeding!

Customizability: There are quite a few skins for every animal, ranging in rarity. you can obtain skins through buying the 'summoning' of the animal you'd like with moonstones and getting a random skin, or buying one directly. Skins are also not changeable! Let's say you're a grey wolf, and you get the sand wolf skin. You would have to enter your den and find that skin, and switch into that one, meaning it could have a different level! There are also LOTS of pets, though i do not remember how to get them. The only way to change your character is through changing limb sizes, there are no accessories!!

I give it a nice little 9/10, as much as i love this game i don't play it too often, but it really is fun! I think i got this game when it came out, and it was really fun watching the game and the community grow and change!! When i joined, not every player had a jump button, and there was this cool feature called 'Clans' (replaced by the player clans, sadly :() where there were 5 packs that you had to either defeat the alpha of or become besties with, and you'd get a packmate of any rarity from them daily!! My bestie pack was called 'the moonrise pack' and the #1 public enemy was 'The tooth pack' or something. I definitely recommend it :3!!

Ultimate Wolf/Fox/Forest/Savanna/Dinosaur/Cat/Shark/Bird/Jungle Simulator: they made a LOT of these games. These are only the ones that are free on my tablet, but im also seeing 'ocean,' 'dog,' 'arctic,' and 'lion' simulators for a dollar, you'd have to check and see if those are free. I'm mostly focusing on the WOLF simulator here, because i do NOT want to download all of those games. There is no multiplayer option for any of them. All made by gluten free games, no idea the release dates.

Playable Animals: The animals depend on which game you get. I know forest has bears, Savanna has cheetahs, Dinosaur has T-rex, triceratops, and ankylosaurus, bird has parrots and eagles, and jungle has tigers, but these are definitely not every animal !!

Customizability: you unlock a skin for every few levels, and you can tint them, but that's about it. For every game. There's like... 8-15 for most?

I give it a 7/10. As much as i do really, really love this game and all the memories playing it, it's really not the most entertaining game out there. If you're really bored and have nothing to do, sure, go wild with it!!

Dog Sim: I just got this game and it's so silly !! Made by Turbo Rocket Games in 2016, the multiplayer servers are surprisingly still decently active! Obviously it doesn't update anymore.

Playable Animals: The only animals in these are: (you guessed it) dogs. There's a single skin that... might? be a wolf, and there's two robo dog skins. There's a total of 38 skins!

Customizability: The only thing you can customize is your breed, sorry!

Other than that, theres a LOT to play with! With 5 bosses, 25 enemy/prey creatures, 1 map, 1 den, a max level of 200, a maximum family size of 4, 20 achievements, and 30 quests, there's plenty to do!

I give it a nice 8/10, the only points taken being because the game itself isnt the highest quality, and the models arent all 10/10, but it's still a really silly game! I do recommend it :)

Cat simulator - animal life: created in 2019 by Pocket Games entertainment, i think this one is pretty cute! With active multiplayer servers!!

Playable Animals: Just kitties! silly little kitties on big adventures!!

Customizability: Lots of cute skins and accessories!!!

There are tons of quests, camp upgrades, and more included in this!!

I didn't play this one for too long, but there are some pvp servers aswell. Overall really cute game, not too buggy/laggy! 10/10 :3

Wild Cougar Sim (3D): Another game made by Turbo Rocket games before their big success that was Wildcraft, Cougar Sim was created in 2015 (I think? I'm only finding the youtube trailer, dont be afraid to correct me.) I'm not seeing an option for multiplayer unfortunately :(!

Playable Animals: Yeah, It's just Cougars! What did you expect?

Customizability: With eight skins (Must be purchased with ingame currency), 9 coat marking options (Almost like tattoos!) including a Shark, Wolf, Lizard, Scorpion, Butterfly and Bird (Phoenix?), and options to change body/limb sizes, there's actually really good customization here!

With 3 unlockable family members, 30 quests, 20 achievements, 18 enemy/prey creatures, 4 biomes, and 8 dens, there is plenty to keep yourself busy with here! That accompanied by the fact that this isn't even a bad looking game, i honestly give it a nice 10/10! Very cute game, not much lag, pretty good in terms of realism, it's pretty cool!! :)

Dragon Sim Online: Yet another game made by Turbo Rocket in 2016, i quite like this one! With semi-active multiplayer servers!!

Playable Animals: Quite a few different types of Dragons, varying in element, colour, and breeds!

Customizability: With 4 elements, 46 (VERY pretty) skins, and limb/body adjustment sliders, you can customize your dragon pretty well!

Similar to both Cougar Sim and Dog Sim, Dragon Sim has plenty to offer: 30 quests, 20 achievements, 27 enemy/prey creatures, 3 bosses, 6 islands and 4[?] dens, there's plenty there to keep you busy! another 10/10 from me :)

[corviddrawsstuff]

Thinking about armour stands in HermitCraft

I love when hermits include armour stands in their builds and I headcanon it as a very intricate craft, creating the mannequin’s structure and their faces.

But I was also thinking about the faces that they choose…

A very overwhelming majority of armour stands on HermitCraft feature the other server member’s faces. Yknow how they say that when we see people in our dreams, it’s actually a face we’ve seen before because our brains are incapable of coming up with new ones?

I think a huge part of Minecraft in general is the loneliness. It’s not a bad loneliness, just the knowledge that you’re the only person in this infinite world. That’s a bit different in multiplayer servers because you see people and the things they create; but at the end of the day, HermitCraft only has 26 members and that’s not a lot of people.

Singleplayer survival worlds rarely feature armour stands as decoration. When they do, they use mob heads, because the player has never seen another human’s face.

I think there’s a ton of headcanon potential here. Something about Cleo spending hours learning how to sew/carve/paint another players face, then repeating that one face so many times it’s second nature. Teaching that technique to Scar, who seems to know exactly how to pose the mannequin frames to make them look alive (there’s definitely some elf magic involved). Tango creating his own armour stands with conductive materials so he can hook them up to redstone.

I just loove worldbuilding and unique crafts and minecraft’s lonely atmosphere… I’d love to hear some other peoples headcanons about armour stands!

[jaquin]

Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers

I've been playing Ring Racers alot in my free time and it has been in my mind ever since it came out, I feel compelled to write how it makes me feel just to let it out. I don't think most people truly realize how amazing this game really is.

The kart racing genre is something I was never super into. most i've played was some Mario Kart games. However, I've always appreciated and continue to appreciate Kirby Air Ride for trying really creative things that still sticks with me, I also just love the presentation and execution of its unique ideas. I never thought a kart racer would ever match that level of creativity again untill I played Ring Racers.

Mario kart was always too simple and easy for me to play on my own or even online. srb2kart felt like a more challenging Mario Kart to me and I loved playing it way more than any other racing game, the controls are as simple as Mario Kart but it takes a bit of mastering and understanding to do really well, My only real gripe with it was that there wasn't much to do other than just playing online with other people since singleplayer content was basically non-existant.

But Ring Racers, oh man. I could not care less if it's not friendly to casual players. It is such a vast improvement from srb2kart to me. I've never felt so engaged with a racing game before. So many creative ideas, mechanics and content that never feels boring when i'm playing. I always feel challenged playing this game and It's so satisfying to get good at. I love how much more technical of a racer it is. It also is just a great sonic fangame, this is exactly what I would want an official sonic kart racing game to be. Kart Krew has really made something amazing here and I'm having the most fun i've ever had with a videogame in a long time. I feel extremely grateful to be able to experience this.

Perhaps i'll make more posts about other games i've played/been playing just to give myself a reason to use tumblr.

But yeah, ring racers is a great videogame. thats all i rly wanted to say.

[princevontwix]

(warning, LOONGG late night rambling post)

ok, so you know about Yume Nikki Online? that really good online multiplayer hub hosting both the original game and a collection of fangames? i feel like that idea could apply really well to OFF and its fangames too! and i got the perfect name for it, OFFline.

i imagine it can go with a similar premise of YNO but just allow people to talk and gather around in OFF-related games. but i see a lot of potential for OFFline to include some kind of PvP-dedicated fangame, which I'll call Engage. which, with how many ideas i have for it, might be best to not make in EasyRPG.

the basic idea i have in mind is that there's a central hub where people can just chat and hang out which has three divisions:

Versus

Team Battle

Arcade, subdivided into Campaign and Endless.

what all of these modes have in common is a shopkeeper. it'll probably be better to make them an original character, but basically, for Versus and Team Battle, at the beginning of a match, you're given a set amount of credits to purchase from a list of items, weapons, and armor. for consistency's sake, i think its best that certain items are locked for certain characters only (say, no one else can use weapons and armor for Home characters), but healing and damage items are fair play for all.

whoever hosts a room will be able to dictate which select fangame they'd wish to fight in (as in, which cast of characters both users must use), OR decide that anything goes and both users are free to make the party of their dreams (its also here that they'd be free to select which battle theme plays).

