The Nation

Last week I talked about the now almost 14 year old game we know and love called Super Smash Brothers Melee. There was a tournament called The Big House 5 held in Dearborn, Mi sometimes recently that I also talked about last week. Well, this week I was honored to actually be able to go to one of these Melee tournaments and not just watch a stream of it. Now let it be known, compared to TBH5 this tournament was basically nothing. It was held at MSU and had about 20 or so player actually in the tournament. Among those players was the guy that actually ran TBH5, he is known as Juggleguy. To me it was pretty crazy actually being able to see him and person and see him actually playing the game. The room that it was held in was kind of like a lecture room with 3 big projectors up front, and 4 long tables that stretched from the wall to wall of the room. Each one of these tables had 3 of those old school box TVs that seem to have no use in the real world today, and either a Gamecube, a Nintendo 64, or a Wii u. I wasn't actually in the tournament I just decided to take the trek down there to check it out because I always wanted to go see what a melee tournament was like. Let me tell you one thing about these tournaments, no matter how many people are there it will get loud. The people in the Melee community are so passionate and so into this game, that when something cool happens in a game the only thing that seems right to do at the time is to yell. Even if you don't really know exactly whats going on in this game, it feels like you just get swept in all the emotion and can't help but joining in on the yelling. Another thing to keep in mind if going to one of these tournaments, is that there will be very few females. Now I am not trying to be sexist in anyway, but it just seems that all throughout the video competitive scene in general, it is very male dominated. Anyway, this tournament was actually a lot of fun to attend even though I wasn't playing. Watching the intensity in peoples faces and the way they can manipulate the characters they play and how they handle the controller is breathtaking. If you have ever played this amazing game we refer to as Melee, I highly, HIGHLY encourage you on watching some high level players play the game. The mix of nostalgia and amazement of the game in front of you will be worth it I promise you.

Old and New

This week/weekend was and will be jam PACKED full of amazing games. First over the weekend The Big House 5 tournament took place in Dearborn, Michigan. Sadly I was a little to late when it came to getting tickets and I was not able to go. The Big House 5 was one of the biggest Super Smash Bros. Melee tournaments of the year, it even had more entries than APEX 2015. The tournament had 2 streams available for it but the one the majority of people watched was the VGbootcamp stream.(http://www.twitch.tv/vgbootcamp) The person who ended up winning the tournament was a Swedish player named Armada. Armada is very known for his peach but opted to play his fox most of the final rounds it seemed because he was going up against a puff(jiggly puff) player named Hungrybox. Both Armada and Hungrybox are well known very skilled professional players, but they also might be some of the most hated players as well. It was kind of easy to tell this because when these 2 were playing the crowd (which was about 99% US) was having a hard awkward time figuring out who to cheer for. I feel they eventually gave up and just cheered whenever good plays were being made. It was kind of upsetting watching a swede taking home the first place trophy at an american tournament, but its hard to be mad at him because you could tell Armada was outplaying ever single person there. If you are interested in learning about all the past players and how melee became apart of the competitive gaming scene I will leave a link below that explains everything about the history of melee. Now with whats coming up with week is going to be very, very hit or miss. They are releasing OPEN BETA for the new Star Wars Battlefront being made by EA. Now, yes Star Wars Battlefront could potentially be an amazing game with hours and hours of gameplay to be had and yada yada yada. BUT, let us not forget that this game is being made by EA. If you don't understand why this is a problem, go play any game that was made by this company after Battlefield Bad Company 2. This company is known for taking some of the most anticipated games titles and putting the ol' "EA twist" on it and ruining the entire thing for everyone. Streams of the CLOSED BETA are out there showing off the gameplay and from what I have seen and heard from others is that it won't be another one of those "EA ruiners". Maybe this could be the game where EA makes a turning point for there company and starts making good games, I don't know. What I do know is that if EA does ruin this game, they will have a lot of nostalgic grown ups pretty pissed off with them. 

The Smash Brothers Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX9hbbA-WP4

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