Now Warzone Firefight launched sometime last summer, and while I was fully aware of its release, I was too busy playing other games at the time, I don't remember what games, but it was something I kinda wrote off as something I'd get to later, Well now that later has arrived and dear god I don't know what took me so long. The game mode is absolutely brilliant in all the right ways, the usage of REQs, the team based goal oriented combat, in fact the only negative thing I can say about it is that respawn timers can get too long late in the game, but even that is offset by the weapons you've unlocked to that point. However, as much fun as I was having I felt dirty for enjoying my time with the game. I felt like I was somehow degrading myself for playing a game so many fans disliked, a game that was criticized for the removal of local coop so it could achieve a smooth 60 fps, and I will fully admit I was one of those dissenters at first, yet, as the Halo nutjob I am, went out and purchased Halo 5 at launch and at least gave it a shot, and while I like the direction the story went, despite some of its previous misgivings in Halo 4. As dirty as I felt though, I just didn't care because at my core I was actually having fun.
See that's something that I feel like people have lost sight on in recent years, especially when it comes to gaming. We all want this huge awesome new IP to launch with open world, and crafting, and all these other things to give us freedom in our worlds because a handful of games did it well and we're constantly under the illusion that that is where success lays, but I've come to disagree with that and instead I put forth a new idea: instead of chasing the heels of previous success, or criticizing something for every graphical misgiving, or a person for their taste, let's just all have fun. It's really not that difficult of a concept to embrace, all you need to do is if you see someone enjoying something you don't, just ignore it, let it go. Don't tell them you hate it, don't tell them why it's bad, don't criticize it for what it is or isn't, let them enjoy something.
Oddly enough this isn't the first time I've found myself in this situation either, with many releases over the last couple of years I've found myself either having to defend my interest in the game, justify why I would ever play such a thing, or I've just felt ashamed for playing something that I am genuinely having fun playing simply because the gaming community as a whole dislikes it for whatever reason. A couple of very recent examples are Mass Effect Andromeda and Ghost Recon Wildlands. It would be no small secret to the people who know me that I am a HUGE Mass Effect fan, I have art on my walls, clothing in my drawers, hell I even splurged on the $130 Pathfinder backpack, $100 DieCast Nomad ND1, and I'm currently in the middle of purchasing the FigPins. Needless to say, I LOVE Mass Effect, it's wonderful and I practically disappeared when Andromeda came out this year, starting the game a mere week and a half before I moved, whilst packing mind you. I loved the game, and had a ton of fun playing it, and while there were things I was looking forward to that weren't there, such as dynamic outposts, being able to land on dozens of worlds, and a larger selection of romantic options. All those put aside I still enjoyed the game, and had hours of fun playing it despite having to defend my interest in the game due to its glitches and facial animations, both issues that in my playthrough were a maximum of maybe 30 minutes in a 50 hour experience.
I felt assaulted and wronged because how dare I have fun when a few people put videos on YouTube for reddit and other meta sites to laugh at and criticize the game for it. How dare I enjoy something that let down their expectations, people who didn't play the game and had no interest in it in the first place. How dare I have fun. How dare I enjoy myself. The same issue revolves around Ghost Recon Wildlands. The reviews came out for it and were less than positive, the game was repetitive, the open world felt like it made the player travel vast amounts for no real reason, and the narrative is too shallow, but I found myself in the same place, having fun. I've enjoyed my time with Ghost Recon, I love taking down bases, getting into firefights driving around Bolivia, flying up as high as I can and parachuting back down to Earth. I'm loving every minute of it and I've actually been putting off completing it because I don't want it to be over.
Yet it was in a PSN group chat that I realized I shouldn't feel bad for enjoying something, if its fun then why should I care what people say about it? Lately we've all been obsessing over review scores and graphical improvement, and making sure that everything is tippy toppy to the point that anything but the very best isn't good enough. People complained about Arkham Knight's graphical and game play issues, but I still had fun, I may have been frustrated at points, but I enjoyed the ride through the game. People complained about Destiny and it's lack of story content and it's MMO-esque approach to gameplay, yet here we are almost 3 years later with the sequel getting ready to release and new players are joining every day, something must be keeping those players coming back. Another much criticized game over its lifetime is World of Warcraft, being one of the largest games of all time leading up to the 2010 release of Cataclysm that rebuilt the world from the ground up and saw many players straight up leave the game after being so invested for so long, other games stepped in place to acquire some of it's player base like Rift, SWtOR, Guild Wars 2, and more recently Final Fantasy XIV. Yet many remained loyal to the game for a myriad of reasons, even throughout the Warlords of Draenor expansion, which some refer to as "The Dark Days of WoW". Yet still, the rush of getting new equipment, enjoyment of friends, and conquering bosses still remained fun to players to world over, these players didn't leave because they were still enjoying themselves in one way or another.
Now none of this is to say we should be happy and content with whatever the industry hands us and just "be grateful we're getting games", but we certainly shouldn't talk down on someone who enjoys something. As a long time fan of the Koei's Warrior franchise I know very well what a double sided dose of criticism looks like. It takes a certain sense of mindless grinding to get any sort of real enjoyment out of those games, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, in fact sometimes a mindless grind is exactly what I need to destress after a long day, I find it relaxing and fun, so what. We all got into this insane hobby around the central idea that games and gaming is fun. No one started off day one out of the gate as being the best and min maxing every character to be the mathematical best at whatever, we all have our own unique playstyles, and our own unique approaches to everything, so why should our enjoyment be any different. Gaming takes all types, some like graphics, some like stories, some like mechanics, some like to min max and feel powerful, some are just tournament players who dedicate everything they have to being the best at their game, and that's all okay.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that we need to stop getting into petty arguments and judging each other. We need to sit down and just appreciate gaming a bit more, appreciate gaming for what it is, something we have fun with. Not everything needs to be an artistic masterpiece, not everything needs to appeal to everything, glitches happen, and someone is going to disagree with you about Ubisofts Spiderman game on PS4, but who cares. What really matters is that you're having fun, and if you see someone enjoying something you don't like here's a little piece of advice: don't attack them for it (unless of course that thing is discriminatory in any way that is), they're people like you. Let people have fun.
