Random Dialogue

Somehow, beyond all imagining, I’ve returned home relatively unruffled. My major goals in leaving were accomplished, and I actually got some work done while I was there. Almost inconceivable, but there you go.

It was a really interesting experience, and you can see the fruits of my labor over on Massively. More content goes up Monday-Wed.

Best elements from the trip:

• Smooth as silk flights, with extra spaces and exit rows abounding.
• No illness, as far as I can tell.
• Lots of folks paying my new gig compliments.
• A view of a very strange hotel amenity: a touchscreen information board on every floor and all around the lobby:

Overall, the whole thing went really well. Glad I went.

I have been playing a most excellent game today.

I also had the chance to interview Mr. Holkins about this fine achievement in gaming. Perhaps you would like to read what he had to say?

Making one game was difficult but it has not destroyed me. What may destroy me is the reality that by the end of these games we’ll have been talking about almost three years total.

Over at Buttonmashing, Tony asked “What was the moment [in gaming] that took your breath away?” That quest in turn is based on a short blurb at the Megatonik blog.

My favorite gaming moment?

I couldn’t pick one, so here are a handful:

1.) The end of Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. It is, of course, the fantastical future, and you can relive that moment right here. At the time, Ganon was a really satisfying fight, and (outside of the game) has some emotional overtones for me. The two shots that always got to me was ‘Flute Boy Plays Again’, because I always thought the disappearing flute kid was a really haunting beautiful part of that story, and (of course) ‘The Master Sword Sleeps Again … Forever’.

2.) The confrontation with SHODAN at the end of the original System Shock. You know the one: “Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you hope to defeat a perfect, immortal machine?”

3.) The first time I really turned up the volume on the E3 2006 Halo 3 Trailer. Martin O’Donnell is a masterful composer, and listening to that theme at high volumes is, simply put, a moving experience. Makes me proud to be a gamer. Plus I used it to shut up my annoying upstairs neighbors once. That was awesome.

4.) The first time I played Alone in the Dark was also the first time a videogame ever scared me. The moment? The upstairs bedroom of Lucy Morton.

I’ve got one that I’d like to add here, but can’t; it hasn’t happened yet. That moment? The first time I play Mass Effect.

What are some of yours? Comments open for this one.

My Pokemon Pearl friend code, in case you’re interested, is 1847 8180 6109.

Yeah, yeah. I know.

I am told that this is useful as a place to track what I’m writing. If I’m still on your RSS reader: thanks for keeping the faith.

Here’s what I’ve been up to since the start of the year -

Star Trek Legacy Review

Elebits/WarioWare Review

Lost Planet Review

Hotel Dusk Review

2006 In Review

It Must be Time To Burn the Crusade

Why eBay is Small Potatoes

The Sony Station Exchange - The Result of One Year of Trading

Straying from the Flock

Damn. When it’s all laid out like that, I appear to have busy. Sheesh.

An entire sentence I wrote down was quoted by Kyle Orland in a response to some questions about gaming stuff we felt like we’d missed out on. He took probably the best part of the email, so … no problem.

If you’re interested, here’s what I said:

Kyle: What video game do you feel most guilty about never having played?

My dirty, well-kept secret, my ‘hole’ in my gaming knowledge … is in the shape of a snake. Specifically, I’ve never played a single chapter of the Metal Gear Solid series. I have seen the ads, watched others play it; heck, I watched a buddy of mine work his way through most of the first quarter of Sons of the Patriots. I personally have never held the controller while a Metal Gear title was in the disc drive of a console.

I feel like my gaming knowledge is pretty broad; I’ve played everything from Eve Online to Viva Pinata, Splinter Cell to Soul Calibur. But this particular hole has always elicited raised eyebrows and grunts of disbelief from other gamers when I have brought it up. Metal Gear’s nature as one of the driving franchises on Sony hardware makes it sacrosanct. Likewise Kojima’s well-known quirky brilliance is something that every games reviewer is just assumed to have in the back of their minds when comparing titles from Japan.

I do have to say I feel kind of guilty about it. Almost everything I know about the series is one sort of over-the-top accolade or another. The fourth chapter in the saga is going to be a money hat fountain for everyone associated with it.

Kyle: Do you find yourself actively pursuing games outside your usual comfort zone just so you’ll be conversant about them?

All the time. While my appreciation for titles in the RPG, MMOG, RTS, and FPS genres is high, pretty much everything outside those areas just doesn’t do anything for me. I like the odd adventure game once in a while, and I’ve played every title in the Splinter Cell series because I like Sam Fisher, but otherwise I’d normally never play, say, Dead or Alive. That said, I’ve played games in the Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive, Virtua Fighter and Mortal Kombat franchises in recent years to stay on top of things. When Madden was released on the 360, I even Gamefly’d that to see if I could wrap my head around the hype that game carries. I’ll be honest: I don’t get why that thing sells so many copies. It’s … football. And you have to work at it. : /

Kyle: Do you think that breadth or depth of knowledge is more important in a video game journalist (or both)?

I would say it depends. As a single reviewer, I think depth is much more important. Being able to speak with a voice of authority on a given genre is (to my mind) crucial to the relationship between reviewer and reader. If you’re reviewing an RPG the reader wants to know that you’ve played every RPG ever made, so that you can tell the reader (who has not) how this stacks up against the body of work out there. On the other hand, I think news editors and EICs are better served by breadth. Knowing at least a little bit about everything ensures that when news comes in your direction, you at least recognize it coming. You may not understand the full import of a press release or studio buyout, but you’ll at least have some idea where it is coming from.

Kyle: Do you open up every game in that pile of press review copies sitting on your desk just so you’ll be able to say “I played it”?

