Tried other games for first time in 20 years

[BlinkofanEye]

Hey guys, recently I got a new computer, largely because I'm looking for a new nightly game after getting banned from HELLO. I ended up getting a gaming laptop that had some good deals. Lenovo Legion with AMD Ryzen 7 with an RTX 4060 card so it can handle most anything.

I did eventually find something worth playing but man...the gaming scene out there, from what little I poked my head around, is pretty dreary. I really valued our server, and the larger DC community, as a place where we have some real camaraderie. Like that Cheers song, "where everybody knows your name, and is always glad you came." I don't know if it's because our community is so small, and one can pretty much recognize every player. Or if it's because the average age of our player definitely trends upwards. But the fact remains that, save for some exceptions, most everyone in our community is oriented towards having fun together. Which I naively expected to be common since we're...talking about games play for fun...

I mainly ended up trying about 50 hours of a game called Squad, after getting really hyped about how much teamplay it's supposed to have. If DC is arcadey, Squad is the exact opposite. You literally can't drive vehicles without approval from your squad leader. And the whole game is oriented towards being very careful to achieve the conquest objectives of taking bases. Maps are huge with big drives or helicopter rides to the forward bases. So you end up spending a good portion of your time simply traveling. And because you go down with about two bullets, you also spend a lot of time waiting for a medic to find you. And then there's all the building of forward bases and other defenses. I thought it'd be fun, but in the end two things took it down, which were kind of one thing.

Because the game also has VOIP, you can hear both the teammates around you, as well as the other 9 people in your Squad chat (each team is comprised of about 6 squads). What ended up happening 75% of the time, was that your Squad would end up bitching about another Squad, or even people in your own Squad, not doing their job correctly. Like, frequently. And sure, it's valid to get frustrated when players on your team are fucking around, driving over your mines or something. But this game seems designed for everyone in it to play armchair military strategist. And somehow it would just feed on people blaming each other for not being fun. I mean...at least for me, it wasn't fun to play, period. People frequently joked how it was basically a walking simulator with a bit of getting somewhere and getting shot, and then walking all over again. Oh...and there were no enemy or friendly markers, except for your map, so you have to check your map every .5 seconds to make sure you're not about to TK someone. So maybe it's no surprise everybody is pent up and looking for someone to blame?

I also tried TitanFall 2, which was a lot of fun single player, once I got over the motion sickness from all the wall-running. Multiplayer was meh, partially because I got trounced from everyone else being way better at wallrunning and grappling than I was, and partially because it just felt empty. Sure, having Titans is kinda cool, and the wallrunning too, but it was essentially just team deathmatch with crazy high learning curve movement mechanics.

On the verge of returning my pricey laptop, I tried something I stumbled upon called Battlebit Remastered. Video 1, Video 2. Jackpot! If you guys like fast-paced, light-hearted teamplay, you guys should try it. It's not everybody's cup of tee. It can be extremely fast paced. You can run nonstop (no running out of stamina like in Squad after ten seconds) and you can jump further than IRL, so if you want you can do a bit of parkour, though nothing like in Titanfall. Other than that, it has basically every working mechanic from the past ten years of FPS games. You can drag and heal teammates. It, like Squad, has local VOIP and Squad VOIP. It has each team (matches can be up to 128 vs 128 players) broken up into Squads. You can set waypoints for your teammates to show them enemies or vehicles (without asking for permission from your Squad leader, like in Squad.) It has throwable (or wearable) C4. It has a ton of different weapons, which can be leveled up. The maps are half destroyable, either by tanks ramming through cars and busses, or using either explosives or your sledgehammer or pickaxe to make Kool-Aid Man entries into buildings. Basically it's just a shit ton of fun, and an extremely polished game for a $15 indy-developed game. (And maybe there's something to that - maybe gamer culture is partially so toxic and exploitative these days because we as gamers have become fodder for so many of the developers themselves.)

