Anyway, SH dropped this picture on me and gave me some food for thought. It was pitched as a fun podcast idea, which could be awesome, but I'm not sure our hockey listeners would love a gaming-only podcast answering a ridiculous 31 questions.
So I'm stealing the 31 Thoughts title from the Fridge Lord himself and answering them in text format. Don't be mad, Steph. Also I'm cleaning up the spelling because I'm not a savage and don't put useless letters in my words like a "u" in favorite. Get ahold of yourself, list-maker.
1. Favorite Game - Mass Effect 2
If you know me, this is no surprise. I have a Mass Effect tattoo and I always make reference to the series when I can. ME2 was the pinnacle of my favorite franchise outside of Mario. It's a masterpiece of a game with fun and varied combat, great character development, and a killer storyline. Very few things beat the joy of rolling into the Omega 4 Relay knowing what's coming. It's a thrill ride from beginning to end. Disagreement on this one is unacceptable.
2. Worst Game - Resident Evil 6
This probably isn't the worst game I've ever played but it's the one that left me the most confused, the angriest, the most...letdown. I know there's a "disappointing sequel" on this list but I have another game for that one. RE6 continued my complicated relationship with the RE franchise. I didn't really like the original survival horror stuff because it just wasn't up my alley. I respected that they were well-crafted but they just weren't particularly fun for me. Then RE4 rolled around and it was perfection on the Wii. And RE5 came and I went to Tennessee to visit my best friend for its release. I played 5 million times, on both PC and the PS3. It was a BLAST.
So naturally, RE6 dropped and my BFF and I were very excited to rock the online co-op...and it had four storylines? Uh fuck yeah? And then...we started playing it. What. The. Fuck. Happened. Some of the core mechanics felt just fine, like the movement and the overall gunplay FELT good. Except, you know, when you headshot zombies they didn't die? What? The second player in each of the co-op stories was regularly left to do these bizarre side quests by themselves and kind of felt like they were just carrying the first player's water. It was weird more than anything else.
Then the story. God, the story. It was cool in concept to have the stories intersect but they did it in such a fucked up way. You ended up seeing several of the same scenes throughout the game, replaying sections where the various characters meet up, and on and on. It artificially lengthened the game simply so they could say "It takes 40 hours to beat this!" Beyond that, it was a buggy fiasco and its save points were ridiculous. You die and you have to go back over an hour worth of gameplay? What is this, 1992?
Dumb. Frustrating. Very few games made me as miserable to play as RE6. What a fucking mess.
3. On the Wish List - The Entire Switch Library
I haven't gotten around to buying a Nintendo Switch yet but I'm dying to. As a huge Mario fan, Odyssey has been in the wild for far too long without me getting down with it. I will have it as my Christmas present to myself. It must happen. New Fire Emblem and Smash Bros. only enhance the demand for me to get this system. I'm also getting ready to travel with the Avs a lot more so having it on the road would be amazing entertainment when I don't want to be social or explore cities like...Minneapolis. Or Dallas.
4. Worst Franchise - Call of Duty
I hate the CoD franchise so much. It was fun back in the day. Then the Activision model kicked in where they demanded one be released every year and that really killed my interest in the franchise. I want good games, not frequent games. The games just declined in quality in my eyes and every time I see a big-money ad buy to show me another trailer for a CoD I just roll my eyes to hell and back. Hard pass. Fuck those games.
5. Most Disappointing Sequel - Mass Effect: Andromeda
Ugh. As usual, this was an ME game that came out at a great time in my life. My girlfriend and I had just broken up and my heart was shattered into a billion pieces and I was extremely unhappy and everything around me was terrible. Then Mass Effect came out and oh my god I had something to pour ALL of my heart into to try and forget about my shit going on.
And it was just such a fucking mess. It was like Mass Effect mixed with Animal Crossing because all I did was run fucking errands for 65 hours. Holy shit was it a buggy disaster along the way, too. The story was kind of cool, and it took some cool turns towards the end but it was very clearly developed to be the beginning of something bigger. But because it was so poorly made, with so many poor design choices, the fans predictably melted down and Bioware essentially put the franchise on the shelf. When you take a money-making monster and do such a terrible job with it that the company benches the entire franchise, you've absolutely failed in spectacular fashion. Way to fuck it up, morons.
