Thanks for reminding me about how I'll likely never get a sequel to one of the greatest games ever made.
It wouldn't be as painful if the game could stand well enough on it's own, but it's just one of those games where you look at stuff and think to yourself "this would be even better if they did such-and-such."
Usually this is solved by making the sequel, but with the case of Beyond Good & Evil....
The moment I realized what playing CS:S professionally would take...
I started playing in the early betas, very early. Back when CS was just a mod and Half-Life Deathmatch was the star of the online show. I played both, managed to place top 20 on the CLQ for my deathmatch scores (admittedly a gauss whore). I started playing CS a huge amount when I found a community, called x-ploited, that had funny regulars and a few solid admins. I played on that server for as long as the community could hold together, just over 2 years. When I finally began to want to take it to another level I went to a regular who ran a decent team and asked to join. The team's name was Rj45, and it may not have significance to you guys, but it carries some respect among the old school. I wasn't deeply involved in the team, but I played as a backup and practiced irregularly. The guys were fun, I had a good time. They became very serious and I simply couldn't keep up during my senior year in high school. Unbeknown to me they went on to be one of the top teams in the world during my inactivity. I finally had time to play during the summer and returned to a team in shambles after months of hardcore practice left everyone in dire straits in their lives. The superficial teammates left, the core remained. Months passed, the lingering void craved be filled.
I moved on, went to college, but the isolation of the dorms allowed me to slip back into the game. It was like a warm blanket on a rainy day. I went to the '04 CPL with the team, we placed terribly (40 something), but we made a decision: We would jump over to CS:S and be among the first to establish ourselves as leaders in the new game. I practiced 40 hours a week and began really living up to my potential as a player. I started to not just understand the theory of tactics, but see it in real-time. Rj45 went on to become one of the top teams in the initial CAL season. We moved up in difficulty and dedication. I moved up to 60 hours a week along with strategy meetings. I couldn't keep my passion locked up in the virtual world, I inadvertently converted several national merit students who lived in my dorm to the game. My passion was electric, I genuinely was enjoying every match. We kept pushing forward, delving deeply into config generation (tweaking netcode and graphics) to maintain a competitive edge.
We started to hit a brick wall. Other teams were started to match our work ethic; their players and ours were equally talented. It became an arms race based on how many hours you practiced that week. Eventually everyone was practicing as much as a non-professional could. We had to start innovating in strategy instead of relying skill. Quality instead of quantity became our motto. We converted practice time to almost entirely strategic theory and experimental tactics.
Don't have time for more, but I'll finish it out if there's any interest.
Thanks for reminding me about how I'll likely never get a sequel to one of the greatest games ever made.
It wouldn't be as painful if the game could stand well enough on it's own, but it's just one of those games where you look at stuff and think to yourself "this would be even better if they did such-and-such."
Usually this is solved by making the sequel, but with the case of Beyond Good & Evil....
Just knowing that it was coming out kept my hopes up for future LucasArts releases.... when Full Throttle 2 got cancelled, the coffin was quickly lowered into the ground. /sigh
This. A hundred times this.
No, Full Throttle 2 looked horrible, I was glad it was canceled. It would have not been a real adventure game, it would have been a horrible undead abomination that only needed to be destroyed. The subsequent horrible sales would have really killed the adventure genre.
When they took Advanced Wars and made it look shitty...
Yeah, Advance Wars DS was pretty awful looking, wasn't it.
I kid, I kid
One of my biggest disappointments: Kane & Lynch. The story is really good, I like the characters and everything about it except the game itself. It could have been GoTY IMO if they gave it another year or so.
Thanks for reminding me about how I'll likely never get a sequel to one of the greatest games ever made.
It wouldn't be as painful if the game could stand well enough on it's own, but it's just one of those games where you look at stuff and think to yourself "this would be even better if they did such-and-such."
Usually this is solved by making the sequel, but with the case of Beyond Good & Evil....
Yeah... Oh man.
First time I went into
space
i was like, damn I wish I could explore tonnes of
planets.
I had blocked this from my mind, now I am sad thanks to all of you.
METAzraeL on
dream a little dream or you could live a little dream
sleep forever if you wish to be a dreamer
When I was a kid my brother had a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) that he'd never let me play. It seems like I spent hundreds of hours watching him play Sonic 2 over and over, but he'd never want to do co-op, because I'd slow him down. He'd position the controller in specific ways when he went out so that when he got home, he'd know if I'd been playing on it, and would yell at me. He even went away for a week on camp, and hid the controllers specifically (or so he told me) so that I couldn't play. I don't know what the fuck his problem was. It wasn't in his room, it wasn't his T.V. I guess he assumed I would break something. Anyway, that always makes me kinda sad to think about, like I missed out on what could have been an awesome part of my childhood; besides that I really had no access to video games until I could afford to buy myself a Playstation a year after they were out.
Also, getting out our old Commodore 64 a decade after it's hey-day only to realise that almost all of the floppy's were corrupt/useless.
When I was a kid my brother had a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) that he'd never let me play. It seems like I spent hundreds of hours watching him play Sonic 2 over and over, but he'd never want to do co-op, because I'd slow him down. He'd position the controller in specific ways when he went out so that when he got home, he'd know if I'd been playing on it, and would yell at me. He even went away for a week on camp, and hid the controllers specifically (or so he told me) so that I couldn't play. I don't know what the fuck his problem was. It wasn't in his room, it wasn't his T.V. I guess he assumed I would break something. Anyway, that always makes me kinda sad to think about, like I missed out on what could have been an awesome part of my childhood; besides that I really had no access to video games until I could afford to buy myself a Playstation a year after they were out.
Also, getting out our old Commodore 64 a decade after it's hey-day only to realise that almost all of the floppy's were corrupt/useless.
Holy hell, I'd have beat the shit out of my brother if he tried that. Or told my mom.
Also, getting out our old Commodore 64 a decade after it's hey-day only to realise that almost all of the floppy's were corrupt/useless.
