Executor Akamia

For those of us who play fighting games, it's quite normal to hear about this or that character being someone's "main", as in a character they'll pick to play as in nearly all scenarios and circumstances, if not all. You'll sometimes hear about this in other genres too; RTS games with factions/races that are asymmetrical usually have players specialize in maybe one or two such "characters" depending on how many there actually are in the game, or shooter games (either the first-person or third-person variety) with a variety of classes or even distinct characters with players being able to play as any range from one to several members of said cast, if not any and all of them when the need arises. MOBA games experience this phenomenon as well. But what I'd like to know is other people's thought process behind this. We all make these decisions our own ways. Sometimes the way we do this can make us hesitant to pick up another game that lacks that specific character you like. Case in point: I myself wasn't all that into fighting games until Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3 came out. The major selling point of the game for me was the presence of Phoenix Wright from the Ace Attorney series on the playable roster. Not only was that a character I was familiar with, having been a fan of Ace Attorney for quite some time by that point, I found the idea of a character from a visual novel series about the Japanese criminal justice system – particularly, the character is a lawyer with no relevant super powers aside from a probable case for super-durability – in a game full of demons, gods, superheroes, and supervillains, to be quite novel and considerably amusing. To this day, whenever I play Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3, I always have Phoenix Wright on my teams. I usually gravitate toward familiarity when it comes to even a minor crossover in a game, such as Akuma being in Tekken 7 for example, as I main him in Street Fighter games, or the Arbiter being a playable character in Killer Instinct for Xbox One, since I play Halo games. When the game isn't a crossover in any capacity, such as Skullgirls, I usually go for the characters that are closest to my interests outside of games. In this case, robots and cybernetics; in Skullgirls, that means I mainly play Big Band and/or Robo-Fortune. What about you guys? What decides a main for you?

Hrrmmm...Well, I've only played maybe a handful of fighters, myself. Of the ones I've played, I'd say maybe either Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3, Skullgirls, or Super Smash Bros. (any entry after, but not including, Brawl) are my favorite. I've yet to get Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, or even a Nintendo Switch to play it on, however. But I tried it on someone else's Switch recently, and I liked it. Sideways joycons are bad, though; get a real controller if you want to play Smash. 😂

Yup. Done that with a couple of LEGO games I own. Bionicle Heroes, The LEGO Movie... For example. I also did that with the three main Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog games, Sonic CD, Knuckles' Chaotix, Sonic Mania... I tried to do it with Sonic Forces too, but I just couldn't keep it up. There isn't enough I like about that game to keep me playing to 100% completion. I made it pretty far, and I 100% completed Episode Shadow, at least. But the main game, no. I also almost 100% completed Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I. I'm only missing one achievement, the one where you have to beat the entire final level without getting hit even once. I gave up on that one years ago.

Burn the heretic! 🔥

Stellaris, a grand strategy sci-fi game by Paradox Interactive, is currently free to play on Steam for its 3 Year Anniversary. You can play it now from May 9th-12th, and buy it to keep for $10 USD! https://store.steampowered.com/app/281990/

If I get so hopelessly stuck that I feel like I've run out of options for myself, I look online for a walkthrough to see if I missed something, often expecting the solution to be something obvious and make me look like an idiot.

Mega Man 2 is a real mess with the special weapons. The Metal Blade is OP except when it doesn't work at all, and most of the weapons drain real quickly or are completely useless outside of very specific situations. The Classic series overall is just obnoxious with the disappearing blocks often referred to as Yoku Blocks; I'm glad later Mega Man series such as Mega Man X did away with them almost entirely. I've yet to play Mega Man 11, but if it's anything like the previous 10 mainstream Classic series games, it probably has them, too. I still want to play it, don't get me wrong, but I'm not looking forward to seeing Yoku Blocks again. Mega Man 2 has my respect for saving the Mega Man franchise from being dead-on-arrival; the first Mega Man wasn't received particularly well at the time, from what I understand, and if Mega Man 2 failed, the series probably would not have gotten off the ground and none of its successors would have ever been made. But I think most later Mega Man games, Classic or otherwise, are technically better games.