6. Favorite Console - Nintendo 64
I can't really choose PC here otherwise I'd pick that. But an actual console, it's my N64. Nintendo is the undisputed king of making amazing games and largely responsible for my love of games. From Super Mario 64 (an absolute masterpiece) to Perfect Dark (which had the effect on my friend group that Goldeneye had on so many others to Conker's Bad Fur Day (just go play it if you haven't), the console had mega hits on top of mega hits. It was the system that really sucked me into gaming and I get all kinds of nostalgic when I think about the days spent playing various games at friends houses.
7. Favorite protagonist - Commander Shepard
Obviously. My Shepard was the best Shep because it was the one I related to the most. A mixture of Paragon goodness and Renegade rebel, my Shep was as close as I've ever gotten to imprinting my own personality on the games I'm playing. My favorite Shep moment was the sniping contest with Garrus in ME3. It was beautiful.
8. Worst Protagonist - Geralt
I just didn't like The Witcher games. Sorry.
9. First Console - NES
True story: I still have mine in one of the unpacked boxes in my house. I have my original slate of games that I grew up on and everything. It was a brutal introduction to gaming because games back then didn't have shit like tutorials or much in the way of save points. You needed to write down passwords to get back to certain levels and I remember my brother and I actually writing our own full guide for Dragon Warrior. Stuff like that just doesn't exist anymore when you have, you know, Google.
10. Guilty Pleasure Game - The NBA 2K series
It's funny that I began my gaming life with a primary focus on sports games (especially Madden) but as I've gotten older, that's become less and less true. One of the most frequent conversations I have with Avs fans is "Do you play NHL? I'd love to play online sometime" but I'm just not a fan of the games. On the flip side, I absolutely love playing video game basketball. Creating my own baller and watching him chuck 3's at increasing success rates over several years until Steph Curry is jelly as hell of my skills? All day, baby.
11. Latest Game Purchase - Battlefield 1
EA is selling BF1 and all of it's DLC for $5 bucks so I bought it tonight and fired it up. The campaign is super cool and for five bucks I feel like I'm straight stealing.
12. Favorite Genre - Platforming
I mentioned my Mario love, right? Platforming just resonates with me in so many ways. I adore the challenge of figuring out the timing and enemy patterns. It can be a total grind but a game like BattleBlock Theater really exemplifies what I love about the genre: speed, creativity, challenge, and the ultimate sense of accomplishment. Very few games bring me the level of satisfaction upon beating that platformers do.
13. Saddest Scene - Mass Effect 3. You know the one.
The opening scene from The Last of Us absolutely tore me up. I can't imagine it didn't do something similar to all of you who played it. But as has already been demonstrated just 13 questions into this thing, Mass Effect is my jam, homies. And that meant Mass Effect 3, for all its flaws, was still going to bring about some painful moments.
None more so than this:
I remember the first time I saw it, I pushed my chair back away from my desk and just started crying. Video games, man.
14. Favorite Antagonist - Kefka, FF6
This is actually a tough call. There are SO many great villains in games, from GLaDOS to Andrew Ryan and Vaas Montenegro, Albert Wesker, and Sarah Kerrigan. But for me, it's all about Kefka. He was legitimately evil, poisoning a town's water supply and reveled in the screams of the dying. He forced Terra to burn soldiers alive just to make sure his slavery crown was working properly. And that's all before he ascends to a literal god and must be defeated. His theme song was chaotic and terrifying and they wrote him as evil as possible. He was such a great villain, I never felt good defeating him at the end of the game. I was just exhausted from going through the chaos.
15. Worst Antagonist - Your Friends
Nothing tests the limits of friendship quite like Mario Party. It's a fun game to blast through as clever minigames test a wide array of classic gaming skills and a lot of times it just doesn't even matter. Why? Because you go rolling around that godforsaken game board in Mario Party and a bad roll means you just have your power stars stripped from you and given elsewhere. What the fuck? And while it can be fun to make alliances with another person when in need, at the end of the day that shit is more cutthroat than Survivor ever was. There were actual raw feelings to go along with bloody palms and broken joysticks after some epic Mario Party, er, parties.
16. What Are You Playing Now?
This question sucks. I play lots of games and rotate them frequently. Right now, Battlefield 1 and most of the Blizzard library, especially Diablo 3 and Heroes of the Storm.
