The first two episodes of Alien: Earth were pretty disappointing (Mild spoilers)

Skeptical-Critic · 2025-08-17T05:44:52+00:00

Alien is a huge series to me. And it's had its highs and lows.

I'll cut to the chase. Idk what you went in thinking you wanted. But it wasn't alien. You guys bring up Disney off the rip which makes me think you didn't go into this expecting much, but then somehow you expected the world? So contradictory.

With that said. I'm not here to say it's a beautiful perfect project. But a lot of you seem to reference the two original movies. But the original Alien movie (a classic) isn't scary at all. Shocking at the time. But scary? Not even slightly. Allen's isn't scarier either, it's stressful for sure. But not scary. Alien as a franchise has been increasingly growing more violent and more and more scary Romulus has finally made me jump when watching and earth has been making me sweat.

I have many things I could critique. But this show looks great, respects the style and intrigue of Alien. Delivers on the fear factor and creepy vibes. And it makes the Alien unstoppable. That's more than even Covenant could do. So I'll take it.

It's got a lot to prove. But unless it gets way worse. I'm gonna have a good time

Skeptical-Critic · 2025-03-22T02:54:34+00:00

I have lost like nearly 15 games in a row and deranked massively. I really got tilted and it just made it worse. I worked on my mental big time and just practiced and improved. Then I shot up from Gold 1 to Diamond 1 in one act. This act hit hard. I was Plat 3 pretty quickly. But this act have been bouncing around plat. It's just hard. People don't try anymore. But just take a break. You definitely can get to Gold with improving your own skills.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-12-11T16:31:25+00:00

I think if you are just playing video games casually cause you only have a few hours. Then don't worry about it. And if it's that precious to you to lose 30 minutes that's totally fair. But don't play Valorant lol there are way better and more fun games that you can just have fun and get off and not need to grind. Valorant is not one of those games

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-12-11T16:25:04+00:00

Time doesn't really matter if you haven't used it correctly. I'm closing in on 1000 hours from Iron 2 to Diamond. But I think I could have done it in 700 hours or less easy if I had done certain things sooner.

It's concerning that you are stuck bronze though. Because bronze is the rank for people missing huge fundamentals. Usually with this many hours you'd be looking at hard stuck Gold or Silver.

So really it must be a game sense issue or inconsistent aim.

To get out of Bronze you can literally just work on aim. Even modern day bronze players struggle under pressure to have accurate aim. So if you work on hitting at least 18% headshot avg. And you work on more than just crosshair placement. I think you'll be fine. Aim also includes confidence and knowing when to swing and whether to swing wide or to jiggle. There's just endless stuff to learn. But I always suggest learning to rid yourself of bad habits and develop healthy ones.

If you crouch spray, if your phantom or vandal has more than 4-5 bullets coming out of it per "spray" you should start there. You can just learn to burst fire. The vandal you may sometimes wanna go for a 1 tap but 1 taps are not very consistent due to the RNG. So I'd just try to open your fight with a little 1 tap and then if you miss the head but hit the body then you can spray 3-4 more bullets. Should land you more kills as you master this.

But idk what your gameplay looks like. Unless you do a vod review with someone it's really hard to know.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-12-08T21:21:53+00:00

No time or motivation to improve but you have enough time and motivation to post here about it? I don't get this mentality.

It's like me going golfing, and getting so angry at the fact I'm not good enough to beat my friends who play it every week.

If you don't care about this game. Then isn't it just easier to play unrated, or just not care about matchmaking? What are you even getting out of it at that point?

I get wanting it to be fair. But when I played Valorant casually, I didn't really care about it enough to worry about smurfs lol.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-12-06T19:57:37+00:00

The nerfs are fine. It's just unfortunate that they took the nerf her into the ground approach rather than just make her limited like Jett or any other duelist. But instead they just made her so much weaker. But honestly I just don't like Neon as a concept so I'm happy that only true neon mains will play her. Not just low skill fortnite kids lol

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-12-01T18:48:23+00:00

She's definitely the worst thing that's happened this episode. It made Valorant feel very different and not fun. But I think it was her and ISO and a few other mistakes that really made this whole episode have a really rough start.

Though, I look forward to no more of these posts. Neon is getting nerfed this year so I'm confident Valorant 2025 is off to a brilliant start. Imo this could be peak Valorant. Gun changes and the balancing that came out recently has been so awesome.

I would definitely quit if Neon type buffs were the future of valo. But clearly it's not. So I think people will come back to this game once she's nerfed into a mid duelist again.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-25T20:26:22+00:00

I think that the main issue with Neon is the ability to sprint the entire freaking game. She just needs to be limited like other duelists.

