Update: The bug that occasionally left archaeologists floating or getting stuck in walls has now been fixed. It's safe to explore again. 

Original story: Heaven's Vault, the moon-hopping archaeological adventure, finally has a decent fast travel option thanks to an update. It went live yesterday, and as well as letting you skip the game's few dull bits, it also makes searching for ruins a little easier and improves your robo-butler's navigation skills. 

Between exploring ancient palaces and graveyards, you need to sail across the nebula, riding on ethereal cosmic rivers. It's kind of lovely, but also pretty boring. There's not much to do on these rivers, and they can be a chore to navigate thanks to clunky controls. But you can now sidestep that by letting Six take the helm after you've plotted a course. 

Previously, fast travel was only possible between a few locations. While in your ship, you could choose to rest and let Six take over, but sometimes you'd be dumped in the river without the option, while limited locations made it only occasionally handy. Now, you can fast travel whenever you want, as long as it's down a river you've already explored. 

When you're in your ship, travelling down your plotted course, you'll quickly be given the option to hand control over to Six. He'll immediately take you to your destination, unless it's somewhere you've never been. In that case, he'll take you as far as you've explored, and then you'll get control again. This means you won't miss all the banter on board the ship, and you'll be able to find optional ruins to loot.

I'm finding it a big improvement. I've adored the adventure so far, and I get the sense that I'm nearing the end, but much of the time spent navigating the rivers has felt like a waste. Once you've gone down a river, there's not much reason to do it again. But now I'm getting straight to the good bits, and no longer sighing when it's time to leave a moon and head back to the ship. 

Unfortunately, the update introduced a new bug that can occasionally leave you standing in mid-air or getting stuck under stairs. I contacted Inkle last night and was told a fix was in the works, and if you do fall foul of this bug, send your save file to info@inklestudios.com and they'll dig you out.  

A whole lot of PC games these days are never really finished. Elder PC gamers can grouch about the good old days, where there was no such thing as a day-one patch or a season pass. Back then games just kinda worked, and I already feel like a grandpa for saying that. Then again, sometimes they didn't, and a broken game couldn't be fixed, or a bad game couldn't become a great one over years of updates and improvements.

So there are some positives about this era of endless post-release maintenance. In 2019 there are tons of success stories of games that were either ignored or derided at launch, and have since found an ironclad community thanks to some expertly deployed patches and updates. No game is beyond saving anymore, and I will be completely unsurprised if, in 2020, Fallout 76 is tearing up Twitch.

With that in mind, I've gone in search of the updates from this always-online era that truly transformed their games. Here are the eight best patches in modern PC gaming history.

Hearthstone patch 5.0: Whispers of the Old Gods

Date: April 2016

It took a while for Blizzard to establish a baseline power-level for its ludicrously popular card game, and after two supremely overpowered sets in Goblins vs. Gnomes and the Curse of Naxxramas (and a comparatively weaker set with The Grand Tournament), the company finally arrived at a happy medium with Whispers of the Old Gods. The Hearthstone team smartly integrated a rotation system that banished old uber-strong cards to the ether, letting the players mess around with the tastefully effective, unoppressive sets left over.

Ask any Hearthstone lifer, and they'll point to Old Gods as the best meta the game has ever nurtured. My only complaint is that Hearthstone was never this good again.

Rainbow Six Siege patch 2.1: Velvet Shell

Date: February 2017

I remember Velvet Shell as Rainbow Six Siege's victory lap. After a widely-ignored launch and persistent issues with cheaters and server lag, Siege rose from the ashes as the FPS du jour for millions of players. Seemingly out of nowhere, it was huge. In reality, of course, that growth took many months, but this was the turning point.

Velvet Shell marked the beginning of Ubisoft's second year of content for the game, which seemed liked a pipedream in 2016. The operators, Jackal and Mira, showed that the developers had plenty of good character designs left in the tank, and Coastline is probably still my favorite map on the servers.

Team Fortress 2 patch: Love And War

Date: June 2014

Have you booted up Team Fortress 2 recently? It is incomprehensible. The vast majority of my playtime was back with the Orange Box, when the game was a meat-and-potatoes class-based shooter, with all the extremities dutifully cut back till it was lean and mean. Now there's crafting, and lootboxes, and costumes, and alternative weapons, and... I don't know. It's bizarre. 

