Video Game Tuesday: Good Games to play in Quarantine

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m back with a list. It’s some Good Games to play in Quarantine!

Skyrim: This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has ever heard of this game but if you’ve got a fairly decent PC Skyrim has nearly endless potential for gameplay with it’s countless mods that have been released in the nearly 9 years since it first released. Even if you don’t have a PC Skyrim is full of fun things to do for those in Quarantine. Whether it’s collecting every piece of Cheese in the province of Skyrim or just following the story you’ll have plenty to do.

Bonus Suggestion:

Morrowind: If you are feeling really adventurous you can load up Morrowind, it’s been out for 18 years and it also has plenty of mods to use. Thankfully this game should run just fine on almost any PC that’s been made since 2010. I do suggest getting a mod that increases your run speed though. You do move very slowly in that game.

Tales of Berseria: I’ve always loved the Tales of games, and Tales of Berseria is the best of the bunch. It’s got an amazing story, fantastic gameplay, excellent graphics and musical score. Frankly this is a must play regardless, but you might find this to be a very fun game to play if you need something else to do and prefer JRPGs over Western RPGs.

Persona 5 Royal: Sadly this game is only on the PlayStation 4, but Persona 5 Royal is a great game that has a fantastic story and while less action oriented than most RPGs, it’s still a very fun game.

Minecraft: Like Skyrim, Minecraft on the PC has plenty of mods, and is literally endlessly replayable, although some might get bored eventually.

No Man’s Sky: This game has come a very long way since it first released and has gotten very good. If you want to explore a nearly endless galaxy full of planets and moons to land on, No Man’s Sky is the game to play.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.

 

Video Game Tuesday: Playing to Win isn’t Always Fun

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m back with a topic that is about how being super serious isn’t always entertaining. It’s about how Playing to Win isn’t Always Fun!

What do you mean “Playing to Win”: Well I mean that pretty literally, sometimes it’s just more fun to just goof off in games, and in fact some games don’t have set objectives and are made purely for goofing off in.

Like what?: Well Minecraft for one is a perfect example of a game that’s made purely to goof off in, you can create amazing things in the game including working calculators, but it’s really mostly used to just goof off and make stuff. There’s a reason why Rooster Teeth has a weekly episode of their Let’s Play crew just playing Minecraft. It’s got pretty much endless potential to just mess around with friends.

What do you like?: I personally keep Grand Theft Auto V always installed on my PS4 just to load up on days where I’m stressed to just goof off online. I go around creating havoc and just having a blast destroying other players. Sure it’s not always a nice thing to do, and I tend to do it to people who aren’t doing special activities like the Motorcycle Club stuff, but just going around and goofing off is pretty fun.

So what about playing to win?: Well I tend to avoid the PvP aspects of games because I personally don’t find them much fun as people take it way too seriously sometimes. League of Legends is a pretty great example of people getting way too invested in pick up games. Now I’d understand if they were playing in ranked mode, but if they are just playing casually I’m not expecting someone to be perfect. PvE activities for me tend to be more fun as it involves either the plot, or just good old team work oriented gameplay with other players.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. What are some of your favorite games to just mess around in? Leave your answers in the comments below!

Video Game Tuesday: Randomized Content and Replayability

This week I’m going to talk about a content that is very contentious in the gaming industry for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! It’s all about Randomized Content and Replayability!

What is Randomized Content: Randomized Content is content that is not actually random, it just has a set of outcomes that vary each time the operation is run, usually meaning each time the player enters the content’s area. What does this mean for replayablity? In the best cast scenario it means that after about 5 times the number of outcomes (5 x Y where Y is the total number of outcomes) before it becomes no longer “Random” and it loses all sense of being random to the user. I’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth bringing up with the soon™ to be released No Man’s Sky and it’s Procedurally Generated Content engine.

What is Procedurally Generated Content?: Procedurally Generated Content, or PGC for short or incredibly lazy types like myself, is essentially a system of equations that produce a pretty much random variation infinitely. Minecraft is a good example of PGC as each seed world is different if you choose to have it be random, no two worlds are exactly alike, sure there may be a Temple near a Village always but that’s part of the equations.

What does this have to do with Replayability?: Recently Bungie released Destiny’s second expansion The House of Wolves with the highlight being the Prison of Elders which is randomized each time a player enters. It’s really not, as I state above, and after a short amount of time everything will go back to the same grind. If they really wanted it to be random they’d have to do something like Diablo 3’s Rift System where it’s a random dungeon every time you enter and even then after a few thousand times through the rifts you’ll start seeing the patterns. Given how fast people played through Destiny’s content I’m disappointed in the lack of foresight on Bungie’s part, but that’s a story for another day.

So what it boils down to is if you want to really play a randomized game you need to play something like Minecraft and hopefully soon No Man’s Sky, don’t take the marketing bullcrap about randomized content at face value.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!