On a related note, the day my Amiga 1200 died. Not just because I suddenly lost the ability to play a wealth of games, some real rare gems too (Worms: The Directors Cut, Alien Breed, Superfrog, and Micro Machines to name but a few), but because I was using it to type my G.C.S.E coursework at the time and suddenly all of my many months of work was lost.
All this talk of Counter-Strike douche baggery reminds me of how much better behaved my brother and I found the DoD community to be.
Man, I didn't get into PC gaming until about 2001, and I got lucky and picked up HL on a whim (I thought the cover was cool, I know), and I played HL DM (it was so scary to be online against humans!) then some CS and then, finally (from a PC Gamer promo disk) DoD 1.3b.
Jesus christ was that game so much more...I don't know what it had, but it hooked me. And even trolling for pub servers I don't remember a time when that community was not classy. Me, on my 56k (awesome HL1 netcode btw) gunning down germans and allies in hectic matches with the SVP sounds ripped from the movie. The vets actually telling me stuff about how to play the game and survive and not screaming shit at me in shrill voices (or typing shit in all caps).
I am sad that I haven't yet had a similiar experience playing online or coop, I still enjoy it, but maybe it was because it was all so new. Also, it felt good returning the favor to the new players when I had become a "vet," the good community was key I think.
I should see if any one is still running a 3.1 server somewhere...
KingAgamemnon on
0
The Black HunterThe key is a minimum of compromise, and a simple,unimpeachable reason to existRegistered Userregular
edited February 2008
That "Vets helping me instead of screaming at me" thing reminds me of some CoD4 I played last night
Basically for about 2 hours it was just the same group of people.
We all joked around and chatted, there was a girl too, and all the guys were nice to her and mucked around a bit, but nothing nasty. Just a few mangirl jokes and refering to her as a guy, she took it well. She also kicked everyone elses ass.
All of a sudden this guy joined in, and by the second match he was in on he started calling the girl a bitch and a cunt, and giving people shit.
Also I was playing some TF2 today, and this guy was just being a total fuckhead, and wouldn't shut up. He shit talked for about an hour, no-one else said anything, they couldnt be shitted, it was just this one guy talking shit about how we're all gay and how he has done more that we could ever dream of etc etc.
Dusdais ashamed of this postSLC, UTRegistered Userregular
edited February 2008
When Star Wars Galaxy's release date was announced. I was in beta at the time (had been since Beta 2); it was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. So much potential, wasted.
The first was when Blizzard really started opening paid server transfers. I was in a high-end raiding guild at the time, and anyone who's done that scene knows there's a whole lot of frustration with learning the new instances. Hours and hours of frustration. Which naturally leads to a lot of "grass looks greener over there..." syndrome.
We lost several core raiders and a few officers. They transferred out. It honestly felt like getting dumped - you spend all this time with these guys, become friends, then log on one day and they're gone. I still get sad when I think of that.
The bitter irony is that they all transferred to a supposedly "better" guild where most of them were promptly given "backup" status - which meant they hardly ever raided. A lot of them just quit WoW after a few months.
The second really sad part was when I "quit" the game - at the time I was spending the vast majority of my free time just raiding. Part of me wanted to keep playing but I knew that it was consuming my life and I made myself walk away. Still very hard to do. Every couple of months I'd log in to say hello to the old guild; my heart broke a little when one of the newer officers (upon seeing me log in) said "Who's 'GameHat' and why does he have officer status? "
The moment I realized what playing CS:S professionally would take...
I started playing in the early betas, very early. Back when CS was just a mod and Half-Life Deathmatch was the star of the online show. I played both, managed to place top 20 on the CLQ for my deathmatch scores (admittedly a gauss whore). I started playing CS a huge amount when I found a community, called x-ploited, that had funny regulars and a few solid admins. I played on that server for as long as the community could hold together, just over 2 years. When I finally began to want to take it to another level I went to a regular who ran a decent team and asked to join. The team's name was Rj45, and it may not have significance to you guys, but it carries some respect among the old school. I wasn't deeply involved in the team, but I played as a backup and practiced irregularly. The guys were fun, I had a good time. They became very serious and I simply couldn't keep up during my senior year in high school. Unbeknown to me they went on to be one of the top teams in the world during my inactivity. I finally had time to play during the summer and returned to a team in shambles after months of hardcore practice left everyone in dire straits in their lives. The superficial teammates left, the core remained. Months passed, the lingering void craved be filled.
I moved on, went to college, but the isolation of the dorms allowed me to slip back into the game. It was like a warm blanket on a rainy day. I went to the '04 CPL with the team, we placed terribly (40 something), but we made a decision: We would jump over to CS:S and be among the first to establish ourselves as leaders in the new game. I practiced 40 hours a week and began really living up to my potential as a player. I started to not just understand the theory of tactics, but see it in real-time. Rj45 went on to become one of the top teams in the initial CAL season. We moved up in difficulty and dedication. I moved up to 60 hours a week along with strategy meetings. I couldn't keep my passion locked up in the virtual world, I inadvertently converted several national merit students who lived in my dorm to the game. My passion was electric, I genuinely was enjoying every match. We kept pushing forward, delving deeply into config generation (tweaking netcode and graphics) to maintain a competitive edge.
We started to hit a brick wall. Other teams started to match our work ethic; their players and ours were equally talented. It became an arms race based on how many hours you practiced that week. Eventually everyone was practicing as much as a non-professional could. We had to start innovating in strategy instead of relying skill. Quality instead of quantity became our motto. We converted practice time to almost entirely strategic theory and experimental tactics.
Continuing:
These experimental tactics evolved from spending hours scrimmaging on each map. Noting things like boost locations, flash-over/under walls, throwing smokes through holes in the 3d skymap to land in specific positions. But they became more. By this time, those national merit students I had coached had finally become situationally aware, I had 3 of the brightest minds in the country over my should helping develop and refine strategy.
The ability for real-time strategic thought had finally sunk into our starting players. We were able to hide in plain sight, move stealthily through the enemy ranks and strike simultaneously without using any form of communication. We had reached near perfect team chemistry. The pinnacle of our strategy/tactics revolved around three maps for us, the 3 most heavily teamwork oriented maps in the game: Train, Nuke, and Contra. Our playbook for contra, whether they know it or not, is still used by professional teams today. We lost only one scrimmage or match ever on Contra, period.