Versus mode is between two players, who have full control of their own parties. while Team Battle is a 4v4, where each player will have control over their selected party member.

as for Arcade, its basically just singleplayer fun; the intent is that with the large amount of enemies and bosses from the multitude of fangames present, it will bring something different each time via randomizer. Campaign i would describe as being similar to Smash 3DS's Classic Mode, where you're given 3 branching paths with varying difficulties. the more difficult ones you beat, the more credits you earn, where you can make a pitstop before each boss to stack up (with zodiac orbs being pricier). referring to the sketch above, yellow cubes are enemy encounters, red cubes are bosses, and purple is for the end-game boss (the final boss from the og game/fangame, if applicable). i figured that every 3rd or 4th encounter being a boss will help prevent the gameplay from being monotonous beatdowns of regular enemies. you'll get choices for enemies and bosses, but there's only one endgame boss and that's random each time.

and lastly, Endless mode is just that. this time, you're given a larger supply of credits to use and once you enter the first round, there's no going back. each round will supply a minute amount of health or energy items to use, but will progressively get more difficult. my hope here is that it isn't just more enemies each round, but for it to sometimes bring fewer but beefier enemies, and maybe even a miniboss. you progress through each round by clicking on the individual cube labeled with the appropriate number. i figured like this it'd be more reasonable to fit within RPG2k3's limits but at this point it would be bloated so oh well. and of course, once you die, it ends. a public leaderboard will be on display to show the top 10 players and their scores.

now to get the obvious out of the way, online functionality with this many features would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement. as such, i would not be opposed to taking an approach similar to the UT fangame Don't Forget, where OFFline will be developed on an engine like Gamemaker and attempt to re-create RPG2k3's vibe and the individual games being hosted, along with Engage. the problem with the latter is that i think its more realistic to just let EasyRPG do all the work in porting the fangames like YNO, rather than recreate each one in a more modern engine. but at the same time, that would be the only feasible way of having any of these planned features to work without any fuckups. of course, i suppose a workaround to having multiplayer work in RPG2k3 would be to have a Parsec session or something similar, but that'd only be a solution for Versus mode at best. it would definitely not work for Team mode and might conflict with general offline.

in fact, the idea of OFFline might take some mad wizardry to even make it work, and i wouldn't be surprised if it barely works. making it in EasyRPG and using 2k3 as the basis vs. making it in a modern engine is the double-edged sword of this whole hypothetical. i'd love for something like this to happen, but i imagine it would be too much work to not only develop, but to keep the servers online for an otherwise niche fanbase. still, i cant shake away how much potential and fun this could be.

with that said, rambling is now over!

[bluebudgie]

Behold! The long announced whiny pissbaby gamer rage essay that noone on the internet asked for.

Disclaimer up front: This is about Eff Eff Sixteen. If you're a fan of this game I advise you to just ignore this because I genuinely don't want to piss into your morning coffee with my negativity. I will rip this game several new assholes. You have been warned.

FAQ Q: Don't you have anything better to spend your time on than writing a ridiculously lengthy internet text post about a video game whose existence you are free to simply ignore? A: Yes, but this matter is personal. I'm writing this for the sake of carthasis. Closure. To be free of the rage that has possessed me for the past months. Q: Have you tried touching grass? A: I have sat in a field of grass for a prolonged amount of time prior to writing this. I am beyond the need of touching grass. Q: Do you expect anyone to actually read all this? A: No.

Spoilers ahead, obviously. Let's go.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Is this the worst game ever made? 1.1 It's personal 1.2 Pre-release & producer statements

The battle system

The narrative 3.1 Storytelling and morality 3.2 Pacing 3.3 Visuals 3.4 Characters 3.4.1 The game's biggest mistake 3.4.2 The state of women 3.5 Music

Credit where credit is due 4.1 It's personal again

Conclusion

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1. Introduction: Is this the worst game ever made? What a strange way to start, you may think. Shouldn't this question rather be addressed in a conclusion at the end? I want to set the record straight from the start: No, it is not the worst game ever made. All things considered I don't even think it's the worst game of its series. And yet I have never in my life felt such unbridled hatred for a video game, or honestly, any piece of entertainment media I can currently think of. Why is that?

1.1 It's personal Usually I'm pretty good at doing the sensible thing people should do when they don't like something - ignore it. Why bother wasting your energy deliberately seeking out something that you know will make you angry?

Hear me out for a moment, I'll have to go on a tangent here.

I didn't actively get into the series until a year before FFXIII released - which at this point in time is 15 years ago now, but considering we've had only two more (singleplayer) mainline games since then, it's still a relatively late entry point. This is to say: I don't think I'm wearing the worst nostalgia goggles, but I do have a long history with the series nonetheless. These games have played a big role in my life for those past 15 years.

I used to roll my eyes at the "the series died after FFX" crowd. FFXII is one of the best in the series, sure FFXIII was a landslide miss for me, but... that's one game, right. Then FFXV's release drew closer. I did not like what I saw, for many reasons I won't detail now. What did I do? I blacklisted the game's name on all social media platforms, and didn't hear anything about it anymore. To this day I haven't actually seen much of it, though I do know the rough outline. And I know that while the game has a dedicated fanbase, it has also received its fair share of harsh criticism.

Why am I telling you all this?

1.2 Pre-release & producer statements

A few years ago, FFXVI was announced. And I have to be honest: I was negatively biased from the start. I hadn't been happy with SE's general direction for years and I wasn't particularly hopeful for this entry either. But - and I want to make this very clear - I was open to give this game a fair chance. The announcement trailer didn't really hook me but it looked alright, some visual and audio gripes aside. I was... cautiously curious. Not quite enough to call it optimistic, but I wanted to be hopeful.

You know what's excellent at crushing hopes? Game producer interviews that range from "that's a severely stupid opinion to have but you do you" aka (paraphrased) "our traditionally turn-based series can't be turn-based anymore because in order to get the production costs covered we have to appeal to the masses, and the masses are kids who love action and not outdated combat systems in which you have to navigate menus to act" (source); to downright offensive statements such as "we are creating a fantasy world based on reality and therefore black people can't exist in our european medieval setting" (source); and "I have gamer pride so I don't want to feature an easy difficulty setting in my game" (source - for clarity's sake there are accessibility options in the game in the form of equipment that helps simplify combat, however the statement itself is still really goddamn stupid).

And I know these statements have been called out by some - but it definitely didn't blow up as much as it should have considering the popularity of this franchise. It's an open secret why this is the case (if you're out of the loop: the game producer in question is an untouchable god with a really large cult fan following), and quite frankly I believe this is probably where the first seeds of my hatred were sown. Knowing that no matter what FFXVI was going to be it would have people defend it out of their blind commitment to the team behind the game's development, left a.... spiteful aftertaste in my mouth.

Ironically looking back now, and plain offensive statements aside, my biggest concern for the game itself was actually the combat system. I'm definitely part of the old-school "a main series FF game needs turn-based combat" crowd. Oh sweet summer child.

At this point I decided it would be better to go the FFXV route (which, by the way, had some similarly stupid dev comments at its release). All marketing made it clear that I was not the target audience for this game, so best to just ignore its existence.

That worked... alright...ish... until the demo's release. I guess you could say curiousity killed the cat. I decided to take a look at someone's playthrough... and that's where my initial "pissbaby gamer rage" draft that I ended up not posting came from. Go big or go home, if I wanted to be angry about this game in public I should at least be fair and wait for the full release. Not judge the game by its (admittedly generous in length) demo. Get the full receipts, see it for all that it is in its entirety. I think in a way I still didn't want to give up hope completely.

And that's where we are now, two months later I've watched a full playthrough of the game including all sidequests. It's been a wild ride to say the least.

2. The battle system

Let's get this out of the way before we finally get to the really meaty part: As mentioned earlier my primary concern before release was the combat system since it's so far removed from the older entries of the series. Ironically, of all things, this is probably the smallest issue I have with the game now.

I still don't think the combat is good, mind you - this is mostly a matter of personal taste but I'll never see how button mashing and a series of QTEs overlayed over 20 minutes of cinematic cutscene is supposed to be more impactful or fun than the oh-so-outdated turn based menu inputs. Then again, I didn't play the game myself and can therefore obviously not judge how good or bad it feels in the heat of battle. I say "button mashing", by the way, as what I've gathered from other people's reviews - who genuinely enjoyed the game - the combat is really watered down and repetitive in comparison to games with similar systems like the DMC series. While you do pick up new abilities over the course of the game it seems like once you've found one combination that works you can solve every single battle following those exact inputs. This is one of the two really big complaints about this game I've seen consistently in almost every review.

Speaking of combat, the game has the weirdest way to pull you out of the action and emotional moments by freezing mid cutscene, showing a "you won the battle - here's your loot" screen while blasting an epic choir rendition of the classic FF fanfare, before picking that same cutscene right back up. I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but it's honestly jarring. For an extremely cinematic game that supposedly wants to break with "outdated" traditions, implementing that very video game-y results screen is a strange choice.

You could say this last point is nitpicking, and if this game had no other issues I would probably not mention it at all, but as it is this little detail is indicative of a much, much larger issue.

3. The narrative

[The sound of cracking knuckles can be heard in the distance.] Let the slaughter begin.

Prior to release the game was marketed as a departure from the rest of the series - the setting was advertised as a darker, more mature, political intrigue for an adult audience. ('But the masses of kids that like action com-' Who? What are you talking about?) Because as we all know, no other FF game has ever been dark before (/sarcasm).

What we got was storytelling and character writing with about the maturity level of a twelve year old teenage boy in his edgelord phase making his first Game of Thrones fanfiction drafts. This game oozes of sexism, really stupid slavery allegories, the most dumbed down black and white morality with a matching set of one-dimensional black and white characters, godawful pacing and some of the worst NPC dialogues I've ever had to witness.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

3.1 Storytelling and morality

So this dark and mature political story... I'm still searching for it. I know GoT started this trend where writers will use "politics" as a buzz word to make their games look complex (FFXVI hasn't been the sole offender in the past years). Then they expose you to a few kingdom names, show you a map with territories, drop a few year dates with barely any significant relevance to anything over the course of the game, and pretend that's a deep political intrigue. I have news for you: It's not.

Alright, then... this dark and mature... oh. Oh you mean that's because there's a plethora of blood splatters and people say "fuck" and "cock" and "whore" and there's goofily censored sex on screen? Ah... oh. Alright, I see. If that's what you'd call that... sure.

But surely the people who are tattooed like cattle and used as slaves due to being born as magic users will have an interesting role in the story dealing with the very delicate topic of slaver- ...oh, uh... what do you mean the perfect king beloved by everyone is the good guy because unlike all the other people who held slaves, he treated his slaves nicely? And, before you ask.... No, this isn't some sort of commentary the game wants you to question. This guy is unironically, unambiguously portrayed as the perfect good guy. Brought up many, many times for how flawless he is.

