A drell mercenary hobbles into the mess hall of an Alliance base. He had just returned from a harrowing mission with his squad to take back a firebase which was overrun by Cerberus agents. Tired and injured, he inserts credits into a the base's gachapon machine. Eager to see the results of his work from the previous mission come to fruition, he receives a large crate. Inside, he receives several packages of ammunition, another pistol (for the fourth time), and a full-sized krogan soldier. Finally! It took him 60,000 credits but he had finally earned himself a krogan!



Many people thought multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 was unnecessary. Others thought it wouldn't detract from the experience and could only add. In all likelihood, it probably wasn't going to amaze anyone. But there's one thing that surprises at least one person in this world: the multiplayer progression.

Or rather, the lack of clear progression. To take a step back, players don't earn incremental unlocks to their characters in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer. You can play as any class from the start as a human with a basic selection of weapons but to unlock more weapons, upgrades, and species, you must basically play the equivalent of a gachapon machine.

Except instead of inserting a quarter and turning the handle to receive a plastic capsule with a random prize, you choose between a regular or high-end gachapon machine, which dispenses a crate of five random items of varying rarity depending on which you chose. The regular machine is only 5,000 credits and only has a chance of carrying rare loot, while the high-end one costs 20,000 and guarantees at least one rare loot drop.

It's this luck based progression, along with fact that you're never actually weak, that fuels me to play the demo for endless hours and only whets my appetite to jump into ME3's full multiplayer experience more.

The human classes are fairly effective on their own. In fact, you could theoretically play as a human the entire time and never feel the need to switch. However, the other races have widely different abilities which make trying them out a tempting offer. For example, all engineers normally carry the combat drone ability but the quarian engineer alone carries the gun turret ability instead.

Add to the fact that different class races are among the rarest among gachapon prizes and you have very sought after prizes that demand a lot of attention on the battlefield. After all, any human soldier can entrench himself in cover and unleash suppressive fire from the biggest assault rifle he can get his hands on. But only a krogan soldier can charge head first into enemy ranks, throwing enemies around like ragdolls, and only get more powerful and harder to put down after entering a killing frenzy from murdering several enemies with his bare hands.



The same is true with new weapons, though they're uncommon rather than rare. Nothing beats the thrill of moving on from your bread and butter, full auto assault rifle to the semi-auto combat rifle. Though when you get duplicates of the same weapon from the gachapon, it only serves to upgrade that particular weapon.

So while fighting off hordes of enemies in select maps in the Mass Effect universe earns you experience points for that specific class, it doesn't actually unlock new things asides from the skills specific to your character.

And that's what makes the whole ME3 multiplayer experience so addicting. I can really get a handle on the human infiltrator fine but it's a different story altogether if I can play as quarian infiltrator, who can sabotage enemy synthetics and tech (outright countering those stupid turrets and Atlas mechs). And here's a thought: krogan are already tough bastards to kill. Imagine playing as a krogan with access to the sentinel's tech armor, which drastically increases defense and explodes outwards when destroyed?

Every mission isn't just a challenging ordeal to use your skills and powers cooperatively with others for experience points and money. It feeds an addiction to put more money into the gachapon machine, hoping you aren't going to get another pistol or SMG upgrade. Maybe this time, just this once, it'll actually give me the salarian engineer, complete with the new decoy ability. I 'd love to see how that actually works. Or maybe even the Revenant assault rifle, one of the best weapons in the game, or at least one of the best weapons from Mass Effect 2.

Oh dammit, another freaking Predator pistol!

Considering it's Valentine's Day (or close to it depending on my mood on composing this), lemme regale you on something I may have talked a lot about in my more personal blogs: my girlfriend. In fact, our whole spiel as a relationship with someone wearing video gamer pants.



I first met her in my college's gaming club actually. A friend of mine founded a club devoted to the general activity of gaming, whether it was table-top, pen and paper, role-playing, or console video games. In its second semester, I dedicated myself to bringing my own Xbox 360 to club every week to share my joy of gaming. It was during the club's inaugural meeting and ice breaker that I met her.