The June 2014 patch is perhaps the best example of that giddy excess. Not only did it add new weapons (the Heavy can punch with a mutated sandwich now!), it also gave us some of the most memorable taunts in the game with the conga, the square dance, and the rock, paper, scissors. 

This year marks the 12th year of Team Fortress 2. Will it ever slow down?

The Division patch 1.4

Date: October 2016

I have a soft spot for the first Division. It launched in such a beguiling unfinished state. (Remember what the endgame was like after launch?) 1.4 didn't add a bunch of new content like the other entries on this list, but it did make the game way more palatable to anyone interested in playing it casually. Loot rates were juiced, and the World Tier system flattened enemy levels in a vaguely Skyrim-esque way.

As has become customary in loot shooters, Ubisoft figured out exactly how their game should work a few months after launch. It's a lesson well-earned. I don't think I've heard a single "this game is broken" complaint about The Division 2 since it dropped. 

No Man's Sky patch 1.5: No Man's Sky Next

Date: July 2018

What will the legacy of No Man's Sky be 10 years from now? There was a fanatical scrutiny of the game's promises (some of which was self-inflicted by the developers, some not) and a wild backlash at launch that it failed to deliver the infinitely playable ur-game. Still, Hello Games kept plugging away, even after the outcry, and No Man's Sky Next got the team pretty close to what that infamous Game Awards trailer promised. Simplified resources, multiplayer, expanded base-building, and a general blanket of new stuff to support that latent space-faring wanderlust deep within you. It sure is nice that we've arrived at a place where we can feel good about No Man's Sky.

World of Warcraft patch 1.9: The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj

Date: January 2006

This might be a controversial choice, given how many memorable patches World of Warcraft has received, but I've always had a soft spot for Vanilla 1.9. Not only did it introduce two new raids, a whole batch of Old Gods lore, and a revamped zone, we also got the realm-wide supplies grind. Basically, a server couldn't gain access to the raids until the denizens contributed enough bandages, potions, and foodstuffs to the war effort.

It wasn't exactly the smartest design—I mean, what was there really to gain for the non-raiders of Azeroth?—but it was an daring idea that was representative of the strong, localized identities of World of Warcraft before the multiverse collapsed.

Warframe update 24: Fortuna

Date: November 2018

When Fortuna hit servers last November, Warframe broke 100,000 concurrent players. Somehow, the little MMO shooter that had flown under the radar since 2013 had grown into one of the most popular games in the world. Fortuna gave players hoverboards, a delightfully ersatz Venus map, and a genuinely provocative story set around a bunch of thugs running a debt-slavery ring, in a beautiful Blade Runner colony.

Warframe's been a great free-to-play experience for a good long while, but Fortuna really feels like Digital Extremes at the top of its game. Out of every entry on this list, I don't think there's an argument that Warframe has been improved by patches the most.

Fortnite patch 1.6: Battle Royale 

Date: September 2017

No patch has ever turned around the fortunes of a game faster, and with more earth-shaking ferocity than this Fortnite patch. The story goes that in the middle of the summer of 2017, as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds was tearing up Twitch, a small team at Epic threw together a simple battle royale module in two months. That mode was launched onto the live servers with patch 1.6, and the rest is history.

No content update has had a more spectacular impact on the culture, and honestly, it's kind of strange to think of something as massive as Fortnite Battle Royale in the context of the usual bug-squashing and quality-of-life improvements that define most video game patches. It's living proof that it doesn't matter how moribund a game looks. One brilliant pivot is all you need to survive. Sorry, Fortnite: Save The World fans.

The superhero MMO City of Heroes went offline for good in 2012—or so it seemed until a week ago, when the existence of a fully-functioning private server that had been kept secret for six years was suddenly revealed to the public. Called SCORE—Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers—its existence was revealed by a YouTuber named Destroyer Stroyer, who said that server only had about 3000 total players, many of them friends and family of the dev team and all vetted by a group of admins and subject to an NDA, which apparently Destroyer Stroyer did not feel bound by. 

Reacting to the leak, a member of the development team said that the CoH server was kept quiet because a similar effort to keep the even-older MMO Tabula Rasa going private ended in a cease-and-desist order from NCSoft in 2011. Despite calls from the CoH community to take the project public, the developer also said that it would continue to operate as an invite-only server, "unless and until we are certain that a Cease and Desist order is no longer a threat." 

