Hello fellow Others, I’m Kyle, AKA Daunt. I’m writing this as an introduction to my blog posts, as a sort of preface to show what to expect from me.
I am pretty new to the Band of Others, but since joining I’ve become really involved because the community is just amazing; great atmosphere and really strives to be what the community wants it to be.
A little about the gamer in me:
I’m 25, have been a gamer all my life… I have a deep appreciation for many games and all aspects of gameplay. A lot of people, I find, hunker down with just one or two games, and there’s nothing wrong with that, when you find something you love, why change it? But I’m not really like that, I have too many interests to sit and only play a few games. My current game library is pretty large for the PC, containing simulators, strategy games, role playing games, the occasional shooters and action games, sports games, puzzle games and more. I try not to limit myself and am always perusing the internet looking for another game to add to my “Upcoming games list” or add to my large library.
Favorites:
Always tough to nail down, so I’m going to cut it to two genres- Simulators and Strategy games. When it comes to games, I’m not a big fan when realism is thrown out the window. Now that’s not to say I hate unrealistic games… obviously things that aren’t possible aren’t realistic in the first place, but with games that try to emulate real-life things, like racing, flying, etc, I prefer to be challenged.
For favorite games, I’ll try to list a few of each genre…
Simulators: Falcon 4.0 BMS, iRacing.
Strategy: Empire: Total War, Civilization series, Space Empires V, Crusader Kings 2.
RPGs: TES: Morrowind, Fallout series, TES: Skyrim, EVE Online.
Simulations: Sim City (Not the newest iteration), Roller Coaster Tycoon Series.
Shooters/Action:ARMA, Assassin’s Creed Series.
Sports Games:No favorites.
I do feel the need to throw this into it’s own category though… I absolutely love Minecraft. It seems that every year for a few months I become hooked to the game and can’t play anything else until I get my fix. Such a deep game that offers so much… really a great game.
My blog:
The two biggest posts I plan to feature will be game reviews and previews. Reviews will be for games that I’ve played in-depth and can give a good, deep opinion of. Game previews on the other hand, are for games that aren’t available yet, or only available to selective people, that I can help share with the community in order to spread the word and help people discover. There is nothing greater than watching a game being developed and counting down the days until it is released. I suppose aside from actually playing the game.
Anyway I plan to structure all reviews in a similar format, to easily compare games. There will be seven categories weighted a bit differently to reflect their importance in a well-designed game. The final score will be a total of these seven, which will add to 100 indicating a perfect game.
Categories:
- Gameplay 0-20 One of the most important aspects… how does it play? Are there new, exciting game mechanics? Is the gameplay just rehashed from a previous game? What do you do in the game? What makes it interesting?
- Graphics & Sound 0-20 How does the game look? How does it sound? Is the artwork unique? Is it cutting edge? Is it a copy-cat?
- Controls 0-10 How intuitive are the controls? Are they easy to learn? Do they make you want to bash your head?
- Immersion 0-10 Is there a rich game world and background story to the game? Does it make sense? Would I want to be there? Do I get lost in the game and lose track of time?
- Replayability 0-10 How many times can I play this game before becoming bored? Is it a one-time through storyline or offer endless amount of gameplay?
- Challenge Level 0-10 Is the game difficult? Does it hold your hand the entire game or do you have to learn on your own? Is there a steep learning curve? How is the tutorial? Is there no guidance?
- Overall Fun Level 0-20 Easiest category… Is the game fun!?
So there you have it. That’s what I hope to bring to our blog. Game reviews, game previews and more. Don’t expect, at least not initially, for me to go over a lot of games. I want to use this to spread news about games that I love, or help people stay away from games that I made the mistake of trying. There are plenty of game review sites out there, so if it’s not on here, you can use them. But I will be trying to stay away from the way they do things by giving honest, insightful information on games that I play often and know best. Since I will focus more on a specific niche of games, I’ll be able to provide more background and give better comparisons between games. Hopefully you will all enjoy and I look forward to hearing feedback! Thank you!
-Daunt