It was during this time we became not just good, but professional. We got our first sponsors and started winning LAN tournaments consistently, we attracted attention. We started playing with the best teams in the world, with the best players. We even beat Forbidden (#2 team at the time) in a scrim so badly they left at the half. But my focus was always on the game and the evolution of strategic and tactical theory.
The game (and moreover all competition) in my mind was broken down to essentially this: Make your enemy move in a predictable manner, or lose.
If you cannot predict your enemy, you cannot win. Because if you do not understand the mind of your enemy, you do not truly understand the advantage you hold over them. You will lose as they make moves you do not comprehend. Whether it be a subtle shift in position, or a series of "mis-thrown" flash bangs; the enemy can be more cunning than you, so taking note of these so called mistakes is absolutely essential to understanding why you lost and providing insight into the mind you're trying to break down. Getting into their head, it's how you win.
When I realized this (not just understood it, but realized it) I went off. I dropped points 45 a half of a match. For two weeks I hit my peak.
I started officially training again for the world tournament, but my personal life started to finally catch up. Grades were abysmal, friends were alienated and my girlfriend was the only person who saw me more than twice a week in the real world. My parents had no idea. I was able to skip class for 2 weeks at a time without any recourse, it was heaven and hell blurred into a 6 month period of enlightenment. The social isolation was intense. I hardly ate, I went for days without seeing sunlight. I took it too far, and I paid the price.
The semester ended, I went home a physical wreck. I was removed from my warm blanket of CS:S and shoved back into the real world and I was pathetic. It took no more than a few days to realize I could never mentally, physically, financially, or socially survive with what I was doing. I didn't quit, but my passion for the game disappeared over night. We went to the world tournament, I was nearly comatose with disdain, and we were crushed in the first round.
We had a good run, it was a great time, I'll always value the lessons we learned along the way. But I will never do it again. This was my saddest moment in gaming.
The moment I realized what playing CS:S professionally would take...
I started playing in the early betas, very early. Back when CS was just a mod and Half-Life Deathmatch was the star of the online show. I played both, managed to place top 20 on the CLQ for my deathmatch scores (admittedly a gauss whore). I started playing CS a huge amount when I found a community, called x-ploited, that had funny regulars and a few solid admins. I played on that server for as long as the community could hold together, just over 2 years. When I finally began to want to take it to another level I went to a regular who ran a decent team and asked to join. The team's name was Rj45, and it may not have significance to you guys, but it carries some respect among the old school. I wasn't deeply involved in the team, but I played as a backup and practiced irregularly. The guys were fun, I had a good time. They became very serious and I simply couldn't keep up during my senior year in high school. Unbeknown to me they went on to be one of the top teams in the world during my inactivity. I finally had time to play during the summer and returned to a team in shambles after months of hardcore practice left everyone in dire straits in their lives. The superficial teammates left, the core remained. Months passed, the lingering void craved be filled.
I moved on, went to college, but the isolation of the dorms allowed me to slip back into the game. It was like a warm blanket on a rainy day. I went to the '04 CPL with the team, we placed terribly (40 something), but we made a decision: We would jump over to CS:S and be among the first to establish ourselves as leaders in the new game. I practiced 40 hours a week and began really living up to my potential as a player. I started to not just understand the theory of tactics, but see it in real-time. Rj45 went on to become one of the top teams in the initial CAL season. We moved up in difficulty and dedication. I moved up to 60 hours a week along with strategy meetings. I couldn't keep my passion locked up in the virtual world, I inadvertently converted several national merit students who lived in my dorm to the game. My passion was electric, I genuinely was enjoying every match. We kept pushing forward, delving deeply into config generation (tweaking netcode and graphics) to maintain a competitive edge.
We started to hit a brick wall. Other teams started to match our work ethic; their players and ours were equally talented. It became an arms race based on how many hours you practiced that week. Eventually everyone was practicing as much as a non-professional could. We had to start innovating in strategy instead of relying skill. Quality instead of quantity became our motto. We converted practice time to almost entirely strategic theory and experimental tactics.
Continuing:
These experimental tactics evolved from spending hours scrimmaging on each map. Noting things like boost locations, flash-over/under walls, throwing smokes through holes in the 3d skymap to land in specific positions. But they became more. By this time, those national merit students I had coached had finally become situationally aware, I had 3 of the brightest minds in the country over my should helping develop and refine strategy.
The ability for real-time strategic thought had finally sunk into our starting players. We were able to hide in plain sight, move stealthily through the enemy ranks and strike simultaneously without using any form of communication. We had reached near perfect team chemistry. The pinnacle of our strategy/tactics revolved around three maps for us, the 3 most heavily teamwork oriented maps in the game: Train, Nuke, and Contra. Our playbook for contra, whether they know it or not, is still used by professional teams today. We lost only one scrimmage or match ever on Contra, period.
It was during this time we became not just good, but professional. We got our first sponsors and started winning LAN tournaments consistently, we attracted attention. We started playing with the best teams in the world, with the best players. We even beat Forbidden (#2 team at the time) in a scrim so badly they left at the half. But my focus was always on the game and the evolution of strategic and tactical theory.
The game (and moreover all competition) in my mind was broken down to essentially this: Make your enemy move in a predictable manner, or lose.
If you cannot predict your enemy, you cannot win. Because if you do not understand the mind of your enemy, you do not truly understand the advantage you hold over them. You will lose as they make moves you do not understand. Whether it be a subtle shift in position, or a series of "mis-thrown" flash bangs; the enemy can be more cunning than you, so taking note of these so called mistakes is absolutely essential to understanding why you lost and providing insight into the mind you're trying to break down. Getting into their head, it's how you win.
When I realized this (not just understood it, but realized it) I went off. I dropped points 45 a half of a match. For two weeks I hit my peak.
