My First Blog Post.

This post is mainly a test post to see how the website works and if I can get my head around it. To do this I am just going to list a few of the game franchises I absolutely adore and why? Rubbish first post idea but tough.

Firstly, the Borderlands franchise.

These titles of amazing games have given me hours upon hours of enjoyment, alone or with my friends. The idea of a Looter-Shooter was very foreign to me as my first games I ever played were Pokemon, which I will cover later, however as my friends at the time were very excited for Borderlands 2 back in 2012, I decided to give the original Borderlands a go and completely fell in love.

I quickly realized these were games I was never going to put down, I came back every day from school having the first thing I do is turn on my PC and play Borderlands till I had to come off for the night. When Borderlands 2 came out only a few weeks later I was enthralled by its replayability. Grinding out weapons and shields, class mods and relics, it was an awesome time, though my mediocre PC at the time disagreed, crashing whenever it felt like it.

When the DLCs inevitably arrived I fell even deeper in love with the game, with almost a whole 10 hours of gameplay from each expansion alone, not including the whopping 100+ hours the base game provided with each expansion, increase to your level and the ability to replay the game on progressively harder difficulties.

If you have never played a game in the Borderlands franchise before I really recommend picking one up and trying it, the graphics may be different or the weapon systems may look complicated but trust me, it adds to the franchises charm that no other game, in my opinion, has been able to replicate. Also, the games tend to go really cheap on Steam during sales and that is a plus.

Now to Pokemon.

I’m going to start this with saying clearly and simply, there is no other game series like Pokemon out there. I’m assuming that there have been attempts to recreate the formula but I haven’t heard of them having played Pokemon for almost 13 years. So they were obviously not successful, or Nintendo sued them, which I hear is the path they like to take in those matters.

I have been playing Pokemon for so long now and it astounds me that Pokemon X & Y, the first main series games for the 3DS were out almost 7 years ago now. It feels like time has flown by since then. I know a large portion of the Pokemon community is very vocal about the games and their likes and dislikes for each title, but for me each title has been an improvement in some form from its previous title. That is not to say the games do not have their faults, they have become a lot easier and more streamlined since X & Y as they have tried to market a lot more to children. I believe however, it is time for Gamefreak and Nintendo to realize that their main hardcore fanbase will almost all be adults by now, having played the games since their inception with Red & Blue.

Pokemon is seriously a simple concept, go out, collect your 8 gym badges, catch 900 oddly designed wild monsters and use them to defeat other monsters. Each generation of Pokemon has always included at least 100 new species of these creatures and how they get their ideas is beyond me. I tend to try and design a Pokemon and it always ends up looking like Charizard. To this day there is not one generation of Pokemon I have not liked in some way, I have had issues with some of the more specific Pokemon, Trubbish and Vanilluxe for example, but as I got older I realized that the original generation has a Pokemon that was literally a ball that exploded when it got angry.

With the recent additions to the series, Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield I believe I have found my favourites of all the games. The games have a lot to be desired, such as not all 900+ species of Pokemon are in the game, there is only 400. I have however, come to like this change, something the community loudly hated about the games. The lack of old Pokemon really allowed me to appreciate all of the newer ones and all their interesting designs and even evolutions of older Pokemon like Sirfetch’d a duck with a sword and shield made from a Leek. What isn’t to love about that? I don’t want this to sound to review-y so I will leave it there, I will say this though, go in with an open mind with these new games. They will surprise you.

Lastly, but definitely not least, is the Destiny franchise.

I love these games. Lets leave it at that. These are my favourite games of all time.

No, seriously, these games are what I have put most of my hours into since 2014. Almost 5000 hours across both games now I believe. These games, having come from Borderlands, were right up my alley. Looter-Shooter, but with a twist, a fully online Looter-Shooter. Destiny was a game I didn’t even think much about when I ordered it. I got a PS4 for Christmas of 2013 and as most people know, there weren’t a lot of launch games for that console. I saw this and thought to myself it shouldn’t hurt, little did I know I would be getting the best game I have ever experienced.

Destiny, like most online games, has had a very rocky history. Lots of ups and downs in terms of player population and content. The story was little to be desired, but the gameplay was phenomenal. The shooting felt incredible and the content was quite good for what we got, despite the game being split into parts and being sold as DLC. Bungie, being known for Halo, were always going to make a great feeling game, but by the time Destiny’s first major expansion, The Taken King launched, it became a whole other game.

I met incredible friends during these games, had some of the best memories in a game I have ever had and probably ever will have. As the current game, Destiny 2, continues to evolve and add to its expanding content, I see myself sticking with this franchise for many, many years to come.

Harry.