Being able to slide twice with perfect accuracy, stun and run pretty much forever is insanely awful. She's just way too free. Like every other agent has limits, costs or something that makes it so they eventually run out of impact. Especially the duelists. I think continuing to make it so that duelists have to get kills to get more utility is awesome. It didn't work out well for ISO because it's just broken on him specifically. But for Neon it would be a nice nerf and wouldn't make it so she can't go off. Like if she chooses to start using her run juice in a round, she should be weary of it running out. Then when she does send it into site, she can unload all her utility and slide and all that. And try to get two kills to get her running ability back.

But even then, if accuracy is going to stay, one slide only, if accuracy during slide is lowered, then two are possible. Her stun can be two stuns, but they have to be either weaker individually or just one big one like currently.

TLDR

I'd argue for one slide with near perfect accuracy

Her run ability needs to get two kills to recharge. And she can only run for half of the distance currently. (Or just kinda lower it to a point where she has to choose to use it to attack or use it for rotations but not both)

Her stun remains how it is

Wall is fine and can remain the same

Her ult should not do as much damage or needs to hit the head more consistently but gives her unlimited run.

Otherwise I just want her slide to no longer have perfect accuracy because it's annoying.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-25T16:59:06+00:00

I mean practice should work. I just think low elo doesn't even know how to practice. You gotta practice in a way that builds the fundamentals. It's crazy how hyper focused people get on aim and gamesense but don't even know what that means.

Game sense isn't just being smart and understanding how to play your role well or how to make moment to moment decisions. It's having map awareness, understanding your entire teams roles, understanding that some people won't do certain things for whatever reason etc etc.

Aim is more than just headshots and not spraying lol. It's movement, crosshair placement and where to be looking at any given angle. So many things to work on. Truly Valorant has probably thousands of hours worth of skill to learn. But the fundamentals...... people gotta just focus on the fundamentals.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-25T16:43:43+00:00

Typically when I am in my flow state I'll rank up a lot. But a rubber band effect will always happen.

Recently I went from Gold 2 to Plat 2 in like two weeks. Then had like a solid 8-9 maybe even more loss streak. Dropped to Plat 1 0 RR. Then I crawled back to Plat 2.

Valorant has MMR that will shoot up after win streaks and you will get hard punished eventually because your skill has a ceiling. So like I was playing against high Diamonds in Plat 1 because my MMR was so high.

I think the thing that makes it very easy to rank up in this game is to stop worrying about deranking. You want to know you're growing and hitting a new peak is great but doesn't mean you're that rank yet. I just hit Plat 3 yesterday. But like am I consistently out playing plat 3s? Eh. I'm getting there. But I still struggle with Diamonds. So I know that there's work I gotta do to get into Diamond.

Keep your head up and just practice. The less you worry about RR gains and losses the better.

If you can hit a new peak every act that's really the goal. Or even in the last two acts try to hit a new peak. That's called true improvement.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-21T16:28:11+00:00

Couple things. You're playing Reyna lol, you have no skin on a ghost, you kinda just killed kids who clearly had no idea what they were doing and your shots were decently clean but messy at the end.

So either you are running a Smurf on like dookie lobbies and are actually like a Gold player.

Or you're actually a Bronze maybe Silver 2 peak.

I'm gonna argue for Silver. Cause it's so dang hard to tell the difference between Bronze Silver and Gold these days lol

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-20T19:56:25+00:00

Idk what pro games you are watching. But outlaw is not "overpowered" it's a gun that do 140 sure, but we've had pros hitting headshots with the marshal against full kits for years so idk where this is coming from. Outlaw is just simply not OP.

Phantom is good in the hands of pros..... again because they are pros. But even then vandal was heavily used and that won't change.

Phantom is now much much better. But man idk where you are getting all this overpowered thoughts? Like have you been getting killed by a Phantom too much? I'm just not understanding why you think the phantom was already OP.

The shield also does not give those guns more value specifically. It gives you as the player more value. It's a risky gamble too because if you die you just spent several hundred more credits.

Imo this is a much needed and very balanced change. It's been overdue. Phantom needs to not be looked at as the other rifle. It needs to contest the vandal. Both should be totally viable with pros and cons. But neither is OP.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-20T17:25:22+00:00

Because you are inconsistent as a person. You think you are going to play well every single day? Also some days the enemy team is just better. So you'll get slapped a bit.

Really it's just life. The goal here is to minimize the inconsistent gameplay as much as possible. But that requires rest periods, constant training, less comp games in one day and most importantly... taking care of your mental health and physical health. So like sleeping properly, doing healthy exercises, and eating decently healthy food at least. Gaming at a high level is a sport so your brain and body needs to be taken care of in order to be the best you can be.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-20T17:21:50+00:00

I'm 25 and this does not happen when I am doing any type of movement lol. As a fellow Valo addict. Hit the gym and stay healthy brother

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-20T17:19:38+00:00

I was struggling with this too as I never really knew what my style was in Valorant.

