holy CRAP i miss this game.

that is all.

MMOs just aren't cutting it for me. they're simply not deep enough.

sounds crazy doesnt it? its true though. you play an mmo, youve got a 4 animation avatar, only real customization is the various gear you have to grind endlessly to earn, but you dont get any CHOICE in the matter. you cant say "oh i like how this helmet looks with these shoulderpads" because then 15 people will harp on how your GS isnt high enough. you cant interact with anything unless its there specifically for it. the plants growing outside, the trash collecting in the corners, all of these are useless polygons, never to be touched or caressed or collected. understandably so, with thousands of players wlking past, for everyone to interact identically would be a bit tricky, and most mmos sidestep the problem by limiting how interactive the environment really is.

well ive had enough. ive pulled the plug on my online gaming, and im going back to single player games... but whats this? they are limited? so is an mmo, it just takes longer for you to realize it. the modern sandbox rpg is no laughing matter. you can spend hundreds... HUNDREDS of hours in the Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3. You can lose DAYS to the gorgeous vistas of Red Dead Revolver. and especially with the work by bethesda, that environment is loaded with items begging to be interacted with, collected, whatevered. once mmos have Oblivion level environmental detail, ill worry about checking out the next crop of online games. i fell in love with the huge world ready to be explored, not the mindless grind of mmos. im sick of delving through forums and guides to get the best strategy for my character when i know id rather just go look around in the jungle and thats the only reason im really levelling anyways. call me casual, maybe im mellowing out in my old age, but i just want to remember more of my gaming than simply "got xp...levelled up....another raid." i'd rather remember when i set off the nuke in megaton, id rather remember making fun of uriel septim's name even though it was patrick stewart (sir). I'd rather follow around Shephard and the Normandy than watch an inanimate auction house teller.

For me, sandbox rpgs/action games are quickly filling the need for hugely in depth gameplay that i once found solace in mmos. perhaps im not alone, but most likely i am. either way, mmos cant structure a cohesive enough narrative to keep me interested and suspend my disbelief long enough to get a character to level. its the nature of the beast. the answer isnt to have a super in depth mmo, because sandbox mmos (mortal online) again just lack a cenral narrative behind which we can get. I'm sorry, im sick of watching video games fight their way to be respectful and be taken seriously as a real mpastime with redeeming qualities, and any artistry is sacrificed in the name of multiplayer. the single player experience should not be sacrificed in favor of xbox live gold account requirements.

I'm sick of the gaming industry. Sick of it completely. Note I said gaming INDUSTRY though. To badmouth the juggernaut of the 'big 3' doesn't mean I'm badmouthing gaming, as I'm not sure what life without video games would even be like, as I've been playing games since literally infancy, and have had handheld game systems on search and rescue missions. Gaming is a cornerstone of not simply my life, but who I am as a person.

But that doesn't mean I enjoy the billion dollar corporate form that gaming has taken on. Look at GameSpot nowadays. Nobody I know likes this site. The only reason I come here is because I don't feel like finding another site to keep track of my games, and I still love the CCU and all the wacky and semi-wacky members. The reviews on this site are based almost entirely on popularity and funding, not originality or creativity or simply quality in a game. It makes you want to just dig through that pile of 2600 cartridges at the used store and find something obscure and good.

On the other hand, youre almost ostracized for liking popular games. As a 'hardcore' gamer (I guess), for me to come out and say I like the Halo series, or that I feel Modern Warfare is handsdown the best CoD (or even IW>Treyarch) seems, for a lot of people, to make me somehow 'less hardcore'.

For the last year I've been unemployed while waiting for funding to begin for my college years. So that means my new game buying has been cut down 75% at least (I could never give it up completely). It also means that I'm spending more time playing the collection I *do* have (despite it being lowest on the CCU leaderboards, It's still about x100 any of my friends).

