From RPG to FPS, A Lady's Tale

Yeah. That's me. 

  I was 18 and I had JUST finished loading up Kingdom Hearts for the first time. I had moved across the country, was away from all the people who had ever known me and just trying to figure out who I was. I had been playing games since Sonic 2 on Genesis and that moment just seemed to be the apex of all the FMVs and emotions I'd ever feel while playing, so, I decided to get a tattoo. At the time, I was only interested in 70+ hour, puzzle filled epics where you felt like you'd saved a whole world and lived a life when finished. The escapism was strong back then. 

  I lived a life like I had videogame bi-polar. I was incredibly happy while saving worlds and learning magic. I was important to all the little NPCs and the stories followed very predictable patterns. I like patterns very much. Then, I would be incredibly depressed until the next game came out and I could dive back into that world instead of the real one. I was a nobody in the real world.

  I was terrible at first person style shooters. My hand-eye coordination is like both of my eyes are on the same side of my head. I'll knock a glass off the table while trying to pick it up and footballs seem to teleport through the air until they hit me in the face. I'm just not good at depth perception and spatial relations. When I played shooters the crosshairs inevitably end up in the upper, right-hand corner and my guy ends up on the floor. Game Over.

  

 My husband is a major SOCOM fan. The developers, Zipper, went out of business so there hasn't been a SOCOM shooter since the PS3. I tried playing when we first got together but playing RPGs leaves you with another hurdle: buttons. 

 I was used to using maybe two out of like eight buttons. There's X for action and O for cancel. That's all you need to swing a space sword at Marlboros. FPS' have like four uses for eighteen combinations. It was like learning another language, hard, so I gave up. 

 Summer of 2013, E3. Destiny was announced and was the baby, the golden boy and the winner of that mythical show of gaming splendor.  I was balls-deep in a replay of Crisis Core for the PSP.  My husband announced that this was going to be his SOCOM replacement. Okay. I thought, "This looks pretty good. I've not really tried to play shooters. I've got to train before this game comes out!"

 So I started training. I started with Fallout 3. It's a shooter but it also has a targeting system that makes it nearly the same as a turn-based RPG. Good story, karma system, perfect transition. I felt like beating that game was a huge step. 

  The next game was Red Dead Redemption. More targeting but in a way that forced me to actually use the sticks to aim. Great story, very engaging and absolutely draining. I actually needed a few weeks off after that one because I was so affected by the way it ended but I was closer to actually being able to play a shooting game on console than I'd ever been!

 Grand Theft Auto V. I thought I was ready, I really did!  If I thought I was bad before, I was even worse now! I was constantly fighting the lock-on system, failing missions and had totally forgotten that the only thing I hated more than FPSs was driving. I drove and died more than I ever had. In the first couple of days I died in GTAV more than I had collectively since I was 7. Bodies were smeared over whatever car I chose and horns honked at me and gang members were deadly at hitting me while I was driving. 

  I refused to give up. I stayed up late, retrying missions and flying planes until I finally started getting it. After a while, I could shoot AND drive. Targeting was my friend again and realizing that cars acted realistically in most cases led me to actually enjoying myself. I thought I was ready!!

  Summer 2014, husband is playing the Beta for Destiny. I'm saving up for my own PS3 so that I can play co-op with him. He's doing really well and getting set up with clanmates. A couple of days after the first DLC drops, I'm ready. I've got my Playstation, headset and some motivation.  

                 (That's my hunter!)

 You guys, Destiny has crosshair reset. When I let go of the sticks, the reticle goes back to screen center. HOLY SHIT HOLD THE 📞, the crosshair just snaps back to true! I wish I could explain it well but this is really the key to making this game fun for me. I like being challenged but I don't like it when I have to be super on top of my game at all times to make it function let alone be good at it.

  Destiny has all the earmarks of a good RPG, character creation (I'm being pretty liberal here, it's not very detailed), leveling, gear management and upgrading, shops, boss fights and fancy cloaks. Yep, as a hunter I get to wear the snazziest neck rags since the Elizabethans but they're very practical of course, I swear.  The point is, is that Destiny was very approachable with concepts I could understand. I'm not saying I'm dumb, I'm saying that it really wasn't the same as going from Skyrim to Call of Duty.  I wasn't expecting it so when I was able to get through the first few missions on my own and didn't get pasted every time I rounded a corner I was motivated to keep trying.  

  Learning to use all the buttons on the controller was probably the next hardest thing, fortunately, there are a lot of places to just run around in a sandbox to make all the mistakes I needed to get the muscle memory down. It didn't hurt that the control scheme is already pretty good. I never liked for my "shoot" button to be X. It should always be a shoulder button.  I threw a lot of grenades at my own feet and blew myself up with a rocket launcher more than was totally necessary but it didn't take long at all to become "good" at the PvE portion. 

I don't want to talk about the crucible. That's the PvP section. That's where everyone splits into teams and tries to kill each other as quickly as possible. You can only hear the people who opt in to voice chat or who are on your fireteam so at least there's no one screaming about teabagging my little sister or little kids playing who really shouldn't be. I had played a ton of campaign so I was all thinking "Let me at'em! I'll murderize'm!" 

 

 Yeah no. So much no. All of the no.

  I died so very much that heaven could be populated if each of my corpses had a soul. I could have accounted for half of New York with how many times I got perfectly sniped from so far away I'd need to rent a telescope to catch his name. I lost a lot of bravado that day but I got better. It's either that or not play half the time or receive half the loot! 

  I'm decent now, I can average a 1.0 k/d so for someone who isn't really interested in that area of play I can hold my own on a team. Especially 6v6. Yep. No, I'm not camping and getting in cheap shots, not at all...

  So I guess that here in 2016 you could say that I bought a Playstation just to play Destiny. I did have games I wanted to keep playing but there's always something I could be doing in Destiny. I already finished those. I can no longer go back and devote 40-60 hours on an RPG anymore, it just seems so tedious! I find myself just wanting to run around and shoot stuff. 

  I'm getting off the subject and I tend to ramble. I'll go into depth with more Destiny stuff in another post but I just wanted to share the experience I had with being so in love with one genre and finding out that I have a burning hot affair with another. I also want to get into the time I spent playing GTAV so there's a lot to say!  Thanks for reading and feel free to share your story in the comments or don't, your choice.