It was only during anime club's Christmas party (WHOA. Gaming club and anime club? I'm a piece of work, right?) that we actually talked to each other a bit more past a hello and goodbye. It was only my second year in college, so I was dying to make some real friends, so when she asked me to drive her to the dorms to pick up batteries, I gladly accepted. I had no idea she was interested.

So a month later, after exchanging phone calls and texts while she went home for winter break, we finally were together proper and were officially a couple. And thus started my first relationship that actually brought my identity as a gamer to the forefront.

In the beginning, I always felt like keeping my persona (HA!) of a gamer and my persona as her boyfriend as two wholly, separate things. Kind of like the separation between church and state, they're always there, but it's preferable to keep them separated to make things simple. I'd game in my free time, but whenever she was around, I'd drop what I was doing or otherwise pause the game to make her my first priority. As a disciplined kind of man, that's just how I work, but that concept seemed foreign to her at first. She was used to her men continuing on doing what they were doing to an extent.

But inevitably there came times when my girlfriend and video games would come far too close and I had to blur my images together. After all, if we hang out together with mutual friends and there's a video game console, or she's at gaming club with me, of course I'd have to share my love of video games with her.


Sharing - lesson #2 of reltionships 101

It started off slow. There was no other way really. Something simple that she could ease herself into. Because let's face it, someone who's never played a game like Street Fighter IV or Call of Duty before will just hit the ground running and enjoy it. Those kinds of games need time and I find time a precious commodity I hate to waste when my girlfriend is concerned. So when I chose a game to play together with her, it was a game I had no idea she'd love so much: Castle Crashers. To this day, it's her first suggestion as far as multiplayer games together goes.



It's certainly a refreshing feeling to have someone accept my undying passion for video games so openly. I've made quite a few friends and acquaintances in college but even some of my friends would ridicule or criticize my game-centric life. Video games are a central part of my life and sometimes I can't talk about anything else. I've had times where some friends would groan that I'd bring up games and I'd feel like some awkward social recluse among people I thought I considered to be like me. That's why the people I keep near me today are people I truly consider my friends. Maybe my girlfriend went through a period of acceptance as well. Maybe she was always prepared for it. But I can't think of anyone who accepts everything about me as much as she does.

Let me give you an example.

When Call of Duty: World at War came out, it was still during the height of CoD mania and I was a part of it. When it came out, I just had to have it that day. It was also a day I'd normally hang out with my girlfriend after classes. We still like spending time together, regardless of how we spend that time. So she went along with me to get my copy of the game.

Even further, she agreed to watch me play through the game, as I couldn't wait to begin playing it. Was it going to live up to my expectations from Modern Warfare? Who knows, but the only way I was going to find out was to play it firsthand.

I had intended to just play an hour or two of the game before shifting my attention back onto my girlfriend for the day. But one hour turned into three, then four, then before I knew it, I had played through nearly the whole single player campaign in one sitting with my girlfriend right by my side.

It certainly wasn't my intention to make Adriana just sit there and watch the theater of war of World War II play out like some epic History channel re-enactment. But I was amazed to find out afterwards that she didn't mind and in fact, enjoyed watching me play through the game.

It's certainly not a new concept to many people in my position to have loved ones who enjoy seeing the narrative of the game played out for them but this was of course my first experience. I thought in my head that she'd rather want to do other things together but she was fine with this, if at least this one time.

At some point in time that I can't quite finger, I became comfortable with just involving my girlfriend into my little world of video games. A large portion of my interest in Catherine for example, stemmed from the fact that it had very mature themes of relationships at the very core of the game (asides from block puzzles). And I'm no longer hesitant about talking about games of any topic or context with her, whether it's the latest news or newest trailer. When she went overseas to teach English in Korea, we even exchanged pictures for a while of video game couples and tagged ourselves.


And this was the best of them all. Click it for full size image!

So after nearly five years together with her, we've come to eventually learn every little thing about ourselves, even things we don't know about ourselves. She admires my passion for video games (sometimes singleminded) and it's of course come to point where she'd even do something I never thought anyone would ever do for me: gift me a video game. At the same time, I managed to gift her something that reflects my personality while still being enjoyable for her: Tetris DS. My relationship isn't built entirely on video games, but it's undoubtably a part of it for better or for worse because it's a part of me. And I'm lucky to have a girlfriend as open-minded as Adriana.

