Gamer’s Thoughts: The Meta Skill

I’m rarely able to beat a Pokémon game. Some bosses in RPG’s give me a lot of trouble. Battles in Europa Universalis 4 are extremely difficult for me. What is going on? I have been playing games for my whole life and I still have trouble with a lot of things in video games. Especially when it comes to the finer things in video games. The meta, the nitty and gritty of gaming. This article is mainly just a braindump of various things about metagaming. If you don’t really know what I’m talking about, this Wikipedia article and Urban Dictionary explains it quite well. Also, I’m curious, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your opinion and/or your experiences. 

Git gud

So, do I need to git gud at playing games?  To be honest, I don’t think my gaming skills are lacking. I don’t mean to brag but I have beaten quite a lot of games.

I think that the biggest issue with my gaming skill is that I’m a jack of all trades. I have basic skills in almost every gaming genre due to my gaming collection but I haven’t specialized in any particular genre.

This lack of knowledge always comes back to bite me in the behind. For example, in Super Mario Odyssey, I’m unable to perform the Cappy Jump. Or, in Etrain Odyssey, my team build is either so unbalanced or too diverse. And when I encounter a powerful enemy, I always know that I’m in for either a restart or for a longer battle than usual.

The fact that a lot of people upload their gameplay onto YouTube or talk about various mad tricks on their blog is not helping. When I’m watching a gameplay video and somebody is performing a trick with ease that I’m unable to perform, I get jealous.

Now, certain things are quite difficult to explain as well. Take for example the combat in Europa Universalis 4. Whenever I’m a multiplayer match with MiseryLC, he is always talking about how he is building his army or which terrain he is using to fight the enemy. This gets extremely confusing to me extremely quickly.

An easier and more universal example is, try to explain how every jump works in a Mario game and how to perform it. It gets quite challenging to do that. I experienced this difficulty first hand when I was explaining how Lara Croft controls in the fan-made levels of the Level Editor. I had to rewrite that section at least 10 times before I was content with it.

Training

Let’s talk a bit more about one of the examples I gave in the introduction of this article. I haven’t been able to beat certain Pokémon games because my team isn’t diverse enough to beat the Elite Four easily.

I haven’t been able to beat the original Pokémon Red/Blue and Yellow, yet, I have been able to beat Pokémon Gold/Silver and Platinum, the sequels of that game. Granted, I abused the cloning glitch the first time, but the second and third time, I had beaten the game completely legit.

My issues with the meta gameplay come when my friends want to challenge me in a duel. Almost every time and also when I prepare myself on a duel, I get beaten. In various cases, I’m even unable to defeat one or two of their Pokémon.

This problem isn’t unique to Pokémon for me. There are several RPG games in my backlog where I’m just unable to progress due to me either having to grind or be unable to beat a certain boss. Take Atelier Rorona as an example, I haven’t been able to get any other ending because I rarely plan out my journey and I always have to race the clock to be able to meet the goal.

For this article, I sat down and thought about why I was having so much trouble with these kinds of mechanics. And I think I might have a reason. For of all, I have a lot of trouble remembering the weapons triangle. Let’s take Pokémon again as an example. The main battle mechanics are a rock/paper and scissor model. Rock beats scissors. Scissor beats paper and paper beats rock. But, there are more than three types of Pokémon. Take a look at this type chart from Reddit user u/ar-gee.

Now, this chart is quite handy. But then game throws an additional wrench in the works. The fact that some Pokémon has more than one type. This makes this chart even more complicated. And let’s not get started about the strength of certain moves and the special stats.

Whenever you level up in an RPG, you see a ton of stats rise of your characters. More often than not, I rarely pay attention to them. When I’m buying gear for my characters, I always make sure that the previous gear is stronger than their current gear. In turn-based RPG’s, this isn’t such a big issue. But in real-time strategy games like Rise of Nations, that’s where things get even more tricky.

During a match in any real-time strategy game, I always create a random army. A handful of soldiers, some cavalry and some archers. Rarely I know which balance to maintain. When my enemy attacks, I always send in my whole army. Instead of trying to think which units are the most effective to use.

Now, knowing the mechanics is one thing. Being able to train them is another thing. How do you train yourself in building a better Pokémon team or upgrading the right stats in an RPG? Or having a better army balance in a real-time strategy game. Barely any game gives you feedback where the weaknesses and/or strengths are in your team. Maybe one day…

Do you need to know?

I could keep giving example after example. But, do I need to know the meta mechanics of a game in order for me to enjoy it? Well, that really depends on one thing for me. If I’m able to enjoy myself and continue in the game.

I barely know anything about the meta gameplay of the Pokémon games yet, I’m able to beat certain mainline Pokémon RPG games. While I don’t have the strongest or the best team in the game, I’m able to finish the game.

On the other hand, you have to Remember Me. In this game, the combat is rather rhythmic and you have to perform a lot of button combos for the stronger attacks. Now, if there is one thing I’m not that good at, it’s keeping a rhythm. There is one boss I need to defeat in Remember Me, but because I’m always unable to preform the button prompts in time, I always lose. And yes, I have rage quit the game.

Of course, the meta is quite important. There are certain games where I’m even able to abuse the meta. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine on the PC is one example. I know how to abuse certain mechanics to reach certain places that can’t be reached by certain means. Just take a look at the speedruns of the game to get an understanding of what I mean with how broken the roll and the chalk is in this game. If only I was able to perform these tricks with greater ease, I would compete in this speedrun category.

The obvious importance of the meta in games is for the people who play online and/or in a competition. I don’t think I have to explain that. Maybe that’s another reason for me. I barely play online or in a competition. It just doesn’t interest me that much. I prefer to play games on a casual level, in my own time.

