Video Games
OK, so what do I do in some of my free time? Once or twice a
week, usually on days off, after the day is over I will play video games. I’m a
console gamer and I have a Playstation 4 right now. Since 2008 I’ve only played
first-person shooter games. We had a Wii when that came out but I haven’t
played it much since. I don’t have a lot of free time to switch between games
and I only play multi-player against live opponents so I stick with
first-person shooter games. I also don’t like playing with friends in “parties”
or with clans because there is too much idle time waiting on other people to
get ready or schedule time to play. I only have a short period of time each
week to play so I won’t wait for anyone else to get ready. I just jump in the online
shooter frag-fest as a lone wolf. I also have no time for the campaign portion
of the first-person shooter games unless the internet goes out, so I play
multi-player exclusively.
I had been loyal to the Call of Duty games since World at
War released in 2008. That was the first game that I played against live
competition. That is when I really got into Call of Duty. Also included in that
game was Nacht Der Untoten AKA Nazi Zombies which created an entirely new kind
of survival game craze and, I think, had a lot to do with the rise of
zombie-everything in pop culture movies, TV, comics, games, art, etc. (just
like vampires in the 1990s).
Of course by 2008 everyone was getting a little tired of the
World War II shooter games especially with the recent release of Modern
Warfare. I liked the Modern Warfare games too. Now every first-person shooter
game is coming out with some sort of ray gun or futuristic pulse cannon set in
the future. I must be too old for these games now. I liked the older games
because they were grounded in history. I’ve held or shot an M1 Garand,
Thompson, M-4, M-16, AK-47, and other types of weapons used in those games.
Now, they use the same coding for an AK-47 but put a different skin on it to
make it look like a ray gun and make a battery pack for it instead of a
magazine. OK, I can live with that and pretend to be in the future. What killed
it for me was Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. I hate the exo suit and refused
to play in anything but classic mode where the exo didn’t work. I suppose all
of the jumping around and flying suits are the future of games. I hate it. I
stopped playing multiplayer altogether and just played the newest version of
Zombies that came with the game starring John Malkovich, Bill Paxton and crew.
So 2015 comes and there were a lot of choices.
Star Wars: Battlefront
I went with Battlefront. I always like anything Star Wars
and Call of Duty was becoming too complicated. There was way too much in each
phase of the game for a casual player like me. I got Battlefront as my 2016
game to play. Apparently it was designed for intermediate players or as another
game to play for most people. What it lacks in complication, it has in
graphics. There isn’t another game that can compete with the graphics. In
nearly every map, there is an entire story going on in the background.
I wanted Battlefront because it wasn’t just a first-person
shooter game, but had the aircraft dog-fight modes as well. I’ve been looking
for a good spaceship game since the all-time classic X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
back in the days before we had the internet to play on. Battlefront has no
killstreaks which I have gotten used to now. I am free to run around and not
worry about staying alive for one more kill before I can get a reward. The guns
fire lasers but it still feels normal because we have seen those guns/blasters
since Star Wars came out. The guns are weak though. The one-shot kill weapons
are cumbersome and most every gun takes three hits to take someone down. I do
like the Walker Assault mode which I play more than anything. I like being able
to fly aircraft, play as infantry, operate armored cavalry, or play as a
special character in each match. Walker Assault is also a better objective game
than what other shooter games have because it combines a variety of objective
based game modes into one huge game.
The last DLC for Battlefront comes out in early 2017 and I
imagine that the next Star Wars Battlefront will be out in late 2017. That one
should be even better and take it one level up. It is good now, it just needs a
little more.