The modern hyper-media bombardment of the gaming industry has bred gamers into opinionated, hateful fanboys. I prefer 360 to PS3, but that's mainly because I own one and the PS3 doesn't have enough unique titles to justify its price tag for my home, yet. Someday I'll get one, and I'm pretty sure I'll like it more than my Wii (considering it's my least favorite system I own atm). Simply stating that opinion is enough for many to place me into the xbox fanboy pile, although my preference for 360 over PS3 doesnt necessarily mean I *LOVE* the xbox (although I used to, until the NXE came out).

Chances are, if you are reading this, you're probably a member of CCU since I really don't bother with much else on GS. If thats the case, I'm preaching to the choir. Why is it so hard to find a gaming community that isn't made up of fanboys trying to debunk all theories that their opposed system is worth anything? or just filled with competitive people whose world begins and ends with the fact that theyre lvl 10 prestige in CoD4? I'm opinionated, meaning I don't love EVERY game that comes out, mainly because I hate tv and all its media tie ins, I dont like sports at all so thats an entire genre of games I don't care for. I'm not a big fan of puzzle games. And just ebcause a game is part of a franchise also doesn't mean I'll enjoy it. That doesn't mean I'm right, it just means I know what I'm looking for in a game.

Which brings me to reviews. This site's reviews are pure crap. Almost across the board, theyre either far too low, or FAR too high. What one game gets condemned for, another is praised. I guess in gaming, like in all other parts of life, I'm on my own to find the niche.

So there are only 3 reviewers I will pay attention to.

Seanbaby

Angry Videogame Nerd

Classic Game Room

Why? because they don't review games for corporations (Seanbaby is borderline, but his role at EGM was to review bad games) they review them because they actually enjoy video games!

Remember just loving games for games? not for their graphics or their online access? I do.

I don't like where the 'gaming industry' is headed, but just like the auto industry, it will never die. There's always hope.

Sega. I never was a huge fan, but they had so many great titles and whatnot that you cant not like Sega.

Recently, Sega announced they were closing the servers to Chromehounds. Chromehounds is on the Xbox 360. That means I'm paying for an xbox gold account and i cant play this game online. Anyone who has played Chromehounds knows that without online play, there is no purpose to this game. So it's a current gen title on a current gen platform, and theyre closing it. Why? who knows, but Sega is now in the same realm as Sony in my book. They screwed all the PSO players when they closed those servers, and every other version of PS since. What other company does this? Pull the plug on a current game for what? to spend more money on a pile of **** Sonic game?

Lately, the entire industry is pissing me off. Sure, Force Unleashed is great, Fallout 3 is ok, Ghostbusters was fun, but come on, all the promise of this generation of gaming is gone completely. The games are all let downs it seems.

I will not ever purchase another Sega game with online play again, because it's obvious how far they support their ****.

f uck you sega. That was the only game I bothered playing online.

This blog is going to start off as more of a rant, but hopefully a few of the ideas I've got behind this will shine through the muck.

It is official. After 16 years and hundreds of hours, I am officially sick and tired of Final Fantasy series. This overblown gargantuan of an out of control bank account must be dealt with harshly. Maybe it's the new FF13 trailer that did it, maybe it's been building, but most likely, it's honestly just overdue regardless.

Let's give a little background on me. I am 30. Well, 29 and a half (gets hard when i run out of fingers and toes). So I remember renting my NES games in the very early days of the nineteen nineties. In my town of Warren Michigan, a disgusting filthy iron worker neighborhood of Detroit, there were few Blockbusters or Hollywood Videos. What we had were Bodegas. Small convenience stores ran by middle easterners, their content filled up with hustlers with the covers torn off and sold in variety packs, local brand beef jerky, spaghetti strainers and other odd assortments of kitchen ware that nobody would ever purchase from such an establishment. The one closest to me, Cerra's, actually had a room set aside for video tape rentals. This was highly out of the ordinary. Most places had the videos on a shelf behind the counter. Here was an actual room with two smaller rooms inside. one was fairly large and filled with porn. the other was a closet with the door taken off, and inside were rows of NES titles.