Not really. If I know that I’m not going to be able to play a game for review, for time or readership interest reasons, I send it back. Why would I want to play “Dragonball Z Budokai Senwhatever 2″?

Kyle: How do you make sure you’re well-versed in all the major games of the day without completely devoting every waking hour to gaming (or perhaps you do devote every waking hour to gaming)?

Not … every hour. I personally go about it in two ways:
1.) Experiential. Even if I’m not reviewing something for Slashdot, if it is a big enough title I will be sure to play it so that I can get a feel for it. GameFly is a wonderful, wonderful service.
2.) Vicarious. RSS feeds filed under ‘Gaming News’ is currently hovering somewhere around 50 strong in Bloglines. I have a whole separate folder for reviews, which has about a dozen or so outlets pouring opinions into my ears every day. While I don’t spend every hour of every day gaming, it definitely feels like I spend almost every hour of the day reading. Once you’ve read the opinions of Greg Kasavin, Chris Grant, Chris Kohler, Sam Kennedy, Brian Crecente, Allen Rausch, *and* Steve Butts, you have a pretty good idea of what a game is like even if you never pick up a controller.

I wish that I talked more about gaming. Not wrote, mind you. I do enough of that, I think. No, I mean talk. Like, with people. This may have something to do with the fracturing and increasing insular nature of my friend-group, but I just don’t get the opportunity to talk games as much as I used to.

If I were talking to a friend, I’d bring up the game that caused me to take an early Christmas break this week: Oblivion. The full title is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and marks the fourth chapter in an ongoing series of games from Bethesda Softworks. None of them are directly story-related (though they all take place in the same world). Their real connection is in gameplay; specifically, an open-ended freeform type of play a lot of people think Grand Theft Auto III invented. Not so. I was enjoying it as far back as 1994, in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls: Arena. The Elder Scroll series are one of the pillars of American computer roleplaying games. Morrowind (the third game in the series), especially, is mentioned in the same breath as games from the Ultima and Baldur’s Gate series’. The completely open playing field means you can do pretty much whatever you want. Oblivion takes this to the furthest extreme, offering you the opportunity to be a hero, a villain, a thief, or a paladin. Or anything in between.

Oblivion has been on my mind lately, because it’s been getting tapped in a lot of ‘best of’ lists for this year. Despite having released waaaay back in March, it’s still on the minds of gamers both console and PC. In the ‘always now, never past’ world of games, that’s saying something. It’s just that good. In fact, Oblivion tops my list for best game of the year, right up there with Half-Life 2: Episode One. In fact, Oblivion is a great example of why I love gaming.

Earlier tonight, I sat down with my much-loved save. This particlar saved game does not include the end-game state; I beat the game all the way back in the spring, to get a sense of things for my review. But, I didn’t want that to be the way the story went for my particular character. I reverted to an earlier save and kept playing. By the time I’d stopped playing, sometime in April, I’d never actually gotten around to beating the game. I’d played over 65 hours with the character, but I’d yet to actually beat the game. I was just having too much fun. I was exploring dungeons, stealing stuff (lots and lots of stuff - 7589 things by the game’s count), doing quests for the citizenry, and generally giving people a reason to talk about the ‘Hero of Kvatch’.

All the talk about the game made me pick back up earlier this week, and for tonight I’d decided I would beat the game again. It took me a lot less time to do this go-round, and the end boss was actually cake for my super-leet thief-warrior. I came loaded for bear, but shouldn’t have worried. He went down like a chump. Even so … and even though I’d already beaten him once … it was a total blast. I celebrated my victory by buying the most expensive house in the game, a 25,000 gold piece mansion in the town of Skingrad. There are display cases in the house, and I set up little examples of my adventures to remind me of good times. Here, I put the armor from each of the major cities; taken from the fallen at the epic Battle of Bruma. There, I put the armor taken off of the fallen Jauffre and Baurus, good friends I’d known since I busted out of jail at the start of the game. In another, I put the staff and robe of the final boss as momentos. I dropped a glowing, humming Oblivion stone on my desk to act as a paperweight, and filled another display case with the hundreds of keys I’d stolen over my career. This is why games are cool. This is why gaming is cool. Jedi may not crave adventures and excitement, but gamers do. This is the real deal; I have the chotchkes to show for it.

As you can imagine, though, setting all this up (and that pesky killing the boss thing) takes quite a bit of time. I sat down at my desk around 9:30 or so, and when I stopped playing to help Katie with some wrapping I said to myself ‘Gosh, I hope it’s not 11:00 yet.’ The cruel, cruel clock said it was already 12:30. I’d spent three hours arranging digital fiddly bits inside the non-existent manor-house I own in a figment place. This sort of ‘gaming fugue’ doesn’t happen to me very often; I can’t let it, it’s a bad place to review a game from. Just the same, I had some things to get done in those three hours.

On the balance, I’m glad I’m a gamer. Sometimes … just sometimes, mind you … I wish games weren’t getting so good.

My review of Viva Pinata should go up this Monday … assuming that I can stop playing it.

ToDo -

• Work on the Domestic Pinatas
• Attract the Ducks, breed em’, feed em’ to the pretztails.
• Build a house for the snails, breed em’, feed em’ to the crows.
• Attract another aracknos, breed em’, feed em’ to the profitamoles. (Fed em’ to the Macacaroons instead)
• Get the daisy population back up to attrack flutterscotches. Breed em’, use a Red to convert a profitamole.
• Hire Diggerling, Weedling
• Breed the Macacaroons
• Finish Breeding the Crowlas
• Breed the Newtgats
• Breed the Mothdrops