And that... is where we're diving into one of this game's biggest and most glaring issues. The writing is so mindnumbingly black and white with not the slightest room for ambiguous or grey morality it's painful. Everything and everyone in this game is always either good with no failings - or so stupidly evil they may as well be a bad saturday morning cartoon villain.

Good characters are always good, and always act out of the pure kindness of their heart. When you think a good character fucked up and actually did something bad, it will later be revealed that either it wasn't them at all and it was all a scheme, or they were possessed by the big baddie and therefore not actually responsible for their actions. Can't possibly risk anyone appearing like a realistic person with character depth now, can we?

And don't worry, just in case you have an extremely bad case of media illiteracy with the slightest hint of doubt of anyone's alignment on the binary moral chart, the game will make sure to overexplain literally every tiny detail to you in the worst way possible. You see, the evil woman right at the start? The one who looks really evil and moves really evil and the first thing she does is being mean to the slaves and being dismissive of her own son? In case you didn't get yet that she's evil, there will be guards whispering about how evil she is when she leaves the scene. Also a scene later the good perfect king will point out how evil she is. And worry not, in case you forget in the few hours she's not on screen, characters will make sure to remind you how she has not a single redeeming quality and every breath she has ever taken has been filled with evil.

And this might sound like I'm exaggerating. But the game is like this with Every. Single. Thing. Sometimes I found myself genuinely wondering if the writers were actively trying to insult the player's intelligence with this condescending amount of overexplanation. Characters constantly comment on everything that is visibly happening on screen - for God's sake if you want to make a modern game that moves away from "outdated" mechanics then write it this way. If you show what is going on with detailed realistic graphics, you do not need characters monologuing a description of what they're seeing. You do not need to voice a character saying "I'm sad" when you can clearly see their facial expression. You do not need to make a character loudly ask himself with noone else present by his side "Is he hallucinating?" when showing another character's hallucinations. Old games did that because they had limited visual capabilities. If you sit on your high horse talking about moving the series forward while spitting into your old playerbase's faces, then do it right at the very least.

Once in a while you'll be exposed to some textbook philosophy theories, which in essence wouldn't be a bad idea at all if those philosophies were somehow smartly woven into the game's narrative… but instead you get characters quoting essentially the wikipedia summary of what that philosophy is about and call it a day.

I wish this was the only issue with the game's writing.

3.2 Pacing

This game's pacing is atrocious. Genuinely, utterly awful. And there`s mostly one thing to blame: Sidequests. If you've heard a single criticism for this game even from people who highly praise it, it's this.

The sidequests are absolutely horrendous filler content on so many levels. Gameplay wise they're usually "follow 10 meters of a linear corridor to defeat an enemy and then grab a carrot at the end" fetch quests. Visually they are not just a nose dive but an entire plane crash compared to the well animated main quests, consisting mostly of the same three reused conversation animations from FFXIV (I'm all for reusing assets if it helps developers save time, work smarter not harder, but this one is blatantly obvious in all the worst ways). And the writing.... oh boy.

NPCs go on and on and on and on having the most blandly written expository dialogue. I get that the writer's intention was to give the world a bit of context and make it feel more alive with random people telling you about their life stories and everyday hurdles, but they failed miserably at making this remotely engaging. They may as well have had people read the dictionary. And maybe this would have worked better as purely written textbox dialogue (if about half of the dialogue was cut, which would still leave more than enough padding around the actually relevant information) - but in a game with voice acting, making people audibly speak in ways noone would ever speak to another person, just doesn't work. It's stilted and unnatural, and really awkward to listen to.

Delivery aside, the stories told in these sidequests vary from "farmer's everyday life issues about growing their crops" to "random child ends oppression by convincing an angry mob of adults they shouldn't be stoning someone because that someone has been a valuable asset to their society (by reminding them they need to keep the streets clean) and suddenly every adult in range is free of bigoted feelings". And then everyone in the bus clapped, I guess. And again, I get the intention behind these stories but they're so clumsily written.

And yes, these are sidequests - you are free to ignore them. But they do make up a considerable chunk of the game. And, unfortuantely, a fair handful of the main quests follow this same fetch quest formula.

This game goes long, very long stretches without anything substential happening. And it's good to have downtime to breathe - the game's big main story moments pack a punch in terms of epic adrenaline filled battles. But this game honestly feels like 60 hours of filler fetch quests with the occasional relevant story sequence sprinkled in between.

3.3 Visuals

I'm not a film student so maybe it's not my place to comment on cinematography, but I felt like visually many of the cutscenes were also really... bland. Not necessarily bad looking (if you can see anything behind the millions of particle effects) but it definitely felt like less care was put into choosing narratively interesting image composition compared to a game like FFXII.

And then it also does this really annoying thing where it will constantly fade to black for absolutely no reason.

Character A: Oh that seems like an exciting story! Tell me all about it. Character B: Okay, so this is a long story... [screen fades to black] [screen fades from black to the exact same shot we had before the fade] Character B: So the story goes like this... (starts telling the story you thought was told off screen indicated by the black sreen)

This and similar instances happen fairly often and I just don't get why. It's nothing to hate the game for but it's just... really strange. Just like those really silly "In the meantime..." text overlays for scenes that are very clearly happening in the meantime. Seriously, we get it. You don't have to spell it out. But whatever, this is one of those things I'd look past if it weren't for the whole rest of this trainwreck.

3.4 Characters

Speaking of trainwrecks. [Takes a deep breath] I've avoided this topic for long enough now. This is where the last seams that hold the game together break and make it fall apart entirely. This is where the pile of shit that's been tossed across the room finally hits the fan.

If you're remotely familiar with any Final Fantasy title you know how important a solid cast is to those games. Your allies and party members you meet over the course of the game, their stories and views on the world's happenings... a charismatic villain. Well, how about we just simply didn't have any of that.

3.4.1 The game's biggest mistake

FFXVI's writers made the decision to focus the game's narrative around a single character, our playable protagonist. There is a small supporting cast of characters that you meet, and occasionally travels alongside you temporarily, but most of them have... not much to them. The game makes it clear: This story is about Clive, and him alone.

And... I don't think having a story focused on a single character is necessarily a bad decision per se, even if highly unusual for a series that was driven by party systems for decades, but... If you decide to do that, then your protagonist needs to have more personality than a soggy wet sponge. It's bad enough that pretty much noone in this game has any sort of depth to them, but if you sideline literally every character in favour of your protagonist's narrative then... at least give that protagonist a character?

This man's personality is nothing beyond helping people because it's the right thing to do. The attempted "he feels guilty for killing his brother" (which naturally he didn't actually do, because that would be too complex of a story) subplot gets dropped a few hours in and he's just... that guy who runs everyone's errands with no input of his own. And it doesn't make him unlikeable necessarily, it just makes him terribly boring.

What is really, really grating however is how every other character portrays him. Named characters and unnamed NPCs alike will throw pity parties for him over and over, going on about how he's so self-sacrificial, always doing everything for others while never expecting anything in return and never taking enough care of himself. It's exhausting. We get it. He's the perfect heroic nice guy, just like his (slave having) dad, the unfailable king. And unlike his evil witch of a mother. Who is so evil, by the way. At times I felt like Clive was some sort of dream fantasy guy self insert of the writers.

I'll say it plainly now: the lack of a well developped playable party is, in my opinion, the game's downfall. Clive alone can't carry the narrative because there isn't nearly enough depth to him, and everyone else has deliberately been stripped of any sort of meaningful screentime. Narrative aside I also feel like multiple playable characters would have done a lot for more variety in terms of gameplay. And before you raise your pitchforks - yes, there are few, very few characters that have their own little story moment. But boy... at what cost.

3.4.2 The state of women

! Rape & suicide mention trigger warning for this section !

So you know, Clive's sidekick? No, not the dog, the girl. Jill. The one who spends most of the game sick in bed, kidnapped, or otherwise missing, and whose single personality trait is being Clive's pure and innocent love interest. Surprisingly, she has her own 30 minutes of side story! A side story that essentially boils down to finding out she was held captive by a weird cult that had no relevance prior to this point and will have no relevance at all after this point. You get to beat up the cult's leader who is revealed to sexually assault underage girls.

Is that ever addressed again at any point? No.

But worry not. We still have a few more women in the bigger roles of the game. One of them, Benedikta, is an early game antagonist whose entire thing is seducing men, and most of the screentime she has is sex scenes. Once you defeat her in battle she flees, and a randomly passing by group of bandits is implied to attempt to rape her. This triggers a flashback of a past assault she was rescued from, and she goes mad. You fight her again, now in her powered up form, and kill her. Then she gets decapitated and her head is sent in a box to her lover to fuel his man rage. Don't worry, you'll get more sex scene flashbacks with her after her death.

But hey. We have another woman in a leading role. The supposedly main antagonist before the real big baddie (who is so boring of a villain i can't even get myself to say anything more about him) is revealed to have business with her. Clive's evil slave-mistreating mum. Her purpose in the story is breeding a flawless heir. What fuels this dignified ambition? Hell if I know. She's written in a hateable way for the sake of it. Likely to contrast Clive and his flawless dad. Absolutely zero depth to anything.

Guess her age here.

If you guessed "at least in her 50s" you are correct! Do I even have to say anything more about this.

The moment her perfect heir is killed, she loses it and slits her own throat. A very anticlimatic conclusion to her non-existent character arc.

Yes, there are a couple more secondary female characters who aren't necessarily walking misogyny targets, but they're pretty much irrelevant to the plot.

Here's a quote from my girlfriend, who is a woman, about the state of women in this game: "I have scarcely felt this alienated by the depiction of women in a video game."

! Trigger warning ends here !