That was where I first rented Final Fantasy. It left an indelible mark on my psyche for a long time, as it did for oh so many. You can imagine my elation when the next year I received a new Super Nintendo. You can also imagine my surprise when BAM, there in its gorgeous red box, Final Fantasy II for the Super Nintendo. Cerra's got a copy early on, and I rented it so much that I most likely could have bought it over and over. I can definitely say that Final Fantasy 2 (or IV, as I now know) was the biggest impact a game has ever had on me.

When Final Fantasy III came out, I don't think I was ready. My friend and I planned on spending a weekend together in the summer, so we rented two games. Comix Zone for his Genesis, and FF3 for my SNES. We poured over every second of that game with such ferocity, few games can instill a memory in me like that.

After a while, I got 'too old' for video games and moved on. Then the PlayStation came out. At first I ignored it, then at a Quake LAN party a friend of mine let me play the first bits of the new Final Fantasy VII. 7 already? wow. After watching Cloud leap from the Train and playing as far as getting back to Avalanche HQ, I was hooked. I bought my own PS1, my own copy of VII, and sat in my room for weeks, breeding golden chocobos and swearing fealty to Squaresoft.

What I did not realize was that I was witnessing the crest of some enormous invisible wave which Squaresoft was riding. Was VII the pinnacle? Is everything else just a shallow attempt to regain that splendor? I cannot answer that. But to me, there has been nothing but repeitious drivel coming from their studios ever since.

VIII was supposed to top VII, was supposed to be everything we could hope for in a game. It was crap. There has been an archetypal story laid forth in Japanese games/anime which has been done so much over and over that it is no longer a story, its merely a facet thrown in. That is the whole schoolboy saving the world crap. The storylines of previous FF titles were engrossing and amazing. The characters had a surprising amount of depth for being sprites on my CRT screen with it's rabbit ear antennae. VIII showed us the future of Final Fantasy: rehashed japanese plotlines overused in every other game, but now with shiny graphics taking advantage of the PS's power.

IX to me was the death gurgle of FF. A realization of a new absorption into the eye candy mindset perhaps, it was a throwback to the 16 bit era as far as setting and feel. It was also a flop, since the VII giant was still rolling strong, and any FF that didnt feature pseudo-futuristic settings identical to VII were thrown out.

Enter the PS2. The more powerful system could have meant longer, more engrossing plots, more characters, more in depth battle systems. Instead what it got you was 14 year old voice actors playing out a glorified japanese version of Space Ace or Dragon's Lair. Utterly linear, utterly inane, and nothing but a severe glut of eye candy. Everything that made FF so superior was gone, replaced by shadows of previously epic ideas. The soft, white underbelly of this new RPG era was exposed: gone were the role players, the dedicated fans of the battle systems of previous FF titles. Instead the new dominant FF follower was revealed for us all to know and loathe, the "semi-gamer". the kids who got it because it looked good, because the voice actors were children too, because now there was nothing to read so video games got one more step away from your imagination, and role playing takes a drastic step away from the Dungeons and Dragons BOOKS they all stemmed from.

XI occupied years of my life. Sometimes it felt like a clinical addiction, others it felt like the only way to get to know friends. Thing is, the creators of XI were not the creators of previous FF titles. They were almost a wholly new team for SquareEnix, so they borrowed bits and pieces from other FF's, took themes and extended them, and sort of made a Final Fantasy based interpretive dance that we could be a part of. The reason I bring this up is twofold. One, to remind you I loved FF, and only a FF online game could get me to try the burgeoning and frightening MMO world. And two, because of some of the conversations I had there. There were MANY players who were annoyed by the fantasy setting of XI. They wondered where was the spikey hair, the steam powered motorcycles, the gigantic swords. I tried explaining how FF started, that 7 was more of a story extension rather than indicative of the series as a whole, but was roundly returned with "nuh uh, what about 8 and 10?" to which i could only count from one to six, but very slowly.

12 I played, but havent finished. Its ok, wasnt too bad, but it also wasnt very remarkable. had a few things that made FF good, had a few things that made FF bad. To me, 12 is neutral ground and is therefore not worth mentioning.

