zephie's game journals
i just be downloading games lately whatever. i was always comically bad at this when i played it years ago. i'd love to see my old profile to see just how bad but it was linked to a Steam account i can't access anymore, and i'm pretty sure this game was taken off Steam anyway. nevertheless, what better time to rebuild my Rocket Legacy now that i can spend twenty-five dollars to play as Lightning McQueen!!!!!
this game's menus have become a nightmare of monetization. every other button wants me to spend money in some way, and i have to wonder genuinely who is spending $20+ on some of this stuff??? i also have to wonder who is into the music it plays throughout. i don't remember it being so grating. it started playing Never Gonna Give You Up when somebody got a goal and it was actually a relief over everything else
i never used to play with the camera following the ball which i always heard was important, but i could never get used to it. it felt like having to rewire the part of my brain that's accustomed to controlling 3D games. i'm giving it a shot now, though it's not like i'd be any good with it off, i haven't touched this in years. but i got into my first online match, that i played online, with another player, over the internet, and was surprised at how well i was doing
...until i realized BumpyDragon with their 0 ping may not have been a real person. there's an offline mode where it clearly labels bot players so i'm not super appreciative nor understanding of the lies here!! i guess there are people who'll think "wow i'm immediately good at this better spend money on it" ?? luckily i went into another real casual match and everyone, me included, is just as bad at the game as i remember
it's been a while since i've played a game that a lot of people play competitively, at least enough people that i'll regularly run into them. maybe it's because i'm bouncing between this and Fall Guys which is the least competitive mega-GaaSy-battlepassified game ever but it's immediately funny how seriously people take their video games. i just go into Competitive and turn chat off and all i see is sarcastic passive-aggressive quick-chat and teammates relentlessly trying to forefeit as soon as they're down a couple points
by some freak anomaly i came out of placement matches in a couple modes at Gold 1 and Platinum 3? i got Platinum in Rumble which is the fun mode with the wacky powers, though i don't know why it's exclusively a competitive mode when almost every goal is cheap as a result of those powers. not that i care, but i figured other people would and thus wouldn't take it too seriously. not the case but what are you gonna do. turn chat off is what
game's easy
i have committed a grave act to which i miss confess......i bought the battle pass.. solely because there's a single achievement that's going to be made unobtainable in a few weeks making 100% forever impossible, and i knew it would likely bother me in the future. i'm working through an OCD recovery program right now and that probably should've been something i focused on putting up with but oh well. i pretty immediately regretted it. i usually make it a rule not to spend any money on free-to-play games, making the odd exception for something purely cosmetic (if they let me make my car look like Sonic i would have no qualms about it), but i don't even care about the items on there
i've been sick....but i must Game..... i couldn't hold the controller for very long at a time due to frequent sinus assaults so i was getting stuff done offline, where i could set bots to 'baby' get a few goals then sittenwait while they jump around all stupid. actually i've realized i tend to play multiplayer games more often when i'm sick because the constant un-pauseable attention required somehow distracts me from leaking out of various parts of my face, somehow causing it to happen less. it's all in the mind. the first lesson of advanced Rocket League
speaking of holding the controller, i very quickly learned not to do it while it's plugged into my console charging. i have a tendency to celebrate goals in a physical manner, and i have a tendency to then frantically web search for "moved ps5 while turned on is it ok" "ps5 ylod does it have one"
aerial shots always eluded me, much like the ball when i attempt one. i've unfortunately fluked my way into the tiers of competitive matches where there are people capable of pulling them off, and i just look like the fool of the field down there on the ground. i did some training and i'm realizing i never practice at video games. i believe i could get good at Rocket League if i wanted to. but i don't think i want to that much, i just want to play the game. and the way i see it, the better i get at aerials, the less excited i will be when i do one, and the less fun i will have. so really i'm being better at the game by being worse at it. the second lesson of advanced Rocket League
i put out a call to trade with someone before it gets removed. it brings me no joy to admit i'm starting to care more than i did before about making my car look pretty, which was not at all. absolutely not enough to spend extra money on the insanely expensive store items, but maybe enough to play fairly often so that i can get the next battle pass for free. so i'm joining the masses in the uproar over trade removal - what da hell epic!
the way i customize my car i use the same colors for each team because it lets me use zephiecolors, which for me causes the silly OCD problem of frequently looking down at my controller to make sure of which team i'm on by whatever color's coming from it. thankfully haven't had any "whoops that's the wrong team" goals yet. had plenty of accidental "here let me help you out, opposing team" ones though. you know i'm the first to vote skip the replay
i played in my first tournament. people were a lot better than in my regular competitive matches, and i was just there to complete my challenges, so as we got further in and the potential embarrassment grew i started to hope more that we would lose (we did in the quarter-finals). people like to show off their aerial control in the standings screens, of which i personally have none so i simply fall flat on my back and spray boostjuice at them as a defence mechanism. also i don't know why it chose "Killer Endo" as our team name. i had one of those recently
i'm pretty much almost exclusively playing Rumble because i enjoy fun. i also enjoy the prospect of sliding my way into high ranks on flukes alone, i don't care if even the game acknowledges this by making the Rumble champion title "RNG Champ". i don't feel the other funmodes that much, Hoops and Dropshot are too hard for my earthbound brain and the hockey mode makes me wonder why i'm messing with my perception of the game's physics. plus they don't let me do stuff like this