Anyways, because Battlebit is so silly in a lot of ways (and the graphics are extremely basic and polygon-based) people don't take themselves too seriously. Sure, I've been called a #$%got by one guy for killing him (you can also hear the local VOIP of the enemy team, which is helpful to listen for an enemy medic saying "i'm coming" or for yelling absurdities as you Kool-aid man your way into a building with a suicide c4 vest, but can also be abused for trash talking) But, I've also had enemy players congratulate me, imagine that, or laugh about how I killed them or surprised popped up on them, which I could hear over the local VOIP. People being good and kind in a videogame in 2024? That's the overall vibe, probably because you don't have to simulate waiting in line at the DMV to pretend to be a "good teammate," nor get the feeling that a faceless corporation is trying to harvest your time and resources to beta test their game and pay for microtransactions. And somehow it doesn't attract the type of personality that's looking to put other people down so they can self-advertise about how "they're the man," which, luckily, is also *largely* absent in our community.

[HairyRussianDude]

Do you remember the full server days Blink?
There was absolutely chaos in game and on voice apps too sometimes when 64 people started clashing.

If interested, I encourage you to hit the shoutbox or thread as Trench and Jolly do if you know you will have game time coming up. You never know, it might rally a few.

viewtopic.php?t=6919

Glad to hear you found other outlets!

[BlinkofanEye]

Tried Battlefield 2042 because it was on sale for 12 bucks and was curious about the portal to play old versions of BF with renewed graphics.

Suffice to say it’s the first time I’ve asked for a refund over an $11.99 purchase. In most of the games you die within milliseconds of engaging the enemy. And then nobody heals you as you crawl around wounded. There’s no kick or bullet spread seemingly on any guns. And the whole time you hear people spout automatically preprogrammed obscenities so the game can seem hip. Sure it was neat to see El Al modernized and playable with 1942 or BF3 weapons (all of which performed with the same above flaws) but actual 1942 was way way better. Graphics schmaficks.

[HairyRussianDude]

I hear you bud.
Personally what threw me off of the newer games was achievements, badges/ribbons/unlocks, and spotting.
Teamplay went out the window because your squad wants that sniper achievement. Spamming the spot key ruins sniping.

I like the simplicity of 1942/DC: Pick a class and go.

[sanchez]

Blink come back to Squad, I usualy play Sumary Bala, when it is seeding with about 16 players you can use any weapons and the map is small, a lot like LV or Al Nas, you dont need to join a squad because it is seeding , that is my favorite map , go to infantry maps that are in seeding mode.
The game was way better before the octuber update where they have made it more real .The good thing about squad is that you can play anytime and get your fix early, you dont have to wait until 6 or 7 Pm

[sanchez]

https://youtu.be/fzBPxYe90Ts?si=RUIPE6QKmBX6AZ_i

[BlinkofanEye]

Ok sanchez...maybe. I rage deleted it and all the other games except battlebit. But maybe I will redownload it. Also I heard the star wars mod is really good for it.

[BlinkofanEye]

I hear you bud.
Personally what threw me off of the newer games was achievements, badges/ribbons/unlocks, and spotting.
Teamplay went out the window because your squad wants that sniper achievement. Spamming the spot key ruins sniping.

I like the simplicity of 1942/DC: Pick a class and go.

Yeah the new games are crazy with all the fluff they put in a game. And how complicated it can get. Who the hell even wants to skin all their guns and characters? What happened to gamers?

[Otto Kontrol]

A little off topic but god I loved the original 'Unreal Tournament' and all the user maps. Me and a buddy of mine "Flint" would spend hours fighting it out in the bathroom map. I swear I was so mad at myself when I lost my backup and all the user files to UT. If anyone has a copy of it, talk to me.

oTTo

[BlinkofanEye]

Sounds fun Otto. I never played UT that much but I remember how much fun those funky maps were that put a spin on things.

These may be the links you're looking for:

https://www.reddit.com/r/abandonware/co ... oad_links/

https://www.mapraider.com/maps/unreal-t ... roomSniper