But now that the game has been revealed to the public, it seems that the threat of a C&D has been enough to force it offline. "We are on a direct course for legal action. As such, steps must be taken in order to protect the people involved in this project, their families, and their futures," a message posted to the City of Heroes Discord states. "We wanted to see our City return, but to do so at the destruction of the lives of those involved is too great a risk to take." 

The good news is that the takedown is not necessarily the end of the project. A time frame isn't currently available but the team said that it will continue its efforts to bring the game back to life. 

"We are in discussions to do what we can to revive some form of the server, however we do not wish to commit to a point in the future that we may not be able to reach. You have trusted us to this point," the message says. "We ask you to extend that trust, and we will in turn do everything within our power to prove to you that we are deserving of it." 

A newer update from the project leader says that the project is "heading into legal fuckery," but also implies that it hasn't actually got there yet. The situation is obviously confused—"This is a panic spiral and we are trying to collect ourselves," they wrote—but the gist of the update is that the situation may not be as dire as it first appeared. 

The server that was operating is down and "we do not physically have them," but there's apparently another drive, currently being verified, that also contains the server binaries. More importantly, it sounds like there has not been a formal request for a takedown. "As of now, we are running on the assumption that there is no DMCA," the most recent update says.

"We have a gameplan. It depends on verifying this code right now. Once it is achieved, we are pushing to get a server back up immediately. The original goal of the server has been to get a stable i24 for distribution and by the Well of the Furies we will get it. This chaos was unprofessional on my part (partly from my inexperience), and triggers were being pulled before we even had the horses at the races. We will also be futureproofing future development to make sure this kind of clusterfuck will never happen again." 

Interestingly, Destroyer Stroyer's video about the server has also been taken offline. I've reached out to the developers for more information and will update if I receive a reply. 

Blitz is busted. I haven’t always felt this way, but it has always been true. Of all 46 Rainbow Six Siege operators, nobody has a more confounding history than the shield-bearing attacker who blinds enemies if they get too close. Depending on who you ask, he’s either one of the worst operators in the game or so good he’s unfair.

Ubisoft has been tweaking Blitz (and his eyeballs) for years in an attempt to make him “less frustrating” to play against while also serving a purpose. A big rework in 2017 increased his movement speed and let him keep his shield up while sprinting. In Ubi’s eyes, this allowed him to finally “blitz” the competition.

Previously, doing well with Blitz relied a lot on your positioning and hoping an enemy wouldn’t shoot your feet before you could close the distance. But New Blitz could suddenly rush into a room with ease. He was terrifying and clearly overpowered. Soon after, a nerf slowed him down to a manageable speed, but he was still too frustrating. Another nerf early last year took away one of his flash charges and reduced the range on flashes by 3 meters. In the latest Burnt Horizon patch this month, his cooldown between flashes was dramatically raised from 2 to 7 seconds. As expected, it still hasn’t fixed the problem. So why does nobody ever seem happy with the current Blitz? 

(Courtesy of missfelinewitch on Reddit)

Partly, it’s because shields have problems across the board. Ubisoft recently identified an issue with camera sync on shield ops that allows the user to be shot even when they’re blocking bullets from their perspective. That’s being worked on, but there’s a larger balancing problem. Shield melee is wonky. Solid hits sometimes don’t work and other times clear misses hit their mark. Siege’s melee is meant as a last resort in combat, but for shields it often becomes a primary weapon. Countering a shield requires swiping it away with melee and exposing the operator to attacks. This has always felt awkward and doesn’t fit Siege’s usual careful, considered approach. And it’s often a mess, as you can observe above.

Blitz’s biggest problem, and the one that Ubi has failed to meaningfully address, is that his fundamental premise is flawed. He relies completely on an all or nothing approach—if I can get close enough to blind you, I will almost surely win the fight. If not, I’m probably dead. That is frustrating for both sides. It sucks to be completely blinded (and subsequently killed) because Blitz suddenly rushed around a corner. It equally sucks to be forced into a long range fight as Blitz, who only carries a pistol.

(Courtesy of Partyhelmet on Reddit)

Other Siege operators that have existed in this all-or-nothing territory have been substantially reworked. Before Kapkan’s rework, one step into his traps was instant death. Thatcher’s EMP grenades used to destroy all electronics, but now temporarily shut off cameras. Caveira’s pistol damage was lowered from 99 to 64 because she was frustrating to play against. In the future, Ubi wants to rework Frost’s Welcome Mats for similar reasons.

