Fight With Your Friends, or With NPCs?

So, a while back my brother and I were debating on one of our favorite subjects: Video Games. One of your favorite topics just so happens to be whether or not plot is more important, or multiplayer. I myself usually play multiplayer based games, while he prefers singleplayer based ones with intense storylines. Now, don't get me wrong, I've logged thousands of hours on Oblivion, Fallout 3, Bioshock, etc...  But my favorite games are still Team Fortress 2, League of Legends, Halo: Reach, etc.. And this confuses him. I personally think it's because he can't play multiplayer very well whilst I think I can do fairly well. But, let’s compare the two, as I think that the two can take a cue from each other.

Starting off for the Questline side, we have the ever great Oblivion, I would use Skyrim, but, I still have 1 month to wait. Its October 11th. I can just feel Bethesda taunting me with 31 days. Oblivion, also known as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, is the wondrous work of Bethesda software. You start out making your own character (which can take you a few hours, depending on how you want your character to look. The options for customization are amazing.) You may then choose how you want to go the vast open world. do you want to be a rogue, an archer, a magician? Its like D & D when your friends are being dicks and won’t play with you, so you go and play Oblivion instead. I have legitimately put around 800 hours into Oblivion, and saved over 850 times.

Next, as pictured below, is Reach. The original part to the original trilogy, it shows the events before Halo: Combat Evolved. Naturally, when I first saw this at E3 a few years ago, I just about lost it. As any fan-boy

Can tell you, seeing Reach re-visited was just about a dream come true. Now, Reach does have a plot line, and it is pretty good for the most part, I won't spoil the ending for all of you who may not own the game, but I had tears in my eyes, maybe it was from the 8 hours I has spent playing the campaign straight through on Heroic. Maybe it was the Flaming hot Cheetos that I had mistaken for normal Cheetos that I had started eating right before the last mission. But, Halo is renowned for its classical Matchmaking game. It’s everything I could, except there are no hats, a cue that all game developers could take from Valve, but it did the next best thing. Complete customization over your Spartan, the one to the left is my very own. I will admit that I have fallen out of playing Reach over the past few months, but I still log onto my Xbox every now and then, and make sure I put a couple of games in. You never know when it may come in handy to remember how to use Bumper Jumper. So, what IS more important? In all honesty, I think it was to be one or the other, and I have a good example on how to prove it: Bioshock 2.

Now, Bioshock 2 was a good game, but that's the point: it was just a good game. And I think it had to do with them putting time into multiplayer instead of just focusing on the singleplayer experience. But, if you bought Minerva's Den, you found a quest-line rivaled to the original Bioshock. The game has amazing and fluid gameplay, but it just turned out kind of "meh." And that's why I do truly believe that you need to focus on one or the other, if you got a reputation for having a large plot, focus on the plot. Dead Space II was on 2 discs, just saying. And if you are making a game almost solely for Multiplayer, there should be bigger focus on how that handles. Unless your game is play-tested for 4 years, it won't be perfect. It took Valve 7 years to finish TF2, and they still update it to this day. They didn't even think of adding new weapons, or gametypes, or god forbid if they didn’t hats. This isn't to say you can have both, it is simply to say that I don't expect a game that has a massive world to have a massive multiplayer feature, unless its a MMO. And I don't expect there to be people yelling at me. "DOOD STOP HAXXING, UR A NOOB" when I'm playing in a deep questline based game. Until the day that they finish a complete virtual reality, if I really want both, I can always play Dungeons and Dragons, but, then again, Skyrim is just around the corner...

Flashback Special: A look into the Greatest Generation of Handhelds

So, after my LoL binge, I decided to pull out my old DS. For the record, I've gone through two before getting to this current one. My first DS was an old DS, which I simply called “FatS” because they're so much bigger than the DS Lite, it was Electric Blue, giving it the name Big Blue, and I swear I could hear thunder in the background every time I turned it on. I spent probably as much time on that DS as I spent on my entire time on the Gamecube. But, tragedy struck one day about 4 years ago. When I was giving it to my brother, he didn't have a strong enough grasp on it, and he dropped it, cracking the screen. There was a large disturbance in the force, as I could feel a small portion of my soul dying out, and so I ran to the nearest Super Target, receipt in hand, and claimed that my warranty covered it. Luckily, the man behind the counter was either stupid, or just had pity for me, as I had tear stains on my cheek. As any true gamer can tell you, you can get very attached to your handhelds.



What was besieged to me wasn’t quite what I expected, as I had originally owned an electric blue DS, that’s what I wanted back. But, this was when the DS Lite had made its first appearance, and the FatS were starting to disappear of store shelves. DS Lite’s at the time cost more than my FatS, and since I had no money on me at the time (And I was just about to beat the Elite 4 in Ruby version, again) I settled on the plain-Jane version, just silver. Now, don’t get me wrong, silver is fine, but it just didn’t have the power to make angels sing every time I flipped my DS open like Big Blue could, but I had him longer than I had most other things. I eventually gave him the name “Old Silver” since I was playing him no later than last June, but, of course, nothing good lasts forever.



I went through many games on Old Silver, from Phantom Hourglass to Diamond Version of Pokémon. I had him in my pocket for so long that his original bar code had fallen off from ware-and-tear. I even got him a cute little carrying case that had Mario and Luigi on the front from their greatest RPG “Superstar Saga.” It didn’t matter to me that it was made for the DS Lite; it still fit (even if it did put a good deal of strain on the zipper.) But, when I was out traveling, I gave it to my brother. And he dropped it. If you’ve ever had a pet die, and your parents have to break the bad news to you, this was the equivalence. I came into the room we were staying in, and he said, “Santa, we need to talk.” What proceeded was him sighing, and holding up Old Silver, now in two pieces, top screen in his left hand, and touch screen in his right. I was despondent for about a month.



I hadn’t used a handheld in about 5 months, and I had been on the Xbox ever since, this was about the time I started transitioning to PC gaming. But, I could feel the excitement of this box, and while I unwrapped it, I could feel a small rumble. It was a DS, Electric Blue. But, there was one difference, it was a DS Lite. I could feel the beginning of a new era. I went downstairs, pushed myself up next to my desk in my La-Z-Boy, and started charging. While I waited for it to charge, I opened up TF2, and traded for a few hours, (that was my obsession at the time) and when I turned it on, I gave it a new name, my new name, Santa, as a way of thanking this Christmas miracle. I started back up Ruby Version, and started a new game. Although I don’t play handhelds very much, I still love the DS; I can still play my GBA games, and get a tough of the future. Maybe I’ll get a 3DS in the future, but I’m not counting on it. I like holding onto the old days, and who knows? Maybe I’ll find my Gameboy Advanced in my storage room sometime soon.