But now where are we? in between all of that, what have we gotten? movies, games, toys, shooters, portable games, you name it, all based on VII. ALL based on VII!! one game. And to me, VII was not a natural progression from 1-6. So VII, the most popular FF, is barely even a FF from my perspective of NES/SNES glory days.

And now here we are, with millions of fanboys fresh from an anime expo, dying to pre order 13. 13 who we have yet to see anything concrete. a millisecond of gameplay between huge chunks of prerendered cutscenes which will in NO way be anything similar to actual gameplay mechanics or visuals. Legions of fans eat this crap up, and wait YEARS for this new entry in the dragged out death march of Final Fantasy. I doubt 10% of the fans understand this whole "multiple system release", but I also doubt that any of them understand what a "Fleecing" is either.

Blame what you want I suppose. The creative minds behind the early ones have taken smaller and smaller roles in the new ones. With the success of VII, all creativity perhaps was tossed aside in the name of the almightly dollar/yen. Many still bring up the merger of Square and Enix, but to that, I remind you of the great games both companies put out on their own. If they would just TRY, we could have our golden days back.

I guess the only real solution is to do as I do... do not throw away your Super Nintendos kids, and dont forget to check your local Bodegas.

well, here it is.

things that arent right: my hair is a bit longer, the scar runs along my cheek, and i rarely wear white.

Things that are right: that lusty feeling you have right now.

First off, before some random Lone Ranger comes along and thinks something about this post, please read it in it's entirety.

Something interesting happened to me the other day. I was mulling over buying Hokuto No Ken on the PS2. My slimline is modified to play NTSC-J games, and I love Japanese 2D fighters. Hokuto No Ken is just awesome, but hard to find at a reasonable price. My friend at the shop offered it to me at a $20 discount, and when I hesitated (I'd just spent $80 on a 3DO the day before) he, as a friend, told me that my modified PS2 was capable of playing burnt discs. Just as a character profile of me, I had no idea. I only wanted to play imported titles.

He told me that he would AS A FRIEND burn me a copy of the game. I thought "hey cool" for a second. Then it dawned on me. In my lovely shelves of games, their bright labels shouting out to me what they are, there would be a blank case, with a "Magnavox CD-R" title, and in black sharpie would be "Hokuto No Ken". It would be a pariah. What is the point of Collecting if there was even ONE such blasphemy in my collection?

I told him no thanks and paid for the proper game. He wasn't necessarily 'stunned' per se, but he was impressed that I'd be that dedicated. Now I'm not going to say that I download music or movies, but I wouldn't want a federal agent looking through my hard drive. But when it comes to games, it's not about the number of titles. It's about the entire experience. Now, I do have some emulators and ROMs, but anymore they're for my GP2X and the games on there are games I own.

It's not just about playing Chronotrigger or Sonic the Hedgehog. It's about holding the SNES controller, yanking out an reinserting cartridges after blowing on them. Reaching aroud the back fo your TV to connect RF adaptors or raiding Radio Shack to get adaptors for 30 year old electronics. No emulator can emulate that™

So after a lot of discussion about the rather seedy nature of people who burn console games, I went home, booted up my import player and rocked out to one of the best handling 2D fighters out there, and can proudly put it in my shelf alongside the other gems.

hello faithfully departed!

I know it's been a while since you've heard from me, but things have been less than splendid here. Work sucks, but I'm coming up on my tour complete and I'll get my honorable discharge from the united states military in about 37 days. Also, due to the extreme stress I've been under, my immune system actually dropped, and I actually got Shingles. look it up, it's awful.

The only games I've been playing are Mass Effect... and after I kinda healed up some I rocked God of War: Chains of Olympus. Definitely reminded me that I'm a gamer.

Things are looking up though. I'll be heading down to Kentucky to visit my parents and my sister, and then heading out to Washington, where Jen's parents are. We'll be ending up in Seattle, where I'll be starting at the Art Institute of Seattle in the fall.

You can see why this is a strenuous time.

good news though, I quit smoking cigarettes, which I'm happy about. I went full time to Pipe Smoking, which I just love.

anyways, this is mostly for my old CCU pals, just a fyi as for where I've been.