I started officially training again for the world tournament, but my personal life started to finally catch up. Grades were abysmal, friends were alienated and my girlfriend was the only person who saw me more than twice a week in the real world. My parents had no idea. I was able to skip class for 2 weeks at a time without any recourse, it was heaven and hell blurred into a 6 month period of enlightenment. The social isolation was intense. I hardly ate, I went for days without seeing sunlight. I took it too far, and I paid the price.
The semester ended, I went home a physical wreck. I was removed from my warm blanket of CS:S and shoved back into the real world and I was pathetic. It took no more than a few days to realize I could never mentally, physically, financially, or socially survive with what I was doing. I didn't quit, but my passion for the game disappeared over night. We went to the world tournament, I was nearly comatose with disdain, and we were crushed in the first round.
We had a good run, it was a great time, I'll always value the lessons we learned along the way. But I will never do it again. This was my saddest moment in gaming.
I know exactly how you feel. I got into CS:S a little late, 2002. That was my first time playing CS in any form. I had played fps for the last 3 years, mostly Quake. I loved HL DM and a friend finally put me onto Source. I loved it immediately.
I went through the same steps as you, as did our team. Though I was the only one who was really being taught, as the others were mostly Main calibur players. I had skill, but not understanding. When it all clicked it was beautiful. But as you stated, the effort of climbing towards my peak mutilated my RL.
Though this is a common scenario for people who play video games, it's actually a common scenario for anyone who delves deeply into any competative form. You train and train and train and you love every minute of what you're doing. You surpass previously concieved limits, to the detriment of everything else in your life.
I have traveled this path with three different forums for competition: Soccer, CS:Source, and Chess.
All three ended the same way. For some of them (chess mostly), I was incredibly succesful. But even winning doesn't lessen the blow, the very literal shredding of what you know to be your world, upon re-entry into the world as everyone, but you, sees it.
To be truly great at anything requires the exclusion of most everything else.
Its axiomatic. And that realization can be incredibly depressing.
wawkin on
Talkin to the robbery expert.
"This is where I say something profound and you bow, so lets just skip to your part."
I know exactly how you feel. I got into CS:S a little late, 2002. That was my first time playing CS in any form. I had played fps for the last 3 years, mostly Quake. I loved HL DM and a friend finally put me onto Source. I loved it immediately.
I went through the same steps as you, as did our team. Though I was the only one who was really being taught, as the others were mostly Main calibur players. I had skill, but not understanding. When it all clicked it was beautiful. But as you stated, the effort of climbing towards my peak mutilated my RL.
Though this is a common scenario for people who play video games, it's actually a common scenario for anyone who delves deeply into any competative form. You train and train and train and you love every minute of what you're doing. You surpass previously concieved limits, to the detriment of everything else in your life.
I have traveled this path with three different forums for competition: Soccer, CS:Source, and Chess.
All three ended the same way. For some of them (chess mostly), I was incredibly succesful. But even winning doesn't lessen the blow, the very literal shredding of what you know to be your world, upon re-entry into the world as everyone, but you, sees it.
To be truly great at anything requires the exclusion of most everything else.
Its axiomatic. And that realization can be incredibly depressing.
Damn straight it can. It's been over 3 years since that happened and the joy of outwitting a worthy opponent is still fresh in my mind.
The moment I realized what playing CS:S professionally would take...
I started playing in the early betas, very early. Back when CS was just a mod and Half-Life Deathmatch was the star of the online show. I played both, managed to place top 20 on the CLQ for my deathmatch scores (admittedly a gauss whore). I started playing CS a huge amount when I found a community, called x-ploited, that had funny regulars and a few solid admins. I played on that server for as long as the community could hold together, just over 2 years. When I finally began to want to take it to another level I went to a regular who ran a decent team and asked to join. The team's name was Rj45, and it may not have significance to you guys, but it carries some respect among the old school. I wasn't deeply involved in the team, but I played as a backup and practiced irregularly. The guys were fun, I had a good time. They became very serious and I simply couldn't keep up during my senior year in high school. Unbeknown to me they went on to be one of the top teams in the world during my inactivity. I finally had time to play during the summer and returned to a team in shambles after months of hardcore practice left everyone in dire straits in their lives. The superficial teammates left, the core remained. Months passed, the lingering void craved be filled.
I moved on, went to college, but the isolation of the dorms allowed me to slip back into the game. It was like a warm blanket on a rainy day. I went to the '04 CPL with the team, we placed terribly (40 something), but we made a decision: We would jump over to CS:S and be among the first to establish ourselves as leaders in the new game. I practiced 40 hours a week and began really living up to my potential as a player. I started to not just understand the theory of tactics, but see it in real-time. Rj45 went on to become one of the top teams in the initial CAL season. We moved up in difficulty and dedication. I moved up to 60 hours a week along with strategy meetings. I couldn't keep my passion locked up in the virtual world, I inadvertently converted several national merit students who lived in my dorm to the game. My passion was electric, I genuinely was enjoying every match. We kept pushing forward, delving deeply into config generation (tweaking netcode and graphics) to maintain a competitive edge.
We started to hit a brick wall. Other teams started to match our work ethic; their players and ours were equally talented. It became an arms race based on how many hours you practiced that week. Eventually everyone was practicing as much as a non-professional could. We had to start innovating in strategy instead of relying skill. Quality instead of quantity became our motto. We converted practice time to almost entirely strategic theory and experimental tactics.
Continuing:
These experimental tactics evolved from spending hours scrimmaging on each map. Noting things like boost locations, flash-over/under walls, throwing smokes through holes in the 3d skymap to land in specific positions. But they became more. By this time, those national merit students I had coached had finally become situationally aware, I had 3 of the brightest minds in the country over my should helping develop and refine strategy.
The ability for real-time strategic thought had finally sunk into our starting players. We were able to hide in plain sight, move stealthily through the enemy ranks and strike simultaneously without using any form of communication. We had reached near perfect team chemistry. The pinnacle of our strategy/tactics revolved around three maps for us, the 3 most heavily teamwork oriented maps in the game: Train, Nuke, and Contra. Our playbook for contra, whether they know it or not, is still used by professional teams today. We lost only one scrimmage or match ever on Contra, period.