Mega Man Zero 3 It's not grindy like the first two (though admittedly I may have done it to myself; I wanted to have full access to my weapons' movesets for everything when possible), screen crunch isn't as troublesome as the first one – though really in the first one it only got really bad with one or two levels – and it has my favorite final boss of all time. I talked about that last bit in the other Mega Man thread you made, so I don't feel the need to elaborate on that. Still, best boss ever. Change my mind.

I'm more inclined to believe it's an anger management issue, though without knowing if this man has a history, I can't say one way or the other, myself.

Mass Effect I was just made a Spectre. First thing I'm doing is getting Liara on the crew. Not because I particularly care about her; I don't even know her yet, it's my first time playing. But I want all my squad options open to me as soon as possible. Even though I'm most likely taking Garrus and Tali with me everywhere I go.

I think I played a demo of an Armored Core game on Xbox 360 once, a long time ago. As a kid, I similarly played a MechAssault game on a demonstration Xbox in a store. I don't really have a strong opinion on Armored Core, as the demo didn't give me enough to work with. MechAssault is another BattleTech product alongside MechWarrior, but it felt too much like an arcade game for my taste. I mean, yeah, MechWarrior 4 did have an arcade port which was pretty fun, but MechAssault lacks the emphasis on "mech simulator" that made me fall in love with MechWarrior in the first place. Don't get me wrong, on its own, it's a fun game in its own right, but playing MechAssault made me wish I was playing MechWarrior instead. 😅 I have played MechWarrior Online. Never on a computer that could run it well, however, and my current computer can't run it at all, sadly. I'm working on building a computer that can run it and several other games I want to play, but that could take years.

I grew up playing MechWarrior games. It was the start of my absolute love for mech-related media. The ones I played in particular were MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat, MechWarrior 4: Vengeance (+ Black Knight expansion), and MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries (+ MekTek mech pack mod, no longer being distributed) My absolute favorite among them was easily 4: Mercenaries. Lots of old-school fans hail MechWarrior 3 as the best, or at the very least, the most accurate to the tabletop game the series spun off from, BattleTech. I never played MechWarrior 3, however. I wish I had; I want to know what I was missing. Alas, it may not be able to run on modern systems. It’s also a huge pain in the rear end to get MechWarrior 2 to run anymore; to do it, you need an external app or two and an occult ritual. 😂

🤔 To be honest... I don’t really know...

Probably the final boss for Sonic Rush, believe it or not. Not the final final boss, but the one at the end of each character's individual story. I actually gave up playing the game for years over it. Then I went back, beat the boss as both characters, got the final Chaos Emerald, then beat the game.

I'm not sure exactly. Probably either StarCraft II, Monster Hunter World, Monster Hunter Generations, or Monster Hunter 4: Ultimate.

Real-time strategy, easily. Followed closely by platformers and MMORPGs. I like racing games, too.

I've been using them since the DSi, and pretty much only the Nintendo ones. My current one is the New 3DS XL. And yes, I still use it. 😆

Good question. To be honest, I don't really know what I would do with that much land. Assuming unlimited resources, I suppose I could build my dream house. Maybe set aside a place for playing NERF or airsoft and the like. And some sort of superlab for all my robotics needs.

After some of the other games I've seen mentioned ITT (Halo, Mass Effect, etc.) I don't see why not. 😁 With that said, I do enjoy StarCraft II. I also put a lot of hours into Stellaris lately. If I had a better computer for it, I'd be happy to include EVE Online or Elite: Dangerous in my list of space games I play. I used to play Star Trek Online, and may go back to that when I have a computer that can run it again, but as a space sim MMO, I find it lacking compared to either EVE or Elite: Dangerous. Perhaps being a full-on space sim was never really the point of that one.