Hey everybody. Before you watch this week's FNF Replay, how about a meta-game before you click on the video link? Try to count the number of rape jokes in the video. I'm sure it's a game the whole family can enjoy!

This thing was one of the longest projects I've worked on yet, but there's a certain amount of pride I took in inserting weird pictures in order to emphasize certain phrases and situations to make you feel even more uncomfortable while questioning your sexuality!

Watch as Occam's Electric Toothbrush, Mr. Andy Dixon, Corduroy Turtle, and StriderHoang (all with their twitter handles listed beforehand) awkwardly stomp through a classic, surreal arcade game with all sorts of weird situations and a pinch of lag. Cause not everything is perfect!



What is Friday Night Fight Replays?
Friday Night Fight Replays is a compilation of gameplay I've recorded from the 360 FNF. They do not reflect FNF as a whole but rather just the games I participated in. That being said, I try to play as many different games as possible for FNF Replays. FNFR goes up the Tuesday after the last FNF.

Basically, we all played through most of the entire arcade game in one night. I came in around Krustyland though, so I'm down the opening stage in terms of cheevos go. Listen as we explore how our sexuality works in the Simpsons, how some of the 90s' sitcoms ended (Dinosaurs' series finale was basically the ice age), and the internet's mysterious collection of niche erotica.

Destructoid FNF! - The Simpsons Arcade Game



See you guys next week!

Once upon a time, I joined in on Friday Night Fights and recorded all the weird conversations and chatter that came with being grood at gaems. Cause you know, the Dtoid crew is so good at gaems that we'd just talk about our current socio-economic climate while stomping on noobs.

But then single player games like Skyrim came out. And I got into Fallout: New Vegas. Not exactly FNF material you know? Plus Monday Night Combat, the old standby, was getting old and I didn't feel like hosting a game that so emotionally wounds me (unless Sinn and Caiters wanna get the chain gang going again. I don't dislike steamrolling you know).

In short, I just wasn't playing FNF-friendly games. NO MORE.

I got The Simpsons with Mr. Andy Dixon and Conrad The Zimmerman coming soon! Oh yes, their wacky banter with a light sprinkling of rape jokes is on my hard drive, begging to be uploaded as much as their criminal history to a central police database. But I still actually need to edit that. For now, I have Gotham Impostors with Epic-Kx. Epic is only moderately impressed with the game, but he may get it if I play regularly. Which means, he'll get it, cause I'm gonna play it religiously.



What is Friday Night Fight Replays?
Friday Night Fight Replays is a compilation of gameplay I've recorded from the 360 FNF. They do not reflect FNF as a whole but rather just the games I participated in. That being said, I try to play as many different games as possible for FNF Replays. FNFR goes up the Tuesday after the last FNF.

I'd like to remind everyone that this compilation of FNF Replays takes place during the beta of Gotham Impostors. The game has now released proper, so get on that shit! I fucking love this game.

Game #1

Game #2

Game #3

Game #4

Game #5

Keep an eye on the 360 FNF thread, cause I'll be there!

Monday Night Combat is a special game to me. Many games I play, I'm proficient enough to become decent in them. But eventually, I hit a wall that prevents me from climbing any higher on the skill ladder like Street Fighter IV or Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. Monday Night Combat was different in that I grew parallel to the game. Of course, I'm not talking about Super Monday Night Combat, which is currently holding an invitational beta. I'm talking about the original Monday Night Combat that released on Xbox Live.

I'll spare you the details about the game. I've already gone over the game in a previous blog talking about downloadables. But becoming good at Monday Night Combat was not for some tournament or clan scrimmage for pride and prestige. I became good at this game simply because I loved the game so much that I couldn't bear being the reason why my team would lose. And every other lobby is a case of playing against someone who is capable of steamrolling an entire team by his or herself. With enough skill, one person can suppress an entire team, leaving even the most inept team mates capable of plowing straight into a victory.