So, uh... how do we move on from here... Let's head somewhere less offensive.

3.5 Music

Usually I'd give the soundtrack a lot more attention since I'm of the opinion that music is one of the most vital parts in a game and can absolutely make or break it - but quite frankly I don't have much to say about this one in detail. It's largely generic epic orchestra music with nothing much unique going for it. The regular battle theme is fairly memorable; and then there's that really aggravatingly annoying acoustic guitar ambient song that seems to play for about half of the game's time. Seriously I hate that one. It drove me nuts. In general I don't know if there's more than 10 songs in the OST because I don't think I heard more than that. Either that, or they all sounded the same.

What stuck out negatively to me especially (apart from that godsdamned acoustic guitar) was the overusage of over the top orchestral arrangements for the tiniest occasions, which was unfitting at best and really tiring at worst. I got used to it with time, but still a good soundtrack isn't just making every moment sound like it's as epic as the final boss, it's making varied music that fits the moment and sets the ambience.

Also not to ruin the OST for anyone who actually enjoys it, but the game's leitmotif sounds like Army of Lovers' Crucified. Noticed it during the demo and couldn't unhear it for the entirety of the game. You're welcome.

4. Credit where credit is due

As should be evident by now, I'm not finding much redeemable in this game. And yet - I would be lying if I said I didn't find myself liking some aspects of it.

Some of the armour designs are pretty neat. In general the character design as a whole feels coherent and mostly fits the setting, some questionable haircut choices aside.

There are chocobos. In different colours. They look nice. Not a big surprise, I suppose.

The voice acting is really good. I can't comment much on the English dub since I only watched the demo in English and then watched the full game with a streamer who played in German; but the German voice actors did an amazing job, and I've heard only good things about the English cast as well. Listening to a few comparisons I was surprised how deep English Joshua's voice is. He sounds like a teenage boy even after the last timeskip in German. That took me out a bit. I also realized I'm very partial to Dion's German voice acting. His final scene was extremely strong in that regard.

Speaking of Dion....

4.1 It's personal again

Alright. Listen. I hate this. I fucking hate this. For weeks I suffered through this game, nothing but this burning passionate hatred within me, ready to shred and tear every single aspect of it apart.

And then. So close to the end. In the final stretch. When I've almost made it through with nothing but rage and hatred by my side. This fucking stupid garbage game attacks my one goddamn weak point: The gay prince and his lover share a small "it isn't meant to be" moment. And I genuinely enjoyed the little gestures in that cutscene. It was a good cutscene.

And at this point I was unfortunately confronted with a hard to swallow pill: I had been kinda looking forward to every time Dion showed up on screen. I'll be honest I'm not sure I would have made it through the game without the driving force of "hey maybe he'll show up again". Over time he turned into my single point of fixation, and it's sad because ultimately he too is pretty much a wet sponge of a character, though maybe the least wet and spongy one. I think he does have some of the stronger scenes in the game (as well as the most visually appealing boss battle - whatever was going on with that bullet hell laser fight in space). He's also unfortunately a sad blond Final Fantasy prince and. Uh. Yeah. Ahem. Alas, he's kinda ugly. Subjectively. But he has an absolutely mighty hip swing when he walks. And a pretty cool spear. Good weapon choice.

In general, props to SE for including an unambiguously gay character in a decently written way. We all know this company is pretty behind in terms of diversity and representation, so seeing that was a pleasant surprise.

Anyway I really REALLY hate to admit it but I've been kinda held hostage by the game over this stupid prince. I'm hoping this is a temporary side effect (derogatory) from being exposed to the game for a prolonged amount of time and in a few weeks I won't care anymore. I hate it here.

5. Conclusion

When I finally finished watching the game after having spent 2 entire months with it I was mostly asking myself one question... What is worse in regards to an art medium? To hate it so intensely that you're willing to dive into every little aspect of it; or to feel complete indifference?

I can't tell you if I think FFXVI is the worst game in the series. It's the one I feel the most passionate hate for, that's for sure. But a game like FFXV seems so inherently unappealing I don't even care to look at it. Not because I think I'll dislike it any more, I just think it will bore me. (Irrelevant side note - I do plan to finally watch a playthrough of that one too in the future. Might as well commit now.)

There are aspects of FFXVI I do think are inexcusable in an objective way; delicate topics handled badly, developers that need an attitude check, and also... by god go meet a woman in real life, please.

For a game that was said to modernize and move the series forward, it makes terribly outdated choices in many regards. It somehow tries so hard to be a departure from the other games in the series, losing a lot of what makes a good Final Fantasy game, and simultaneously clings so hard to references that feel so empty when the core of these games has been trampled on. No amount of preludes and FF1 overworld theme rearrangements and corny "this will be your final fantasy" puns can bring the series' essence back that this game failed to capture. A sense of adventure, a compelling story with a meaningful cast of companions, a world to explore beyond grey corridors.

It should have been a spin-off, not a main title game. Obviously a different name wouldn't have changed the quality of the game, but I can't shake off the feeling that had it been called FFXIV: The Offline Singleplayer Experience (which quite frankly it feels like in many regards), I might have been a bit more lenient with my judgement.

Still...public reception of the game seems, surprisingly, fairly mixed. My fears of the game being hailed as the second coming of Christ didn't actually become true. At the very least the gameplay is oftentimes heavily criticized. And while I really have to wonder if all the people who praise the story and character writing have watched the same thing as I have, seeing the game actually receive some nuanced opinions from both people who like and dislike it alike is a refreshing twist I didn't expect. (Just in case this comes across wrong: I don't consider my opinions to be nuanced. I'm just a hater. But I'm right. Ha.)

Well... uh... After all this I don't quite know how to end this. I feel like I've said more than anyone should say about this game and somehow nothing of substance at all. Topical, I suppose. Oh well. Congrats (I guess) to this game for sparking something in me (negative) no other game has ever done before. For all it's worth, it strengthened my bond to some of the older entries I used to judge more harshly. I know better now.

-----

If you're the single person who made it this far, I think you deserve to have some pictures. Here's my favourite battle phase: (Something about those symmetrical orb patterns was very aesthetically pleasing. Better in motion though.)

And here's an exclusive look at parts of my initial draft and some discord liveblogging:

anyway peace out ✌️ go watch dions death scene in german

[definitelynotshouting]

*cough* slides over a bowl of soup any hunger au thoughts...? /nf

-🍂

HELLO TEA ANON WELCOME BACK TO THE HUNGER AU SHOW

... i should probably make a masterlist of this au at some point. Anyway.

I've been thinking a lot about worldbuilding and how Players form, and just. Players in general?? Which, in an au thats specifically about a Watcher, that might seem a little silly. But i like to think about what the general baseline is seen as, to really dig deep into the differences between them!!

For Players, i think theres two general ways they come into being-- spawning in, or being born. Obviously the second one is a familiar concept so we dont need to talk about that, but spawning i think is actually more common for Players than being born. I imagine its a bit like new stars forming-- bits of code split off from the Greater Code and coalesce, forming all the components needed to make a Player. There's no infancy stage for spawned Players-- while some might spawn in younger than others, they generally tend to be young adults.

Im honestly thinking that, when Players first spawn, new servers do too. Singleplayer, of course; their first spawn and first spawnpoint, a protective cocoon from the harshness of the in between. This is where a spawned Player learns the difference between breathing and becoming, and where they acquaint themselves with the rules of the world around them. This is their casting off point-- eventually, most of them outgrow their first world and move onto newer ones, some multiplayer, some single, some hardcore, some modded. And most don't return, either, and the server is eventually recycled back into the Greater Code by one of its cosmic decomposers (eg: viruses).

The other thing im thinking about when it comes to Players is how they look when they spawn in. The thing about Player code is that there's layers. You have the type that's surface level, which dictates what your appearance looks like, and then the deeper code in charge of things like memories, personality, stats, etc. Because code is so scrambled in the beginning of a Player's spawn, the surface code is completely randomized!!! Players can look like anything at all, anyone at all, and can even have non-human traits from the outset. I also think this surface code can be fairly easily manipulated; learning to play with your own surface code is about the same level of difficulty as learning to code your own website, and occurs with a similar amount of regularity (which is to say, it's definitely not uncommon, but there are some people more adept at it than others, and a definite learning curve at the start). Playing with your surface code means you can make yourself look like anything, by give yourself new physical traits or just modify existing ones. It's usually recommended to do this with a spotter, though-- someone experienced with surface code who can look over your changes before you implement them to make sure there aren't any glaring mistakes, and step in if something glitches or you need help.

So yeah those are my current hunger au thoughts with regards to worldbuilding!! I'm also still picking at what Listeners are like, as well as their and Watchers' ecological niche in the universe-- I'm tempted to say both have a much more brittle, and less adaptable code structure, which makes their type of feeding an even more vital and necessary part of their survival. Gotta keep that code from deteriorating, after all!! Anyway thank u for asking, i am always happy to receive hunger au questions, and if anyone has specific questions they want to ask that is great and often gives me a good direction to jump off of when explaining stuff :]

[amskvaris]

oops. maint hit during a pse burst bc i forgot. oh well! one of these days i'll actually pay attention to what's going on.

reminds me... sometimes i worry. i know there's no wrong way to play the game but that doesn't mean i stop being self-conscious. personal rambling under the cut.

tbh i don't really play the game to play the game really. i play bc it's fun to mess around and i don't feel like it's a waste of time, like a singleplayer game would be for me.

i Can play the game properly if i want-- i play enough to have a head start whenever (if ever) i get serious about it. that's why it's not a waste of time to me, i think.

however.

i've always been overleveled bc i'm not really interested in having to overcome challenges. i just want to have fun, and difficult content isn't fun for me. i'd rather do something else if i can't do something i feel like doing right away... if i don't want to work up to it then i don't really care to try again.

but if i don't want to get good at the game, being a part of a community will be way out of reach. and if i'm not in one, it feels like a waste of time, just like a singleplayer would.

that's also why it's a little overwhelming to talk to other players about it. too tired of being seen like an idiot that doesn't know anything, you know? and that's what always happens when i start talking to other people about a thing i'm new to.

sometimes i try to share something and i get "But this is already--" or "This is a thing tho--" and it's like. please let me have my fun and look away if you don't want to see my WIP ideas.

