Out With the New, In With the Old?

November 20th, 2009

Before you start throwing blonde jokes my way for getting that phrase wrong, let me assure you I meant it that way. ;)

Yet another wave of anticipated games will soon be hitting shelves. We’ve already got a taste with titles such as Uncharted 2, Borderlands, Dragon Age: Origins and the sequels to Modern Warfare, Left 4 Dead and Assassin’s Creed. And while I’m excited for the upcoming sequels to Mass Effect, Lost Planet and Bioshock, not to mention stand alones such as Dante’s Inferno, Bayonetta and Heavy Rain, I can’t but feel a little…stressed.

Sure, a little stress stems from knowing I will never have the allotted time I desire to sit down with the aforementioned titles. But the core of it truly comes from the 200+ games I have, sitting in what seems like an endless queue, boxed up. The majority of games in these storage boxes are RPGs ranging from the SNES to PlayStation 2. However there are others in there such as Perfect Dark, Killzone, Devil May Cry, God of War — all titles I wanted to get my hands dirty with but have never had the chance.

It aint rocket science! The fact of the matter is that I have too many games, all purchased with intentions of playing. How did I get myself into this mess?

About a year and a half ago, while I still lived 10 minutes away from work, I was able to come home and put a good couple hours into gaming a night. I was blowing through them like it was nothing. I began running out and went on a big ol’ EBay/garage sale binge and started purchasing games like hotcakes. Well, this past year I moved to Seattle and now have a horrendous hour and a half commute to work and hour and half commute to get home. And this commute, my friends, is where my ‘game time’ has gone to. Yeah, no bueno.

At any rate, I’m contemplating ignoring all future releases and concentrating on my enormous backlog. Sure I’ll be bummed that I’ll be missing out on promising sequels and new IPs, but at the same time I’ll be excited to FINALLY get my hands on some great titles.

Although I’m not sure what I’m going to do, this dilemma has me thinking. When I have so many games in my library that haven’t been touched, why do I keep purchasing newer titles and consoles?

There are the obvious reasons, such as the ability to play online and socialize with gamers thousands of miles away, and franchises in the realm of Final Fantasy and Zelda are reason enough to purchase a new console. However I DO know it’s not the jaw dropping graphics, for example, or this ‘breakthrough’ motion control mambo jambo that keeps me purchasing these new releases.

Because what were video games when I began playing? 8 and 16 bit graphics with simple controls and gameplay; not jaw dropping cut scenes, spectacular textures and online multiplayer.

Yes, we have adapted to these new (and mostly welcomed) improvements to the gaming world and have come to expect nothing less. And for some of our younger gamers, this generation is all they’ve known; which is why I can better understand their unwillingness to play older gen games. But I grew up on those games, and I’m beginning to find it ridiculous that they remained untouched. The older graphics and simplicity don’t bother me one bit; in fact I find it refreshing.

I would say that I’m merely trying to keep up in the world of videogames, that I feel obligated to play these new titles. But that statement wouldn’t be true. Watching this industry grow and advance fascinates me, so it would only seem obvious that I would be first in line to get my hands on the latest and greatest. It’s all out of pure curiosity.

What it boils down to is that it is MY choice to play the new releases and allow the oldies to collect dust. Maybe part of it has to do with my obsession with the ever changing industry, and one of the best ways to experience it first hand is to, well, go hands on. But what’s that saying? “To know where you’re going you have to know where you’ve been”?

So who the hell knows?

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Update – 7/2/2013

It’s too funny I’m reading this now — I just moved AGAIN, and AGAIN I have yet to unpack my older games. I WILL GET TO IT EVENTUALLY.

Actually… I should do that now. >_<

The post Britt5091 Origins: Out With the New, In With the Old? first appeared on A video game blog and other shenanigans | Blondenerd.com.

Night Vision Goggles, Mario Swag and a Link Bookmark.

