Ramblings of a Canadian Freelancer
It’s been some time since I’ve blogged here, but hey, I’ve been busy. Here’s what I’ve been up to:
Defense Grid: The Awakening Review
The Sounds of Street Fightin’ — Street Fighter HD Remix Soundtrack Interview
Here’s what you’d find if you actually read DownWriteFierce.com!
Reviews Review 2008 – Volume One
Reviews Review 2008 – Volume Two
Sega Does What Nintendon’t — And It Isn’t Working
Rear Review: Shaun White Snowboarding
Contention Question (Or, everyone loves to talk about reviews)
If you want to see more writing from me on the topic of games, videogames and/or gaming, do check out my new blog: http://DownWriteFierce.com
I don’t quite know the direction I want to take yet. I considered doing JUST editorials (similar to http://thenewgamer.com) but I think I’m going to slip those in to blog entries, which I promise I’m going to try to make more interesting than anything you’ll read here. Drop me a line with feedback and suggestions!
I’m currently working on getting another blog set up. I set upa blogger-blog because WordPress has been bothering me lately, but I still don’t know if I’m going to use it.
Regardless, the new blog will be used wherever I decide to set it up, and it’s going to be more focused on writing about games. I blabber here, and that’s what I’ll continue to do, but it’ll be a more personal affair on this MitchellDyer.com than it was before. I mean, sure I write about some dumb personal things from time to time. So that’s what you’ll be getting here. General life stuff, whether it’s goings-on that I deem worthy enough to talk about, movies, stupid cartoons… All that. But I think gaming will be limited to non-existent here unless it’s passing chatter. The new blog is going to be more of a “new games journalism” thing, I guess they call it.
It’ll be more about personal experience in games, maybe the odd review (quality — experimenting with styles is something I’ll do here with anime write ups, but that site will be me sitting down and editing reviews that I don’t submit to any publications) and other stuff that I can think of that will make me feel smart. I want to take a stab at something besides reviews and fun features. Maybe I’ll take a more analytical look at development, reviews vs criticism (since that’s a hot topic these days) and other stuff to bloat my ego. It’ll be serious, and, in theory, smart.
At least smarter than the goofy shit you’ll suffer through here.
More to come.
I did the review for Street Fighter HD this week, and it’s safe to say that I freakin’ love this game. It’s gorgeous, sounds great and, well, it’s hella Street Fighter. The refinements are impressive, the slick online multiplayer still has me hooked (intruding on time I should be spending with other games), and the fights feel so, so, good.
People have been complaining about the $15 price tag, which I deliberately avoided mentioning in the review. The deluge of “expensive” games on Arcade and PSN have been getting a lot of unecessary flack lately, but I think that Braid, Castle Crashers, Penny Arcade and Street Fighter are all totally worth your money. Fifteen bones seems like a lot to ask, but I think that console gamers aren’t accustomed to spending that much on something that isn’t off of a retail shelf. Steam offers similarly priced games of comparable quality and I’m suckered in to them every time. And I love it.
It’s only $15. I make more than that in an hour at work, and if I can get a great game like Street Fighter or Castle Crashers for an hour of work, and then suck HOURS of fun out of it with my friends, that’s a steal. Even Braid, which was short and single-player-only, was worth the cash. In fact, I played it twice. I played it for review at Nukoda, and then again because I enjoyed the puzzles and art so much. I’ll never play Braid again, ever, but I absolutely got my money’s worth from Jon Blow’s mini-masterpiece, and I’d happily pay 20 or 30 for whatever he makes next, regardless of length. If your getting a game with lots of fun, a great look, or just general high quality, isn’t that enough to warrant a purchase? You could be playing and having a ball instead of moaning and complaining on forums and blogs about how you’re going to “vote with your dollars” and refuse to support such an outrageous release.
But the rest of us will be happily punching jaws and cutting cutesty knights with a little hole in our wallets, and a big batch of awesome on our hard drive.
Please play Street Fighter. I’ll play with you, if you want, but this is such an excellent remake that I am CRAVING more from Capcom. Bionic Commando is probably my favorite arcade game of the year that doesn’t have “HD Remix” in the title. Even 1942, as hand-hurting as it was, still entertained and impressed me. Capcom is on the right track and I’m dying for more. Vote with your dollars and donate cash in exchange for excellence.
I used to play hockey. I wasn’t very good, but I enjoyed the ever living hell out of it. When I scored a goal, which wasn’t often, it was the highlight of my month. I actually ended up scoring the overtime goal in the Super-Duper-Championship one year — basically the Stanley Cup for 12-year-olds. That was dope.
