IDK, random diary stuff…
You know, I need to start putting just… normal things in here again. I think it would be a good idea, just to talk about non-huge things, and ideas and such. Honestly, it’s just… yeah.
Well, I’ve done some more thinking about video games, lately. IDK, I did go ahead and buy the remastered Starcraft after all. It turns out that I hadn’t used one of my credit cards in a while, and the bank was threatening to close my account if I didn’t use it. And the remastered SC was on sale, so… I got it, and charged it on the card. Might as well, I thought that I should probably keep the card, so…
I did the same with a few other things on Battle.net. I used another card I really should use more often on the Diablo 3/Diablo 2 combo pack. I also got the Arcade classic collection, and yes, since it was on sale, I got the Warcraft 3 remaster. Honestly, just to keep my credit lines open, lol.
And I’ve been doing a lot of searching for video games, too, lately, and Christ, the market today really is a confusing, dangerous quagmire. Wow.
Many games today are online only, or have a small single player campaign designed solely to push you into online play. I mean, even more then SC II. It’s kinda… unfortunate, since I don’t play online. That entire scene is just toxic, utterly. There isn’t a multiplayer game on the market that I can find that doesn’t require you to, ugh, practice. I mean, you need to like, actually schedule time to play the game, and keep up your skills, and stuff. Like, actually practice. A video game. Like for real!
Wut? No, lol.
No, not a chance. There is only so much time in a day. I mean, I could do pilates, or practice DOTA. I could romance Laura Marano, or I could practice Counterstrike. Or… you know. I don’t get multiplayer. At least for me, it doesn’t click. Is Overwatch 2 really that great of a game that you need to spend a thousand hours playing it just so you can get good enough to really play it? I don’t think so.
And the expenditures! Lordy, the cost! A World of Warcraft monthly subscription is needed just so you can buy the game, lol. Holy shit! At least, for any WOW game released in like the last 10 years, lol. Seriously- you need to pay a monthly fee for the opportunity to purchase the new WOW game, like the one advertised on the front page of Battle.net these days, Dragonflight. Paying money for the chance to pay more money, lol. The mind boggles.
I looked at Overwatch 2. I didn’t look much since it seemed too much like a mobile game- the store was advertising “Overwatch coins”. Pay 100 USD for an invisible basket of “Overwatch coins”! Great deal, huh? Um, no thanks, lol.
And they were advertising “premium passes”. Wut? The game itself was “free”, but man, looking online, people really want to you to pay for these “premium passes”. The impression I got was that the game was technically free, but if you really wanted to play it properly, you needed to pay a monthly fee. And of course the pressure to “play it properly” is pretty severe in Overwatch 2 since it’s a multiplayer team game, so if you lose, you’re making other people, real people, sad, and who wants that? So yeah, you’re going to be “part of the team” and fork over the cold hard cash on a monthly basis, lol.
Yeah, so, there you go. Not really the experience for me, I think.
I looked at other developers too. Since I’m on an RTS kick I logged onto Steam and did a search for “Warhammer”, since I’ve heard that that franchise has made some good RTS games in recent years.
Christ! A general search brought up 500+ results, and I checked them over and I swear a good 500 of them were actually about Warhammer games. I mean, the games, and their DLC, and other stuff. Wow, 500 results, that’s a lot. Like, a lot a lot. That’s 500 games, then, and DLC, and expansions, and early releases, and other stuff, and ye gods, it would take days to even sort through all of that- figure out what games in the franchise were the RTS ones, what their DLC was, which ones were the good ones, which ones I might like, personally, and then you have to find the right package to buy, and… yikes!
I mean, I know I sound kinda curmudgeonly but… still. That’s a lot to go through. And RTS games aren’t like platformers- you need to take the time to learn the games and the mechanics, and that’s more time spent, and gods, is it even worth it?
I looked up Age of Empires, too, since I heard the old ones were remastered, and that they had a new one out. The new one looked like a great game if you were into multiplayer, not so much for a single player only gamer. I looked up the remasters and… yikes, I found out that the remaster was apparently farmed out to some other company, and they didn’t do a good job with them at all- apparently there is/was a bug in Age of Empires III that caused the game to delete your entire C drive and all of it’s contents! Holy shit! Yes, seriously. See here, from Steam:
I’ve been hearing about buggy games for 30 years but that review gave me a double take. Wiping entire C: drives? Wut? That’s not a bug, that’s assault and battery, lol. I googled this and yup, it is/was an issue with this game; other people were talking about it on other sites and platforms.
I’m sorry, but you have got to be kidding me. That is so far beyond inexcusable that it’s hard to even describe. The rest of that list is deal breaking, but that one is just… nuclear. It’s so unreal that a steam game could do this that it makes me wonder if one of the devs was an aspiring supervillain and had some kind of secret grudge against humanity, lol. Regardless there is no way in hell am I approaching any of this, ever.
So… for now, it’s back to Starcraft, lol! I got the cartooned thing, too. I might decide to give that a full run through some day, IDK.
Um… to summarize though, I’m still glad with my decision to not multiplayer anything, really. I mean I’ve tried it and inevitably, any kind of experience like that becomes a horrible time and money sink. It’s not worth it, it really isn’t. I mean, with the kind of demands these stupid games put on players, it really would come down to being Kathryn Newton’s boyfriend or playing League of Legends of whatever. Of the two options, I think that right one is obvious, lol.
I might look into the C&C remasters, tho. Maybe they won’t be horrible. Let’s hope so.