I belong to a couple of gaming clubs at //dotgames. First is FFXI club, but it's about as much fun as...well...playing FFXI. But more importantly is the Fight Club. FC is a bunch of sweaty high school to college age dorks, whose interests range from counterstrike to naruto to hentai tentacle monster porn. ok made the last one up (except when my wife comes...then its true).

We get together around 9pm twice a week, right as the store closes. Thenwe sit around playing competitive games. At first we played a ton of Guilty Gear XX Accent Core on the PS2 (we use modified PS2s for imports), then we played a ton of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on the PS2, although we had several people whine about wanting to play the DC version... I was not among their rank. Then we had theme nights where we'd watch a movie then play the game, like we watched Fist of the Northstar, then opened up a brand new copy of Hokuto no Ken: Shinpan no Sōsōsei Kengō Retsuden (which is awesome btw, highly recommend it to 2d fighting fans). Then we went back to Marvel vs. Capcom 2. and kept playing Marvel vs. Capcom 2. This went on far too long, because Marvel vs. Capcom 2 isn't exactly the most balanced of fighters. Eventaully, people quit going as much, except the guys who were REALLY good at MvC2 and would practice at home, which I just refuse to do (plus, my copy of it is Korean, and Korean ps2 saves won't work on English copies of the game, so I'm kinda stuck). My friend Chris, who helps run //dotgames and is sort of the unofficial/official Jack's Raging Bile Duct to our fight Club, decided to inject some new blood into our Fight Nights. At that point, it was a mishmash. Some guys would sit around playing Halo 3, some would be playing a Naruto game (which i would sit there and torment them for doing so.) and soon it devolved into a scene from Grandma's Boy, where I, being the oldest, would walk in, get challenged on a new game, and bust someone's ass (in all fairness, the games were always Halo 3 and Gears of War, kinda shifts the odds in my favor).

Chris did a bit of research. we had guys who were into fantasy games, FPSs, fighters, and all of whom loved blood. He searched high and low for a game that would sate all our desires, yet was obscure enough that none of us would have pre-existing skills at it. A fresh start. He debated many games. Chromehounds? no, Matthew plays that (I'm Matthew, btw). Mortal Kombat? nah, we're all sick of fighters. An MMO? hell no, most of these guys are twitch arcade gamers. Finally he found the game we could all at least kind of dig. Shadowrun.

Remember that 360 flash in the pan? well I downloaded the demo, thought "wow, this game looks cool" and decided I'd wait a bit. It got decent reviews, and by the time I'd gotten around to picking up a copy, I'd heard the servers had gone quiet. Figures, everytime I really dig a game, everyone else jumps ship (if Chromehounds closes it's servers, I'm flying to friggin' Tokyo). Turns out, there is a small but HARDCORE group of Shadowrunners that are on all the damn time. These guys are INSANE about Shadowrun. So we all agree, and we all buy our own copies of the game (watch an ex-Fasa employee read that and think "Nice Timing, Asshat!"). It's a good game, not the greatest thing I've ever played (that title goes to Nintendogs: Chihuahua edition) but solid. It seems FAIRLY balanced, for an online shooter. Elves with Katanas are cheesy, that's all I really know so far. Seems to be a few lag spikes here and there (I stabbed a guy FOUR times and didn't kill him, he stabs me once and my helth drops to 1/4), but we all find our niches and go with them. This friday is our first time playing all together on the same team. Should be interesting, a bunch of guys in a darkened room with a bunch of widescreen HDTVs glowing, all playing together. I called Minigun Troll.

I had always hoped it would be a kind of "game of the week" atmosphere, like try out obscure games people could bring in. I'd bring something like WarTech or get a copy of Aka-Champions, then Chris could bring King of Fighters '96, and just keep that going, but I'm still liking going. It reminds me of two things: one, that I'm not the only gamer in the world, and two: there are people FAR FAR FAR dorkier than I am. I mean come on, guys old enough to drink who watch Naruto and Bleach religiously... Hell, one of 'em even likes Avatar!!!! GAH!!!