king of video games, part 2

31 Jan, 2024

Okay sick, I literally wrote all of part 1 to justify making a list of video games lgi.

fighting games

I don't think any genre games screams PVP more than the genre dedicated to having a player fight another player. All things considered, I strangely do not consider myself a fighting game player. I think of myself more of a casual participant. My first fighting game was melee and I can't say I regret the years I spent playing it. I unfortunately had to stop playing due to my poor wrist health and I can't say if I'll ever return to it in a meaningful capacity.

Incidentally, I have always wanted to dive deeper into the more traditional side of fighting games. I had a small phase with guilty gear strive; I learned how to play on keyboard and then bought a hitbox! It was a great experience and I've been itching to return multiple times. I listed sf6 and gbvr as potential games but what I really want to play is gbvr. Idk, I just fuck with the aesthetic.

racing games

The other primal form of PVP, going fast. I can't say I have much experience with racing games. When I was making the list, I had racing split into two further sub-categories: traditional and arcade. When I think of traditional racing, I think of gran turismo, forza, iracing, driving sims essentially. When I was younger I always wanted a track car to take to the track on the weekend with the boys but now that I'm older, I think I'll settle for the most minimal of driving sim setups. Just something about going fast makes the neurons fire. Arcade racing games is less loosely defined for me. I think of games like trackmania and mario kart.

I have a bunch of games listed here to try to represent a wide spectrum but recently I've been really fired up over the idea of playing the art of rally. A type of indie racing game paying homage to the car scene and culture. For trackmania, I think I just watch too much wirtual. The game looks slick, it looks fast, it looks fun.

speedrunning

This is like racing except the nerdy kind. Also I lied, I guess I do have racing experience since I've spent like 3k hours speedrunning hades at this point. I think when you get into it, there are a lot of ways to speedrun and a lot of ways to categorize it's little niches. Instead of breaking down the niches, I'm just going to explain why each game was selected.

Golden Sun: Probably cause nostalgia? My experience with golden sun consists of playing the arena mode on my best friend's cartridge whenever we met up. As an adult, speedrunning this game is the kind of esoteric pick I would expect out of myself. The speedrun itself is like, 3.5-4 hours the last time I checked and I think there's a certain charm to these longer speedgames. There's also an aesthetic to playing these old jrpgs.

Hades 2: This game isn't even out yet and it's on my list. I mean, I missed my chance with hades 1, maybe I'll become the king of hades 2?

Titanfall 2: My first speedgame ever. And honestly, probably one of the best speedgames ever. This game also occupies that source engine niche where you strafe to build speed and go fast. It's very technical and boy do you get rewarded for being technical. It's been at least half a decade since I've done a speedrun and you fucking bet I'd do it again given the chance.

tabletop

I had no idea how to categorize this one. It felt illegal to call something like chess or go a board game so here we are. Something as classic as these two games, it would be criminal to not include them in my list. I've been eyeing go for years at this point. And yea, its literally because I'm a chronic re-reader of hikaru no go.

FPS

The funny thing about fps games is that I never thought I would be an fps player. Growing up, I had no computer that could run fps games. Even if I did, I was definitely not allowed to play fps games. The first time I played 1.6 on a school computer, I literally panicked when I got into gunfights. Fps games were not for me. At the start of the pandemic, something magical happened: riot released valorant. I played for a bit before quitting and I recently started playing it again (before quitting again).

Fps games are an iconic part of the gaming culture and even moreso on the competitive side. The counterstrike scene is a scene with deep lore and stories. While my journey in valorant started me on my quest to improving my aim, what I actually fell in love with was the macro. There's no question that this game will be an essential part of my road to becoming the king of games, especially because it's one of the few games where I can play with my friends.

arcadey/puzzle

I didn't know what to call these guys but calling them puzzle games feels kind of right? Regardless, these guys deserve a place on this list as much as any of the others. These guys got selected just because of the way I accidentally fell into them. I picked up tetris as a chill game when I wasn't playing melee. Minesweepers was even dumber; I told someone that I was an incredibly petty person and that would be enough to fuel my improvement in any game. They asked me what about minesweepers? and I asked them what their PB was lol.

conclusion

I think by the time I got to the bottom of writing this list, it felt like it was less about becoming the king of video games and more about the esoteric way I fell into some of these video games. For better or for worse, this is my list. It's crazy because I have this whole list and I have no idea which one of these I'm going to play next. There's also that tiny fact that NEW games can always appear too so check back in later and we'll see what kind of progress we made.