It hasn't changed very much in the transition to Super Monday Night Combat. The learning curve is extremely unforgiving and I was no exception. A large part of my skill is due to my regular presence on the Uberent official forums where I absorbed a large amount of information that isn't available anywhere else. To make the curve even steeper, I regularly played the Assassin, a character class that was largely seen as the weakest of the 6 available classes back then: Assault, Gunner, Tank, Support, Sniper, and lastly, Assassin.

It was an in-joke among the community that the team with the most Assassins is destined to lose. That's because the Assassin is the equivalent of the Spy from Team Fortress 2 in most cases. Except the Spy is actually good at both sabotage and killing. The Assassin however, has trouble achieving attaining any sense of being a slayer position due to her short effective range and reliance on mobility while lacking a protective pool of health.

Early time with the Assassin meant many deaths, few kills, and generally acting like a weight holding down your team. People coming into MNC from games like Battlefield and Call of Duty are heavily conditioned to play with a slayer mindset as opposed to an objective or role-based mindset. Even worse, playing with this mindset on the fragile Assassin is a recipe for disaster. Players would constantly kill you whether out of malice or as opportunists and the whole experience would be very difficult to weather.



But through a combination of experience, observation, and frequenting the official forums where other likeminded individuals went to, I learned the necessary strategies to becoming not only a legitimate threat in a game, but a regular choice for the lobby's MVP and the one who would carry bad teams in desperate situations. I credit the forums for all the knowledge and skills I gained, silently lurking the strategy threads for important notes and strategies.

I slowly grasped the concept that money earned from gameplay is a much greater scale for skill as opposed to kill/death ratio. Like in games like MOBA and DOTA, an Assassin player is supposed to push lanes of bots and sabotage the enemy's bot lanes. After learning what the priorities of the Assassin were, I slowly learned gained more tricks and skills to further evolve my tactics. When Snipers tried to deny me bots with area of effect attacks and traps, I learned to employ hit and run tactics to quickly hit lanes while avoiding damage while learning to spot traps. When Tanks and Gunners strengthened their presence on the frontlines, I learned to infiltrate deeper into enemy territory to take advantage of their exposed flanks. When Supports continued to strengthen their turret defenses, I learned to spawn my special ninja bots, Gremlins, to attack them while I hit them from unexpected angles. And whenever the Assault is concerned, I only approach him when weakened and never from the front, because the Assault is OP.

With my tendency to upload matches to YouTube, I began attracting attention as a good Assassin in the small community. Every so often, I received questions for tips on playing Assassin or Tank and was even asked a few times if I wanted to play in private match games among other good players. Most of my subscriber base is based off of my Assassin gameplay videos.

I enjoyed Monday Night Combat in its prime immensely. And a large part of that enjoyment was growing alongside it. When the game was a month old, I had died a couple hundred times and only managed a hundred or so kills myself. When the game was three months old, I began contributing to my team much better and pushing towards a more consistent victory. And after a year of playing the game, I had uploaded over a hundred matches onto my YouTube telling the tales of all the times I had won despite bad team mates and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat belonging to amazing opponents. Honestly, as an Assassin specializes in sabotage and subterfuge on bot lanes and not actual assassination, an Assassin can only do so much in the face of extreme odds, but I've also learned to never give up and to keep fighting no matter how dire things seem.


A recreation of steamrolling a game

Monday Night Combat had a unique learning curve that I quickly picked up on. I enjoyed the game so much, I decided to become as good as possible at the game to maximize my enjoyment in a game that tends to attract people who party together in order to plow through random pubs. It is probably the only game I never experienced a wall in terms of skill progression.

I was an Assassin. I was good at what I did and I made sure everyone knew my gamertag when I stepped into the arena.

I love Gotham City Impostors! Going into the game as a veteran fan of Monday Night Combat, with experience from every Call of Duty game since Modern Warfare, I immediately fell into the groove needed to play this game well.

