Competitive Mentalities in Gaming

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It’s been about ten years since I last wrote something for this site. A lot has changed in that time.

For instance, it seems to me that the entire gaming landscape has become a lot more competitive.

Gamer Unsupervised: Ideas and Lessons Your Gamer May be Learning While Nobody's Watching | PT 1: Rage — Ukatsu

I’m not just talking about eSports. In fact, the rise of professional competitive gaming is one thing that doesn’t surprise me. It was already a thing back in 2012, albeit much smaller, and even then I had a feeling it would grow.

I’m also not talking about the popularity of traditional, non-professional competitive gaming. That’s been consistently popular for about as long as gaming has existed. I’m more interested in the other, subtle-but-not-always-subtle ways in which a competitive mindset has permeated the hobby.

Take speedrunning for example. It’s not new, but it has become explosively popular over the last decade. →  2 h4rdc0r3 4 U.

Desirable Games of 2022

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2022 may already be three months old, but videolamer just relaunched and we have calendar based feelings to express. Here are some of the staffs’ least undesirable games coming out this year. [Because of the enormous lead time of this site’s print version, some of these games may already be available.]

Cunzy

In the (n)ever year that was 2020-202X with most of the normal markers of the year suspended, canceled, or otherwise prevented by the pandemic, it really was only the next game release on the horizon that helped to stay shotgun from mouth. 

Top of my list, and pleasingly scheduled for the end of January (which is now the past) is (was) Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Part of the appeal of this game at the moment is it’s hard to work out the shape of the game from the handful of teasers and trailers that we’ve got. →  I can has post?

Oh Joy, an old video game site

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Step aside Web 2.0, here comes videolamer 2.lame. Or lame.0. Whichever is stupider. We have returned to offer articles, reviews, complaints, and jokes about video games to the new generation. A lot has changed since we stopped regularly updating the site nearly a dozen years ago. Back then we didn’t even call them video games, but moving interactables. Also, we could pretend we had enough time left to do something about climate change.

2011’s best looking game.

To fill new readers in, this is a site where each contributor can write mostly whatever they want, though we generally share a passion for older and Japanese games. What we lose in unity and coherence, we gain in distinct perspectives. And what perspectives! We are all straight, white men, but one of us doesn’t even live in America. →  The Adventures of Cookie and Read

How Not to Remake: Langrisser Edition

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I’ve been a fan of the Langrisser series for a long time. The series’ debut entry, Warsong, is the only one that received an official localization until recently. Unfortunately, the Langrisser 1&2 remake available on most platforms is not only missing much of what makes Warsong special, it’s not even a particularly good game in its own right.

There are several things included in the remake that are actually good changes. It includes a fully viewable class change chart, with “secret” final classes spelled out (much of this was hidden in the original games). The skill system is actually a great addition as well. It gives more customization options and incentivizes exploring the tree a little more. It also gives a little more flavor to characters that are otherwise very similar, like Thorne and Hawking. →  This better not be as bad as everything else here.

We’re back… kind of

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We’ve managed to bring the site back with https support, removed some older shared content (what even is gamegrep?) and cleaned other things up a bit.

If you happen to actually read this… let us know if anything seems to be broken!

Quantum Link Remembered

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Hey reader(s),
None of us at videolamer (that I could get a hold of) recalls the Quantum Link service, although many of you no doubt remember its successor America On-Line with no small amount of fondness. This is a pretty darn cool article about the Quantum Link worthy of attention:

https://www.tinytickle.co.uk/quantum-link/

We’re not really in a state to reincarnate at the moment, but we do fondly recall the times we would write several articles a week, some of which were worth reading. We’ll keep them online as long as we can.

Keep on keeping on.

2012 Retrospective – Part 2

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Continued from the previous article, this is a set of mini-reviews from stuff I didn’t get the chance to actually write about in 2012.

Diablo III (PC)
Because impressions from the beta were somewhat divided, I held off on picking up Diablo III until early summer, when the hype for the game had died down to “acceptable dungeon-crawler”. Unfortunately, I commit the ultimate sin now by (mini-)reviewing it without having actually beaten it. After the wealth of customization, strategy, and randomness that was in Diablo II, its sequel came as a huge disappointment.

Despite more than two hours of gameplay, I had yet to make an actual decision for either character I made. Bizarrely, stats exist but are auto-allocated, and you are simply given a new skill (and occasionally skill-variant) at each level. →  But the future refused to change.

2012 Retrospective — Part 1

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Since I didn’t get the chance to write about many of these games on videolamer, this is sort of a 2012-as-reviewed. Apologies if it’s a bit much; I’ll try to keep my impressions brief. These are all games that stand out to me, in either a good or a bad way. Some of them were released in 2011, but as a fellow gaming peon (no review copies for videolamer) I didn’t acquire them until this year. Games appear in rough chronological order.

Overall, 2012 has been a really great year for video games. Personally, I’ve been trying to limit the growth of my backlog while completing as many new and interesting games as I have the time for. What I found surprising was how well-represented the JRPG genre has been, as they have seen releases on consoles, portables, and even PC. →  A reader is you.

Great Greed: Or, I play bad RPGs so you don’t have to

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Many, many years ago I was an avid reader of Nintendo Power.  I had already developed a taste for RPGs, although they were a bit less numerous back then.  A bunch of them were bad — and often, even Nintendo Power was willing to admit that.

Regardless, I would read each article about an RPG with fascination.  When it was a game I knew, I would enjoy flipping through the various artwork and reading about the tricky parts.  Otherwise, I’d quietly file it away in a hidden corner of my mind, to play later.

I’m finally working my way through the last few of those games I filed away — recently Paladin’s Quest and 7th Saga, and a year or so back I played through a good chunk of Arcana.  All of these games I tracked down, purchased, and (with the exception of 7th Saga, which is too tedious) played on real hardware. 

 →  Keep it warm.

Review — Suikoden Tactics

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Disclaimer: Not really a “glorious revival” of videolamer, but I’ve written this stuff on my own site and by gum this site deserves some activity.  Don’t worry, I’ll probably only update once or twice before the site goes back into hibernation.

Recently, I finally beat Suikoden Tactics, the Strategy RPG semi-sequel to Suikoden IV.  As a long-time fan of the series, I had intended to beat the game for some time, held off by two things.  First, Suikoden IV wasn’t very good and the story never resonated with me.  Second, Suikoden Tactics has the much-maligned feature of permanent death for non-story characters.  When combined with the grid elemental system and a massive set of things enemies can do, it’s extremely difficult at times to predict whether a character will die in any given situation. →  Article Hominid