It was during this time we became not just good, but professional. We got our first sponsors and started winning LAN tournaments consistently, we attracted attention. We started playing with the best teams in the world, with the best players. We even beat Forbidden (#2 team at the time) in a scrim so badly they left at the half. But my focus was always on the game and the evolution of strategic and tactical theory.
The game (and moreover all competition) in my mind was broken down to essentially this: Make your enemy move in a predictable manner, or lose.
If you cannot predict your enemy, you cannot win. Because if you do not understand the mind of your enemy, you do not truly understand the advantage you hold over them. You will lose as they make moves you do not comprehend. Whether it be a subtle shift in position, or a series of "mis-thrown" flash bangs; the enemy can be more cunning than you, so taking note of these so called mistakes is absolutely essential to understanding why you lost and providing insight into the mind you're trying to break down. Getting into their head, it's how you win.
When I realized this (not just understood it, but realized it) I went off. I dropped points 45 a half of a match. For two weeks I hit my peak.
I started officially training again for the world tournament, but my personal life started to finally catch up. Grades were abysmal, friends were alienated and my girlfriend was the only person who saw me more than twice a week in the real world. My parents had no idea. I was able to skip class for 2 weeks at a time without any recourse, it was heaven and hell blurred into a 6 month period of enlightenment. The social isolation was intense. I hardly ate, I went for days without seeing sunlight. I took it too far, and I paid the price.
The semester ended, I went home a physical wreck. I was removed from my warm blanket of CS:S and shoved back into the real world and I was pathetic. It took no more than a few days to realize I could never mentally, physically, financially, or socially survive with what I was doing. I didn't quit, but my passion for the game disappeared over night. We went to the world tournament, I was nearly comatose with disdain, and we were crushed in the first round.
We had a good run, it was a great time, I'll always value the lessons we learned along the way. But I will never do it again. This was my saddest moment in gaming.
Is this an OU thing? Because at UT, professors can petition to get you removed from the class if you do that.
All this talk of Counter-Strike douche baggery reminds me of how much better behaved my brother and I found the DoD community to be.
Man, I didn't get into PC gaming until about 2001, and I got lucky and picked up HL on a whim (I thought the cover was cool, I know), and I played HL DM (it was so scary to be online against humans!) then some CS and then, finally (from a PC Gamer promo disk) DoD 1.3b.
Jesus christ was that game so much more...I don't know what it had, but it hooked me. And even trolling for pub servers I don't remember a time when that community was not classy. Me, on my 56k (awesome HL1 netcode btw) gunning down germans and allies in hectic matches with the SVP sounds ripped from the movie. The vets actually telling me stuff about how to play the game and survive and not screaming shit at me in shrill voices (or typing shit in all caps).
I am sad that I haven't yet had a similiar experience playing online or coop, I still enjoy it, but maybe it was because it was all so new. Also, it felt good returning the favor to the new players when I had become a "vet," the good community was key I think.
I should see if any one is still running a 3.1 server somewhere...
Really? My DoD experience was terrible. At the time there was no auto team balance so half my games consisted of being one of 3 allied players against double digit axis players on the D-Day map. Requests to even the teams were met with replies of "stop sucking noob" and being called a whiner. I admit I didn't play it that much and they eventually added something to balance the teams, but those moments were enough to turn me away from the game forever.
I heard someone at a Target checkout line say that there was a new company called Nintendo making this system called the Wii once. If I had reacted at all on the spot, I would be in Juvenile detention right now for mass murder.
EDIT: Also, I'm 14 and I feel depressed whenever I try to talk about gaming with most people my age about classic gaming. This is because most people honest to god just don't know the old school stuff.
I feel so nerdy saying this, but this thread makes me miss arcades.
And you didn't even know true arcades.
My god, The Simpsons with 4 people was the best gaming experience ever of the early 90s.
It worries me how many people in this very thread seem to wish we'd stayed in 2D and never moved past the SNES.
Other posters have pointed out that this isn't the case, but I think it's important to note exactly how painful the loss of 2D gaming was.
2D games were basically phased out by corporate mandate just as they were reaching their artistic peak. The late 16-bit and early 32-bit era saw gorgeous 2D games like Astal, SNK's Metal Slug games, Capcom's post-Street Fighter 2 fighters, Yoshi's Island, Vectorman, Comix Zone, Donkey Kong Country, Mega Man 8, Guardian Heroes, Castlevania: SOTN...
The hardware was finally there to make 2D games that looked like playable cartoons, and developers were putting out amazing stuff even on comparitively ancient hardware like the Genesis.
Thiis the stuff we should have been seeing a lot more of in the 32-bit era. What we got were hundreds of absolutely horrendous looking polygonal games, just because more importance was put on a game being 3D than anything else. Sony, in particular, discouraged 2D games on the PSX.
All of that potential was dashed just because people went polygon-crazy.
I would lime this post so hard if it wouldn't eye-rape the whole thread. I don't hate 3D games or anything, I just feel cheated that instead of being a new realm of games they became the ONLY 'real' games, and all the kick-ass things that could have been done is 2D with more processing power and attention just never happened at all.
I'm really hoping that WiiWare/PSN/XBLA provide a home for 2D gaming in the modern era, because there's no reason for it to die - there's plenty of room for both 2D and 3D gaming, just like there's plenty of room for waggle and traditional controllers.
On a side note. Being a fantastic strat caller for your source team has got to be the most thankless job in that game.
Monking in early Guild Wars times was also pretty bad. Some asshole just runs forward, healsinks the fuck out of your energy, dies as you're unable to keep him alive along with the 6 other players who are taking damage, and then people bitch at you for being a noob. Being perfect was expected.
I was looking back through the thread and perhaps the biggest one is indeed the Dreamcast.
I remember going out to purchase it with my parents about a month before Christmas. I got to purchase it as my own Christmas gift. The DC, Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi, a blue controller and a blue VMU. I remember being one of the few in EB that didn't give a fuck about the PS2 that everyone else was skeeting all over the store aboutI wanted a Dreamcast. IT WAS BETTER. Sexcellent. I got Jet Grind Radio for Christmas from another relative and those three games right there made it just about the damn best Christmas ever.
