sallachim

Report #6 - Multiplayer progress part 2

1718 hours
36/36
Played on Steam

One of my favourite games of all time that I've been playing for years. There's no other like it out there.

It's a PvP shooter, but it starts as a survival horror shooter, with maps teeming with monsters, and one or two dangerous boss monsters we try to hunt, with other players trying to kill us over the bounty the boss drops. That amazing horror period of being afraid of anything and everything in the game lasted about 500 hours for me. After that, I became braver and more aggressive in my approach - I started looking forward to hunting - and fighting - other players. I have joined the monster compendium of the Bayou. The action, the adrenaline, the thrill, the victory - that's what it was all about.

However, the game is a live service by Crytek. And such games change, that is their nature. For me, the changes were for the worse. First came the limitation of the drops of premium currency from playing and achieving feats in the game (killing players, hunting bosses, actually getting out alive with the bounty). The prize for playing the game as intended was gone, and with that, so was the motivation. I'm not the only one affected. Over the years after that change, I noticed many players straight up ignoring the boss and the bounty and concentrating on fighting the other players instead. It was the only truly rewarding thing left in the game. And while it was amazing, with old cowboy guns, amazing sound design that added new dimension to fights, tactics and resource management, the old style of fighting by hunting also started being phased out to make the game faster and tighter.

In the end, the game ceased to be what I fell in love with.

Then came other things. Game was ported to newer CryEngine version. The new graphics were so dense in detail that they kind of made my head hurt. I didn't know where to look. UI got changed into staple console UI, with big tiles and generally being shit. That has since been kind of fixed, but I never truly got used to it.
The TV series we were promised never came to be. The single player mode everybody craved never made a beep on developers' radar. The new actual content (monsters, bosses, maps) took years to be released, while developers are content to release the inconsequential stuff to monetise (weapon skins, time-limited events that play the same).

With things I disliked accumulating, things I liked disappearing, and nothing new & good to look forward to, eventually I came to realise I have no more reason to play.
It was my favourite. Now it's no more, replaced by something else.
Still, it was great to play it, and I can't ever say I regret it. GG


1070 hours
50/50
Played on Steam

Another multiplayer first person shooter I put over 1000 hours into. Man, when they are good, I sure do love them.

This one is also one of my favourite games ever.

Purely multiplayer PvP, this game has multiple play modes and incredible variety of playstyles. Three different classes, each with multiple specializations (being either unique gadgets nearly equaling superpowers, or actual superpowers), weapons and gadgets practically make it a "make your own hero" hero shooter.

Most of the modes are base attack/defense in disguise, making it way better than typical mindless team deathmatch.
All in all: tight gameplay and movement, incredible variety of playstyles, tactics and strategy, good gunplay, destructible environment, big maps to learn. Just awesome.

Alas, not all is perfect in this paradise. Game is seasonal, and that kind of forces me to grind some seasonal progression points from time to time. Dailies (which in essence are annoying practice in gaming) are simply not enough. Basically, the time investment the game requires is too big for me to keep up with if I ever want to make a dent in my backlog. The other issues of simply having played all the playstyles I wanted in the game already, the matches becoming very annoying recently with bad teams on my side being very common, and people ragequitting without game refilling the empty spots causing the match to essentially end minutes before the clock runs out and wasting everyone's time all add up.

So enough is enough. I've had my fill. Game was great, time for new stuff.
Side note: some achievements were so hard to obtain (partly due to rng) that I practically jumped in my seat when I got them. ^_^
I'm really proud to have 100%ed this one.


Divine Knockout (DKO)

4.8 hours, 19 of 19 achievements

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Another PvP multiplayer game!
A bit like Super Smash Bros, but third person. Hit people so they fall from the arena, but the less health they have, the farther they fly upon getting hit. Basically, a happy, chaotic brawl with various arenas and characters inspired by various myths.

Played it just before servers shut down, but it was very nice.

Have it on Epic Games Store, so crossing it out of there as well.


Highguard

27 hours, 32 of 32 achievements

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Another PvP multiplayer FPS game! Also one of recent games it was popular to criticise on the internet.

It was actually very easy to start playing it. Low bar of entry was a plus. There were plenty of cool elements in it, but I also saw plenty of rough edges.
I also started playing it after the big gameplay update, and I can imagine how much duller and repetitive it was before. So criticisms were kind of fair, I have to admit that.

Still, I had my fun with it. Hunting for achievements just before servers closed was a bit stressful, but plenty of people were willing to help out one another, sometimes even with no communication available between opposing teams.

In the end, servers shut down, and that's about it with this game.


Dungeonborne

0 hours, 0 of 70 achievements

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Multiplayer PvP dungeon raiding and extraction game. A mighty rival to Dark and Darker, swooping into the scene as Dark and Darker was having legal issues. In the end, it failed, and servers shut down. Whoopsie.

I only played its demo a long while back, and even then it had some glaring issues, chief issue being a crawling level walking speed
Literally only grabbed the game because it was F2P. Maybe it's for the best I never played it again.


Monstrum 2

0.7 hours, 0 of 32 achievements

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Multiplayer PvP game. Something akin to Dead by Daylight in gameplay, with SCP vibes.
Played through tutorial, but playerbase wasn't there to start a public match.
F2P on Steam, so kind of easy come, easy go.
Servers shut down, so can't play even if I wanted to.


Propnight

0 hours, 0 of 43 achievements

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Multiplayer PvP hide and seek game.
Got it as a key drop from someone who didn't want it (so counting it as a gift), but never got around to playing it, even though I meant to.
Found out servers shut down long after they did, so that's that.


Warface: Clutch

2.2 hours, 0 of 67 achievements

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Multiplayer PvP FPS game.
Played probably around 2012 for a match or three to check it out. Seemed very similar to Call of Duty to me back then, but plenty of reviews I've seen recently mentioned that it was ahead of its time. Well, in the end it didn't matter, as the game decided to start becoming worse and worse, enough so that they shut it down and released a new version.


BLAEO
Total: 26 (+8)
Completed: 15 (+4)
Beaten: 3
Won’t play: 8 (+4)

SG wins: 3
Gifts: 5 (+1)
Multiplayer: 15 (+8)
Games I want to play: 1 (+1)
Games from Series I want to play: 0

Done everywhere
Total: 29 (+9)
Steam: 26 (+8)
EA: 0
Uplay: 0
GOG: 0
EGS: 3 (+1)
Amazon: 0
Blizzard: 0
Mobile: 0
Other: 0