Let's Get Serious

[DarkTone | 988]

Have you ever got serious or semi serious about a game? 

Just pre ordered Splatoon 3 and I want to see how well i do. Love the franchise but I've always played it casual. I'm not looking to join an e sports team or anything. Just see how fast I can rank up on skill alone. Maybe buy the DLC too. Theres also modes for "hardcore" players. Only played a few and might join that too. Last few games I came close to going serious with were MW2, SFIV and overwatch. 

What about you? Was there a game you focused on for speedruns or walkthroughs? Maybe to enter a tournament. 

[Nintegageo | 582]

Nah, though as an arcade enthusiast I do try to win with 1$ or less and a no death would be amazing 

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

Every now and then I get serious with competitive Rocket League and Halo. I can still get to a respectable rank, but I no longer enjoy the grind, so I drop off quickly. At this point in my life I want my videogame time to be relaxing or I want to choose how the pain is inflicted upon me (Returnal, Dead Cells, Cuphead, etc).

[a3quit4s | 4,124]

Splatoon is an odd game to start getting competitive about since it’s very cartoony. Counter strike was really the only game I was seriously competitive about. Join clans and scrimming and doing actual matches and junk. Feels like forever ago lol

Edited August 31, 2022 by a3quit4s

[JamesRobot | 5,825]

Used to be pretty serious about Tekken circa Tekken 3 and Tag.  Always wanted to play in a legit tourney but never did.  I did win a couple hundred bucks from a friend tournament back in the day though.  There was about 10 of us.

Heihachi and Paul are my guys for serious Tekken.  But I can hold my own with most of the characters.  Or, at least I could.  Don't remember the last time I played Tekken.

 

[JamesRobot | 5,825]

1 hour ago, Nintegageo said:

Nah, though as an arcade enthusiast I do try to win with 1$ or less and a no death would be amazing 

The act of paying to play the game gives you incentive to get good.

I find that I don't value playing arcade games (emulated of course) at home because you can just credit feed the game.  So I don't really get any better.

[DefaultGen | 5,427]

I'm not good enough at video games. The only game I competed in at a highish level was Bike or Die on PalmOS, a trial bike game with a very small community

Otherwise, I was a decent competitive pinballer for a while, topping out around #700 in the world. It takes traveling to a lot of big pinball tournaments to gain and maintain ratings though (and constantly learning strategies for every game in existence, including many new games every year), so I've totally fallen off.

Edited September 1, 2022 by DefaultGen

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

Nope. Im a filthy, disgusting casual. 

[Nintegageo | 582]

@JamesRobot I actually meant at my place haha. Are you emulating with a cabinet? I just ding the thing 4 times and that's a game. 

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Nintegageo

[Red | 438]

I was really into Splatoon for a while.  I got up to the highest rank, S+.  My points maxed out somewhere in the 90s (I think it was 97), but never got to the highest possible (S+99).  I played Splatoon 2 quite a bit too, but I pretty much stopped playing right after reaching Rank X (the highest), so I didn't play much with other Rank X players.

[JamesRobot | 5,825]

51 minutes ago, Nintegageo said:

@JamesRobot I actually meant at my place haha. Are you emulating with a cabinet? I just ding the thing 4 times and that's a game. 

 

Nice.  Haha, no.  Just on the TV or handheld.  It's def not the same experience.  I actually don't play too many arcade games at home.

I do have an Asteroids Arcade1Up though which I got because I needed a proper way to play Tempest.  I think it tops out at 4 credits.  It will only let me continue 3 times.  There's no option for additional credits which suits me fine.

 

[Tanooki | 4,950]

Speedruns, never, never did like the idea of effectively overly learning a game to finish it the fastest sucking the joy out of the adventure and exploration for a number, or in the case of when it's allowed using lame game breaking glitches to get impossible times.

But, hyper focused with a task in mind, definitely.  It has been decades but I did write a few walkthroughs up on gamefaqs in the late 90s early 00s.  It's a mix of a couple multi-game guides, and some singles too.

[T-Pac | 7,584]

I got relatively serious at Turmoil and Defender [2600] for the VGS Leaderboard challenges last year.

I pushed myself a lot further than I normally would, and I feel like I got some respectable scores (at least by my own standards).

Spoiler

On 5/31/2021 at 2:53 PM, CasualCart said:

Turmoil - 127,360

I finally broke 100k! It felt like I had a lot of good luck on this run - plenty of bonus points, and I didn't get blindsided by too many ships until the very end. This was the first time I made it to stage 9, and it was brutal haha.

I've never exceeded the number of digits in a game's score-counter before, so this feels like a real accomplishment for a 'casual' gamer like me!

-CasualCart

 

 

On 12/7/2021 at 2:42 PM, CasualCart said:

Defender - 333,000

I almost tripled my high-score today!!! Somehow I fell into an ideal pattern of earning bonus lives faster than I burned them (until a handful of sloppy mistakes ended my run). 

I honestly thought I had no chance at earning this challenge badge, so I took myself by surprise here!

-CasualCart

 

-CasualCart

[TDIRunner | 2,771]

The first time I ever beat Metal Gear Solid 4, I was super obsessed with the game and I wanted to play through it again.  I ended up playing the game from start to finish about 8 times in a row.  Each time I tried to improve my performance (no alerts, no kills, no health items, fast time).  Usually, once I beat a game, I won't play it again for a minimum of a year if not much longer.  That is the only game I can think of that I wanted to immediately start over and play again, not only once but multiple times.  

