As Niche Gamer’s resident crypto shill, I strive to stay up-to-date about the latest developments in web3: the Metaverse, blockchain technology, and NFTs. Unfortunately, I write for a video game website, which means I also have to stay up-to-date with the latest baby toys for manchildren.
On a good day, I manage to find a way to combine both topics into one, such as when covering stories about entitled gamers harassing innocent executives for trying to drag them into the next golden age of gaming. This is one of those days.
In this op-ed, I’m going to look through five of the most overrated, underwhelming video games and discuss how they would immeasurably benefit from the inclusion of non-fungible tokens (for all you slow kids in the comments, that’s what NFT stands for!).
Nier Automata
The debut title from the tragically deformed Yoko Taro, Nier Automata impressed midwits with its story about a girl with a sword who has to kill robots in a post-apocalyptic setting and sometimes feels bad about it. Take any Philip K. Dick novel, combine it with one of those Japanese robot cartoons, and add a pretentious orchestral score— that’s basically what you get out of this overrated hack and slash title.
After Toobee choked that other guy and all the robots woke up, I watched the credits roll and felt a profound sense of shame at wasting my time. But then I came up with the perfect idea for a sequel with real potential.
What if the reason that the other robots woke up was because they had connected to a sidechain after the guy in blackface disconnected them from the main network?
That would explain why their eyes changed color. Then the new plot could involve figuring out how to migrate Toobee’s tokens over to the new chain. In the beginning, the gas fees are way too high— but they can be lowered if Toobee kills the other humans and stops them from congesting the network with their transactions. Or maybe instead of killing them, she turns them into NFTs and adds them to her portfolio!
Elden Ring
This roguelike from the guys who made the artificially difficult Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has you explore an open world that looks exactly like Skyrim. George R. R. Martin wrote a bunch of messages on the ground that trick you into running off cliffs and hitting walls looking for secret doors.
You don’t even need to play Elden Ring to know everything about it. It’s the exact same game that’s been trotted out by AAA game studios for over a decade: collect crafting items, unlock pieces of a map, and do fetch quests to get a ring that adds +2 to your prong damage. All filler, no killer— it’s the video game equivalent of high-fructose corn syrup.
Instead of collecting pieces of a broken sigil or rune or whatever, what if the plot of Elden Ring was to defeat each enemy so you could take their Bored Apes? Bosses could be based on the most influential people in crypto, like Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, Troy Baker, and Ashton Kutcher. You could even have side factions like the Punks or the Kitties for PvP battles.
If you die in battle, you have one chance to recover your precious JPEGs. But if you die again before reaching them? All your apes, gone.
Also, I would add an easy mode.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Read the section above about Elden Ring and you’ll know what this game is about. In addition to being generic, it’s also horribly sexist because you have to save a princess who’s locked in a castle, robbing her of the agency to work as a C-suite executive at a diverse corporation.
However, there is one thing I really like about this title— weapon durability. Every time your weapon breaks, you should have to pay a certain amount of Rupeecoin to fix it. But instead of finding Rupeecoin by cutting tall grass or breaking pots, you can earn it by staking Skulltula Tokens to earn passive income in Deku Nuts.
Then, you can take your Deku Nuts and Bombs and contribute to a liquidity pool, which gives you 0.00053 Bombchus. Those Bombchus can be locked in a vault to earn 40,190% APY or 500% APR, but you can’t withdraw them until after playing the Song of Time 30 times.
Doesn’t that sound like way more fun?
Persona 5
I didn’t play this game but from what I can tell, you play as a thin high school student with an active social life and a part-time job. I’m honestly baffled as to why this is so popular among gamers. But the first thing I would change is the soundtrack: disco is dead for a reason. Instead, it should all be EDM: Deadmau5, Steve Aoki, and LMFAO.
According to Wikipedia, this game already takes place in the Metaverse— so that can stay the same.
But instead of trying to gaslight people into sharing your political opinions or whatever, you try to take over their validator nodes in order to push fraudulent transactions via a 51% attack. Then you can use their hash power to mint NFTs of Tarot cards or Pagan deities or any other uninspired Gnostic imagery your little heart desires.
Monster Hunter: Whatever (They’re All The Same)
I have no idea what you’re supposed to do in these games, but I know what you should be doing— running an AMM to prevent opportunities for arbitrage.
The game takes place in the mysterious and exotic land of El Salvador. It’s all about defeating monsters who attempt to destroy DAOs by draining them of liquidity. Some use vampire attacks, while others are clever social engineers who can figure out your secret recovery phrase. You can break their body parts by hitting them with giant graphics cards, which you can overclock for extra heat damage.
Once you defeat a monster, you can use their bodies to create powerful weapons and armor like the Proof of Stake, the Metamask, or the Lightning Net. You can power up before battles by eating Sushi and Pancakes, or you can use one of your daily Smart Contracts to earn extra carves after a successful hunt.
Anyway, the main thing you should take away from this article is that these games all suck in their current states— but if any of the developers hire me as a consultant, they can be a whole lot better.
A quick note about the comments section: If you’d like me to read your comment, please make a donation to offset the carbon emissions required for me to turn on my computer to read it. You can donate crypto to these addresses:
BTC: 1Ph7F9XK2PJqREisF5jBF5ZXWaYZUiLuQw
ETH: 0x49E05E4E3F83CD8e0b2532f8F54502A8Aa5633b8
DOGE: G0b4cK2r3dDit