November 17th, 2009

First things first. Maybe it’s the new phone, or maybe it’s a sudden crack in ability to stand up to peer pressure. But I now haz tweets.

http://twitter.com/Britt5091

Want to follow my life filled with spilled rendering trucks, apartment mishaps, losing underwear and video games? Suuure you do. Or maybe you don’t.

Anyway…

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 came to me on Saturday, November 14, 2009. The good folks at Amazon were a, er, few days late in shipping out my prestige edition of Modern Warfare 2, but it’s all Moogles and Chocobos as I’ve been preoccupied with a few other games.

Most of us agree that Modern Warfare 2 is a hell of a ride. I would say most of us MINUS the Russians, because as of yesterday MW2 had supposedly been banned in the motherland, but it turns out that was horseshit. So I’m sure they’re enjoying it as much as we are.

The real star of the show here, however, are the night vision goggles that came with the prestige edition.

Okay maybe I wouldn’t go that far, but they do provide many hours of entertainment. Saturday night while most of you were playing your own copies of Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age, Brutal Legend or what have you, I was ambling about in the bushes.

The simple rundown: The top of the goggles have three switches. First is for turning the power on/off (I believe it takes 5 AA batteries) the second is for toggling between high/low illumination (think of it like high/low beams for a car) and the third is to switch the type of imagery you want to view through. If you want to feel like you’re in the middle of a sex tape, the green grainy view is perfect; or if that’s not your thing, you can view in black and white.

I have to say, these things work well. Granted, they don’t put out the sharpest image compared to other goggles I’ve peered through, but they are clear enough to identify objects around 50 feet in front of you with relative ease.

Anyone else get the prestige edition?

On Sunday I went to my local EB Games and picked up New Super Mario Bros Wii (anyone else think that is a half-assed name? On the flip side, its brilliant marketing). Apparently, and I don’t know how I missed this, Nintendo was offering 500 Wii points as a preorder bonus? Well I get to the counter and the clerk apologized by saying that that whole deal fell through, but instead he had other Nintendo swag to offer me.

I told him I thought the preorder bonus was going to be a Mario hat, but he said he hadn’t heard of that. At any rate, I left with a Link bookmark, a Mario pin and a Mario notepad — better than nothing I suppose!

I’ve only played with others on the main story mode of NSMB Wii (excluding time played at PAX). Undeniably it’s a blast to play cooperatively with your buddies; however it can become frustrating if you’re playing with a few hotheads. Example: If all of you are trying to jump to a platform and don’t plan it out accordingly, chances are at least one of you will bump/bounce into another person mid jump, knocking them (or you) off course and sending them to certain death. Or, if someone isn?t paying attention and is standing on the edge of a platform you’re attempting to jump to, you will simply deflect off of them and fall.

I’ve never played New Super Mario Bros for the DS, so this experience has been long awaited for me. LONG awaited. Now if only Rare would do the same with the Donkey Kong Country franchise, I’d be one happy camper.

Speaking of being a happy camper, I bet a lot of you are excited for the releases this week (I know I am). What are you picking up?

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Update: 5/6/2013

Dude, I remember being SO stoked for Twitter! I think that was honestly one of the main reasons I wanted to buy a smart phone. I think my first tweet was something along the lines of how the person who I bought Left For Dead from smelled really bad. Yeah. But anyway, it’s so funny to think back on that — as cheesy as it sounds, Twitter really has changed my life! (Not the app itself, but they people I’ve met on there!)

I know those night vision goggles are still around my woman cave somewhere…when I made my Pokemon shrine I had to boot ’em off of the shelf. :(

The post Britt5091 Origins: Night Vision Goggles, Mario Swag and a Link Bookmark. first appeared on A video game blog and other shenanigans | Blondenerd.com.

My Tale of Being a Pansy

November 13th, 2009

Ever heard of a game called Bioshock? Sure you have. And I’m sure the majority of you got your hands on it when released a few years back, ammirite? Anyway, I first attempted to play Bioshock a year ago. I maybe, maybe, got an hour into it before I had to shelve it. Why would I do that to such a great game?