[wongojack | 220]

I just recently tried to get serious about (of all things) BurgerTime for the Intellivision.  Normally when I dig into a well known game, I'm pleased at discovering some of the nuance that has helped it build a reputation over the years.  However, I had the opposite experience with that version of BurgerTime.  It suffers from some pretty big flaws, but the biggest one that everyone would have a problem with is that sometimes you press the button for Pepper and nothing happens - you just die.  This happens at least once or twice during every play session every time I play the game.

 

It is also possible to throw pepper PAST the enemy (and then you die).

 

I discovered a few other things about that version that basically made me never want to play it again.  Some folks easily rack up scores over 100k, 300k, 500k, etc., but I can't do it.  My top score around 61k.

Edited September 1, 2022 by wongojack

[Sumez | 2,989]

14 hours ago, Tanooki said:

sucking the joy out of the adventure and exploration for a number, or in the case of when it's allowed using lame game breaking glitches to get impossible times.

 

[Ankos | 462]

14 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Speedruns, never, never did like the idea of effectively overly learning a game to finish it the fastest sucking the joy out of the adventure and exploration for a number, or in the case of when it's allowed using lame game breaking glitches to get impossible times.

Some games are better for it than others. If a game includes an ingame timer, then it kinda encourages the player to go fast. I don't think I'd ever try to get on a leaderboard, but it genuinely feels great to be good enough at a game to perform difficult inputs at breakneck speed and do well. I would say some glitches suck more fun out of a game than others. I've seen people play Pokemon Yellow and beat the game ridiculously fast through save file corruption, and while though that is a neat proof of concept, it isn't really interesting in terms of gameplay. But when I see people perform pull of wall jumping (a glitch) in Super Mario World, it looks cool. People also needed to explore the games far deeper than a normal playthrough to find most of these glitches. I'd say that learning the best route for a game is an adventure of its own

[Webhead123 | 687]

I almost never "get serious" about a game to that extent. There are some cases where I decidedly "test myself" and focus on developing skills at a game...but enjoyment is always first and foremost, even then. In some ways, putting laser-focus into a game to "get good" at it can bring its own level of fun and a new sense of discovery. A good example for me might be Doom (1993), where I will sometimes just fire up the game to improve my knowledge of the maps, enemy placement, item locations, etc. to challenge myself to beat personal record times. Eventually, I get to the point where I instinctively know when to shoot coming around corners, what items to skip, etc. and get a certain thrill as I fly down the corridors at full sprint and chopping 20 seconds off my previous stage completion time.

I used to play Overwatch quite a bit and I did sink quite a few hours into developing skills and reflexes to playing my favorite Heroes...but even so, I never liked the "competitive" play environment and played the game almost exclusively in Quick Play. This is mostly because of how obnoxious and angry the "serious comp" players could get when things didn't go their way. When everyone, myself included, just played in a more casual setting, the games were usually more fun and more pleasant.

So, long story short, while there is an element of fun and excitement to "focusing down" and developing skill and memorization in some games, I don't ever recall taking a game "serious" to the level of putting those goals before personal enjoyment.

[rdrunner | 422]

I dunno if "serious" is the right word for how I play, but I do like to deep dive into a game in the name of competition (months of "Kangaroo" high score attempts being the latest example).  I don't use the word for a simple reason: When the game stops being fun, I just stop.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,574]

No.  I'd rather experience 50 games than compete with tweens for 500 hours in one game. 

I was in a serious WoW raiding  clan once, doing PVP and Arena as well.  That was definitely time I cannot ever get back!

[Tanooki | 4,950]

My best work friend who passed many years ago now and I while I was out of this town back in CA and before/after that until his passing we ran a guild in Guild Wars, nightly fun for years.  Was worth it and not at the same time.  As reed said, usually less is more, and less 'time' is more games, instead of more time in A game.

[glazball | 172]

Similar to what @Reed Rothchild wrote, I also haven't been "serious" about a game since my raiding days in WoW.  It was fun, but it was also a lot of work (and time) so these days it's all about casual solo gaming for me.

Looking back though to those early days of 40-player raids...  damn those were some incredible gaming experiences.  Honestly, when is the last time you did anything in sync with a large group of people since high school marching band?

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

On 9/1/2022 at 4:55 PM, rdrunner said:

I dunno if "serious" is the right word for how I play, but I do like to deep dive into a game in the name of competition (months of "Kangaroo" high score attempts being the latest example).  I don't use the word for a simple reason: When the game stops being fun, I just stop.

I would say that I play most games "seriously" as well, but when I feel that I've peaked or it stops being fun, I move on to the next one.

[BortLicensePlate | 652]

The only game I've really done this with is Tetris NES, was shooting for a max out and my best was over 500k don't remember the exact number. I've since taken a long break though

[Link | 2,726]

On 8/31/2022 at 7:26 PM, JamesRobot said:

The act of paying to play the game gives you incentive to get good.

I find that I don't value playing arcade games (emulated of course) at home because you can just credit feed the game.  So I don't really get any better.

Just walk away.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20160313051747/https://www.insomnia.ac/commentary/arcade_culture/

To understand the essence of arcade gaming you must never continue.

...play a credit for ten or so minutes until you lose, and while the continue timer is counting down you consider your options. If you let it time out and start over, you will get another ten or so minutes of playtime, but if you continue you probably won't even last half as long, since the game has obviously got harder now and you obviously can't handle it.

And with each successive time you continue you end up getting less and less playtime, to the point where you might as well just be emptying your wallet's contents into the fucking thing.

But if you take it from the beginning enough times, the opposite starts happening -- you get increasingly moreplaytime out of each credit, instead of less...

This is how the one-credit rule began -- with kids cutting school with little money in their pockets, loving these games and wanting to spend as much time as possible with them.

Back then we had no access to freeplay modes. Back then there were no emulators with infinite credits. But though we were forced by circumstances to play these games the hard way, we soon discovered that that was the only way to play them.