Games like Team Fortress 2 and Monday Night Combat just have a certain charm to it. Design choices that lead to an enjoyable atmosphere of colorful backdrops and characters. Gotham City Impostors enhances this by having a handful of items that fit under its gadget category which dramatically change the way you think about most shooters, as well as other customization options. From body size, to main weapons, support weapons, and the of course perks. But of course, through the eyes of Gotham City Impostors, perks are fun facts! And it's fine to pack two weapons which would both be considered primaries in any other shooter. And planting the flag in capture the flag activates a strange hypnosis machine that causes all enemies to flail their arms in a useless stupor.

Long of it short: if you think calling in an attack helicopter is crazy, wait until you try this game.

Using the glider rig to dive bomb your hapless enemies

The glider rig allows to you use height and air vents to glide enormous distances quickly. But if you get someone in your sights, you can dive bomb them for significant damage.


Awaaaaaaaay!

You can customize your character size for your usual benefits. Smaller is faster and harder to hit but less health and bigger is slower but more health. The glider rig not only helps negates the speed problem for fatties, they also do more damage with their dive bomb! Getting streaks thanks to dive bombs never gets old.

Literally playing as a ninja

First, you have the ninja smoke bomb, which turns you mostly invisible for an indefinite amount of time while restricting your actions. Second, not only can you equip a silencer and a hunting bow, but you can also use shurikens.


Ninja!

Put it all together with some smart maneuvers and you'll constantly be disappearing and reappearing behind your enemies to hit them where they can't see you! All without appearing on your enemies' mini-map. Personally, I prefer the hatchet as it can silently one-hit-kill while being much harder to use compared to shurikens or boomerangs.

Becoming a one-man checkpoint

The care package is a support item you can drop to replenish your allies' health and ammo on the fly. That's not to say you can't reap its benefits as well.

With the largest body type, I've had great success (and lulz) finding a defensible position, dropping a care package at my feet, and stopping every enemy who attempts to pass by my area. Since the only gametypes available so far in the beta are objective gametypes, all I need to do is fortify an area near an objective and the flies simply come to me!

MULTI-KILL!

I love those Quake-style kill fanfares. Getting double kills, triples, and multi-kills accompanied by that deep voiced, maniacal announcement that empowers you so much. Impostor's fanfare for multi-kills are similar but flavored appropriately.



Considering it's Bats versus Jokers, the fanfare announcement for a multi-kill is like hearing a carnie announce that you've won some big prize. Especially considering that multi-kills are on a different level of difficulty compared to other shooters makes these fanfares especially hilarious and rewarding.

Slap'em silly!

Psych Warfare is pretty much capture the flag with a twist. Grab the battery and hook it up to your propaganda machine. When it activates after charging for 24 seconds, it spews out strange music and hypnotic messages which demoralize the enemy team, reducing them to a bunch of flailing babies. You get a point for setting off the propaganda machine and mopping up the leftover babies is just an added reward for your kill/death ratio.

Even though they're flailing wildly, that doesn't mean they're incapable of inflicting hilarious, spazzy-looking damage. If they somehow get close enough, they can still actually fight back with hilarious looking nerd slaps! And of course it'll show up on the kill feed for everyone to see.

“Another headshot for BATMAN!”

Some people get tired of the one-liners and quips the impostors spit out but I never seem to get tired of them, especially when everyone changes the pitch of their voice to varying degrees.


FYI I am Batman.

There's of course the Conan the barbarian voice, but you can make it as deep or as high as you want. So putting it on a tiny man with high pitch is not only fitting for the image but hilarious. How about a deadly emo female voice with some of the most cliché Linkin Park lyrics imaginable with a chipmunk's squeaky voice.

Delusional wannabe heroes with deep voices are just a slam dunk for me.

Those are just some of my favorite things about Gotham City Impostors. As it's currently in beta, there are a lot of bugs to iron out like laggy games, mismatched UI, and various placement glitches. Probably the funniest thing about the whole game though is the concept that these are supposed to be normal people like you and me, but with big comic book delusions which allow them to go to great lengths to buy deadly firearms and make their own explosives.

If I were a smidge crazier, that could be me dressed as Batman in bathrobes with a jury rigged grapple gun, going after clown themed gangsters.

Or maybe not, but that's part of the fun of the game anyways: the crazy.


Let me ax you a question: have you played the beta yet?