(this is part of the reason why i've been avoiding talking on discord lately.)

i'm just going to burn out and do something else if i try to absorb the franchise/game all at once like a college course... but until i do i'm just gonna look like an idiot. as usual. it's kinda lose-lose if i try to talk to people before i know what i'm talking about.

i just talk to myself on this tumblr instead. is it lonely? yes. do i have a choice? doesn't feel like it.

more detail on what i meant by "my fun" aka what do on this tumblr:

i really just want to liveblog ideas instead of just reactions. i have no issue making new ideas, developing old ones, changing them up or throwing them away when canon says otherwise. that's just how i enjoy doing things.

really... i just prefer to be creative with what i have in front of me. i don't think people would understand that.

honestly... i only want to do things in ngs. but it's like everything is tied to the massive story/lore of the base game... which everyone has so much nostalgia about and seems to know like the back of their hand...

... so i'm doomed unless i want to watch 24+ hours of someone on youtube play it (and i don't really want to, especially if their characters don't visually fit in the setting.)

the wiki and lore/summary videos have been great too, but. there's only so much those can do.

even then, i can't absorb things very well just by hearing them either. but these are video games. i doubt if people generally care to write transcripts either... so i'm just. doomed lmao.

-

hmmm that feels nice to get that off my chest actually, even if probably only to a few of you.

(irrelevant note... due to all this i'm considering finally doing some of my fully original things too, but right now i have pso2 ngs brainrot too bad so those are on hold.)

[crescentfool]

"completed" side order (got the credits roll and currently have four developer logs), some thoughts about the gameplay + lore under the cut 👍

i really enjoyed playing side order! i felt that a lot of my experiences in salmon run carried over with having to assess situations and maneuver around large mobs of enemy. so it's not much of a surprise to me that the gameplay structure really scratches an itch in my brain...!

i've played side order for around 10 hours so far (5 hour sessions each)... it wasn't intentional, but i really felt that each run taught me something about the chips/specials and i couldn't help but want to give another try again... (and i do appreciate that the game does allow for breaks between runs, even if i didn't utilize it this time around!)

the only thing i didn't like gameplay-wise (so far) was the weighted rates for certain chips depending on palette, i didn't particularly enjoy my run with charger (even though it's my favorite weapon class), but it could've just been bad rng giving me chips that weren't that fun/interesting...? there's some modifications that i want to explore, but it can be hard to do that with the weighted rates.

that said, i personally think the developers did an excellent job of blending together splatoon's mechanics/objectives with the rougelike style of games! i definitely want to play more sometime, there's still a lot of lore, chips, and palettes i've yet to see. i think it's a breath of fresh air from the other singleplayer parts, but i also recognize that it might not be for everyone (the structure of side order inherently requires a lot of patience and endurance).

as for the story and lore bits, i really liked the framework of the memverse! i do think that some of my affection for it stems from the fact that it has some parallels to persona games (i legit messaged a friend saying "omg it's like apathy syndrome but for splatoon"). but i think side order's a pretty fun follow up to octo expansion, i like that there's potential closure for sanitized octolings and whatever happens to the deepsea metro afterwards. i think it's a pretty cool basis for ocs which is nice!

the bits of character interaction were nice too, pearl and marina are endearing and lovely as always (they are so in love)! deep cut reporting on the side order things before/after the campaign was really funny too, i really liked it (especially after watching the nintendo live 2024 concert).

i think i found the story more satisfying than rotm- the stakes made... more sense to me, but also the setup was just, really interesting to me (persona fan moment). i'll need to check more of the dev logs when i unlock them and reread some things, but, overall, really enjoyable!

anyway, the short of it: side order was fun for me because the gameplay scratches the grinding itch in my brain (salmon run player moment), and also i just like the premise of the memverse because i'm a persona fan and it reminds me of that. LOL.

[a-single-slice-of-toast]

My thoughts on the new Splatoon DLC

I really hope wave 1 isn't just Inkopolis. Don't get me wrong, I think an additional hub for the game with new and old characters is really cool. But at the same time, the expansion pass costs $25. Now, remember that OE was $20. Considering that Side Order is 3's singleplayer DLC, this means that we are pretty much paying $5 for an alternate hub.

Now, I know they said that the shops in Inkopolis carry the same stock as the Splatlands, but I'm hoping that they have exclusive stock as well. I can only dream of the Japan-exclusive gear from past games appearing with the Inkopolis stock. Sure, you might think that that would be locking people who didn't buy the pass out of content, but OE literally locked Octolings and a bunch of gear behind a paywall as well.

I saw some speculating that there will be more DLC with this pass, but considering the price tag, I don't see it. I really want there to be something more, like Octoling soldier hair or some Salmon Run story mode campaign, but unless they decide to raise the price of the pass overtime, I don't think it'll happen.

Side Order looks really cool, and does give me heavy Team Order vibes. Mostly because the muted and monochromatic palette contrasts heavily with the Splatlands more chaotic and vibrant nature. I saw some people saying that the protag will be Agent 8, and I just think it would be funny if Agent 8 has to save the world (or at least Inkopolis Square) again. I'm kind of hoping if it is Agent 8 that Agent 4 also shows up considering that they were both from Splatoon 2 and Side Order seems to be more based on 2 like how Inkopolis is obviously based on 1.

I don't know why but I thought initially that the Octoling we see was a young Marina and we would play through her memories or something. In fact, what if Side Order is about Agent 8 reliving their memories through the mem cakes? Or maybe it will all just be one big De Blob reference but with sea creatures living in the post-nuclear world.

[alicefromtheabyss]

1. The Switch is pretty neat I guess. I also absolutely love the DS/3DS line of systems. But currently, I play most of my games on PC for, uh, *puts on pirate hat*, reasons

2. In no particular order, Pokemon White Version/Pokemon HeartGold Versiin, Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive edition, Octopath Traveler, Hollow Knight, Xenogears

3. The Radiance, because I get to live out my fantasy of beating the shit out of the sun

4. Ughhh, there are so many good ones. But if I'd have to narrow it down to one, it would probably be XBC.

5. So, the first gym in Pokemon BW always makes you fight the gym leader with the elemental monkey that's strong against your starter. What you are supposed to do is go talk to that one girl in the Dreamyard who gives you the monkey that's strong against the gym leader's. But because, as a kid, I basically never talked to npcs or engaged in proper exploration, I didn't get the monkey until after I had already beaten the gym. So what did I do? I grinded my Snivy to level 16 and overpowered the gym leader through sheer force.

6. Pokemon White Version

7. Haven't finished it yet, but Trails in the Sky (pretty good so far!)

8. Ys 10 Nordics

9. *sigh* fire emblem heroes. probably. but if we're talking about genuinely respectable games here, Pokemon HG

10. Also Pokemon HG.

11. JRPGs of all kinds, be it turn based, action or strategy. Metroidvanias are a close second.

12. Samus Aran

13. Grimm

14. Ys 5? Maybe? That game isn't really bad, it's just...kinda undercooked in a lot of ways.

15. Thracia 776. That entire game is a certified Kaga Moment

16. Singleplayer

17. Not anymore, fortunately.

18. There's quite a few, with the most recent one I can think of being the PSX version of Grandia.

19. XBC

20. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 broke me twice, with both times being during moments I had already been spoiled on.

21. XBC2 (again). I thought I'd like the gameplay but not the story, and ended up loving this game about as much as the first one.

22. Yeah, I guess

23. I mostly just go with whoever has the best drip, which, in most cases, just so happens to be the female option.

24. Probably in the world of Pokemon. I mean, it's literally just our world, except better, and with even funkier animals.

25. Gaur Plains, though Valak Mountain is also up there, as are a lot of other snowy areas in games. Also like a bunch of areas from XBC2. These games just have the best world design imo, so much fun to just run around in.

26. Swamps, especially poisonous ones (sorry miyazaki)

27. Metroid Prime

28. Yes

29. Pokemon White Version

30. Depends on the game. But a good OST is something that any game should have.

31. Pokemon White 2 for being Pokemon White 2 and also having like the most stuff to do in the entire series

32. I haven't really ever rage quit a game, but I have taken breaks or even dropped games due to getting frustrated. For example, FF2. That game isn't nearly as bad as people say it is, but it also is a game that is actively hostile to the player, and as such, can be kinda exhausting to play.

33. I could figure out how to deal damage to a specific boss in Metroid Dread despite it being pretty obvious.

34. That one sequence in Xenogears where Bart's butler guy comes in to save them on that crab helicopter thing

35. Uhhh I have a few plushies if that counts

36. Sigurd from fe4 if you know what I mean

37. Uhh fuck Klavier ace attorney, marry Testament guilty gear, kill The Radiance (I hate the sun)

38. I like XBC2 more than XBC3. Actually, liking XBC2 in general could be considered an unpopular opinion.

39. Silksong

40. The og Secret of Mana boxart. That shit deserves to be framed and hung on a wall.

Video Game Related Asks for Gaymers!

Platform of choice when gaming?

Top 5 games of all time.

Favorite boss?

Best game soundtrack (full album or single track)?

Most memorable gaming moment?

First game you ever played?

Most recent game you played?

Most anticipated upcoming game?

Most hours you’ve put into a single game?

Game you’ve replayed the most?

Favorite game genre?

Favorite game character?

Coolest enemy/boss design?

Worst game you’ve ever played?

Hardest game you’ve ever played?

Single player, multiplayer, or both?

Do you play mobile games?

