I want to be clear. I haven’t enjoyed Battle Royal games, a competitive game mode with lots of players on an island and the last player/team standing is the winner. Twitch tells me I should be all about them. They are some of the most streamed games. It’s a competitive game burnout most likely. Ahem, it could be that I suck; I don’t win a lot on competitive shooter games, but we won’t talk about that, mmmkay. The AAA competitive game scene is overwhelming these days, and it’s sickening. RPGs are my thing. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy some shooters. We are talking about stuff like Borderlands, DOOM, and Mass Effect. You get the picture, vs NPCs. I can tune a NPC’s AI to my level. Play just on the edge of difficulty that doesn’t piss me off, but I have the upper hand in winning. Makes me feel great, and I don’t have to sweat.
With esports, competitive games have become super sweaty. It’s gross. I have found that I like to watch esports though. Which comes as a surprise; because, I’ve never been interested in sports much at all. Maybe it’s just the community surrounding shit like football. Video games—video games I get. For the most part, I can watch and enjoy esports events. However, with the rise of esports, you have a rise of toxic shit heads. Like a virus, you can’t stop them from spreading once they are in an ecosystem. It’s so bad companies are doing everything they can to control their communities. So, I don’t hate esports. I’m glad video games are as big and mainstream as they are now. Kids in school don’t have to live through being one of the outcasts because you play a lot of video games. But, I blame esports for creating a community, like sports, that I fucking hate. I don’t give a shit about shitty shit head opinions from shitty tryhards, who are just as talentless as I am. I just want to play the game without judgement on everyone’s skill level.
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One of the most impressive esports scenes, because Activision Blizzard bought MLG and support it with truck loads of cash, is Overwatch. A hero based, unique characters that all have unique abilities, shooter that has that patented Blizzard Polish™. The game looks great, feels great, and is just all around great, but it’s only a competitive game. Playing solo quick play, the most casual mode, is no problem. Even two people teamed up in quick play isn’t that bad. Once your group gets to about 3+ members or a full stack of six, the sweaty games creep out of the wood works. It makes sense. I get it. You don’t want to run up against a full team if you are queueing in solo. Full teams should run into other full teams, and solo queue groups should run into other pugs, pickup groups. I actually didn’t mind the quick play full groups even with it being a little sweaty, but Overwatch has a design feature I can’t stand dubbed The Holy Trinity. Just know it is mainly found in MMOs such as World of Warcraft. Blizzard’s decision to have Overwatch’s heroes fall into one of the three categories of tank, heals, or damage usually means half of the group is forced into a role they feel would best suit the team rather than what they want to play. There’s always people who claim they only know how to play DPS(damage) characters, and you need to fill the tank or heals gap in the party. No thanks.
Overwatch is a fairly cheap base game. It’s main form of predatory monetization is loot boxes. Loot boxes are cancer that seeped into PC gaming from mobile cash grabs, and Overwatch’s success is to blame. I don’t mind buying specific items that I might want to support a game, but fuck loot boxes. I really can’t express my hatred of loot boxes any better than The Hater Lord himself, Jim Sterling. Give the video a watch, and this video was before the whole Star Wars: Battlefront II loot box fallout. Jim called it. That’s it folks. Next topic.
So, Apex Legends showed up out of nowhere last week. No marketing that I knew managed to see. They announced it and they released it at basically the same time. It’s taken over Twitch by storm, and there’s a good reason. The game is fun as hell. What is this game, you ask? Apex is a free to download Squad Based Hero Shooter Battle Royale supported by microtransactions, one of which being loot boxes. It is a melting pot of all the things I loath. I should hate the game. It’s just too damn fun. I was going to have Anthem be the main game I streamed. Now, I want that to be Apex Legends. Bonus, Apex is more in line with the type of game that’s popular to stream on Twitch. Anthem’s streaming potential will be limited to new content releases. Battle Royale game types don’t have that issue. There is no story or anything like that in the game, which is another thing I’ve chastised games like Overwatch for that I seem to forgive for Apex. The popular games to stream are devoid of any substance other than one type of competitive game mode they have. They are kind of like Sitcoms. Anyone can start watching at any point; because, they are basically meaningless. So, thanks for Apex, Respawn and Evil Corp., I mean EA.
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So, maybe I just hate losing, and love winning. Who doesn’t. Maybe I like to hate for the sake of hatin’. Be part of something; part the Hate Crowd. I could be a sellout. Ok, the joke here is that I was never not a sellout. Maybe … maybe I’m just a goddamn trendy ass poser.