There’s one shield operator that isn’t frustrating in the same way—Clash, coincidentally the only shieldbearer to be added after launch. Her shield protects her entire body and she can’t shoot or melee when it's equipped. It’s not frustrating to fight Clash the way it is Blitz because she is deliberately designed to bypass the technical issues with shields and avoid extremes. No weird melee hits or instant kill scenarios. She can be easily overwhelmed without teammate support, but that’s a fair deal.

Fights shouldn’t boil down to whether or not Blitz got close enough to blind his prey. The best operators have nuance. He needs a full rework or temporary removal from the game, not small changes that maintain the status quo. 

This is what I would do to Blitz to make him less frustrating while maintaining his aggressive nature.

• Flashes from the shield no longer blind an enemy completely. They disorient victims enough to impart a disadvantage, but they can still fight back.
• Blitz can no longer melee with his shield. Alternatively, melee deals less damage. Extend this rule to all shields, and we’re getting somewhere.
• Blitz’s flash shield has a longer range. His new goal is to get close enough to disorient foes (4-7 meters), but keep his distance to avoid being overrun by a melee hit. Add a teammate and he’s a worthy support operator.
• Shield hipfire becomes slightly more accurate within 5 meters. This compensates for the loss of melee while still encouraging Blitz to drop the shield for a precise shot.
• Max flash charges raised from 4 to 5.
• Blitz reverted back to 3-armor. He doesn’t need speed to do his job and the extra armor increases his survivability.

That’s one interpretation of how to improve Blitz, but I’m sure there are other options. Reworks are a tricky tightrope to walk. Kapkan V2 is a more interesting and versatile take on his original vision. Lion’s recent rework successfully made his map scan less intrusive, but he’s also boring as a result. I believe the devs can thread the needle to fix Blitz, but they first have to acknowledge that he’s broken.

Update: Barone has responded in a series of tweets, saying that the job posting isn't accurately conveying the level of work he is expecting out of the position.

Original Story: Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone is expanding his Seattle studio with a new team, and more Stardew Valley, in whatever form that takes, is exciting. There's nothing unusual about the growth—the game has sold more than 3.5M copies across all platforms—but I bring it up because the first job posting is so comically overstuffed with responsibilities that it's hard to believe anyone would be able to do it for more than a week.

It's really a sight to behold. Whoever were to take the position, simply called 'Administrator,' would be responsible for:

• Updating social media feeds
• Updating the Stardew Valley website
• Collecting feedback from players
• Answering troubleshooting emails
• Maintaining payroll and employee benefits
• Hiring and on-boarding new employees
• Managing travel logistics
• Executing projects with contractors
• Corresponding with "external business partners to track and maintain various projects"
• Organizing and stocking the office
• Mailing packages
• Working with an accounting firm to maintain finance records 

And that's the abridged version. The job title, put more accurately, is 'social media and community and business development and office and human resources manager producer accountant.' 

The qualifications Barone is looking for are likewise broad. He wants someone who understands difficult subjects like employee benefits and employment law, who can publicly represent Stardew Valley, has web development skills, can grapple with office equipment, and who has an iron grip on the nucleus of all job postings, Microsoft Office Suite.

At such a small developer—it's just Barone right now, as far as I know—this may all sound like more than it really is. But as the "core team" grows, the idea that someone could be a marketing and project manager, HR manager, accountant, and more without exploding is just a little questionable. These are all different fields.

It makes some sense why Barone would seek such a multifaceted generalist: he created Stardew Valley largely by himself, with some help from publisher Chucklefish, which he recently split with. (It is probably not coincidental that some of the listed responsibilities, such as promotion and working with third-parties, are things a publisher might provide.)

But Twitter users were quick to point out that making a game by yourself isn't the same as running every part of a multi-employee business. Human resources is especially not something typically mixed with other roles, given the sensitive nature of the information being handled.

I've asked Barone if, given the feedback, he's thinking of modifying the job description before making a hire. If not, then I hope those who apply ask for seven figure salaries. If you make it through a year, you'll have earned it.

Little Misfortune is an adventure game about an eight-year-old girl, Misfortune Ramirez Hernandez, who follows her new friend Mr. Voice into the deep, dark forest to seek Eternal Happiness as a gift for her mother. Sounds fine, right? 

The game is all about exploration, choices, and consequences, and yes, it looks... a bit strange. But that's fine, because as of today there's a demo, so you can see what it's all about before you commit. 