A game you started, but never finished.

A game that you wish you could play for the first time again.

A game that made you cry.

A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving?

Do you watch any other gamers?

Do you typically choose to play a male or female character (when asked to pick)?

If you could live in one of the games you’ve played, which one would it be?

Favorite environment in a game?

Least favorite environmental hazard (e.g. poison swamp, fire/lava, etc.)

A popular game that you just can’t get into.

Do you still buy physical games?

Favorite childhood game?

Favorite aspect of a game (e.g. exploration, combat, fashion/customization, environments, graphics, bosses, roleplaying, etc.)

If you could only play one game for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Have you ever rage quit a game? If so, what game and what caused the rage quit?

Most embarrassing gaming moment.

Funniest gaming moment.

Do you own any gaming themed memorabilia? (e.g. collector’s editions, posters, prop replicas, statues, clothing, etc.)

Hottest video game character?

Kill, Fuck, Marry (choose three characters)

An unpopular gaming opinion you have.

What’s something you want to see in the future of gaming?

Best game cover art.

[wavepriisms]

liveblogging every after school dice club chapter that did not get animated (LONG ASS THREAD)

most of it is on mangadex now so i checked it out!!

these became liveblogging around chapter 46 because nao showed up and she is a freak (negative) (DEEPLY INFATUATED WITH MANAGER-SAN)

chapter 32, "nightmare," right after the cultural festival/board game cafe. miki plays onirim, a singleplayer card game. at some point she gets sick, and during her fever, she dreams that she's in the world of onirim. she can't escape until she sees the photo taken at the board game cafe (GAYYYY. GAY. HOMOSEXUAL)

chapter 35, "let's save the world!" right after the chapter where emmy fucking sucks with directions. three potential hires for a tabletop game company have to play pandemic as their final test before employment. they have one hour to do so. the boss is midori's dad surprise!! also at the end there's an extra about the mangaka's wedding, which is sweet <3

chapter 36, "do adults enjoy stock trading?" it's down to just aya, miki, and midori for this chapter. kamiya shin'ichi, the first part-time hire at saikoro club, shows up to visit. he and the girls play acquire, a game about (you guessed it) stock trading and mergers. i'm going to affectionately call this chapter "the gang learns about american capitalism." kamiya starts venting because he fucked up big time at his real job (which is. stock trading and mergers) and got fired. objectively really funny when you remember the whole dice club is like 15. he learns the joys of Not Being A Rich Asshole

there was a gap between chapters 36 and 46 but that's 10 chapters they probably did not animate

chapter 46, "the black cat and the caterpillar," we have a new girl!! she shows up on the cover of later volumes as well. it's a new school year. her name is nao and she lives in a shitty apartment, has no friends, and her mom seems like a drunk considering she thought the apartment reeked of booze. there's also a stray kitty she takes care of. manager-san brings her to saikoro club. she and manager-san play heckmeck. SHE THOUGHT TO HERSELF AFTER LEAVING THAT THE HEIGHT AND VOICE REMIND HER OF HER ABSENT FATHER?? MANAGER-SAN FOUND FAMILY ARC??

chapter 47, "the lost cat's gloom," nao returns to saikoro club. midori is there. she does not like midori's presence. midori and nao play famiglia. nao thinks midori is dating manager-san 😭😭 manager-san says he doesn't have anything like that and there's a photo of him and a girlfriend?? also nao got extremely flustered around manager-san and was gonna ask if she's not good enough for him. girl you are a freshman

chapter 48 "memorial lovers" (first half), starts with a flashback from manager-san. he is with the girl from the photo, clearly a girlfriend. a semi truck hits them head on on the road, and he wakes up. this is a reoccurring dream. he is allowed to say fuck which is wonderful and should be in the anime. nao arrives with food and lets herself in. he says an unmarried woman can't go in a single guy's house, lest people think something is happening, and she asks if he's gonna do something to her (flustered). i do not like where this is going. there aren't enough male characters so she has to crush on a 30 something. then she starts fantasizing about him shoving her against the wall and calling her obedient?? please stop that. they play quarto and nao asks about it and reminds him of his old girlfriend and i'm gonna Cry. i'm not even halfway through the chapter

chapter 48 (second half, this is where the game comes in). quarto!! simple game. like connect 4. SHE MEOWED AT HIM I CAN'T DO THIS. she loses and begs for another game and REMINDS HIM OF HIS GIRLFRIEND AGAIN PLEASE GOD NO... she won and saw the photo and now she's jealous. girl you are 15 manager-san is not gonna go for you. ex-girlfriend is not dead by the way. despite being hit by a semi truck all that happened was she started dating the doctor who took care of her

gonna cease liveblogging for now this post is long enough. see you for part 2, starting from chapter 49!!

[fluffycatgirl]

2! because that's the dumbest questino ever, like c'mon

5, 13, 28 & 35 for real though :3

2: Do you like playing with mods?

yeah the obvious answer is yes, but im like gonna go more in depth than that for this answer... like give examples... like it depends on the game how often i play modded, like for something like terraria i'd say i have about an equal amount of time playing unmodded and modded but for something like starbound i like am always playing that game with mods, civ 6 is another one i always have mods on for another note there is paradox games, if i'm playing singleplayer i will never have mods on because it disables acheievements, but if i were to play multiplayer i would be just fine running mods 5: Games you’ve played in the past 12 months that you really enjoyed?

uhhhhh well rabbit and steel is really good (if you like uh bullet hells, rougelikes, and/or mmo raiding) there's like terraria and minecraft which ive played in the last twelve months (and also like the last 11 years of my life but shhhh) cassette beasts is really good! civ 5 & 6 are nice and fun (tentatively hyped for civ 7) stardew valley is also nice, should get back to playing that that uh will be everything for this one....

13: A series you’ve enjoyed since your early days of gaming and still enjoy to this day whether it still has games coming out or is one you return to?

ok well there's a few here, notably uh terraria and minecraft for individual games that ive been playing since very early into my uh playing games but like for proper series-es, pokemon and mario are like the oldest i'd say, and i do still enjoy both series, even if nintendo continues to be fucking awful

28: A game you love the atmosphere of?

hrmmm, this one is kinda hard....,, i think outer wilds has a pretty good "atmosphere", Hades is also good on that front

35: What's your favorite genre of game?

hrmmmm.. i'd probably have to say roguelikes? like that genre comprises like most of my gaming playtime i think i also like am fond of sandbox games like minecraft and terraria, as well as 4X and RTS, i am also very fond of like creature collecters (pokemon, pretty much just pokemon, cassette beasts is really good too though) i like do enjoy an rpg from time to time but they're not really necessarily my favorite one of my Least favorite genres however is fighting games, mostly because i just suck at them

[midnite-enjoyer]

Finally decided to design my takes on the Splatoon agents! Notes below cut ^v^ (also mention of a Side Order boss)

Coral:

When they first joined the Splatoon they were really vicious and fiery, and probably said some stuff they regret today. Over the years they've mellowed considerably, though I think they can still get pretty competitive.

They technically first joined like 2-3 months before their 14th birthday. They'd snuck out to try to watch turf wars and got sidetracked by weird sewer guy. (They, when retelling this story, emphasize that following weird sewer guy was a mistake. Aubergine and Daffodil, who did the same thing, do not care.)

They used she/her during the time of Splat1, changed pronouns sometime during the two years between then and Octo Expansion, and completely forgot to inform Cuttlefish of this until after OE.

Blind in their right eye post-OE

Was a charger main in their youth, but as of yet I'm unsure if they changed mains later on. They were definitely one of Those Chargers when they were younger though

Aubergine

Aubrey for short!

He's like. Really whimsical and a bit eccentric. Perfectly pleasant individual to be around, and she's really good at knowing just what to say when you're feeling down, but sometimes she says something really perplexing out of nowhere.

He likes to people-watch in her free time.

Roommates with Eight! (This is actually canon according to the dialogue when Agent 4's Palette is obtained in Side Order.) They'll often spend late nights together just being mesmerized by crafting videos (stuff like OOAKs or miniatures)

You know how you can buy a Parallel Canon mask in Side Order? Aubrey got one for reasons she refuses to explain. Scared the shit out of poor Eight and he doesn't wear it around them if she can avoid it after that.

He doesn't main one particular weapon, he just has a stash and goes for whatever she feels like that particular day.

Eight

He never remembered his original name, so they just go by Eight. They did actually try a few other names, but none ended up sticking.

Trans :)

They're pretty calm and quiet generally, and doesn't typically initiate conversations. He does like to infodump to people he's closer to, though.

Gets annoyed if you just assume he's a technical whiz because he's Octarian, but yes, they do actually live up to that stereotype. He'll help you fix your appliances if they like you, with one fairly obvious exception...

He banned standing blenders in the apartment. Aubrey is mildly perplexed but just uses one of those hand blender things.

Brush main, but doesn't Turf War a lot. He does a lot of Salmon Run. Neither they nor Aubrey comprehend how they still smell like salmon when he comes back despite the protective gear.

Daffodil

Xe's like one of those yappy dogs to me. Really aggressive and loud during Turf War and controlled settings, but was terrified throughout his singleplayer campaign and just tried to mask it with more aggression.

Her family is in fact from Octo Canyon and left during the exodus post-Octavio fight. Daffodil very much does not talk about this and would greatly prefer if nobody outside the family ever found out about that. (In particular, they don't want Coral to think fae owes them anything.)

It generally hates being indebted to someone, so they tend to get very defensive about being given anything and Will insist on paying you back for it somehow. She even explicitly requests that nobody get xem birthday gifts (although it Does throw wild parties on aer birthday)

Actually a Squid Sisters fan, and likes a lot of their other songs besides Calamari Inkantation (and honestly thinks people are missing out when they only pay attention to the Inkantation), but didn't admit this to anyone until Liquid Sunshine came out.

