-- If I must expose a child to violence, at least let me censor the curses
Divers 2 deserves the biggest shoutout I can give, without actually onboarding a game into my Top Ten of all-time list. To accomplish this, I blog.
HD2 came close. 10th on my list of all-timers is Star Wars Battlefront, a FPS that managed to join the top-ten despite stiff competition from the likes of Halo, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and that extremely tense Rainbow Six game from the N64 days. Each of those games did something better than Star Wars -- Halo, laughs; CoD, action; MoH, campaign; Rainbow Six, nervousness -- but Star Wars did something no other game really ever has: it allowed me to enter a movie. And that is freaking cool. The moments that I've blogged about before, running away from Darth Vader, tripping an AT-AT, blowing up the Death Star, were surreal; they will not leave my memory bank.
So I've buried the reveal: yes, HD2 is amazing, but no it does not overtake Star Wars Battlefront. Yet it is firmly in the honorable mentions category alongside all-timers like OG Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy 7. That is no small praise.
This is not meant to be a review. I'm doing enough of that with my in-progress TV pyramid, so I'd rather just write down some of my favorite memories from this game.
In a way, much like Star Wars, this game made me feel like I was in a movie.
The first time this happened was when I was overwhelmed by bugs, which is a phrase I'll probably type 5 or 6 times more before this post ends. I was in a mission with one other rando, and I had backed myself into a rock outcropping, fresh out of anything that could help me. A titan was about to descend upon me alongside his 100 minion buddies. I double tapped circle to dive away from a piercing claw, and if there was a button I could have tapped to have my character cover his head and curl into the fetal position, I would have.
HD2 came close. 10th on my list of all-timers is Star Wars Battlefront, a FPS that managed to join the top-ten despite stiff competition from the likes of Halo, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and that extremely tense Rainbow Six game from the N64 days. Each of those games did something better than Star Wars -- Halo, laughs; CoD, action; MoH, campaign; Rainbow Six, nervousness -- but Star Wars did something no other game really ever has: it allowed me to enter a movie. And that is freaking cool. The moments that I've blogged about before, running away from Darth Vader, tripping an AT-AT, blowing up the Death Star, were surreal; they will not leave my memory bank.
So I've buried the reveal: yes, HD2 is amazing, but no it does not overtake Star Wars Battlefront. Yet it is firmly in the honorable mentions category alongside all-timers like OG Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy 7. That is no small praise.
This is not meant to be a review. I'm doing enough of that with my in-progress TV pyramid, so I'd rather just write down some of my favorite memories from this game.
In a way, much like Star Wars, this game made me feel like I was in a movie.
The first time this happened was when I was overwhelmed by bugs, which is a phrase I'll probably type 5 or 6 times more before this post ends. I was in a mission with one other rando, and I had backed myself into a rock outcropping, fresh out of anything that could help me. A titan was about to descend upon me alongside his 100 minion buddies. I double tapped circle to dive away from a piercing claw, and if there was a button I could have tapped to have my character cover his head and curl into the fetal position, I would have.
It was during this moment of doom when suddenly, like my prophet before me, I saw a pillar of light descend from the heavens. I hope I'm not being sacrilegious by typing that, but it's exactly what happened. My teammate threw out one of the most powerful ordinances in the game, the orbital laser, so devastating a tool that you can only use it three times a mission and it has a five or 6 minute cooldown between tosses. The laser from the gods circled around me like a shield, vaporizing the small-timers and bringing the Titan to its knees. I survived. The game had written me into a movie. I had just lived what the life of a soldier at Helm's Deep when Gandalf appeared at the top of the hill. I was a trampled Jon Snow, rescued by Sansa at Winterfell. I instantly texted Eric about it, giggling the whole time.
Another favorite moment came when facing my first titan. I was again playing with a rando, and after I died fighting the titan my partner quickly coached me to fly my rebirth pod into the belly of the beast. I did so, delivering a nice chunk of damage, but also finding myself underneath the creature. I ran out and picked up a discarded backpack full of rockets on my way. I realized my teammate had dropped it. I saddled up next to him, and as naturally as running a pick and roll with a stranger on the blacktop, I team-loaded ammo into his rocket launcher at max speed while he fired missile after missile into the juggernaut. This tag-team operation ended the monster quickly. In later days, I'd see titans annihilated in seconds, courtesy of a perfectly placed 500KG, but on this day, my first encounter, I was appropriately frightened by the size of the monster and thrilled by the challenge behind our combined victory.
The first day Eric came over to test the game out he defended the flag of liberty and was all too conservative with his eagle loadouts. Bron was watching with me, and boy did the three of us laugh when the extraction ship landed and the fire thrusters burned Eric to a crisp. I didn't want to expose Bron to this game, but he would not be denied. I tried to just let him play the robot boards, out of fear that the bug boards would give him nightmares, but one day while I was at work he got into a match with some strangers and had no issues turning bugs into juice. I like to imagine what his teammates thought, hearing the unmuted cries of success and failure from a 5-year old voice. I promise I'm not that bad of a parent!
We went to Saint George right around the time Bron and I fell in love with this game and at a playground at our hotel we pretended to be Divers, typing in codes on our arms, and throwing out jet packs and guard dogs as we ran around the slide. Ellie didn't ever get into the game but she liked putting in the extraction codes. At that same hotel where we played was the world's coldest pool known to man, even colder than the ice plunge at Crystal Hot Springs. Makayla broke mine and Ellie's brains by jumping into it non-stop and I bring this up because I like the memory and because our next Divers memory involves another member of the Barber clan.
