I get pretty good at a few games but I'm not confident enough to call myself a master. Am good enough to overcome any challenge a game I enjoy can throw at me, and all my favorite games regardless of difficulty I have beaten every challenge, in competitive as well I do aim and usually succeed in unlocking the high tier awards. However I'm no master.
My most successful form of praise is probably in Tekken Tag Tournament II; I had over 1,000 rank matches with a 87% win ratio.
And still I wouldn't call myself any more than 'pretty good', because deep down I knew a lot of players on the game spammed spinning demon or lazer-beams, and attempted to take advantage of 2 bar lag just for me to know what a parry is and learned to adjust my timing with various lag, then all it took was performing powerful juggler combos and infinite strings (I usually rocked Jun & Yoshimitsu or Nina & Jin). It is also worth noting that I very early-on disabled wall arenas so players couldn't just spam Bruce and Paul chains. Most my matches ended up in the sheep field, lol.
Other games I'm pretty good at are most the games I mention in the forums. I've killed every monster in every Monster Hunter game (that's not considered a spin-off) which includes Apex Rajang 140 MH4G. I've beaten Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry games on the crazy difficulty sliders (MNM & DMD) and finally I'm a psychopath who not only beat both The Evil Within games on Akumu, I boot up and play them again and again for lols.
The last time I probably did anything I considered impressive to that extreme is at one point everywhere went bonkers about the Mag demo pre-Rise release claiming it as "impossible" meanwhile I was on my Switch saying "nice challenge, tough but fair"_
I loved how challenging Sifu and Elden Ring can be but I wouldn't really call either too nuts compared to the other things I've listed. I'm sure some ER fan will again tell me "Malenia is the hardest thing ever" in which I would continue to respond. no
Just a fan of mechanical depth and game design challenges. However am not setting any records or winning EVO events. Not by a long-shot!
I would say every game in the Tony Hawk series, I can get some pretty crazy combos going, and complete most goals without much difficulty. That game was my childhood and teenage years haha. Aside from that I’ve gotten decent at quite a few games but wouldn’t say I’ve mastered them. I used to be abysmal at CoD online but I have improved significantly the last couple years after putting more hours into it.
The only games that I'd say I've "mastered" are racing games, in particular motorsport/circuit racing focused ones like Forza Motorsport or F1. I've always been pretty good at them.
most recently demon's souls. i've come up with what i think is the most optimal run, zero farming required. fastest path and strat to get to and comfortably beat flamelurker, and then to get to end game with every npc quest completed and everything world tendency affected unlocked, finishing with smashing old king allant for fun.
back in the day (loooong time ago lol) streetfighter 2 and og mario kart were the first games i really mastered.
i could finish sf2 with any character on level 7. chained 360 d-pad spinning piledrivers with zangief? no problem. i remember sat on my bed as a kid casually beating it on level 7 without taking a hit.
with mario kart bowser was my guy. i played so much i knew every course inside out, exactly when to jump, when and how to powerslide round every corner, when to break the slide and reslide so not to wheelspin, every shortcut etc... and everyone i played seemed to always go for toad or koopa and laughed when i chose tank boy bowser, then i took them to school.
i went to a retro arcade a few years ago and among all the classic arcade machines they had some retro consoles set up, including a famicom and mario kart. was like 20+ years since i last touched it but started playing against another guy and it all just came back to me like i'd never left. i just knew each course like it was burnt into muscle memory. beat challenger after challenger lol. couldnt believe how familiar it felt after all that time. that was a good night. i must've slightly impressed at least several people that night (myself included). very proud
I tend to dabble in many different titles so I don't really master many.
For a while I was pretty good at Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 because I was poor and that's all I played for like 10 years. This was before there was a lot of competitive gaming and rankings or ladders built in to games though so it's not like I was ranked or anything. I just remember being in the top five for most rounds.
I'm pretty good at city-builders and factory games, but that's mostly just because I tend to be obsessive about layouts lol.
I have thought a lot about the rotational speed of inserters in Factorio and how they affect throughput. Wouldn't consider myself a master tho. Approaching 1700 hours.
I have completed no-logic OoT randomizers by using glitches. Def not a master tho.
What Cup said. Between speedrunners, combo mad types, competitive gamers, etc. pretty big stretch to say I've mastered any game lol. Even in fighting games that I've invested thousands of hrs in, would still just be in the range of above-average to pretty good.
Games where I've come the closest to saying so:
- Metal Gear Online PS2 - Kept #1 rank in Sneaking Mission for a while. Death Match was usually in top 10 to top 15. Stayed in top 200 for TDM. Admittedly a busted ranking system, more about how many hrs you played at a certain point. Me and my best bud would run 2 v 6 matches and wreck shit, typically ending like 50/1 kd. But the best player in the game was a dude named Beowulf, we weren't on his level at all.
- Ninja Gaiden Black - Never caught up to the likes of guys like Bigalski, but the main separator was consistency. Otherwise could pull off just about anything in that game, including no hurt any encounter on MNM.
- UMK3 - Honestly it's just because the skill ceiling is super low compared to most fighting games. You can only get so good. But yeah had a pretty dedicated community of UMK3 heads around me for years. All of them owning cabs. We came to find out it wasn't just big fish in a small pond thing, a couple of us really had chops against wider competition.
- MGS2 and MGS3, really just played those games inside out. Not some big accomplishment, but could definitely do whatever I wanted with those games. Would set all kinds of weird self imposed challenges.
I would say the game that I would consider to my closest one to mastering would be Contra for the NES. Can literally just keep playing and rolling the game over, without using the 30 life cheat code of course.
Also kind of mastered Sparkster for the SNES. Each time you beat the game it would roll over and start again on the next difficulty until you hit Crazy Hard mode and beat that. Played through it all from the easiest to Crazy Hard without continuing. Not sure if I could do it without dying mind you, can’t recall. Absolutely loved that game. Played the hell out of it.
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