This is embarrassing, but hell I’ve admitted worse on here before.

Bioshock freaked me out.

You have to remember that FPS were not my forte. I could count on one hand the amount of FPS I had attempted (yes, attempted) to get into. You should also know that I am a wuss that LOVES scary films but squirms watching them through the spaces in my fingers.

Mix the anxiety of an unfamiliar genre with enemy lunatics called Splicers that were constantly sneaking up on me and jumping and why do they look like that—

You get it.

That game was put away faster than one could say ‘Big Daddy’. I knew it was a genre that would need to be tackled, wrestled to the ground and conquered someday. But for the time being, I went back to what I knew. RPGs, action/adventure, old school survival horror (RE, Silent Hill) and good ol’ platforming.

Months passed, and never forgotten was my humiliating defeat to the shooter genre. 2K’s underwater venture, however, was simply forgotten.

It was around this time I picked up my PS3. Are you ready for some irony?

One of the first games I picked up was Dead Space.

Really? Dead Space? Looking back on it now, I laugh. I couldn’t finish freakin’ Bioshock but was able to muster through Dead Space.

Hmmm, I’d rather pick a fight with the dude on the right.

I also played through Modern Warfare and spent much time with Halo: ODST. This in turn honed my FPS/TPS skills and I am now comfortable with the genre.

So when I was hit with a nasty cold/flu last week, in went Bioshock and after two days of shooting, electrocuting and incinerating I finally accomplished what I couldn’t a year ago with ease.

Bioshock provided a different experience than anything I’ve played before. The 1960’s setting of Rapture is simply awesome, from the superb music and sound to the unique dialogue and solid story. It all goes so well together, it makes you feel like a place like Rapture could actually exist, or at least be made into a Pirates of the Caribbean Disneyland ride spoof.

Weapon of choice? The wrench. There is ABSOLUTELY nothing more satisfying than whacking Splicers while listening to the sweet symphony of ballroom music in the background. That being said, I found that the wrench quickly became the most effective weapon (for me anyway) and I wish I had the personal discipline to use more of the firearms outside of the necessary moments (security cams, bots, etc).

Looking back, it strikes me as funny that a game such as Bioshock once gave me the heebie-jeebies. It?s interesting how each game we play ‘evolves us’ so to speak. My situation here is a perfect example. Dead Space killed any chance ‘human’ enemies now have (such as those in Bioshock and Resident Evil 4/5) to make the hair on my neck stand up. And Modern Warfare helped me adjust to the anxiety I faced while playing fast paced shooter. After completing these two, I had absolutely no problem with Bioshock.

Yeah. I’m such a badass now.

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Update: April 4th, 2013

Okay, this is too funny. I haven’t done a “Britt5091 Origins” post in four months (my bad) and it just so happens that this was the next post in queue. “But Britt, that’s not funny!” No, and neither is this, but I just wrapped up Bioshock Infinite last night! What are the odds, mang?!

For sure, the Bioshock series has a freaky-deaky somethin’ somethin’ about them. I still haven’t played Bioshock 2, but there’s just somethingabout the first and Infinite that, at times, made me think to myself, “Damn, this IS creepy!” Perhaps it’s the unsettling early to mid 1900’s music, or maybe it’s how dead bodies are strewn everywhere amongst happy posters and talking vending machines.

But in any case, I personally think Bioshock Infinite far surpasses the first Bioshock. I WANT SEX WITH ELIZABETH.

The post Britt5091 Origins: Bioshock: My Tale of Being a Pansy first appeared on A video game blog and other shenanigans | Blondenerd.com.

Being Sick Definitely Has Its Perks

November 11th, 2009

Only two months after having teh swine, I found myself coughing, sneezing and hacking up throat goo (sexy, right?) last week. This, in turn, forced me to call in sick Wednesday and Thursday. Since I don’t work on Fridays or during the weekend, I had five days off of work. Though I felt like shit, I was able to make the most of it.