17. Favorite Franchise - Mario
I've already written plenty about Mass Effect in this thing. Let's give Mario some love, too. That lil plumber and the wide array of brilliant games attached to his name has brought me endless amounts of joy. Now just make a god damn Mario Hockey and we will be SET.
18. Best Soundtrack - Mass Effect!
And we're back. The original Mass Effect soundtrack still stops me in my tracks if I hear it. The music in ME3 was pretty brilliant, too. It's strange how ME2 is a masterpiece and of the series, it has the weakest soundtrack. But the original ME has by far the most incredible soundtrack of any game I've played. That said, special shoutout to Bioshock for what I believe is the best use of sound in a game. Amazing atmosphere.
19. Worst Soundtrack - All the games who don't have one
What are you doing not making a game with dope music? Fuck off with that noise. Or lack of noise, I guess. Lame.
20. First Game - Super Mario Bros.
I guess this counts as the first one. DuckTales was also on this list. I played a shitload of that game as a kid. DuckTales and SMB got me hooked onto platformers. Life would never be the same.
21. Hardest Game - Battletoads
If you've ever played, you know what's up. If you haven't, you haven't gone through puberty yet. Trust.
22. Best Developers - Nintendo
This isn't even close. Nobody else puts the time, effort, and care into their products like the big N. Between Mario and Zelda alone, you have two of the most innovative franchises in gaming history that consistently produce the highest quality of games in their genres. And in the case of Mario, switching back and forth between 2D platforming and 3D gaming, two genres. And Breath of the Wild could legitimately be the greatest game ever made. The company is just on a completely different planet. They understand that games are about fun, creativity, and imagination. No other game developer can play the hits like these guys.
Special props to Naughty Dog and Rockstar for also being killer devs. They also produce masterpieces.
23. Favorite Couples - Maria & Dom, Gears of War
The first Gears of War game is pretty awesome. It's a rough and tumble "Us versus the world" story. But for me, the real heart of the game was Dom's search for his lost wife, Maria. The small moments he steals to look at the picture he carries of her resonate throughout the game.
And when he finally finds her in Gears of War 2, it's insanely heartbreaking. It's outrageously painful to watch as he discovers her soulless husk has left her without a clue who he is. It's a testament to their true love that he did right by her, even when it tore him up inside to do so.
So why is this my favorite couple? Few love stories in video games exist, let alone the kind of emotion their story does. It's a tragic tale but once upon a time in that fictional universe, Dom and Maria had the most intense romance of them all. True soulmates.
24. Worst Couple - Mario and Peach
Bro, if she gets captured that many times, she wants to be with that dude. She's hot for that dinosaur dick. Just let her go. We've all grown tired of bailing her out of some silly nonsense only for her to reward you with some peck on the cheek. She's not getting down. Stop forcing it.
25. Most Valuable Games -
What the hell does this even mean?
26. Latest Console -
Also this. PC for life.
27. Best Voice Acting - Mass Effect
Obviously. They hired a top-notch cast of established actors/actresses and they crushed it.
28. Most Underrated Games - Valkyria Chronicles
Just the numbered iterations. Don't play any of the others. I love the fusion of turn-based combat with modern graphics and combat principles. This series combines those elements with beautiful artwork, an interesting story, and quality voice-acting. It's like playing through a comic book. The games are well-received critically but I rarely interact with people who have played them. Like the X-COM revivals but without the incredibly frustrating 3% chance to get completely screwed that seems to trigger 50% of the time.
29. Most Annoying Character - Baby Mario, Yoshi's Island
Just fucking trust me on this, okay? If you're familiar, you already know what's up. If you're not, stay that way. It was one of the most annoying design choices of any video game ever made. Other strong contenders were the god damn dog from Duck Hunt and Slippy from Star Fox. No, YOU knock it off, you god damn annoying ass frog. Fuck.
30. Worst Console -
Another dumb question. If you don't like a console, don't fuckin play it.
31. Most Played Game - Guild Wars
My chosen MMO poison, we all have 'that' game that sucks an enormous portion of our lives. Guild Wars 1 was that for me, as I registered just a little over 6,000 hours played. For reference, there are 8, 544 hours in a standard non-leap year. I've spent just a little over 250 full days of my life playing that video game. It meant a lot to me and I made great friends during those days. Memories!