Then what does Sega do a month later. Says they are stopping support for the thing gradually.
What the fucking fuck. So much awesome killed too soon.
Like Heath Ledger.
There I said it. The Dreamcast was the Heath Ledger of Videogame systems.
Don't fucking compare the Dreamcast to Heath Ledger. It was so much more.
Easily the most ahead of it's time console in history. Waggle? Ha! the dreamcast did that AT LAUNCH - sega bass controller used motion control via accelerometers to determine when you were swinging the controller around to hook the bass. Waggle Tennis? Ha! Virtua Tennis 1 and 2 let you use the bass controller exactly like the wiimote.
motion sensor based motion control? Sega did it first... AiR NiGHTS was supposed to have this odd, elongated controller which required you to place a motion sensor below you which would emit an infrared beam to determine where your controller was in 3D space, along with pitch, yaw, and rotation. It looked like this:
And it even came out, eventually. The Samba De Amigo controllers... those were the fruits of the aborted project.
Xbox Live? Ha, old news to Sega. Ever heard the final plans for Sega.net? Think Xbox Live... Xbox 360 Live, that is... 8 years prior. Universal gaming profile which would carry across all games, with a unified friends list. Games would yield currency (think achievements). Complete game X in 30 minutes, and earn 250 sega bucks, which could be applied to your profile currency (to move you up universal leader boards) or use it to buy DLC. On the fucking dreamcast.
Connectivity? Screw you nintendo, sega did it first. Dreamcast-NGPC connectivity, bitches!
Broadband adaptors? Sorry xbox, sega did it years before you.
Upgradable, free webbrowsers? Sorry Sony, sega did it years before you.
Back in the dreamcast days, HDDs were too expensive, but zip drives were affordable. So, of course, Sega planned a removable zip drive, where you could download stuff from the internet and DLC and game mods and such to.
remember how big of a deal it was that UT3 on the PS3 would have full KB&M support? Sega did it 8 years prior. Quake 3 on the dreamcast, it features full KB&M support. In fact, it does something that no console game since has done - it allowed console players to play against PC players. Dreamcast owners could go against PC owners in quake 3. It even would download additional skins and maps.
How about their memory cards? Fucking VMU? A screen on your controller? Heaven for sports games. But sega didn't stop their... the VMU2 was months away from launching when sega pulled the plug. In addition to a bigger storage size, its other big upgrade was that it was a fully functional, hardware based mp3 player.
We're in the High Def age now. Sega was there 8 years ago - 480p VGA support.
VoIP is a big new feature for the PSP, and the PS3 and Xbox 360 boast voice chatrooms. Sega did it, again, 8 years prior. Free VoIP along with free voice chatrooms. Voice recognition is supposed to be a big deal on the DS, sega did it years prior. Seaman anyone? Online FPS with in-game voice chat is a big thing microsoft has pushed starting with Halo 2. Sega did it prior with Alien Front Online, and with good enough netcode to run on fucking 56k. With full voice chat.
the Xbox vision and PS3 eye and PS2 eyetoy are supposed to be innovative. Yet Sega did it with the dreamcast with the Dreameye.
Oh, and sony's PS2 with DVD support? Sega had plans for that... the dreamcast 2:
God, that console was so fucking far ahead of it's time.
Posts
Thanks for reminding me about how I'll likely never get a sequel to one of the greatest games ever made.
It wouldn't be as painful if the game could stand well enough on it's own, but it's just one of those games where you look at stuff and think to yourself "this would be even better if they did such-and-such."
Usually this is solved by making the sequel, but with the case of Beyond Good & Evil....
I started playing in the early betas, very early. Back when CS was just a mod and Half-Life Deathmatch was the star of the online show. I played both, managed to place top 20 on the CLQ for my deathmatch scores (admittedly a gauss whore). I started playing CS a huge amount when I found a community, called x-ploited, that had funny regulars and a few solid admins. I played on that server for as long as the community could hold together, just over 2 years. When I finally began to want to take it to another level I went to a regular who ran a decent team and asked to join. The team's name was Rj45, and it may not have significance to you guys, but it carries some respect among the old school. I wasn't deeply involved in the team, but I played as a backup and practiced irregularly. The guys were fun, I had a good time. They became very serious and I simply couldn't keep up during my senior year in high school. Unbeknown to me they went on to be one of the top teams in the world during my inactivity. I finally had time to play during the summer and returned to a team in shambles after months of hardcore practice left everyone in dire straits in their lives. The superficial teammates left, the core remained. Months passed, the lingering void craved be filled.
I moved on, went to college, but the isolation of the dorms allowed me to slip back into the game. It was like a warm blanket on a rainy day. I went to the '04 CPL with the team, we placed terribly (40 something), but we made a decision: We would jump over to CS:S and be among the first to establish ourselves as leaders in the new game. I practiced 40 hours a week and began really living up to my potential as a player. I started to not just understand the theory of tactics, but see it in real-time. Rj45 went on to become one of the top teams in the initial CAL season. We moved up in difficulty and dedication. I moved up to 60 hours a week along with strategy meetings. I couldn't keep my passion locked up in the virtual world, I inadvertently converted several national merit students who lived in my dorm to the game. My passion was electric, I genuinely was enjoying every match. We kept pushing forward, delving deeply into config generation (tweaking netcode and graphics) to maintain a competitive edge.
We started to hit a brick wall. Other teams were started to match our work ethic; their players and ours were equally talented. It became an arms race based on how many hours you practiced that week. Eventually everyone was practicing as much as a non-professional could. We had to start innovating in strategy instead of relying skill. Quality instead of quantity became our motto. We converted practice time to almost entirely strategic theory and experimental tactics.
Don't have time for more, but I'll finish it out if there's any interest.
Yeah... Oh man.
First time I went into
No, Full Throttle 2 looked horrible, I was glad it was canceled. It would have not been a real adventure game, it would have been a horrible undead abomination that only needed to be destroyed. The subsequent horrible sales would have really killed the adventure genre.