Absolutely spoils Menace rotten. It pampers that little dude.

Stringer main. I must regretfully inform everyone ze probably mains REEF-LUX.

[randomboo256]

Four Swords Rant

I've been playing the Four Swords games for the first time recently, and they're honestly not as good as people hype them up to be. Specifically, I'm referring to the games Four Swords Anniversary Edition and Four Swords Adventures. I was really excited to play them because they're some of the only Zelda games I never touched, so to say I was let down is an understatement. Let me go one at a time with these two, because they're surprisingly different.

Also they're pretty old and are a pain to play nowadays (hell, they were a pain to play even back then), so I imagine a lot of people haven't touched them seriously in forever, so let me recap you as well.

Warning: This post will be long. I am sorry.

Firstly, Four Swords. It's probably the most obscure official Zelda game made for one of Nintendo's main systems. Four Swords was a freebie with the GBA version of A Link to the Past, and it's remaster Four Swords Anniversary Edition was a downloadable freebie to all Nintendo DSI owners. Needless to say, but there's no reason to be too overly harsh on the game. Honestly, the main problem with Four Swords is less to do with the game and more do to Nintendo's refusal to act normal for five seconds. Four Swords Anniversary was delisted just a few months after release, and the GBA original has never been rereleased (despite the fact Nintendo charges us a $50 sub to play GBA games with online multiplayer as being its main selling point).

Anyway the game itself. It's a weird one. There's four main levels, but they're randomized. It's kinda like a roguelike game or something. The gameplay is basic, but it's fun enough for a freebie. The original GBA version was multiplayer only, but luckily the (delisted) remaster added a singleplayer which works fine enough. I wanted to play it multiplayer with a friend (and believe me I tried), but it was too much hassle. As a singleplayer game, I can see it working very well as a way to get your quick Zelda fix on the go.

"But where's the complaining?" you might be wondering. Well, I haven't gotten into the bonus levels yet. Anniversary added two extra worlds... which consist of three levels each... which themselves are batches of three levels each. So 18 levels, except unlike the base game, these aren't randomized. These were all handcrafted, and are identical on every playthrough. The first 9 levels aren't bad at all, actually. They're loving homages to ALTTP, LA, and TLOZ respectively and the level design and puzzle were pretty good imo.

Now the second batch of levels are what grind my gears. They're positioned as like the greatest challenge yet but they're more like greatest test of patience. These levels are LONG (admittedly I play slow), and they're the only time in the game where Rupees became a real annoyance to me. Basically, Rupees are your extra lives. If any Link dies, you lose 50, then 100, then like 200, etc until it caps at 500 Rupees per death. If a Link dies, they respawn on the spot. Now critically, if you can not afford the death fee it's GAME OVER. You have to go back —not to the start of the level— but to to the start of that batch of 3 levels. Just one of these levels can take me like 30 minutes because they're huge and I'm looking everywhere for all the rupees I can get. Add them all up and that's like 90 minutes of progress I can potentially lose from not having my damn tax money. Even that wouldn't be too bad if these levels didn't have some downright horrible game design in my opinion. For example, the second batch of levels are all filled with ice physics that make the game near unplayable. Yeah, it's hard I guess. But the developers didn't seem to understand that hard things should also have to be fun.

You may think this is a lot of pointless complaining considering it's about 1 bonus world in a free and delisted remaster of a relatively obscure game, and if you do think that you're completely correct. However I was so completely miserable playing it that I just had to rant to get it off my chest, ok? Despite my whining, I think Four Swords Anniversary Edition is a good game for what it is, at least from my singleplayer perspective.

Four Swords Adventures on the other hand... I am not so forgiving to. Disclaimer: I have not finished this game yet. At this point, we only have a couple worlds left. Multiplayer games like this need scheduling, and we haven't had the chance to end it yet. Firstly, Four Swords Adventures is the polar opposite of Four Swords in terms of price. While Four Swords was basically just a free giveaway, Four Swords Adventures is perhaps one of the most ridiculously expensive games to ever exist on a home console. Between the $50 price tag of the game itself, you also need four $100 GBAs, and four $10 GBA to GCN link cables. If you just want to play your Gamecube game with multiple people the couch, you had to spend over $500 (including tax) when it was new. Keep in mind, I was using the pricing of back then when it was new. Nowadays it's even worse. Just one of those GBA to GCN cables alone and used can run you like $40.

You might defend this with, "So what? The GBA Four Swords required a bunch of consoles and stuff. You didn't give it shit for it." But there's a huge difference there. It's not unreasonable for a GBA game to need more GBAs for multiplayer. In fact, for simultaneous multiplayer it simply needs to do that. There's no other way it could reasonably work. Not only that, but Four Swords—again—was a freebie to a normal Zelda game. It was more like a bonus if you had the extra hardware to play it.

Meanwhile, it's completely UNreasonable for a Gamecube game that's literally all about multiplayer to require four separate game consoles on top of the existing home console that you needed to buy. Spoiler alert, but the GBAs basically just act like Wii U Gamepads before the Wii U Gamepad, and they're about as useless. You can see your health, force gem count, and if you're in a house or underground you appear on the GBA screen. Is it neat? Kinda, but not $500 neat. This game should've just had split screen, like a normal game. The GBA stuff could've just been optional if you own the hardware already. It's completely and utterly ridiculous, and it's insane that Nintendo got away with it.

Well for a game this expensive, it must be worth it right? God I wish it was...

Firstly, the good. I really love the combat. It feels like 3D Zelda combat adapted right into the second dimension. It took me a bit to get used to, but it feels great. I can't remember if any other 2D played like this, but I like it. Secondly and despite my upcoming issues, I do think the game is decently fun most of the time.

Ok I'm out of good. Now for the bad.

Firstly, WHY IS EVERYTHING RECYCLED FROM OTHER GAMES?! Graphics, music, enemies, everything! Everything is taken from either A Link to the Past, Wind Waker, or the OG Four Swords. Even some of the characters are just lifted from Ocarina of Time like come on Nintendo! Give this game some identity! The original GBA game felt like it had more of its own identity, and it was literally a pack in! It makes me feel like I'm playing some weird mod or fangame or something. It doesn't help that some of the graphics just look bad. Some of the bosses reused from Wind Waker, for example, just have some really cheap looking sprites. Combine that with the constant mismatch of assets from random Zelda games on top of this game's tacky UI elements and it ends up looking like a Newgrounds fan game.

Secondly, the multiplayer experience is seriously flawed. There's no way around it. So, it's a co-op right? After all, the goal is to work together to finish the dungeon. Well the co-op experience is frankly lacking. All the co-op amounts to is "Push thing together" or "Grab thing together" or whatever. There's rarely any creativity in it. Most of this game could be completed with a single Link, which ends up meaning that there's rarely any feeling of actually working together to get through it. Often, one person will just end up doing everything while the others are just following them around with nothing to contribute.

As for the puzzles? What puzzles? So far, there's hardly been anything at all. That's baffling to me, because four player Zelda is literally perfect for tons of super fun puzzles, but so far it's like they aren't even in the game really. It's such a damn shame, because that was the part I was really looking forward to. Elaborate co-op puzzle solving?? Like sign me up! But alas. The game is basically just exploration and combat. The combat is fun, but the exploration? Well, I'll get back to that.

So the co-op is already wounded as is, but what kills it the fact this game feels deeply confused on what kind of multiplayer game it wants to be. On one hand, it seems like it's a co-op. On the other hand, it adds a bunch of annoying shit to try to make it competitive. I don't mean the side modes or Tingle's tower or whatever. I mean the core level to level gameplay. The fact that things like heart containers and bracelets are only given to one person is terrible because it undercuts the fact we're working together here. When I get an upgrade like that I just feel bad about it. A lot of the intended competitiveness revolves around the Rupee replacements, being Force Gems. The game really wants us to be aggressively fighting each other over these damn gems that none of us give a shit about. So much so that the game has freaking friendly fire on at all times. Not only that, but we also have hitboxes and can bump each other around and get in each other's way. This means that this a co-op game where the other players are more likely to get in the way of each other (whether they like it or not) than they are to actually work together. Even from a purely competitive perspective, what's the appeal? Being a dick to your friends just ends up costing both of you in the end, so like???

Plus like, there's practically no punishment for death at all. The only punishment as far as I can tell is ranking lower on the end level tally, which again is just an unwanted competitive element.

Finally, the exploration has problems too. It's generally fun, but there's a constant sense of being tethered too heavily to your teammates. Despite the fact that the game forces every player to have a glorified Gamepad, there's still very little freedom in walking around. Sure, another player might walk into a cave, but you're all stuck on the same overall screen. That means that if one player has to backtrack, everyone has to backtrack with them. It also means that the four players can't multitask. Unless there's a bunch to do on one screen, and there usually isn't, it just leaves someone waiting for the other players to get finished.

It doesn't help that every player only gets 1 item each. It's so lame. They totally could've added an inventory menu and had you unlock items for at least the rest of the level, rather than temporarily putting them in the hands of one Link. Any excitement I feel finding a cool item is completely ruined knowing that I'll likely be forced to toss it aside for like, a shovel or something. Plus, it's the main source of obnoxious back tracking. God, it really feels good for the whole group to backtrack multiple screens because one of us needs to grab a certain item that we need to progress. Feels great. Definitely not wasting our time.

I know I've been really negative, but I don't hate this game. When I can ignore the issues, it's pretty fun. But man this game can really get on all of our nerves at times, and not in an enjoyable way. Four Swords Adventures just reeks of missed potential. Multiplayer Zelda??! That sounds awesome! But nah this was super underwhelming. My gameplay issues combined with the insane hardware requirements just makes this a huge no go nowadays. It's frankly not worth it, in any capacity. If you have to play it, just play it on PC if you can. It's too much money for a game that feels this uncreative.

What a let down.

