Video Game Tuesday: Product Placement in Games

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering a topic that often annoys me. It’s Product Placement in Games!

Product Placement?: So real world brands, like Coca Cola or Subway. Sometimes in games you’ll find parodies of real world businesses, like Up and Atom for In and Out Burgers in Grand Theft Auto V. But other times you’ll find actual brands in the games you play. Sometimes this is amusing, like in Final Fantasy XV where not only was there a helmet for Noctis to wear proudly proclaiming Cup Noodles odd placement in the game, but there was an entire side Quest where you hunted an incredibly difficult monster in order to find a good topping for it. It was beyond bizarre, but it didn’t feel immersion breaking. Almost, but not quite. Considering that American Express, and Coleman were also prominently featured in the game that is quite a feat. Other games that have done it well are games like Skate, which features tons of different brands.

But not always?: Right, sometimes it’s just plain annoying. Like the Subway products in Uncharted 3. That was just immersion breaking, and just out of place.

The odd: Some of them are just plain weird though, like EverQuest II having an in game spot where you could order a pizza and get it delivered from Pizza Hut.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. Are there any games which feature Product Placement that you feel I should’ve mentioned? Leave your answers in the comments below!

 

Video Game Tuesday: Most Hated Mission Type

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering my most disliked quest genre in all of gaming. It’s my Most Hated Mission Type!

What is it?: Escort Missions, or Quests. I freaking hate doing these missions because I almost always feel like I have to babysit the NPC I’m escorting, who will do nothing but get into trouble and cause me grief.

Really?: Yeah, so I guess my hatred of the mission first really appeared with my time playing Vanilla WoW as an Alliance player in the Westfall zone. As anyone who played during that time will probably remember, that is the first zone most Alliance players will be in that allowed PvP on PvP servers. There’s one specific quest chain that was in the zone that dealt with the first dungeon many Alliance players would ever encounter, The Deadmines. The very last quest before the one that led to you being instructed to actually venture into the dungeon required you to escort an NPC to the entrance of the building that led into the dungeon. You were required to defeat many spawned enemies, in an area that was full of annoying rogue and mage type enemies as well.

In addition if you were unlucky enough to do it when a Horde player was skulking around they could easily just kill your NPC causing you to fail the quest instantly. This would mark them for PvP, but as most of these people were Rogues who could use the skill Vanish it was rather pointless trying to deal with them even if you were of the same level, which you often weren’t.

But they can’t all be bad!: Well that’s true, Bioshock Infinite for example actually had a great escort mechanic, in that not only did your companion Elizabeth not constantly draw fire onto her (she couldn’t die thank god) she also used her powers to change the battlefield to your advantage. She also threw you ammo occasionally during a firefight which would instantly refill your currently equipped weapon. But she is one of the few exceptions. Most of the time, Escort Quests are still a pain in the ass.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. What are some of your least favorite mission types? Leave your answers in the comments below!

Video Game Tuesday: Why Ultimate Coil Should Be The Gold Standard

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m talking about the success of Final Fantasy XIV’s latest hardcore encounter. It’s Why Ultimate Coil Should Be The Gold Standard!

Ultimate Coil?: The Unending Coil of Bahamut (Ultimate) is the latest hardcore fight in Final Fantasy XIV. To even enter Ultimate Coil it requires the player to clear the Savage version of Omega Deltascape V4 (The Exdeath Fight). Plenty of players have yet to even clear that fight, and as of the time writing this post (9 days after the release of the encounter) there still hasn’t been a clear of Ultimate Coil. That being said there are no new mechanics to the encounter which features Twintania the boss of Turn 5, Nael the boss of Turn 9 and Bahamut the boss of Turn 13. It’s merely just incredibly unforgiving and hard. If you make a single mistake it almost assuredly will lead to a wipe. This is the type of content that should be present in every MMO out there, the type that is so hard to complete it takes people weeks or months to complete.

The actual fight is said to last for about 20 minutes in total, not terribly long compared to past Square Enix bosses like the 18 hour boss fight of XI’s Pandemonium Warden. People have yet to complete this fight and I find that fact incredibly amazing. There are no bullshit glitches (Crota I’m looking at you, you teleporting bastard), no unknown mechanics, just pure difficulty. The first group to clear this encounter will probably go down in gaming history as some of the best gamers in gaming history. They’ll be up there with the likes of Mionee, a World of Warcraft player who has been soloing the hardest encounters in the game by herself for years.

So Gold Standard?: Yea, if other developers can adopt this sort of fight to their own games it would mean a lot for the hardcore players. Imagine doing a boss fight in Destiny where you not only took on Oryx, but had to deal with Atheon and Crota with all their mechanics at the same time. It’d be insane, heartpounding and a ridiculous bragging point if you and your friends could actually complete such an encounter. Ultimate Coil has a gear reward that matches the same you’d get from V4 Savage, with just an extra materia slot, so for the most part it’s only there for bragging rights, but that isn’t a small thing.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! Do you want to have the hardcore boss fights in your games be like Ultimate Coil, where you just have to be nearly perfect in execution to succeed? Leave your answers in the comments below!

Edited on 11/4: The Unending Coil of Bahamut (Ultimate) was beaten 12 days and 2 hours after release on 11/4/2017.

Video Game Tuesday: Patch Notes

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m back with a topic many gamers should read a heck of a lot more often. It’s all about Patch Notes!

Patch Notes?: Patch Notes are notes of any and all changes that occur when a game is updated. These are most of the time fairly boring reads, especially in the bug sections, but nevertheless such things are really worth reading. Especially the bug portions, because it might just help you avoid getting a game breaking bug, or getting corrupted save files and losing all your progress in a game.

All of your progress, really?: Yeah, really. In MMOs it’s especially worth reading any and all Known Bug sections of Patch Notes before playing. The ideal time to do so? While your game is updating. In fact it’s also worth having your phone or tablet’s web browser open to any community sites, be that a fan site like Blizzard Watch for Blizzard games or a really active subreddit like the Final Fantasy XIV subreddit. This should be done during any major patch, and especially during Expansion launches. They’ll put up things like PSA’s about what not to do. For instance in FFXIV’s latest expansion Stormblood, there was a particularly nasty bug with the first Primal fight players experience in the expansion at level 63.

If you entered the instance and were sitting or doing any emote at all prior to entering you would be kicked from your character and be unable to log in to that character at all once you finished the instance. This was particularly bad, and was just one of the many issues that were occuring during Stormblood’s launch. There were also congestion issues and server issues that were occurring due to DDoS attacks on the FFXIV servers, and later on to the actual ISPs themselves.

Okay so back to Patch Notes, they are not all boring. Some games actually have a ton of fun with their patch notes, and it’s just a fun thing to be reading when you are bored. Crusader Kings II is one game whose Patch Notes are genuinely hilarious almost all the time. Like this little jewel “-No longer possible for AI to plot to assassinate self (unless they are a lunatic).” Brilliant, and it’s actually relevant!

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. Are the any particular Patch Notes that you remember just being absolutely hilarious? Feel free to share them below!

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!