Yeah, Advance Wars DS was pretty awful looking, wasn't it.
One of my biggest disappointments: Kane & Lynch. The story is really good, I like the characters and everything about it except the game itself. It could have been GoTY IMO if they gave it another year or so.
Tease! I demand that this receive an ending!
Dammit.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
I had blocked this from my mind, now I am sad thanks to all of you.
dream a little dream or you could live a little dream
sleep forever if you wish to be a dreamer
There are 2 sequels planned, by the by.
Also, getting out our old Commodore 64 a decade after it's hey-day only to realise that almost all of the floppy's were corrupt/useless.
Holy hell, I'd have beat the shit out of my brother if he tried that. Or told my mom.
Or both if the first failed.
On a related note, the day my Amiga 1200 died. Not just because I suddenly lost the ability to play a wealth of games, some real rare gems too (Worms: The Directors Cut, Alien Breed, Superfrog, and Micro Machines to name but a few), but because I was using it to type my G.C.S.E coursework at the time and suddenly all of my many months of work was lost.
PortsCenter • Jump Leads • The Life Toyetic with Ben and Molly
Man, I didn't get into PC gaming until about 2001, and I got lucky and picked up HL on a whim (I thought the cover was cool, I know), and I played HL DM (it was so scary to be online against humans!) then some CS and then, finally (from a PC Gamer promo disk) DoD 1.3b.
Jesus christ was that game so much more...I don't know what it had, but it hooked me. And even trolling for pub servers I don't remember a time when that community was not classy. Me, on my 56k (awesome HL1 netcode btw) gunning down germans and allies in hectic matches with the SVP sounds ripped from the movie. The vets actually telling me stuff about how to play the game and survive and not screaming shit at me in shrill voices (or typing shit in all caps).
I am sad that I haven't yet had a similiar experience playing online or coop, I still enjoy it, but maybe it was because it was all so new. Also, it felt good returning the favor to the new players when I had become a "vet," the good community was key I think.
I should see if any one is still running a 3.1 server somewhere...
Basically for about 2 hours it was just the same group of people.
We all joked around and chatted, there was a girl too, and all the guys were nice to her and mucked around a bit, but nothing nasty. Just a few mangirl jokes and refering to her as a guy, she took it well. She also kicked everyone elses ass.
All of a sudden this guy joined in, and by the second match he was in on he started calling the girl a bitch and a cunt, and giving people shit.
Also I was playing some TF2 today, and this guy was just being a total fuckhead, and wouldn't shut up. He shit talked for about an hour, no-one else said anything, they couldnt be shitted, it was just this one guy talking shit about how we're all gay and how he has done more that we could ever dream of etc etc.
What the fuck?
The first was when Blizzard really started opening paid server transfers. I was in a high-end raiding guild at the time, and anyone who's done that scene knows there's a whole lot of frustration with learning the new instances. Hours and hours of frustration. Which naturally leads to a lot of "grass looks greener over there..." syndrome.
We lost several core raiders and a few officers. They transferred out. It honestly felt like getting dumped - you spend all this time with these guys, become friends, then log on one day and they're gone. I still get sad when I think of that.
The bitter irony is that they all transferred to a supposedly "better" guild where most of them were promptly given "backup" status - which meant they hardly ever raided. A lot of them just quit WoW after a few months.
The second really sad part was when I "quit" the game - at the time I was spending the vast majority of my free time just raiding. Part of me wanted to keep playing but I knew that it was consuming my life and I made myself walk away. Still very hard to do. Every couple of months I'd log in to say hello to the old guild; my heart broke a little when one of the newer officers (upon seeing me log in) said "Who's 'GameHat' and why does he have officer status?
Continuing:
These experimental tactics evolved from spending hours scrimmaging on each map. Noting things like boost locations, flash-over/under walls, throwing smokes through holes in the 3d skymap to land in specific positions. But they became more. By this time, those national merit students I had coached had finally become situationally aware, I had 3 of the brightest minds in the country over my should helping develop and refine strategy.
The ability for real-time strategic thought had finally sunk into our starting players. We were able to hide in plain sight, move stealthily through the enemy ranks and strike simultaneously without using any form of communication. We had reached near perfect team chemistry. The pinnacle of our strategy/tactics revolved around three maps for us, the 3 most heavily teamwork oriented maps in the game: Train, Nuke, and Contra. Our playbook for contra, whether they know it or not, is still used by professional teams today. We lost only one scrimmage or match ever on Contra, period.
It was during this time we became not just good, but professional. We got our first sponsors and started winning LAN tournaments consistently, we attracted attention. We started playing with the best teams in the world, with the best players. We even beat Forbidden (#2 team at the time) in a scrim so badly they left at the half. But my focus was always on the game and the evolution of strategic and tactical theory.
The game (and moreover all competition) in my mind was broken down to essentially this: Make your enemy move in a predictable manner, or lose.
If you cannot predict your enemy, you cannot win. Because if you do not understand the mind of your enemy, you do not truly understand the advantage you hold over them. You will lose as they make moves you do not comprehend. Whether it be a subtle shift in position, or a series of "mis-thrown" flash bangs; the enemy can be more cunning than you, so taking note of these so called mistakes is absolutely essential to understanding why you lost and providing insight into the mind you're trying to break down. Getting into their head, it's how you win.
When I realized this (not just understood it, but realized it) I went off. I dropped points 45 a half of a match. For two weeks I hit my peak.
I started officially training again for the world tournament, but my personal life started to finally catch up. Grades were abysmal, friends were alienated and my girlfriend was the only person who saw me more than twice a week in the real world. My parents had no idea. I was able to skip class for 2 weeks at a time without any recourse, it was heaven and hell blurred into a 6 month period of enlightenment. The social isolation was intense. I hardly ate, I went for days without seeing sunlight. I took it too far, and I paid the price.
The semester ended, I went home a physical wreck. I was removed from my warm blanket of CS:S and shoved back into the real world and I was pathetic. It took no more than a few days to realize I could never mentally, physically, financially, or socially survive with what I was doing. I didn't quit, but my passion for the game disappeared over night. We went to the world tournament, I was nearly comatose with disdain, and we were crushed in the first round.