*Ahem*

…BY DOING NOTHING BY SITTING ON MY ASS AND PLAYING VIDEO GAMES, READING ABOUT VIDEO GAMES AND WATCHING VIDEO GAMES FOR FIVE FREAKIN’ DAYS >__< !!11!

Ohhh yes. I haven’t been able to game-a-thon like that since middle school. It felt soooooo good. And I’ll proudly state that it was one hundred and ten percent worth my consequential aching lower back.

When I had the H1Nerd1 virus I caught from PAX, it took all I had to muster up the strength to sit up for fifteen minutes so I could eat. It was incredibly disappointing to be home for a week only to lie in bed the entire time. There was going to be none of that this time around. Give me a few boxes of Kleenex and some Sudafed and I’m in it for the long haul baby.

I started and finished Bioshock, played a hearty amount of Left 4 Dead (and the L4D2 demo), surfed IGN, rocked out in Guitar Hero 3 (only to quit with a broken ego and a sore wrist), blasted the covenant in ODST, read an issue of Game Informer, got my hands on Enchanted Arms —

— okay hold the phone for a sec. Who here has played Enchanted Arms? For those who have, is the script REALLY that corny throughout the entire game? Seriously, it wasn’t terrible or anything but it was oozing with cheese sauce. I was laughing in astonishment the entire time before turning it off a few hours in. I’m pretty sure I missed the story amidst all the Gorgonzola.

I spent a few hours playing Peggle (I love that game), played the Modern Warfare campaign again in preparation for Friday when I receive MW2 (So…long…to…go…) and started playing Lost Planet.

During this entire escapade, my 360 froze a few times. As much as I’m sure this is due to the fact that it was running for a ridiculous amount of time, it made me a liiiitttle nervous. Thankfully most of the time it would kick back and resume playing, but man was I holding my breath.

I’ll say it again…I haven’t had the opportunity to game like that in, what, 8 years? I tell you, getting older sucks. I almost forgot what it felt like to wake up, knowing you have nothing ahead of you except to hunker down with your favorite games.

But of course, it wouldn’t be MY life if something completely off the wall didn’t happen during my five days of utmost nirvana.

I had just gotten out of the shower on Saturday and immediately began suffering from the ‘ZOMG hot shower to cold air” syndrome. My hair was dripping wet and I was shivering, so I plugged in my hair dryer and got down to business.

A few minutes into drying my hair (aka no progress made) and:

BZZZZZZZT.

The power to my apartment shut off.

All was quiet.

Yes, folks, my hair dyer completely cut power to my apartment.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if the UW football game wasn’t due to air in a few minutes. Or if I didn’t have tantalizing hot wings in the oven. Or if I wasn’t sick and wet hair you know, makes you feel worse. Or if the several game demos I had downloading on my PS3 weren’t almost completed. Or if my appliances didn’t go tits up and die on me after power was restored.

Did I mention this caused my neighbor to lose power as well?

My bad.

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Update – October 22nd, 2012

I FORGOT ABOUT THAT FIVE DAY AWESOMENESS! Holy crap, those days were nothing but pure nirvana! But, yeah, causing a power outage because of my hair dryer sorta-kinda sucked. If I recall correctly, it happened a few more times, too.

And Enchanted Arms…my grandma really, REALLY liked that game but as I said above I remember it being SO incredibly cheesy. Maybe I should give it another shot. Because clearly I have time for another JRPG.

=___=

The post Britt5091 Origins: Being Sick Definitely Has Its Perks first appeared on A video game blog and other shenanigans | Blondenerd.com.

Alright…

November 9th, 2009

How many of you lucky bastards were able to attend a Modern Warfare 2 launch event?

Raise your hand, say “I”, share you story, explain how amazing (or not) it was…rub it in.

As for me, I’m tucked into bed awaiting work tomorrow, knowing where I’d rather be.

:`(

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Update – September 11th, 2012

Oh, I remember those days…back when Call of Duty’s annual launch didn’t bug me.

The post Britt5091 Origins: Alright… first appeared on A video game blog and other shenanigans | Blondenerd.com.