It's a short demo, about 15 minutes long, but it "sets the tone for the whole game," according to the description, with an introduction to the main characters, gameplay, "and the darkly mysterious world of Misfortune." It's available from Steam or, if you prefer the no-DRM route, from Itch.io—which also enables you to toss a few bucks at the developers, if you really like what you see. 

I'm honestly not sure what to make of it at this point. The Steam description includes a list of features that make it sound like a spooky-cute tale—something Tim Burton might whip up for the Cartoon Network, maybe. 

• You may pet a doggy, a fishy, a wolfie, the Kraken, the kitty and the foxy.
• Visit a pet cemetery with a shovel.
• Now with real human voices: Hear Misfortune say some pretty cute things!
• Missing children.
• There's a monster!
• Fall in love.
• Commit petty crimes.

But the demo itself hints at something much darker: It looks cute but it sure doesn't play that way. Misfortune's father is abusive, her mother is neglectful, and her home life—as you'd expect, given all that—appears extremely dysfunctional. 

The previous game from developer Killmonday Games might offer some insight into what to expect. Fran Bow, released in 2015, is a "creepy adventure" about a young girl "struggling with a mental disorder and an unfair destiny." It sounds awfully dark too—Fran Bow is institutionalized after witnessing the murder of her parents—but has an overwhelmingly positive user score on Steam, across more than 4200 reviews.   

As unsettling as it is, I think it's very promising, too. The interface is simplistic, but the art, music, and voice work are excellent. If the story can come up to the same level, Little Misfortune could be quite an experience. It's expected to be released later this year, and there's a website with more up at littlemisfortune.com.   

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice version 1.03 will roll out later today across all platforms.

FromSoftware has confirmed the update will go live at 6pm PT / 9pm ET today (which is 2am on Tuesday April 23, 2019, UK time). 

According to Gematsu's translation, the patch will bring improvements to strategic approaches, specifically an adjustment to the "efficiency and Spirit Emblem cost [...] to encourage usage and diversity of approach", and a reduction to the posture damage dealt by the first hit of the Combat Arts Senpou Leaping Kicks and High Monk "as it was causing more damage than intended".

From has also increased the poison build-up dealt by the Prosthetic Tool Sabimaru against enemies that were supposed to be weak against it, as well as the drop rate of Divine Confetti for Fencers in Ashina Castle. It has also "adjusted loading screen tips and tutorial text", and fixed a bug where system crashes could corrupt PC save data.

The full patch notes, as translated by Gematsu, are below:

Improvements to Strategic Approaches

• Adjusted the efficiency and Spirit Emblem cost of the following to encourage usage and diversity of approach:
  • Prosthetic Tools: “Lazulite Sacred Flame,” “Loaded Axe” series, “Sparking Axe,” “Lazulite Axe”
  • Combat Arts: “Ashina Cross,” “Dragon Flash,” “One Mind,” “Floating Passage,” “Spiral Cloud Passage,” “Mortal Draw,” “Empowered Mortal Draw”
  • Items: “Spiritfall” series
• Prosthetic Tools: “Lazulite Sacred Flame,” “Loaded Axe” series, “Sparking Axe,” “Lazulite Axe”
• Combat Arts: “Ashina Cross,” “Dragon Flash,” “One Mind,” “Floating Passage,” “Spiral Cloud Passage,” “Mortal Draw,” “Empowered Mortal Draw”
• Items: “Spiritfall” series
• Reduced the Posture damage dealt by the first hit of the Combat Arts “Senpou Leaping Kicks” and “High Monk” as it was causing more damage than intended in certain cases. Posture damage dealt in the latter-half of the combo has been increased.
• Increased the Poison build-up dealt by the Prosthetic Tool “Sabimaru” against enemies that were intended to be weak against it.
• Increased the drop rate of “Divine Confetti” for Fencers in Ashina Castle.
• Adjusted loading screen tips and tutorial text, as well as adding new text.

Other fixes

• Slightly reduced Posture and Vitality of Blazing Bull in order to improve game pacing and balance time in combat.
• Lowered the price of information sold by Anayama the Peddler.
• The Chained Ogre inside Ashina Castle is now Red Eyed.
• Fixed a bug where “Gokan’s Sugar” and “Gokan’s Spiritfall” were not mitigating player Posture damage taken while guarding or deflecting enemy attacks.
• Fixed a bug where system crashes could cause save data to become corrupted on PC.
• Fixed a bug where certain enemies would sometimes stop attacking the player.
• Fixed a bug where certain actions could not be performed after reconfiguring the controls.
• Fixed certain bugs that were allowing the player to access unexpected areas, which could result in becoming unable to obtain items or make further progress.
• Fixed cases of certain text being displayed incorrectly.
• Improved stability.
• Improved performance.
• Other various bug fixes.

