Butterflies

My week has been primarily dominated by 2 games this week, so I thought it would be best if I talk about both of them. The first game that I want to talk about is called Archeage. Archeage is a Korean based MMORPG that focuses on its diverse way to create a player based economy and mixing it with open world pvp (player vs player combat). I played this game the day it launched in the US and I couldn’t believe how packed all 10 servers were. I had to leave my computer on for a day and half with archeage open just to wait for the 2k+ que I was in. The first couple weeks I was only able to play for about 3 hours. Once the people started thinning out I was able to just log in whenever I wanted and play. I was fascinated by all the different mechanics that the game brought. The game made you feel free and not like you were just progressing to get better and better. You were doing things fun and helpful to not only yourself but others too. It wasn’t just the grindy kill this then kill that and level up it gave you a feeling of accomplishment. Not many games do that anymore in people I feel. The accomplishment feeling also ties in with this next game called Rivals of Aether. This game is basically a 8bit remake of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Yes, it has slightly different mechanics but the core of both the games are very similar. Right now in the game there are only 6 different characters you can play. They all possess different abilities that revolve around the 4 elements Wind, Earth, Fire, and Water. The game sounds pretty cheesy when you put it that way, but just shut up and play it. Videos really don’t do this game justice, you only get to understand how amazing it is once you play it. After you find what character you like to play and you start learning how to actually control said character is so fun. Winning matches in this game give you the most rewarding feeling. It’s just a 1 on 1 deathmatch, you vs him. It comes right down to who is the better player right then and there. And I don’t know what it is about winning but that rewarding feeling you get just makes you want to play more and more and progress and to just keep winning. I think that is the reason why people play video games in the first place right? That rewarding feeling you get from a win, oh it’s so good.

Its Inevitable

I'm standing on top of one of the biggest mountains in the lands. The cool breeze runs past my skin bring with it a fresh scent from who knows where. As I look over the land below I see a monster attacking other people. Quickly I spring into action to go help the people below slay this monster. As I am running up to this monster I can see its huge hands and ginormous body. With this almost frost like aura emitting from him. I join the other players and we release our assault onto this beast and end up defeating it! What a glorious battle it was!

This is what Video Games portray themselves as. An epic experience between player and AI with amazing visuals, graphics, and immersive game play that will keep you craving for me. Video games do in fact do this for a lot of people. There have been people playing World of Warcraft since the Vanilla days and are still enjoying the game. That's not how I am with video games though. I love MMORPG's I think they offer some of the most intense and rewarding game play experiences across all other genres. But MMORPG's are meant to be played for a very long amount of time, and with my attention span it is very difficult to play games to there full potential when you essentially are getting bored of the game. Think about that concept for a second, getting BORED of a video game. Video games are essentially, in my opinion, an escape from actual reality to virtual reality, right? Can we all agree on that statement? Cool. Anyway, back to the getting bored part, how insane is it that people can get bored of video games? I mean seriously, they are made just for people to enjoy them. So, if we can use simple logic and math here for a second, if a person is bored of our actual reality and then gets bored of whatever game he is playing (virtual reality), we are essentially bored of 2 DIFFERENT realities. We are a species who has become educated enough to even make these mini simulations of virtual reality, and then we get bored of them. Am I really the only one that thinks this concept is crazy? What happens when mankind becomes complex enough to make virtual realities that we can actually mistake as our real reality? Well that is a completely different conversation about science and math and yada yada yada. Video games man, they really are something aren’t they.

Not Good, But Not Bad

Hello everyone, to start off I would like to apologize for not streaming like I claimed I was going too. I actually ran into a problem that basically makes it so I am not able to stream from my Home. It has to do with how my stream reacts with the streaming services servers or something along those lines. Anyways I would like to apologize for that and I will keep you updated if I find some way to get my stream going. Now, this past week I didn't really play a wide variety of games. I mostly stuck with Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, H1Z1, and Trackmania. If you haven't heard of Trackmania I am going to automatically assume you have absolutely zero insight into the gaming world. Trackmania is a community driven racing game with a fairly popular European competitive scene. Basically what happens in the game is you race others from around the world on tracks built by people from the community of the game. I think they have a weekly rotation of about 10-15 different tracks that servers usually rotate between. Another new thing I tried out is CEVO for Counter Strike. CEVO is a free game finder I guess is what you could call it. You download the CEVO program and you can use it to connect to higher level Counter Strike games with other players around the world. People usually use it for casual games with random people, but it can also be used as a competitive Scrimmage program or even for tournaments. Other than those 2 new game I tried out, the past week was kinda of a boring gaming week for me. Which is kind of a shame to think that I had a boring week playing video games. Alright, maybe I use the word “boring” a little too literally here. Obviously I was not BORED playing games, I love playing games and I can always have a fun time doing it. What I mean by “boring” is that it wasn’t really spectacular in any way. Nothing happened that was incredibly memorable in some way to me or anything like that. And don’t get me wrong that is completely ok in my book. You can’t really go around playing video games expecting every single day to have some amazing moment that knocks your socks off and tickles your jimmies you know? That just kind of makes gaming sound more of a chore than something you do to relax. And if you are a person that thinks gaming should be like that, I think you should find a new hobby.

Hi! Hello! Greetings! Intro Time!

Hi and thanks for taking the time to look at my blog. Throughout my time of me posting in this blog I will be talking about my experiences with video games. Mostly I will be talking about what I am playing and what happened in those games etc., but I also like to go off on little rants if you will so those will more than likely be splashed in here and there. A little background about myself, My name's Brad, I am 18 years old, I just started my first year of college, I am an avid skateboarder, snowboarder, and video game player. I have 1 older brother, 1 cat, 1 dog, and like 3 goldfish (most useless pet ever IMO). Uhm, yeah that's basically it about me, I will try my hardest to keep this blog as interesting as possible through text because although I do know how to post pictures I think blogs are best when the text if more interesting than the pictures in it. I will also be trying to stream my gameplay experiences LIVE on Twitch. If you don’t know what Twitch is it’s a great Live Streaming website for thousands of people to stream themselves not only playing video games but doing other cool things like Glass Blowing, Painting, etc. Games you can expect to see me play are H1z1, Dota 2, Counter Strike Global Offensive, and I will also try my best to get to any of the triple A releases as well as the smaller games that are released weekly on steam. Also, with the streaming thing still fresh in everyone's head, you aren’t just limited to watching me play the game, you can also chat with me and the other people that are tuned into my stream in the chatbox. I will leave links below this to all of these programs and websites that I have been telling you about. You can expect my streams to come online most likely Wednesday - Saturday around 3 - 5pm EST. They will run for a random amount of time because I am admittedly a very bi-polar video game player. I can be having a blast and then 1 thing I don’t like happens and the fun plummets and then I either go skateboard or switch games. Well with all this information I hope you feel compelled to check back in the next couple weeks and see how everything is going. Thanks for READING!

My stream - Twitch.tv/Soopahee

Steam - http://store.steampowered.com/

Some of my favorite Streamers -

Twitch.tv/lirik

Twitch.tv/summit1g

Twitch.tv/mang0

Twitch.tv/arteezy