I write so many posts, and they get published in random orders, I don’t know what I’ve already said and what I haven’t. But, if I haven’t, here’s a recap: RPG’s are really, really tiring.

I have been doing nothing but playing one RPG after another for the last, I don’t know, eight months, and while they are good games, and I largely enjoy playing them, I haven’t been as thrilled to play video games as I used to be, and frankly, it worries me. I certainly wasn’t getting bored of them, as I still love them as much as ever, and people are still forbidden from touching them, or even looking at them too closely, for that matter.

Seriously, don’t touch them.

So I wondered, where had this apathy come from? Why am I losing some of the glee I once felt when sitting down in front of my collection of consoles and playing to my duck-heart’s content? I wondered if it might have been due to some lugubriousness (hey, I can never find a good place to use that word, so I’m reduced to forcing it in random places!) I have been feeling about life. And that might be some of it. But, it certainly wasn’t all of it.

Because one day, I got in this big “Ratchet and Clank” mood. I get in obsessive moods about all my favorite series at one point or another, but there is something special about this series that none of the others can compete with. I don’t know what it is, but I then go on these several day marathons of random “R&C” cut scenes and gameplay videos on Youtube through the Wii (so it’s all big and awesome on my telly). I don’t do this with any other series, and maybe it’s because this one is just so darn funny. My favorite things to watch are anything related to Dr. Nefarious and Captain Qwark, plus any other cut scenes I remember being good, along with those awesome vid-comics from “Up Your Arsenal” (tee hee). I mean, who didn’t giggle like a five-year old at “Emergency response plan: Number 2”? (Insomniac is comprised of a good number of immature people. And I love them for that.)

In fact, my craze has gotten so bad, I have reduced myself to remembering the dialogue from entire cut scenes (Don’t even get me started on my favorite cut scene from “A Crack in Time”, which wouldn’t be complete without a “super wavy flashback effect”), along with doing impressions of the characters while they’re speaking (I do find it rather unsettling how close I’ve come to impersonating Nefarious, and if you’ve heard that voice of his, you’d understand why), which all started when I found some gameplay videos of a rather funny guy playing the Qwark vid comics who does the same thing. Seriously, check one of these videos out. I don’t typically like gameplay videos where the player talks during it, but he’s too entertaining.

Video from Youtube User: Tealgamemaster

And so, not terribly long ago, but possibly very far away, depending on where you are geographically located, I decided to go on another “R&C” marathon of fun, and I thought to myself, gosh, I really wish I could play those vid comics again. Well, I do have the HD collection of the original trilogy on the PS3, but I don’t have a save file yet… And then, because I’m slow like that, it hit me that my PS2 was already plugged in (my TV only has ports for one console at a time, you see, and I like to switch them as infrequently as possible) because I’ve been playing old PS1 RPG’s on it. Dur.

Overjoyed, I got to playing those vid comics, and even though I had played them countless times before, and they were merely small platforming levels in a much larger game, I had the most fun I’ve had in, well, eight months. It seemed a large part of my gaming lethargy stemmed from not having the right games to play and not because I was turning against my love of (counts on fingers) 14 years. These old RPG’s have been fun enough, but there’s nothing like playing a series you have a really deep connection to like I do with “R&C”. It’s funny because I haven’t been playing these games for that long, but in that short time, I have had some of my happiest hours of gaming, and there’s nothing like returning to such joy to remind yourself exactly why you’re a gamer.

After this gloom I had settled into, this was just what I needed, and what better game than “R&C:UYA”, which I firmly believe is the most important entry into the series. Not only is it a great game, but it introduced Dr. Nefarious, one of the best villains I’ve yet to find, and it was the game where Captain Qwark returned to the side of good. I really didn’t care much for him back when he was naughty. It’s only when he’s good (no matter how incompetent he is at even that) that he’s at his best. Plus, I love the whole superhero/supervillain thing (despite superhero comics being a genre I avoid…), so I particularly loved the vid comics with the backstory on Qwark and Nefarious.

So, I’d like to ask, dear readers and fellow squishies, what series are particularly special to you? What games can you return to that cheer you up more than any other? Let me know your thoughts.

The Duck Whose Only Regret is Not Saving Enough Bolts for the Quack-O-Ray