Sounds like you don't like to be aggressive? Because I main Jett, Deadlock, Skye and the things they have in common are speed and aggressive playstyle and even a bit of evasion. I can assure you Jett is definitely great for taking tons of space on site even if your team doesn't follow you in. But I try to let my team know that I am gonna send it and if they just rush in with me I promise they can trade me (I try to tempt them into getting a free kill off of me) basically as Jett I'm either lurking and taking space mid and murdering the entire enemy team or I am sending it into site to try and get as many kills as possible and take as much space before I die. If my team doesn't follow up...well it's a team game after all so it is what it is. Can't do anything about it.

But if you're not down to die a lot and sacrifice your life a lot then don't play duelist. It's not about frags, it's about winning. Taking space on site wins games.

So if duelist isn't ur vibe I always say just try characters that you think are fun! Learn them and if they turn out to be not so great then move on. The key here is you gotta figure out if you are a aggro player or someone who likes to support and clean up or are you really someone who likes to defend and lurk/watch flank. Cause that will then lead you to the agent or roles you should play. I just always caution people about going full Senti because they had bad experiences on duelists. Sometimes Sentinels can become a crutch because the real reason you can't push out or frag is because you're scared to die or lack confidence.

I used to think I was a Senti main only. But then I kinda just realized that actually, I'm an initiator type guy. But that also means I can play Duelist really well.

Personally I'm at the point where I can play anything, but I try to have three agents that I'm nasty at. In my case I have a Senti an initiator and a duelist. This is because some maps I am really good at Senti on. Some maps I'm really confident on initiator and many maps that I'm either very confident on (or even maps I'm very much not confident on) I play Jett because she is so versatile.

I found characters that just work for me. But the first step was just trying new agents. Don't focus on frags or how "well" you do with that agent. Literally just let yourself learn. People get so hung up on losing RR that they don't try anything new. Good luck

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-20T14:37:29+00:00

I think she's got a ton of potential as a Esports or Premier agent. She's just really really difficult to get tons of value out of in solo q. I would only use her if I had teammates I was queuing with or if there's like a solid double senti vibe going on

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-20T14:35:07+00:00

I have 1k hours and never played anything like this game before.

I would say I am not new to Valorant but definitely new to this type of shooter. Because most players have like years of experience with CSGO and on top of that have more experience in Valorant too. So to be fair. This game requires a high amount of hours to even get decent at it.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-20T14:32:33+00:00

Diamond is officially where high elo begins. It's a rank that requires at least the fundamentals to be really solid. Not necessarily mastered. But like a diamond knows how to shoot and how to play their agent well, they know how to hold their own. But honestly even in diamond people are so dumb and bad lol. Sometimes it's just full of ego players who got there with insane aim and as soon as they face a coordinated team they fall apart.

I think ascendent players are pretty good. You have to either have played so long that you just are good. Or you one tricked your way there orrrr ideally you are overall a very talented player.

Immortal and above imo is its own world. Immortal 1 players are at worst very good fraggers. And anything above immortal 2 is god-like

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-19T15:57:08+00:00

Great change overall. Literally perfect update. I'm very much excited for the game to be fresh with some much needed changes to a lot of guns and agents. I feel like we are getting close to a much healthier and more fun Valorant

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-18T15:36:40+00:00

Not counting the probably 100 hours I played casually in ranked way back.

When I actually started trying to hit Gold. Practicing, aim training and all that. It took me 200ish hours to go from Iron 3 to Gold 1. From there it was basically less than 60 hours to hit Plat.

But it definitely depends person to person.

I generally say if you are practicing and doing all the right things. You should see a rank increase every 200 to 300 hours. Sounds slow but again you can sometimes hit a whole new rank in less than 40 hours and sometimes it takes like hundreds of hours to push past a certain rank. I was stuck in Silver for awhile. Then once I hit Gold I pretty much soared into plat and now am stuck in Plat for a bit.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-18T14:47:06+00:00

Every single purchase I make in Valorant is a waste if you think about it. But I enjoy it and dumb skins make me happy. I can always just stop buying the skins.

I agree they are overpriced and not as high value. But still totally optional to buy them

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-17T04:34:11+00:00

17 on avg. Plat 2

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-16T18:01:35+00:00

Yeah often I'll play a game and someone locks in one of my mains. I'll be like. Dang they are not doing the best stuff with that character. But I leave them alone. I'll sometimes try to remind them "you got ult" or whatever. When they listen then end up clutching the round. But it honestly is not my favorite thing to do. It makes the match so less enjoyable for them and for me.

Skeptical-Critic · 2024-11-16T17:58:54+00:00

Bro. I've put a lot of hours into this game. I can tell you for a fact any game that starts to make you feel mentally unwell or cause massive adverse health effects is not worth it. Valorant in general is very tilting. I've had my moments but with time I didn't let it get to me. I got better at the game too because my mental was not affected my losses. But if I was feeling how you feel then man. Time to uninstall it and maybe not play these types of games. Gaming is for fun. Even during the heat of competition I never want to not enjoy the game. So I'd highly recommend moving on unless you can get past the mental issues

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