Before I could barely comprehend how to skate speedily, the parents were always encouraging me to score goals, and the rewards were always amazing. For a kid who was addicted to his PS1 at the time (who am I kidding? I still play my PS1 discs!) the enticing promise of a game as a reward for scoring was something I strove for to my dying breath. I remember busting my ass an entire game once to score a goal (I’m always more of a “play-maker,” giving it to folks who can actually put it between the pipes. My assist count was insane) because my dad promised he’d buy me any game I wanted if I put the puck in the net. Being that I wanted Jet Moto something fierce, I made damn sure that my mate Kevin was feeding me the puck at every opportunity.
I got the goal, and I got the game, and I was proud and happy and zen. I was tearing it up on my Star Wars-y speederbike in swamps, oceans, forests and whatever other areas that game had, and I loved it for ever.
I think about gaming now, and there are so many triple A titles coming each month that it’s hard to keep up with what I want. I was content to play Jet Moto or 2Xtreme or NHL ‘98 ’til the disc was fried, and whatever game my parents bought for me was one I savored and drove in to the ground. Now, games are essentially throwaway pieces of entertainment. I’ve got my own income so I buy and rent every possible game I can. Like movies, I’ll play ‘em and toss ‘em away forever. I notice that I don’t really bask in any game for an extended period of time anymore because there’s really too much to keep up with. With Gears 2 coming up in a few weeks, shortly after Fallout and Fable, I am hoping that that will be my staple multiplayer game.
Gears 1 did it for me, though on the tail end of my caring about the game. I still love it, but again, too much to play. I played the crap outta the online after clearing the campaign once or twice, but it never hooked me in the same way the older games used to because shortly after I got it there was Crackdown and The Darkness and the rest of 2008 to deal with.
Looking back on the PS2, even, I didn’t really have a killer cash flow to keep the games coming in, so when I bought Ratchet and Clank with Christmas gift cards after getting the console and LotR: The Two Towers game, I squeezed the life out of them for months. Rentals broke up the action, but I lived for Two Towers and Ratchet. Shortly after, Jak and Daxter consumed me, but then I got enough money that it all went to buying new games or splitting the cost with friends (and we’d later split the trade in credit–worked nicely).
Fast forwarding to now (again; sorry for being all over the place, but you’ll live) I’ve got oodles of cash to drop on whatever-the-eff-I-want since I’ve got a pretty well paying full time job. That job feeds my freelancing, since I rent buttloads of games for my Scoreboard column on OXM Online, so I get my mitts around basically every relevant (and irrelevant-but-Achievement-heavy) 360 game that comes out. I also find myself more addicted to buying games online. And I mean downloadables, not getting discs shipped from Amazon.
It blows me away that I would live for a 40, 50 dollar or more PS1 game and drown in its awesomeness for months at a time, and that it could keep me occupied for that long. Now, ten bucks buys me a game that’s infinitely better, but doesn’t keep me hooked. Regardless of how freakin’ awesome a game is, I don’t see myself playing them for more than a month after I buy them, but I always feel like I got my money’s worth., Castle Crashers and Braid were both 15 bucks and caused tons of Internet hoop-la, but when you consider that 15 measley bucks got you a game that is ostensibly better in every way than any PS1 game, or most PS2 games (hell, some retail current-gen stuff too), well, that just bamboozles my brain.
I think about all the XBLA stuff I got for five friggin’ dollars and am amazed that, despite not occupying me for more than a few weeks, filled me with as much satisfaction as any game I dedicated a significant period of my adolescant life to. The insane stack of digital downloads that I’ve neglected playing for a long time are purchases I don’t regret because they were cheap and I got so much out of them in a small amount of time.
So now that I’m not killing myself to score a goal to get that one game, I’m doing a lazy job to feed a hobby that borders on addiction (well, it’s a “job” now, or so I can say!) and I blow hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars a year on consoles, retail discs, rentals and downloads… And in smaller portions and quicker bursts, I’m just as satisfied with my ridiculous pile of purchases as I would be ten years ago with one.
I don’t really know what that says about me, gaming culture, or even how consumers operate, but it’s something I picked up on recently. There isn’t a goddamn game in the world that could keep me from playing Fallout 3, and Fallout 3 won’t stop me from playing the 4500 other Xbox games I want to, and will, play before the end of the year.
And with XBLA games and even some PSN downloadable things being so accessibly cheap, it’s hard to say if I’ll ever be short on games to play. I don’t feel overwhelmed with the amount of stuff to play, despite the large list of releases — it feels just right, and I wonder if any less would leave me feeling empty.
What will it take for one game to consume me like games used to when I “worked so hard” to get it? With so many releases that I’m dying to play, and such an easy way of getting to them, it’s hard to say if that’s even possible.
I guess we’ll see how Fallout fares the day after I finish it. Even Metal Gear Solid 4 didn’t bring me back for a second go… And hot damn was that a great game. But I had more to play… and it was probably a remake of some 70 year old Nintendo game.