SpaceExplorer pretty much nails it. I for one prefer space sims such as Elite: Dangerous or EVE Online or, to a lesser extent, Star Trek Online. I do enjoy exploration, but I also enjoy mostly-unrestricted player-versus-player combat, the likes of which are usually reserved for specific types of servers in MMO games. Something really fascinates me about traveling throughout the final frontier where anyone (especially players) could show up at any time, either as a friend or a foe, and if they turn out to be hostile for one reason or another, I can try to fight them off. In games like these where players can organize into groups ranging from tiny merchant guilds or warbands to prestigious mercenary units or even galactic superpowers, there's something to be said about being able to live among the stars, contributing to the galactic community, even if it's all confined to the internet. Have spaceship, will travel. Of course, a game that isn't a space-sim, but is nevertheless set in space, doesn't hurt either. There's a reason I put so much time into Stellaris lately. Heh.

Stellaris Did a single-player run that started as an organic empire – something I've rarely done since buying the Synthetic Dawn DLC gave me the option to play as machine empires – and will end as a synthetic one via synthetic ascension. The only thing left for me to do is deal with the endgame crisis; I've already ascended and become synths. Of course, after the crisis is defeated, I intend to keep going a little longer to unlock some achievements and try things out that I never really did before, either because I didn't think to do so, or because I didn't have the DLC to do so at the time. Synthetic empires are truly an interesting type; they operate like regular organic empires, but the main species are robots. You can't start that way, either; if you want to be a robot empire, you either start as Machine Intelligence and stay that way forever, or you start as an organic empire and pursue the synthetic ascension that turns your empire synthetic... and you stay that way forever; Machine Intelligence empires will consider you a fellow machine empire when this happens, but the way you manage your empire works more like an organic one as your pops are all individuals whereas Machine Intelligence pops are drones linked to an artificial hive mind. You also can't create machine worlds as a synth empire, though presumably you can take them from Machine Intelligence empires who can and be no worse for wear. I don't know how synthetic empires handle Machine Intelligence pops that enter their borders somehow, but allegedly Machine pops can't survive outside of a Machine Intelligence... There's a Fallen Empire in my current save that is a Machine Intelligence. I could, in theory, build up an overwhelmingly powerful fleet and just kick them over for their planets, just to see what happens to their pops. If they don't purge automatically, I expect them to be assimilated and become synth pops instead. Mechanical pops from other empires survive within Machine Intelligence empires just fine, however, but they lose whatever individuality they had, if any.

I now have all the DLCs. So if anyone wants to play a MP game with them, I can host and everyone will have access to them during that session, completely free.

Blogs would be nice to have, I think.

I probably shouldn't get involved in this, but... no, the context of AVGN's mention wasn't to claim he was the be-all-end-all. He was mentioning a counterexample. James Rolfe is "one of us", if you will, and an example of a particularly prominent figure disliking the game. Incidentally, I don't know if Rolfe himself actually hates Street Fighter 2010. The Angry Video Game Nerd, like the Nostalgia Critic when it comes to film reviews, is a character. As I understand it, Rolfe himself does enjoy some games the Nerd hates, though unlike Doug Walker, Rolfe isn't in the habit of giving even an unscripted, out-of-character review after the fact. Actually, I'm not sure even Doug does that consistently... Oh well. While there are often actual criticisms in the shows, the actors don't always hate a game/movie as much as their characters do. The entire point of AVGN is to emphasize the negatives of a game, to the point that in early episodes, he rarely had anything good to say. NC does this sometimes too, but from what I've seen, not nearly as much. Over time, both shows struck a balance and started resembling regular reviews, from what I've seen of recent stuff, skits aside of course. Street Fighter 2010 was an episode where AVGN was definitely in his "heavy emphasis on the negative" phase.

Team Sonic Racing Also, the expansion to Monster Hunter World coming later this year, if that counts. 😂