The Poor Man’s Gaming Moments of the Year Pt 1

As someone who hasn’t had a decent flow of income in a looooong time, I always have to play catch up.

Most gamers I know have picked up almost every new game title that gets released during any given year, as well as the big consoles when they come out. Sure some of them let other facets of their lives fall to the wayside or took the opposite path and managed to get their lives together earlier on.

Sure I am jelly one way or another, one more so than the other, but I understand how and why these guys manage to experience games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and all the Nintendo Switch has to offer, or even games like Evil Within 2. Does that mean I can’t be a little jealous while I try to figure my life out? I feel I can be jealous about missing the fresh experience but I can’t discredit the experiences I DO get to go through during each year.

I can also do a Game of the Year special leading up to the end of the year, with games and consoles I may own or have gotten just a small chance to play with. So with that being said, I welcome all 5 of you to my Game/Gaming of the Year Part 1.

Destiny 2 and Reintroduction to Socializing

DISCLAIMER: Yeah, I know this game is being looked down upon by many people right now for many reasons but here is the deal… I have my own damn opinion, and I enjoy what I enjoy.

Destiny 2 came out just 3 months or so ago and it genuinely impressed me. When I played through the first installment on the PS3 I absolutely, positively, fucking hated it! I found flaws in every aspect of it, right down to simple design flaws and harped on the lack of any consequential story. I quit playing and never touched DLC flat out saying it was a bullshit title from what used to be an amazing developer. Then I wrote a review… told my friends… and tried for hours on end to explain just why I hated it. Everyone just looked at me with a blank stare, agreeing with some things but in general thinking I’d just became cynical.

Fast-forward to a few months before the release of Destiny 2 and I just so happened to spy the badass looking Collector’s edition with that messenger bag. So I watched a few of the videos about the changes and what had been released to us from Bungie and suddenly found myself excited. I went from “fuck this shit” to ” man that would be awesome to play”. I just so happened to have gotten a vanilla copy of Destiny the past Christmas, so I popped it into the PS4 and played through the incredibly short main portion and then danced around Crucible matches.

I felt excited about this series in the weirdest turn around I’d ever heard with a game series. So needless to say I managed to find a way to pick up Destiny 2 when it dropped and I played the hell out of it, hell I still play it when I have only a small amount of time to play anything. I find myself in love with many aspects of this game, sure plenty issues exist but I never felt as angry or as wronged as I did my first time around with the original game. But the best thing about Destiny 2  has to has be to the social connection that D2 has restarted in my life.

I have never been one to join online groups where I would have to talk to, even people I already knew. It would make me panic, it would make me so anxious that I just avoided multiplayer action in any regard. However with this game, I broke all my conventions and joined in multiple groups with people I didn’t even know and I was ok with it. Destiny 2 somehow revitalized a portion of my social life that I thought I would never get back. I can’t tell if it was the game or if it was just I matured but somehow this game was the catalyst to socializing again.

So Destiny 2 has a spot in the halls of 2017’s Games/Gaming Moments. Stay tuned to the rest of this month for more drops on the biggest moments for me this year.

Also you can check out my twitter, @ReedicusRex to watch me photoshop Santa and Krampus into pictures for the rest of December for what I am calling Shopcember (toootally original right?).

Dialogue Trees In Real Life

Have you ever wished you could take back something embarrassing you’ve said?

 

I’m sure many of us have made this wish on nights where our insomnia reigns supreme while the horrible conversations run on repeat. I have these moments continually in life, my anxiety is always preventing me from sleeping without first entertaining thoughts of all the mildly (majorly) embarrassing things I’ve done in life.  In an attempt to rationalize things, I try to create scenarios where I would say something cooler or at least smoother.

Inner me is cooler by all means, but real life Jay doesn’t meet the standards of cool I’ve set. I was thinking about this earlier today, as I was working at the airport where I deal with customers on a daily basis and my comments always get jumbled or I get caught of guard by people’s questions I don’t expect. Then a question came to mind as I sat down on break; What if I had a dialogue tree? Would my conversations with people become stress free? In the end, I would have to say it would make life more interesting, that’s for sure.

Imagine a customer comes up and they decide they want to be rude and interrupt you every time you open your mouth. What if you were given three choices on how to respond, the standard dialogue tree affair with Good, Neutral, Or Bad, and could see them in front of you before you spoke. The amount of time you could wait to respond comes included in this package, so you could weigh each choice with a decent amount of time and come to terms with the consequences. You decide you’ve had about enough of rude customers today so you pop off a comment from the Bad column and start by interrupting them and tell them off in the most fantastic way. You have a moment in the sun, sure you may regret the decision later, but you sounded as cool as you sound in your head. Finally.

Of course reality isn’t always as great as you imagine in your mind, but one can dream. Implementing video game mechanics into real life would make things a little more enjoyable and possibly improve your social life. Or destroy it, if it were me.

I know my thoughts may come off childish, but I’m sure I can’t be the only one who thinks things like this, so I would like to hear what video game mechanics you would implement in the real world?

Would you use dialogue trees, or would you rather introduce open combat against horrid customers? Well if you are the latter, you should look into an up and coming Indie game known as I Hate My Job by Devious Gamers. They are running a fund raising campaign to get marketing funds in the US. They have already had a soft launch in India and it looked promising. So if you want to take a look into the company or feel interested in backing such a project, I’ll post links below.

Devious Gamers Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deviousgamersofficial/

I Hate My Job IndieGoGo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-devious-gamers-launch-i-hate-my-job-game-mobile#/

P.S.

I want to note that I will eventually start doing video game reviews and news when I get into a regular routine. So those of you who start to follow me, I will be including these in my future writings. It also depends on my financial situation but I digress and say hopefully in the near future that can begin.

Image credit: Mass Effect and GameSkinny Article  Featured Image: Fallout 4