Category Archives: gaming

Revisiting MGSV

I booted up my Xbox One for the first time in six months about a week ago to play Metal Gear Solid V and I was kind of shocked. There are some parts of the game that’s aged as well as an 80-point wine.

For all of the hype surrounding the game’s costly and lengthy development and considering how stale the game got shortly after launch, it’s funny how I ended up coming to this conclusion. After I finished the story and finished grinding the single-player world (when the online functionality was not exactly smooth sailing), I justified my moving on from playing the game by concluding the game was the wrong type of grind—the very same way in which Destiny turned into the wrong type of grind that turned me off from buying in after the House of Wolves expansion.

A year later, it’s clear that the real endgame for MGSV required more commitment and patience than the typical gamer might be able to command.

After picking the game back up over the weekend, I’m nearly back to where I was at skill-wise before I stopped playing when the game was still fresh. We’re not talking about Metal Gear Online, though, because addressing that mess is its own can of worms.

I’m having fun coming back to the game, though I wish there was an easy way to replay the whole story without it being tied to my online progress.

I really intend to fully complete the game while I still ahve some sort of interest in playing it. Right now, I’m concentrating on finishing the entire list of Side Ops. After that, I’ll replay all of the story missions to make sure I complete every additional mission task and find every hidden key item. Lastly, I’ll deal with the major replay missions I haven’t completed yet.

After dealing with all of those single player things, I’d like to seriously try the multiple FOB grind. Maybe contibute to unlocking that third and final chapter of the game. If the game can keep my attention for that long. I suppose it doesn’t really help that I am playing it on my Xbox One, but I suppose it could be worse. I could be playing it on my Xbox 360.

Until then, I suppose I need to figure out how to train DD to stop blocking my line of sight.

ATVI’s renewed Facebook push expands to game integration

Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat’s resident gaming reporter, scored some interviews with a couple of execs from Blizzard and Facebook in exchange for writing up how all of the new Facebook integrations will make Overwatch better. Or at least I’m pretty sure that’s how Blizzard execs agree to speak to the media at all.

His article leads with the under-the-radar announcement that a couple of Facebook APIs will be integrated into the Overwatch client. The first provides a find your friends-type service between Battle.net and Facebook. The second integration allows for games to be streamed via Facebook’s own live-streaming platform, Live.

The Facebook Login will go live later this month with Battle.net games such as World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, Diablo III, StarCraft II, and Blizzard’s most recent blockbuster release, Overwatch, using their Facebook accounts. That could help Blizzard address the problem that comes with anonymous accounts, such as hate speech and bullying.

The last remark in the blurb above anonymous accounts is something Blizzard could address itself, but clearly isn’t bothered enough about to invest time to fix that problem with a first-party solution, unlike some other fucking triple-A game developer who is at least trying to add a compromise of sorts.

Later on in the article, this red flag describes a potential end-game for all of this Facebook integration:

Adding Facebook Login will also pave the way for new social functionality in Blizzard games while highlighting Facebook as a platform of choice for sharing, viewing, and discussing AAA game content. As an example, Blizzard is in the process of incorporating Facebook’s Live API in order to add “Go Live” streaming functionality for its games.

With the flip of a few switches and a bit more money changing hands, a Facebook login might be the only way you could end up interacting with Blizzard support, a game’s forums, and other players in-game. While that might come off as a doomsday scenario to most, I don’t think it’s such an impossible leap, especially if Facebook continues to pay off ATVI for more exclusive in-roads to Blizzard’s other recent titles.

As for my take on all this…

2300 UTC. 1900 Eastern. 1600 Pacific.

Overwatch unlocks for play later today. I’m pretty excited to jump back into the grind of unlocking and completing a new game again, and if the beta was any indication, I won’t rage out on it so much–especially considering matches usually take less than ten minutes to complete.

That’s one of the major sticking points that I have with trying to compete in the CS:GO matchmaking mode as presented in the client. I can’t handle the range of other people who play matchmaking–from players who don’t effectively communicate to those that would rather spam the dankest of memes and not even bother to try. It becomes a crap shoot as to whether or not I am going to be matched up with competent teammates and other players who seriously just want to try to play their best–or at least give an honest go at the game.

It’s not like I have thousands of hours in the game or anything, but when you end up playing at least forty or fifty minutes per map and being locked into playing with shit teammates who leave early, who decide not to listen, and/or who intentionally lose the game makes for a certain extra dramatic element that Valve isn’t addressing or making an effort to fix.

Sure, the Prime Matchmaking scheme they announced might help remove the more suspect accounts from matchmaking contention, but it won’t completely remove them unless they allow for Prime players to only be matched with other Prime players. I seriously doubt the likelihood of Valve attempting to fight off the epidemic of smurf accounts that are commonly used to circumvent the matchmaking system in the interest of not closing off additional vectors for revenue.

Meanwhile, I seem to be the only person in my group of friends that haven’t intentionally left a match in the Overwatch beta due to pure rage. I don’t see how I can get upset with a game that I will end up playing for an hour straight and not be limited to one match.

I might have been salty on more than one occasion with how our team’s composition might not have been effective against another team’s, but there always seems to be a rock, paper, scissors approach to composition strategy that’s fluid enough thanks to being able to swap between heroes during the respawn timer. However, I generally feel more confident in being able to suggest a character swap in Overwatch than I am to suggest a plan of attack in CS:GO.

Forget tactical strategy as a parallel, consider buytime in CS:GO. Entire classes of weapons are considered too unreliable to be used at a competitive level–leaving you with four rifles, four pistols and sometimes a shotgun. Maybe SMGs if you’re looking to out-play your opponents or play like a complete moron who can’t hit shots to save his life (as I end up being on a regular basis).

For some reason I don’t feel as critical about my teammate’s decisions in Overwatch when I was playing the beta. Perhaps that’s only a temporary thing, but I think that on the whole, I might find that I enjoy how Blizzard has casualized the team arena shooter while making it feel fun to play in a way that only Blizzard could.

I’m looking forward to this evening. For sure.