If you're playing Sekiro and wish you could infuse your katana with elemental damage on demand like some bosses can, then the modding community has you covered. Thanks to a mod released by ChoongJing this week, you can now buff your katana with five elemental damage effects by drinking from a selection of gourds, letting you set your enemies on fire or smite them with lightning. 

Studio FOW, who have attracted controversy for producing CG porn starring videogame characters, have turned to Kickstarter to fund a game of their own. Called Subverse, they describe it as "a tactical RPG/SHMUP hybrid" where you're the captain of a spaceship called the Mary Celeste and have to assemble a crew. It sounds kind of like Mass Effect 2, only with more explicit sex.

At the time of writing it has raised the equivalent of over $1,200,000 in US dollars, and still has nine days left in its Kickstarter campaign.

Subverse will apparently be "at least a 20 hour game" with two different combat systems, one arcade-style for ship combat and the other a grid-based tactical system for squad vs. squad fights. It will also have "nine waifus" for you to romance. The fact that they use the word "waifu" about 15 times on the Kickstarter page probably tells you everything you need to know about Subverse's tone.

If you're playing Sekiro and wish you could infuse your katana with elemental damage on demand—like some of the bosses can—then modder ChoongJing has you covered. Thanks to a mod they released this week, you can now buff your katana with five elemental damage effects by drinking from a selection of gourds, letting you set your enemies on fire or smite them with lightning. 

The Elemental Weapon Buffs mod adds five new items to the game that, when consumed, each grant you extra fire, divine, poison, lightning or Shura damage. The buffs last five minutes, and you can switch between them by eating or drinking the corresponding item.

The fire, thunder and divine effects are fairly straightforward, and add an extra chunk of elemental damage onto your normal attacks. Poison, in contrast, does 1.25x normal posture damage. The Shura damage—which you get by consuming Ako's Spiritfall—is the most interesting. It doubles all your damage output, gives you 1.3x normal health, but makes you lose a chunk of health every second. It's high risk, high reward.

Each damage type changes the appearance of your sword, and they all look fantastic: you can view a gallery here. The Shura effect even gives you glowing red eyes.

The full installation instructions are on its Nexus mod page. As with other Sekiro mods, you'll need to grab the Sekiro Mod Engine first.

Great moments in PC gaming are short, bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.  

It was all a bit tricky at the time. My friend Mark and I decided to try playing Doom together using our modems (this would have been in the early-to-mid 1990s). The biggest issue was that we each only had one phone line in our apartments, and no cell phones. So we'd talk on the landline, then hang up and plug our lines into our modems and try to connect. If it wasn't working, the question was always: how long should I wait before plugging my phone back in and calling him? What if he's still got his line plugged into his modem and is still trying to connect? What if he's trying to call me at the same time I'm trying to call him? What if he tried calling while my line was still plugged into my modem, and when I finally plugged my phone in he'd given up trying to call and plugged his line back into his modem?

Oh, the trials and tribulations of the early 1990s! It's all so much easier today. But back then it took an entire evening of plugging and unplugging and calling and waiting and wondering.

When we finally did connect, somehow we wound up in co-op rather than in deathmatch. Not wanting to take a chance by quitting and trying to get deathmatch going, we just played co-op for a while, and it was incredibly fun. The novelty of seeing my friend running around in Doom, another actual human being in the game with me for the first time, was so strange and wonderful. And having a friend to fight next to in a game I'd played many times on my own just felt so cool. We played that way until I accidentally shot Mark in the back, killing him (friendly-fire was on), and then we managed to get deathmatch going. Also great fun, hilarious, and really interesting to face-off against another real person in a game in which I'd only ever played against AI.

The only issue was, I was considerably better at the FPS than Mark so I wound up trouncing him quite a bit, and after a few nights of Doom he wanted to try a different multiplayer game: Command & Conquer. This time, he was the one doing the trouncing. I suck at strategy and I never once even came close to beating him. Still fun, though.

There were no dance emotes, no worldwide leaderboards, no simple 'click to join' buttons, and no friends lists back then, but it was still weirdly wonderful to be sitting at my desk and seeing another human being moving around in my game for the first time. Sorry I shot you in the back, Mark.