[ingapotejtoo]

none submitted for cap? well then

cracks knuckles

this is the Captain we're talking about - the man who literally created a damn Goddess because he didn't want to pick a side. (we do know he was pushed to that point by other champions but i digress) The amount of lore his cubito has, the amount of lore he will create given a chance. (ultra modded leading into mianite, origins, sun guardians, hexxit 2, mf vault hunters of all things - some unintentional but boy oh boy it does add to it doesn't it? especially if he keeps referencing mianite in all of them to tie it all into a pretty little bow - if you want a tragic immortal champion who spent literally over 300 years in the void [yes i've done the actual void math on how long it took don't test me with that] they you got your guy right here!) For goodness sake this man sometimes says such gut wrenching one-liners during SINGLEPLAYER series OUT OF NOWHERE bcus haha oopsie i got too op tehee! that will make you stare into the distance and ponder your own life. "make me feel something again, please i want to feel something" "im going to walk into every dangerous situation in hopes to find someone who can make me feel" yeah??? uh huh??? anyway i think he would do great on empires and bring funky lore into the whole equasion of what everyone else has going on let him go wild let him be silly! also here is some silly art to add onto my propaganda wooo

Side one | Round #1

Propaganda

CaptainSparklez

none submitted

TangoTek

Firstly: Ranchers. I love them. We need more. Nothing else needs to be said, I'm sure everyone agrees cause they're amazing together.

Second: let the D&D man loose on a roleplay server!! His season 8 lore was so good and one must merely look at Decked Out 1 and 2 or his Create series or the current season 10 to be witness to his amazing environmental storytelling abilities. He would be such a good addition.

—

honestly I don't have strong propaganda for him but it's Tango, let him make a weird little redstone powered empire with ridiculous traps and many farms. Add enrichment to his enclosure!!! Also ranchers

[turtlemagnum]

KOTOR and KOTOR2 main cast and their relations to video games

this is a mostly jokey, headcanon-y "what if" in regards to if video games existed as they do irl in the star wars universe. try not to think about it too hard, and this is also presupposing neutral/light side for the core cast because that's how i played the games and i don't have the constitution to actively choose bad things in video games

revan: in terms of raw skill, they're virtually unmatched. doesn't matter if it's a fighting game, a puzzle game, nor a grand strategy game, there's an extremely solid chance they'll kick your ass. they also get extremely competitive, impeccable shit-talking game that'll throw off all but the most stoic; but they also get angry in a very funny way on the rare times they do lose. one of the few mortals that can comprehend 5d chess with multiverse time travel. is a tier whore, mains one of the high tier anime swordfighters in smash (i think lucina?)

carth: you know those boomer dads that absolutely wrecked shit up in arcades back in the 70s and 80s, but anything past the NES or SNES they just... don't get? that's carth, if you put him in front of a pacman or galaga cabinet, he'd wreck shit up, but if you showed him a smash brother or a mario he'd just squint

bastilla: i feel like if she were a gamer at all, she'd probably be into platformers and life simulation games, maybe the occasional 2D JRPG if she's feeling especially spicy. would probably play the shit out of stardew valley or kirby, ya feel me? when playing smash, she'd specifically choose one of the prettyboy anime fighters. not because they're high tier, she's probably never heard of a tier list in her life, she just likes how they look

mission vao: extremely good at video games, especially for her age. probably the only one on the ebon hawk who even comes close to rivaling revan in terms of raw skill aside from the droids, but droids playing video games is cheating tbh. probably pretty omnivorous in terms of game taste, but probably leaning towards anything violent/fast paced, e.g. shooters like DOOM or smash bros. is the reason why the crew regularly plays mario party, and since she's mildly luckier than revan and has almost as much skill, she fairly regularly wrecks revan's ass. is also probably around the right age to get wayyy into minecraft tbh. game and watch main

juhani: gamer god reflexes, absolute jack shit for gamesense. if a game requires mashing, precise movements and the like, she's likely golden; but she's terrible at reading her opponent/things that require extensive forethought. overall, pretty good at fighting games and the like, though frankly i feel like she wouldn't be a huge gamer

jolee: while old, this man is a gamer god. he's like, skyrim grandma type guy, can play games normally for the most part despite being ancient. also probably tends towards single player open world games and extremely dense RPGs, this man will play morrowind and planescape: torment until he's dead and rotting. despite being great at RPGs and singleplayer shit, it's mostly because he knows how to minmax all the technical shit/knows the exploits and glitches and all that, in terms of raw gameplay (and thus, in multiplayer games), he leaves something to be desired. if you manage to talk him into playing smash, he specifically chooses mii gunner with the sans outfit just to annoy revan specifically, figures it doesn't matter if he chooses a bad character if he's gonna lose, so he might as well get a laugh out of it

canderous: this man will relentlessly bully you for playing video games, but if you coaxed him well enough you could probably get him to play something violent, like DOOM or GTA. once you've got him in, he'll most likely relent, but now you have to deal with this boomer son of a bitch yelling at kids in GTA online and blaring rip and tear while everyone else is trying to sleep

HK-47 and T3M4: both are roughly about as good as one another at games, which is to say that they're both goddamn AIs who can consistently perform frame perfect tricks and make every game into a live TAS. you have better odds against them in, say, chess, or perhaps even 5D chess with multiverse time travel. of course, they're not programmed to be good at video games, so any game they play they'd start off bad, but they learn startlingly quickly and playing against them is generally unfair enough to be extremely unfun. both also shittalk relentlessly, though T3 is a lot more vulgar, it's just that most of the crew can't speak binary. HK tries to be a bit more "refined" in his insults, while T3 is peak 13 year old on xbox live, except more eloquent and creative since he's still got an adult tier of intellect. one last remark is that HK isn't as good at thinking in the longterm as T3, so T3 kicks his shit in at grand strategy games like civ and the like

zaalbar: is it bigoted for me to assume this man has never touched a video game in his life? i don't think so, i feel like chewbacca would wreck han's ass at video games, so i don't think it's because he's a wookie. i think zaalbar is basically just a boomer

the exile: honestly about as good as revan at games, it's just that they're not as much of a tryhard. despite this, they have inhuman amounts of luck. so, essentially, they're the Fearesome Monarcke of mario party in terms of how often they win, but everyone still has a good time since they're a good sport about it. the exception is that whenever atton gets into his Gamer Rage, the exile knows exactly how to press his buttons and thinks it's funny. they generally have the most fun playing multiplayer games, especially co-op, so naturally they tend towards a lot of nintendo stuff (though, occasionally they get the urge to pubstomp in TF2 or some other shooter.... may the force have mercy on the poor souls who face them, for they have none to spare...) zelda main in smash

brianna: until meeting the exile, this girl has never touched a video game in her life. though, once she's acclimated, she's surprisingly good. especially likes fighting games/games where you can punch, for what i hope are obvious reasons. also loves to play multiplayer games with the exile, and while she can get a bit heated she definitely tends towards more zen levels of play. would main captain falcon in smash

kreia: refuses to play the exile's party games on principal, though if she thinks she can get away with it she'll absolutely fuck with atton's controller with the force. if she does play games, i think she'd lean towards singleplayer RPGs with good writing, especially if it permits amoral characters, so she'd probably love fallout: new vegas. also? hardcore PC gamer, if her computer skill is anything to go by

visas: also hadn't touched a game before meeting the exile, though due to her blindness, she's incapable of playing games without some manner of accessibility aid. but even if she wasn't blind, i feel like she'd be kinda bad at video games, though she'd absolutely enjoy spending quality time with the others (even if she wouldn't like to admit it). while not video games necessarily, i feel like the exile would probably get something like one of those chess boards where the pieces are designed to all be differentiated from texture alone, and she'd really appreciate the gesture

atton: peak toxic gamer boy, shit-talks relentlessly, gets really into it. would honestly be a bit too much for some people (read: kreia), but most of the crew think it's funny, albeit to varying degrees. in terms of gameplay skill, he'd probably be about average? but with anything to do with probability, he's a savant at crunching the numbers (playing pazaak). would honestly consider cheating in online multiplayer games, the rascal. man mains pikachu in smash, he tries to write himself off as a tier whore but he secretly just thinks the little guy's cute

bao dur: this man is a god gamer at puzzle and fighting games specifically. in tetris, he'll stack em up like you wouldn't believe, could honestly be a speedrunner. in something like tekken, not only would he be absurdly good in terms of raw gameplay, this man can read your inputs like a goddamn book. gets really competitive with brianna, probably has that thing where you absentmindedly play tetris in your head. also, war games are absolutely too much for him, i feel like he'd react to the battlefront games in the same way that ww2 veterans allegedly react to CoD

mical: this man plays the sims, cheesy old PC point and click adventure games, and nothing else. he's a master at the oregon trail, but if you were to put him into anything with more reactive gameplay he'd crumble to dust. still plays mario party with the exile and everyone else, and while he has fun, it's because he's with good friends, in terms of gameplay he'd look like he was throwing to an outside observer

G0-T0: you'd imagine he'd be like the other droids, but no. he's that nerd boy who's all like, "heh, this is simple, all i have to do are these elementary calculations" only to fall flat on his face, every time. bro can't even play chess. the only person who will lose to mical

hanharr: i have the least experience with him out of any KOTOR companion, due to my aforementioned lack of desire to intentionally be evil in video games. but, i feel like this man wouldn't touch a video game with a twenty yard pole, both out of a lack of desire and a lack of ability. again, trying not to be bigoted against wookies, i just feel like the two we see in the KOTOR games would specifically, as individuals, be bad at video games

mira: shooters, stealth games, and any combination of the two. would love the stealth parts of the MGS games, would play the shit out of the thief games, boomer shooters like half life etc. slightly better than atton at the exile's goddamn party games, which she relentlessly taunts him with. mains snake in smash, plays incredibly lame and spammy