What Makes A Gamer: Your Play Style

Well, this week is coming to close with the impending release of Mass Effect 3. The staff at eGamer already know that on that day Cavie will explode like a heavy shock from an overload attack, and dissipate into tiny fragments of Cavie-sighs. But getting back to more a intriguing topic, this week on What Makes A Gamer I thought it would be quite interesting to talk about the different play styles each gamer brings to the games they play. The approaches used in the games our readers play.

Is there a general play style you test in similar games of a genre, or do you branch out and try many different methods? Perhaps you prefer to run in and just shoot at the first living thing you see, like most of FPS gamers (joking of course)? What method do you use the most? For the purposes of this feature I’m going to use eGamer staff as examples of the different play styles. I’ve played with most of the staff here on the odd occasion, except Duncan because he refuses to buy a console and rather prefers playing Starcraft 2 by himself (forever alone boy).

In my case, if the game is an FPS for instance I just run around in the game shooting enemies here and there. I do this with a disregard for any type of objective, mission or purposefully the point of following common sense. Or you can be just be like Azhar and play Crysis so you can punch Koreans through walls and cause epic amounts of mayhem. Azhar loves punching Koreans through walls (in Crysis that is). Maybe that’s how Kim Jong-il was defeated last year; not by old age and disease, but by Azhar and his unique ‘kill everything that moves’ play style.

Moving away from that sort of deranged play style we come across more concerted and tactically infused play styles such as the ones used by Timothy. If you try and challenge Tim to a game (with the exception of Haxball) you’re in for a deep unwelcoming surprise. Tim’s play style is to ‘butt-rape’ you into non-existence through constant perseverance. Tim will figure out all your tactics, expose them, let you suffer and then squash you like a little bug on the end of his nose. Basically, Tim is like a totalitarian leader of some fascist party with a cult of personality where everyone believes Tim to be the god of gaming, and he shoots you on sight for denying him his godliness. But his play style becomes irrelevant in games of chance, some racing games and sports games because he barely plays them, and has no interest and care for killing you in them.

Whilst Dean, on the other hand, has a play style which is increasingly suited to sports, racing games and games of that style. The man even plays some Table Tennis game, and I bet you he would thrash you in it. He’s just a badass that way and rolls with it. Alessandro in contrast to Dean whilst not naturally superior to Dean in racing games will learn a track so well, like the Top Gear track to the point that he knows every turn, and beat Dean. Because we all know Alessandro is using ‘hacks’ and perseverance to win, and that’s not cool in Forza 4.

We can’t forget co-op in the bigger picture of all these variant play styles. Particularly, if you take into consideration squad based games. In my recent experience, the results of Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer component have been ‘lol’ worthy. It was decided by all members of the staff that we were going to band together as a squad in the Mass Effect 3 demo (even Dean) on PC. If I recall, Tim and I were both Vanguards. Dean was a Soldier and Azhar was an Infiltrator. You can already see how this was going to end up. But I digress.

It was decided that we would first play the Noveria map on Bronze Challenge difficulty, and after a few tries we were killing everything with the grace of Shepard’s new melee attack (which is awesome by the way). Dean was shooting things. Tim was running across the map like a lone ranger killing things, whilst leaving Azhar to defend himself. But Azhar was fine because he was sniping enemies like a true boss. All the while, Cavie was on Mumble harking on about all the different strategies we should use and how he progressed so far in the gold challenge with only one extra person.

But Cavie’s play style isn’t so much a style but rather extreme fanboyism to the point that he had sex with Garrus in Mass Effect 2 for an achievement, and played the Mass Effect 3 demo six separate times with all the classes the way through. So after hearing Cavie continually sigh, we ignored all the advice he offered and we tried out the silver challenge difficulty. At first, things started to go pear-shaped as Tim’s Chuck Norris tendencies began to fail, as he ended up on the other side of the map. Dean was being a team player as always, and Azhar suffered some brutal deaths because of Tim’s lone ranger tactics. I was awesome, or at least I thought so. I am not that good, at all. But it beats listening to Cavie’s continual sighing all day. We eventually came together and made a team effort making it to the gold challenge. We tried out the gold challenge mode and died after the forth wave or so.

All in all, it was a good indication for me of how different people are with their play styles. What works for one gamer, may not work for another. It’s all an issue of finding out how you want to play. So dear readers, how do you play your games? If you want to you can mention how you handle your controller or mouse if it pleases you. You can talk about how you play DOTA with friends and Battlefield 3. Tell us all about your play styles.