Q&A: January 15th, 2025

Dzera Asks
What video game story made you genuinely depressed after finishing it?

Soma.

I part of the reason the credits song lives rent free in my brain is every time I hear it, I remember just sitting and staring at the computer screen until it started the post-credits sequence...

Which made me even more depressed.

Multiple of the bad choices in Mass Effect 3 I find hard to watch, same with many of the ones in Cyberpunk.

Hearing Misty be angry ,or Judy crying over voice-mail is just...

Rough.

Majin Brandon Asks
I'm curious about your takes on the ADS discourse for FPS games. I see people bring it up as an automatic bad thing, with differing levels of reasoning (good or bad) as to their distaste. What do you feel about ADS is FPS titles overtaking the genre by now, mechanically especially?

I think they're mostly reacting to the multi-year trend of people quite literally not bothering to even try playing a game if it didn't have sprint or ADS.

Yes, that's very arbitrary and seemingly silly, but ADS being an automatic problem is just as arbitrary.

What I think people are sick of is games doing it only to appeal to the former crowd. Like... did Rage 1 really need ADS? Is that the thing people left that game with the impression of? Did anybody buy ID's DOOM and think "Hey, where's the ADS from RAGE?"

Game mechanics in general need to stop being thought of by everybody, publishers, developers, gamers, as silver bullets. That there's a mechanic which will universally in 100% of scenarios always elevate a game.

I find ADS discourse in-general as a waste of time, but I do think we're in a much better position than 10-15 years ago, because at the games themselves are not relying on this mechanic alone to sell, and ADS itself has now appeared in enough fast-paced games like Titanfall that the mechanic is more flexible than we previously assumed.

Hexteria Asks
Do you find your music tastes fluctuate a fair bit or stay fairly consistent? I tend to find my tastes goes through distinct cycles. To the point that a genre I love will start to absolutely grate on me only to go full circle and end up loving it again after a few months. But maybe that's just me overindulging.

Ever since a couple years ago when I made a conscious effort to listen to edgier and poppier music, not too much, as the taste is so eclectic and all over the place, that it's sort of always in a state of flux.

Sometimes an entire day will be spent with ambient Cyberpunk playlists, other times I'll be playing a Death from Above 1979 album on loop, occasionally I'll even peruse through a friend's K-Pop favorites and dance in my chair to 'em.

I haven't hit the point of grating on favorites, but I do save most played songs playlists from groups like Spotify, and there seems to be a surprising amount of variety between the years.

Usually, when I'm listening to something over and over and over, there is a reason for it, or something inspiring that interest.

FQ540 Asks
What are your thoughts on fighting games such as Tekken, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, etc? Have you played any of them? If not, would you? If so, which ones have you played and how did you enjoy them?

I've played all of them to varying degrees, with a handful I've spent a brief time really getting into for a couple days with friends. MK11 was the last one, and before that it was Soul Caliber VI. Both however fell off eventually for the same reason though, the dynamics of each fight devolved into timing, especially around the games super-meters.

Fighting games are really fun, especially when you're battling somebody you know the style of and are roughly on pair with, but I'm also not very experienced with them, and generally don't have the investment to learn the depths of an individual character's move-set.

Weirdly, I get the satisfaction from Racing Games, and I'm obviously a lot more familiar with those, but I am always open to trying them, and who knows, maybe there'll be a game that makes me want to make that extra effort.

I admit... being an Arcane fan, I am very interested in 2KXO.

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