How I don’t like just a good gameplay anymore

I’ve found myself to be enjoying less and less games with just minimal story, even if they had a good gameplay.

Back when I first tried Skyrim, which was probably years after it was out, since I only buy games in huge sales, I loved it. Especially the freedom you have in it.

More recently, when I finally tried Fallout: New Vegas, I played it a little bit, and stopped. Why? Mostly because of this endless side quests that have no impact on the story.

On the other hand, some games I’ve played also recently, which had an interesting story, if they happened to be too linear, I wasn’t a big fan either. That was the case with A Plague Tale, first one. Even if I played it for longer than New Vegas.

That led me to a quite-obvious-but-good-to-know-theory: we all give different weights to each element of a piece of art, in our appreciation of it. For me, I’d say I give the highest coefficient to the story, second highest to the Art Direction, third to the gameplay, something like that.

And all of this explains why the game that is the best masterpiece of the last 20 years for me is a heresy for some other people: Bioshock Infinite, partly for moments like this:

And partly for others like that (spoiler). If you don’t know this scene yet, play the game until you arrive to it. And if you’re a father, well…

So, yes, ideally, I like a game when it’s good at everything, but when I have to choose, I prefer it to have a good story, an amazing artistic direction, and an average gameplay rather than the opposit.

And as in films and books, most of the engagement in the story comes from the characterisation of the characters. Well, also from the events, of course. But writing characters is clearly a difficult task. In my opinion, even Steven Moffat struggles with characterization.

Are we human so centered on ourselves that we can engage only with stories in which the protagonist have humanoid traits? Maybe…

Just play the guitar

So, what if I wrote a few things in a blog on my website?

Now, what should I talk about? Easy: the same things as the rest of the site.

Let’s start with playing the guitar, shall we?

I’ve seen some mockeries about some « fake metal guitarists » that would typically use NeuralDSP plugins, Metal Zone pedals, have clean hair and all… Whatever.

There’s a thing I’ve learned from a long time ago: most of the time, if it sounds good, nobody cares what you use.

The Boss Metal Zone have been my first entry into the distortion world, back in the end of the 90s. And I think, honestly, that transistor amps like the one I had, were much more responsible for the bad sound than the Metal Zone. Ola Englund have shown that Metal Zone can sound good.

Besides, I’m not the kind of person who searches for his ultimate sound, for the exact sound that would be perfect for me. And why is that?

Well, first of all because I’ve started to be interested actively in music and playing with the Offspring. And yes Offspring is punk, or punk/rock, and no, I wouldn’t care if they were labeled otherwise. What I took from that is this I don’t really care, maybe typical of some sub-genres of the 90s (Kurt, I’m looking at you… well at least at your music). Just watch a clip of the offspring and you’ll understand. We don’t care. A guitar, some power chords, and an insanely skilled drummer are almost all you need.

Even if now, I write baroque music as well as Symphonic Metal (who said it was the same thing?), I still don’t care whether a song is poorly recorded, or if the sound is just « okay ». What I search in a song, is the song. Of course it has its limits. And I strangely don’t apply this mentality to what I consider to be the best masterpieces of the history of the multiverse, for which I tend to be a lot more elitist and picky, because they deserve it.

So here’s what I play: my same first guitar (oh yeah, also because I don’t have enough money to buy extreme quality stuff) until I get a luthier to do a custom one, a Peavey Classic 30 until I get the money to buy a Mesa Boogie, and NeuralDSP Plugins because yes, they sound good, especially compared to everything else I’ve tested, from TH-U to Guitar Rig, to I don’t know what else.