We had a good run, it was a great time, I'll always value the lessons we learned along the way. But I will never do it again. This was my saddest moment in gaming.
https://medium.com/@alascii
I know exactly how you feel. I got into CS:S a little late, 2002. That was my first time playing CS in any form. I had played fps for the last 3 years, mostly Quake. I loved HL DM and a friend finally put me onto Source. I loved it immediately.
I went through the same steps as you, as did our team. Though I was the only one who was really being taught, as the others were mostly Main calibur players. I had skill, but not understanding. When it all clicked it was beautiful. But as you stated, the effort of climbing towards my peak mutilated my RL.
Though this is a common scenario for people who play video games, it's actually a common scenario for anyone who delves deeply into any competative form. You train and train and train and you love every minute of what you're doing. You surpass previously concieved limits, to the detriment of everything else in your life.
I have traveled this path with three different forums for competition: Soccer, CS:Source, and Chess.
All three ended the same way. For some of them (chess mostly), I was incredibly succesful. But even winning doesn't lessen the blow, the very literal shredding of what you know to be your world, upon re-entry into the world as everyone, but you, sees it.
To be truly great at anything requires the exclusion of most everything else.
Its axiomatic. And that realization can be incredibly depressing.
"This is where I say something profound and you bow, so lets just skip to your part."
Damn straight it can. It's been over 3 years since that happened and the joy of outwitting a worthy opponent is still fresh in my mind.
"This is where I say something profound and you bow, so lets just skip to your part."
Is this an OU thing? Because at UT, professors can petition to get you removed from the class if you do that.
Really? My DoD experience was terrible. At the time there was no auto team balance so half my games consisted of being one of 3 allied players against double digit axis players on the D-Day map. Requests to even the teams were met with replies of "stop sucking noob" and being called a whiner. I admit I didn't play it that much and they eventually added something to balance the teams, but those moments were enough to turn me away from the game forever.
And you didn't even know true arcades.
My god, The Simpsons with 4 people was the best gaming experience ever of the early 90s.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
Rayman
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
Monking in early Guild Wars times was also pretty bad. Some asshole just runs forward, healsinks the fuck out of your energy, dies as you're unable to keep him alive along with the 6 other players who are taking damage, and then people bitch at you for being a noob. Being perfect was expected.
I remember going out to purchase it with my parents about a month before Christmas. I got to purchase it as my own Christmas gift. The DC, Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi, a blue controller and a blue VMU. I remember being one of the few in EB that didn't give a fuck about the PS2 that everyone else was skeeting all over the store aboutI wanted a Dreamcast. IT WAS BETTER. Sexcellent. I got Jet Grind Radio for Christmas from another relative and those three games right there made it just about the damn best Christmas ever.
Then what does Sega do a month later. Says they are stopping support for the thing gradually.
What the fucking fuck. So much awesome killed too soon.
Like Heath Ledger.
There I said it. The Dreamcast was the Heath Ledger of Videogame systems.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
Easily the most ahead of it's time console in history. Waggle? Ha! the dreamcast did that AT LAUNCH - sega bass controller used motion control via accelerometers to determine when you were swinging the controller around to hook the bass. Waggle Tennis? Ha! Virtua Tennis 1 and 2 let you use the bass controller exactly like the wiimote.
motion sensor based motion control? Sega did it first... AiR NiGHTS was supposed to have this odd, elongated controller which required you to place a motion sensor below you which would emit an infrared beam to determine where your controller was in 3D space, along with pitch, yaw, and rotation. It looked like this:
And it even came out, eventually. The Samba De Amigo controllers... those were the fruits of the aborted project.
Xbox Live? Ha, old news to Sega. Ever heard the final plans for Sega.net? Think Xbox Live... Xbox 360 Live, that is... 8 years prior. Universal gaming profile which would carry across all games, with a unified friends list. Games would yield currency (think achievements). Complete game X in 30 minutes, and earn 250 sega bucks, which could be applied to your profile currency (to move you up universal leader boards) or use it to buy DLC. On the fucking dreamcast.
Connectivity? Screw you nintendo, sega did it first. Dreamcast-NGPC connectivity, bitches!
Broadband adaptors? Sorry xbox, sega did it years before you.
Upgradable, free webbrowsers? Sorry Sony, sega did it years before you.
Back in the dreamcast days, HDDs were too expensive, but zip drives were affordable. So, of course, Sega planned a removable zip drive, where you could download stuff from the internet and DLC and game mods and such to.
remember how big of a deal it was that UT3 on the PS3 would have full KB&M support? Sega did it 8 years prior. Quake 3 on the dreamcast, it features full KB&M support. In fact, it does something that no console game since has done - it allowed console players to play against PC players. Dreamcast owners could go against PC owners in quake 3. It even would download additional skins and maps.
How about their memory cards? Fucking VMU? A screen on your controller? Heaven for sports games. But sega didn't stop their... the VMU2 was months away from launching when sega pulled the plug. In addition to a bigger storage size, its other big upgrade was that it was a fully functional, hardware based mp3 player.
We're in the High Def age now. Sega was there 8 years ago - 480p VGA support.
VoIP is a big new feature for the PSP, and the PS3 and Xbox 360 boast voice chatrooms. Sega did it, again, 8 years prior. Free VoIP along with free voice chatrooms. Voice recognition is supposed to be a big deal on the DS, sega did it years prior. Seaman anyone? Online FPS with in-game voice chat is a big thing microsoft has pushed starting with Halo 2. Sega did it prior with Alien Front Online, and with good enough netcode to run on fucking 56k. With full voice chat.
the Xbox vision and PS3 eye and PS2 eyetoy are supposed to be innovative. Yet Sega did it with the dreamcast with the Dreameye.
Oh, and sony's PS2 with DVD support? Sega had plans for that... the dreamcast 2:
God, that console was so fucking far ahead of it's time.
Which is never going to happen.
Wow... 8 years ago?? Makes most things produced today look severely dated.