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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Android Games you should try #5: Requests.

I love getting requests by people who actually develop games. I feel honored and I actually like doing them. It’s the reason why I put a contact page on my blog. Anyway, it has been quite some time since I actually wrote about Android games. That has a reason, I didn’t play a lot of Android games I wanted to talk about in the past few months. Yet, there are a few that slipped under my radar, so I will correct that mistake. It’s time to talk about some Android games. I write a short review or talk about why you should play that game and give a score of 5! And as usual, feel free to leave a comment on this article with your thoughts on the games, content and or the games I should take a look at in the future!

Special guest: “Bubbliminate“

The developer of this game told me that this game is released rather recently, and he was looking for some feedback and some exposure. So, when I booted it up, I didn’t know what to expect. The screenshots on the store page didn’t explain what this game is about.

That’s one of the issues I had with the game. I didn’t really understand the game. After a bit of trail and error, I think I got the hang of it. You play against another player or CPU. Each one starts out with one bubble. You can do one of three moves. Split, grow or move your bubble. It’s your goal to get rid of the other guy (or girl)’s bubble.

The suggestion I would give to the developer of this game is that he adds a sort of introduction area. A sort of optional tutorial that teaches the basics to beat a CPU on easy mode with ease. On the store page he says that it’s interesting to young children. I’m sorry, but I put this to the test and the children, who were aged in the rage of 5 – 12, didn’t enjoy the game.

Before I talk about the other games, apart from what I mentioned above, the game is quite nice for a first game. Decent and responsive controls, amazing menu work, great music and pleasant visuals.

In conclusion, this game has potential, it just needs a bit more polish to make the entry level and the learning curve a bit less harsh.

Score: 3/5.

Bitcoin Billionaire

I tried various games that tried to emulate cookie clicker. Since that game was released, I wanted to try it out as well. But I quickly lost interested. But when I saw this game in the Google Play Store, I was interested. A Cookie Clicker clone that’s IT-themed? Yes please!

It didn’t take long before I got myself hooked on the game and I spend various hours on it. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen this coming since I actually tweeted a few interesting news items of this game. The humor in this game is just amazing!

This game also needs to get an award. This is an incredible example of how microtransactions should work. You can buy special red gems, but you can get 25 of them free each day. The catch here is that you get them rather easily. Also, when you connect to Wi-Fi, you get the option to enable ads for a few seconds for in game rewards. That’s just impressive!

The only negative of this game is that sometimes the prices are a bit unbalanced, but hey, how else they make getting the next level rewarding?

Score: 5/5.

Buttons And Scissors

I didn’t see this one coming. This puzzle game is one of the most simple games I played in a while. I don’t mean this in a bad way! When you press any button, the game shows you the possible moves. And thanks to that, I was able to figure out how the game works in no time.

Your goal is to cut all the buttons from the piece of fabric. You can only cut the buttons from the same color away, as long as there are no other buttons in between them. Since you can also cut diagonally, this game offers quite a big challenge. This game is nice to play in short bursts.

The only flaw in this game is that they don’t offer a mode for people who are colorblind. Since the contrast mode isn’t really that helpful if you are colorblind.

Score: 4,5/5.

1010!

I discovered this one only rather recently. At the start of this week, actually. So, I can’t say that I had much fun with it since, yeah. I barely started getting into it. But it’s that good that it deserves a spot in this list.

It’s a puzzle game where you get various shapes that you need to fit in a grid. As soon as you put a whole line full of blocks, they disappear. Your goal is that you can keep placing the blocks that the game gives you.

The only negative I have with this game is that you only get new blocks if you placed all blocks from the bottom. A nitpick I have is that the ads when you lose are too much in your face. It’s something I don’t like at all.

Score: 4/5

Final words

Alright, I think I’m going to wrap up this article here. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. Hopefully you found out about some new Android games that you could play in the waiting room or on the bus.

If you ever find new interesting Android games, feel free to send them to me. I might cover them on my blog if I like them or if I dislike them. I love user feedback.

In the meantime, I will be on the lookout for new Android games myself. I actually want to write this kind of articles more often. Since this way I can give more than one game some time to shine. Anyway, take care and I hope to see you in another article!