Last weekend, a couple of years since the hype of Divers has faded, I dialed up HD2 with Cohen and Tristan and it was maybe the most fun match I ever did play. Cohen talks just like a 17-year old gamer would -- "Oh man, this guy is OP!" "I'm cooked, I'm cooked!" "We gotta protect Tristan, he's AFK" "How am I still alive I only have one HP" -- and it made me laugh the whole time. We avoided friendly fire for the most part, I barely missed dividing Tristan into three pieces with a recoilless rifle blast, but Cohen walked under a descending pod at the perfect moment for a hilarious death. Tristan fell into a hole which was another moment for cackling.
Another favorite moment came when facing my first titan. I was again playing with a rando, and after I died fighting the titan my partner quickly coached me to fly my rebirth pod into the belly of the beast. I did so, delivering a nice chunk of damage, but also finding myself underneath the creature. I ran out and picked up a discarded backpack full of rockets on my way. I realized my teammate had dropped it. I saddled up next to him, and as naturally as running a pick and roll with a stranger on the blacktop, I team-loaded ammo into his rocket launcher at max speed while he fired missile after missile into the juggernaut. This tag-team operation ended the monster quickly. In later days, I'd see titans annihilated in seconds, courtesy of a perfectly placed 500KG, but on this day, my first encounter, I was appropriately frightened by the size of the monster and thrilled by the challenge behind our combined victory.
The first day Eric came over to test the game out he defended the flag of liberty and was all too conservative with his eagle loadouts. Bron was watching with me, and boy did the three of us laugh when the extraction ship landed and the fire thrusters burned Eric to a crisp. I didn't want to expose Bron to this game, but he would not be denied. I tried to just let him play the robot boards, out of fear that the bug boards would give him nightmares, but one day while I was at work he got into a match with some strangers and had no issues turning bugs into juice. I like to imagine what his teammates thought, hearing the unmuted cries of success and failure from a 5-year old voice. I promise I'm not that bad of a parent!
We went to Saint George right around the time Bron and I fell in love with this game and at a playground at our hotel we pretended to be Divers, typing in codes on our arms, and throwing out jet packs and guard dogs as we ran around the slide. Ellie didn't ever get into the game but she liked putting in the extraction codes. At that same hotel where we played was the world's coldest pool known to man, even colder than the ice plunge at Crystal Hot Springs. Makayla broke mine and Ellie's brains by jumping into it non-stop and I bring this up because I like the memory and because our next Divers memory involves another member of the Barber clan.
Last weekend, a couple of years since the hype of Divers has faded, I dialed up HD2 with Cohen and Tristan and it was maybe the most fun match I ever did play. Cohen talks just like a 17-year old gamer would -- "Oh man, this guy is OP!" "I'm cooked, I'm cooked!" "We gotta protect Tristan, he's AFK" "How am I still alive I only have one HP" -- and it made me laugh the whole time. We avoided friendly fire for the most part, I barely missed dividing Tristan into three pieces with a recoilless rifle blast, but Cohen walked under a descending pod at the perfect moment for a hilarious death. Tristan fell into a hole which was another moment for cackling.
Another hilarious moment was when Tristan was ambushed and he was screaming, "I'm under attack, I'm under att --" and then the mic went totally silent, like he had actually died. Me and Cohen could not stop laughing. The rest of the time the noise from his end was consistent, as their whole family was in the basement loudly playing Axis and Allies in the background. At one point I believe I heard Dafne say, "I didn't know bugs could explode like that!" During one match we had a random dude join us named Gilderoy Gilbrath and boy did we make fun of that name for a long time. I accidentally shot a hellbomb which blew him up, which may have been the reason he betrayed us at the end of the dive, which is definitely the reason I blasted him while he was in the extraction ship. Because of his ill turn against us, we were dismayed that we couldn't chat him a "gg GG" (good game Gilderoy Gilbrath).
Later a character named Luismiguelalfonso joined us and Cohen just kept saying, "Wow that is so much name. What a name. What. A. Name." During that round we were getting absolutely annihilated and when Luismigueletc joined us I thought for about 8 glorious seconds that Eric had indeed received my earlier text, and had joined our game to save our lives. Alas, twas not so. That would have been the true Gandalf moment.
Divers 2, thank you for being awesome, you created a collaborative game that felt different than everything else that came before. Whether it was the omnipresent threat of friendly fire, the Reddit stories of the war effort -- RIP Malevelon creek-- the fun of team reloading, or the fact that your ability to revive a downed comrade depended on how quickly you could tap arrows under extreme pressure, it just felt like a game where your teammate always mattered. I can’t think of any other one that replicates that feeling of comradery. It was fiction, but it made me believe.
Divers 2, thank you for being awesome, you created a collaborative game that felt different than everything else that came before. Whether it was the omnipresent threat of friendly fire, the Reddit stories of the war effort -- RIP Malevelon creek-- the fun of team reloading, or the fact that your ability to revive a downed comrade depended on how quickly you could tap arrows under extreme pressure, it just felt like a game where your teammate always mattered. I can’t think of any other one that replicates that feeling of comradery. It was fiction, but it made me believe.
Great, great game.
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