Before I continue to ramble on about this topic, I think it’s time to finish this article. I might return on this topic but I would like to know what you, the readers think. If I revisit this topic, what do you want me to talk about? Am I alone with these “issues” or are there other people? Do you need to “git gud”?

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this subject for now. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

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First Impression: Ratchet & Clank (PS2) ~ The First One

Wikipedia entry

Today I want to talk about a game I started playing in my holidays on the PS2. The name is Ratchet & Clank and I’m playing it on PS2. I realize that with the recently released movie, there is a new game on PS4. But I haven’t seen the movie (yet), I don’t have a PS4 and I don’t own the PS4 game either. So yeah. In any case, it’s time to take a look at Ratchet & Clank on the PS2. A game I bought at a garage sale. At that same garage sale, I also bought the third game in the series. Sadly enough, I was unable to buy the second one. But, that game is on my “to look out for” list. And I’m quite sure I’ll find it in the near future. In any case, enough stalling. It’s time to talk about Ratchet and Clank. A game I haven’t finished … yet. In any case, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the content of this article and/or the game. 

The story of sci-fi

 If you read my blog from or when you know me personally, you might know that I’m a big fan of stories in my games. While I do enjoy the characters and the jokes that are thrown around, I feel that the story is taking a backseat to the gameplay. Honestly, the story doesn’t 100% click with me. I think the biggest problem is that the story doesn’t really help build the world and atmosphere.

When I play sci-fi games, I want the story to explain how certain things work. But so far, nothing is really explained enough in-depth. Yet, there is some techno-jargon that gets thrown around. Take for example an “infobot”. From what I can gather, it’s a sort of advertisement billboard, but I have seen it play recordings of people’s video calls. And what didn’t help is the fact that some infobots have coordinates of where some people are. So, what’s the purpose of an infobot? That left me very confused.

So yeah, while I do enjoy the interaction with the characters and the actual plot of the game, I feel that there is so much lost potential with the story. I felt that the focus was too much on the characters and not enough on the world that they created.

The voice acting of this game helps to bring the characters alive. The jokes of a naive robot Clank work so well in the robot voice. It feels real and genuine.

So, in conclusion about the story, I’m in the middle. Like I said earlier, I do like it, but I feel that they could have gone more in-depth with it. Also, some characters are underused. Like the Captian Qwark figure. He looks like an extremely popular marketing thing, but I have only seen him on one island. So yeah.

Two or more ways to objectives

It surprises me how I managed to fall in love with the gameplay of this game. Usually, I play adventure games like Broken Sword and Monkey Island. I even said in some articles that I don’t like platformers. But this game is something really different. In this game, you have to travel to various planets to finish missions.

But here is the thing. On two planets, I managed to miss secondary pathways that lead to other objectives. While this could lead to frustrating “find the right way” gameplay, I love that the map shows in yellow the places you have visited already. Too bad that it also shows a “?” mark exactly where a trigger for an objective is.

I have one problem with the gameplay that made me put the game down for a while. That are the respawn points. When you fail a jump or die, you sometimes respawn way too far. One time I was on the other side of the planet., and I misjudged a jump. When I respawned, I was back at the start, which was on the other side of the planet.

Also, I find it an interesting mechanic that the boxes and enemies only respawn when you leave the planet. Apart from one exception though and that is when you have a mission where you need to kill for example all sand sharks.

Maybe it might be just me, but the hit detection is sometimes a bit strange. I have seen several times where I was sure I was hit but didn’t lose health. A minor thing I would have changed is that I would have made the health always visible. There have been moments where I though I had more or less life and misjudged a situation. But then again, you can see it easily when you press a button.

The controls of this game are really good. The only thing I felt could use some polish was the grabbing of platforms. That didn’t always work for me. What I really liked is that this game didn’t force the tutorial on me. When you get a new gadget or a new item to play around with, the game briefly explains how it works and you can read it again in the menu. Also, you are able to shut off the help feature completely. I haven’t tested if the help section then still updates or what happens if you use a weapon where the explanation hasn’t popped up for it yet.

Something that would have improved this game is a sort of indication from where you are hit. I felt cheated when I died because an enemy was attacking me from behind. Speaking of which, some enemies are quite stupid. When you aren’t in range, you can easily kill them with bombs and not having them chase you.

The manual aiming of the special weapons is a big issue for me. I think I’m too spoiled by playing games with a mouse or a Wii Remote. It’s really clunky on a controller. Thankfully, there is a sort of auto-aim feature that works really well.

A big plus in this game is that you are free to explore the game at your own pace. Sometimes you have two different objectives and you choose on which one you focus first.

Planet Life 

The sound design and the music are pretty decent. I would have changed one thing around to make it a bit better.

I would have given the enemies a bit more sound effects. Now, they can sometimes be soulless. It feels like they don’t have a personality. What I mean here is that, in other games you can easily hear if the enemy is a weak or a strong enemy. That isn’t too clear in this game.

The soundtrack of this game is really fun to listen too. While I feel that the soundtrack doesn’t always fit the world or presentation like a glove, it gets the job done pretty well and it’s a joy to listen too from time to time.

Speaking about the presentation, that’s something I really have to praise this game. I feel that the level design is extremely well done. From what I have seen so far, this game provides moments of action and then moments of rest. This game is a platformer at hart, but it changes things up here and there with some mini-games.

Graphically, this world aged pretty well in my opinion. I love how some things are animated in the background and how ships fly around while you are exploring the world. It makes the world come alive that much more.

I think I have everything I wanted to say about this game for now. There are a few things I want to talk about, but I’m going to leave them for the review. When I have to give my opinion on this game: it’s a really good game but it lacks some polish. It’s an amazing platformer that made me come back for more several times.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing this. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article and until then… Have a great rest of your day and take care!