Monthly Archives: November 2014

Food For Thought, Gamer's Life, General Commentary

Stories are the Keys

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Image by Flickr User: Charles Williams (cc)

It’s been an odd year in gaming for me.  Despite all the new games that have come out this year, I’ve often found myself drawn to the senior ranks of my collection. Mirror’s Edge, Final Fantasy VII, KotOR 2, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, etc., somehow they’ve all wound up being much more interesting prospects for my game time than just about everything that’s come out this year so far.  At first I thought it was just a severe case of gamer nostalgia (after all, being back in the day really was awesome Am-I-right?), but that just didn’t feel like a good answer. It took playing Destiny to bring the problem into clear focus: there just wasn’t enough story to be had in many of the newer I played games this year.
Continue reading Stories are the Keys →

Gamer's Life, General Commentary

I see you shiver in antici…pation (of next year’s game releases!)

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Image by Flickr user Joris Louwes
Image by Flickr user Joris Louwes (CC)

In about a week, my copy of Dragon Age: Inquisition will arrive in the mail. Between that, Metroid Prime, Pokemon LeafGreen, and whatever else gaming-wise I can squeeze in here and there, I’m pretty much set for the rest of 2014. There’s a good possibility that holidaytime will bring about the addition of the PlayStation 4 to our gaming brood, which, short of having a handheld and a Steam-only PC, should keep my hands plenty busy for a good long while.

It’s with those thoughts in mind that I contemplate here the coming year in gaming. It seem like the “next-gen” moniker is finally crumbling as “next” becomes “now” and the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are more ubiquitous than ever. True that a sizable handful games coming out in 2015 will only be available to those with the new consoles, but that’s the way these things go – eventually we all have to live with our decisions to upgrade or not. And surely the enormous catalog of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games is nothing to balk at. If anything, the Xbox One and PS4 have quite a lot to live up to.

Continue reading I see you shiver in antici…pation (of next year’s game releases!) →

Gamer's Life

How Time Shortages Turn the Duck Into a Cheat

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Image by Flickr User: Thomas Schrantz
Image by Flickr User: Thomas Schrantz

I used to be a cheater. Fortunately, not the kind one could get in trouble over, but it was something I practiced occasionally, nonetheless. Okay, by occasionally, I mean quite a bit more than occasionally. In fact, I used to do it all the time.

I know, I’m a bad person. Continue reading How Time Shortages Turn the Duck Into a Cheat →

Gamer's Life

Games Only Make Fun Possible

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Image captured by Hatm0nster

After getting so excited for Destiny back in August, it’s less-than-stellar launch and developments have left me more than a little disappointed. I spent a great amount of the time I’ve spent playing it complaining, but the fact is that I’ve put in almost 80 hours of time into the game at this point. The obvious question then, is: “If I dislike it so much, why have I spent so much time in it?” Finding an an answer wasn’t difficult, but facing that answer was. It’s simple really: “I’ve been playing it because, in spite of itself, it’s been fun.” This should not be true! Continue reading Games Only Make Fun Possible →

Gamer's Life, General Commentary, Retro

My Time with Metroid Prime: Recap and Update

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Image by Flickr user Jeremy G.
Image by Flickr user Jeremy G. (CC)

If you’ve been following UWG for awhile, you might recall my profession back in June I was finally going to tackle Metroid Prime, a game that has been languishing in my backlog for over a decade. I gave it a go when it was first released, and despite my love for Super Metroid, things just didn’t work out between us then. I had a hard time with everything about the game, from getting into the story to managing the first-person controls. I long regretted that I didn’t connect with the game, so after years of internal hemming and hawing, I bit the bullet and decided I needed to play through the series at least once before my timely passing. This year seemed as good as any.

Continue reading My Time with Metroid Prime: Recap and Update →

Retro

I Don’t Have the Patience for Multiple Endings

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Image by Flickr User: misiontokyo
Image by Flickr User: misiontokyo

As I’ve been saying, I have been busy catching up on a bunch of old games I was told were the duck’s quack, and one game I beat rather recently was “Chrono Trigger”, a game made by the same developers as “Final Fantasy”. The story involves our heroes traveling through time in their efforts to prevent the monster Lavos from bursting forth from the surface of the planet and causing the apocalypse.  While I would have liked to have had a better main villain than a monster, I definitely see why people have so many good things to say about it. Continue reading I Don’t Have the Patience for Multiple Endings →