I quit

So I quit playing Neverwinter.  It’s been over a week since I played it and honestly I do not even feel inclined to go back.  This is by far the longest it has been since I started playing it about 10 months ago, as I played almost every single day.

Anyways, I have been playing some other cool stuff, mainly Half-Life 2 and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.  Both of those games are amazing. It’s amazing how an “old” game like Castlevania for the PSONE can still be amazing, though the graphics are “pixelated” or whatever, it is still cool, to see the backgrounds moving differently than each other, to see the clouds racing overhead, and the fireballs of the exploding enemies, etc. All pretty awesome stuff even though the “quality” of the graphics “suck” now compared to newer games. The soundtrack is cool, I can se why this is considered one of the best PSONE games and in fact one of the best games of all time.

Which brings me into another topic. That “newness” has nothing to do with goodness, or quality.  Have you ever looked in a video rental store (well probably not lately), but it happened to me when I was looking at the racks of videos and I saw one that looked like a dumb movie, and probably was, but then I remembered that it had been a big summer hit about 2 years prior. Ever had that happen, where you saw or maybe played an old game and was like “wtf is this sh1t? I thought this used to be awesome.” There is talk about how Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has not aged well and the interactions seem silly even though that game was totally amazing and revolutionary for it’s time, I have not played it in years so I cannot speak on whether that is true or not that it hasn’t aged well, but there are a lot of parody videos about the game on youtube.

So yea, don’t fall for the hype of “the latest game!!!!”, at least I don’t. I play old games that are still awesome, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, Half-Life, I was just playing Dino Crisis on PSONE, pretty cool survival horror with some hard puzzles. I often like games that are sort of dark or alone or quiet, it’s hard to explain, and I can go slow and explore without my hand being held or scripted things constantly popping up. That is what I did the most in Skyrim, I didn’t go for quests but mostly just wandered aimlessly, exploring, coming upon a mysterious unknown cave or dwarven lair, entering it not knowing what would be there, it was great fun!

No Guides

I don’t like to read guides, and virtually never do.  Take Skyrim for example, I have the platinum trophy on PS4 and really never read any guides about it.  The only thing I recall reading as far as a guide for Skyrim was where to get the Daedric quest from that guy in the prison cell in Falkreath. It’s so much more fun to discover and come upon Blackreach on your own, without knowing it is going to be there, that would ruin it at least a little if say I had watched a youtube video of blackreach beforehand, that is quite lame imo, no offense to anyone who does that for some reason. Anyways, so I don’t like to read guides, I like the mystery and not knowing. By not knowing I am free to look, and enjoy not knowing what is going to happen instead of projecting a future result with my mind, which is related to just trying to get to the end of a task and imagining the result preemptively, basically. Anyways, I also don’t like spoilers and really never see them. Why do I need to see the trailer of a movie that is going to come out in six months. I would rather not know a single thing about a good movie before I watch it. Some trailers reveal like stuff that happens halfway through the movie, why would I want to see that? Some trailers are nice and keep it vague and mysterious, which is nice, but again what is even the point of watching it? I know the producers of the movie have a point which is to entice people to go see the movie, but I would rather just wait and hear from word of mouth or whatever that a movie is “good” and then just see it then, not knowing a single thing about it. Some people intentionally like to see trailers and stuff like at E3 and I just don’t, if a game is good you will hear about it “through the grape vine” so to speak, or something else will draw you to see it or play it. Which reminds me of something else which is people wanting to see/play things on DAY 1.  And then they are often disappointed like that game Evolve. It supposedly had an awesome E3 trailer and demo and then when it was finally released people hated it. I never played because I don’t fall for that trap. Now I can kind-of understand with multiplayer games why you would want to get in early, but for single player I believe there is no good reason for that.  After all, I still play PSONE classics sometimes here in 2017, and watch movies that are decades old and yet better that the newest stuff. So, age has nothing to do with the “classicness” of a production. If it’s good it will stand the test of time. It’s like when you walk around a video rental store (do they still exist?) and see movies a few years old on the middle shelves and think “What is this crap? lol”, but a few years previously it was like the biggest summer hit of that year. That happened to me once for a Sandra Bullock movie I think when I saw it in a Blockbuster or something which is why I mention that. Anyways, so, back to guides, and why I don’t read them. It’s more fun to play blind in my opinion. Oh yes, I just remembered The Last of Us as an example of a game that I never saw a trailer for or knew anything about or anticipated, but you just hear here and there how great it is and then eventually I played it and it was awesome. The same thing happened with Dark Souls. So, about playing blindly with no guides… Take Neverwinter for example, I di not read anything about it for several months when I first started playing it on PS4, and didn’t ask people either. I would rather make the mistake of “wasting AD on that wrong item” then have someone tell me what to do. I see people on Reddit and stuff asking, “I’m just starting, what do I need to know?” Whatever, do want you, but I don’t want someone to tell, that would be like me being a follower and not “standing alone”. After all, I’m smart enough and capable enough to find these things on my own, usually anyways 99.9% of the time. I will admit occasionally I will look up a slight answer or preferably just a hint on say a puzzle when I have tried to figure it out myself and feel like I have exhausted all techniques, but that is very rare like maybe once a year or something. Anyways, take Neverwinter, I didn’t have VIP for many months. And also you understand it and appreciate it better when you go through it yourself, instead of someone telling you what to do. If someone had just said “You have to buy VIP” on day one it would be a little superficial to me and also that causes burn-out imo, after all the tortoise wins the race not the hare remember? lol. It may be slower but it is more fun and lasts longer and is better in the long-run that they I believe. They says Einstein was slow, a slow learner or something, but that was probably because he wasn’t asking for an idea to conform to, an “answer” to memorize, he was just looking and trying to see things for himself, which yea it makes it “slower” then someone just telling you to memorize for example “Thomas Jefferson went to Tennessee because he felt a call for political reform” (or something like that, I just made that up!) then you could repeat it five seconds later on a test, but you don’t really know anything do you, like knowing the name of a capital city, what difference is that that means nothing, it is not true knowledge. Whereas, if you take longer and say study Thomas Jefferson in this intentionally academic example you will see a lot more and learn a lot more true information and there is more depth and perhaps you will discover something completely new about say Thomas Jefferson in this example. Then you will write the next book about Thomas Jefferson. No one gets credit for just reciting what someone else has already said.