The Gamer's Eye of Judgement

 I own a lot of video games, and by a lot I'm talking over 300, spanning across all generations dating back to the early 80's of Atari and Intellivision. Throughout my life I've talked games with numerous people and during these conversations there's always talk about a big title that they've played and absolutely loved to death that I have not had the chance to buy or try out. I guarantee every single time I'm asked to play the awesome game I always have to bring them down with the excuse "I'd love to play it, but I'm busy with other games at the moment."

 My gaming style is not the most common amongst other gamers, but I like to play a game straight to the end as soon as I start playing it. On rare occasions I could do this with 2 games at a time, but a majority of my time is spent on one game. Of course that one game could take a few days to beat to a few months depending on what my schedule looks like, and how difficult the game itself is. Achievements are also another factor in this as well...I hate to say that I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to 100% a game's achievements, but there's always a few that I'm almost certain not to obtain and so I passively move on to the next game. However in most cases if I have a hunch that I can get a specific achievement, no matter how excruciatingly long of a grind it'll take to get me that achievement, I will spend as long as it takes to get it no matter what.

 A perfect example of this is the achievement to reach level 50 in multiplayer on Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. That one achievement took me a good month of grinding games to reach and it was worth the blood and sweat. As a result, I never want to play multiplayer to that extent again...however I regret reading ahead on the achievements for ACIV and finding yet another "level 55" multiplayer achievement. The good news though while reading the comments on the achievement, is that the leveling is not as bad as was in Brotherhood, and with the Wolfpack mode there's really no need to sit in a lobby waiting for other players to join. So in the end maybe this max level achievement won't be as terrible, but still a tiny bit of a grind.

 I know there's a lot of gamers that don't spend countless hours on every game they get their hands on. I know for sure there's at least a couple games that will be played for countless hours, while the rest are only played for a couple hours at a time. Yes, I do know and realize the games you play are absolutely amazing and I would love to play them. I do know I will be most likely playing them from start to finish one way or another, but I've got quite a line of other amazing games that are also on my waiting list to be played that I need to go through as well.

 I had one such discussion with a co-worker trying to get me to buy and play Skyrim. He did nothing but talk nearly everyday about his happenings with the game and what he's been doing and how I should seriously be playing the game because that's all there is to play and no other game matters except Skyrim. I told him the usual "I have other awesome games that I need to play too" and gave him a couple like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and the original Resident Evil trilogy (I've only really played part of the 2nd). He then turns and tells me that I need to play those too, and I just simply rolled my eyes at him since these were only a few of many I still needed to play on top of just Skyrim.

 There is good in some of today's games when it comes to not buying them day 1. A year or so down the line there'll most likely be a special edition of the game that includes all DLC that was released for the game all packed in one and for the same price (if not cheaper) than when it was initially released without any DLC. All in all, buying late is better with the much cheaper price and possible added content.

 Hopefully before I die I will have played all that needs to be played both old and new. With the rise of concern for the future in console gaming I hope to have just a LITTLE bit of a breather to catch up on some older games while I continue to potentially flood my Steam account with more games...

A couple days ago I looked through my YouTube videos and playlists and seemed a little disgusted with how it was all organized based around all the different kinds of videos I upload. I then remembered a couple people I follow that had made their own web pages that basically simplified the traditional YouTube playlists to make it a lot easier to find what you're looking for. So with that inspiration to go by I went ahead and made a new page to link all of my YouTube videos organized by which games I have played and the videos associated with said games. You can check out the link on the right, or by clicking HERE.

I've been having a little bit of a rush in terms of working on my channel again (along with this blog, of course) and thinking up some content ideas to upload and share. There's not much in terms of thinking up an original idea. I've done both a speedrun and a let's play, and that's probably as much of those as I'll do. Maybe down the road I'll do more on speedrunning at the least, and as for let's plays I don't have a proper microphone. I'm also way too shy to speak, so I don't think I would be much entertainment for people in that sense...but I guess you'll never know.

I also had an idea to go through my whole collection of games and beat them all from start to finish. Kind of like a longplay / walkthrough, but just mainly gameplay while skipping cutscenes, optional objectives, etc and keeping any deaths intact. I've also thought up possibly doing post-commentary on a few games if there's a need for explanation on a lot of choices I make during the playthrough but as of now that won't be the case without a mic. This might be what I'll end up doing, but the ideas are still floating around for now.

Point and Click, or Graphic adventure games used to be a pretty major genre in the PC market back in the 90's. LucasArts was the one major company producing such great hits as the Monkey Island and Sam and Max series, Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle. These type of games were focused more on the story development and presented gameplay through various puzzles that had to be solved in order to progress the story forward. One would have to use the most of their imagination to get through these type of games.

In recent years this once PC exclusive genre has had a growth in game releases not only on Steam, but also showing light on current gen consoles. Remasters and sequals to past franchises have returned along with new titles such as Back to the Future, The Walking Dead, and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. A remaster of Day of the Tentacle was in the making before LucasArts was closed by Disney therefore shutting that project down never to be seen by the public.

A newer company, Daedalic Entertainment, has been hard at work continuing the graphic adventure game legacy that LucasArts has left behind. While not affiliated with LucasArts, the games that they produce have that same quality that you would find in a LucasArts game. Some of their games including Edna & Harvey, The Whispered World, and Deponia received various awards such as best story, best youth game, and best soundtrack.

While I can understand these games aren't not the most appealing to most gamers, if your into a rich story, beautiful artwork, and challenging puzzles, point and click adventure games are surely something to look into and enjoy. There are a wide variety to choose from and can be found on almost any platform nowadays.

I've been playing video games for most of my life. Being someone with that level of experience and devotion to a hobby does have it's ups and downs. For one, being a gamer keeps you away from all the "bad" the world has to offer to you. But at the same time as you grow older, and start living life the way society wants you to live, it becomes more and more difficult to find the time to actually play games. Even today I'm writing this now in bits and pieces due to such minimal free time in posting because of the two jobs I work everyday. I know it's becoming an issue because I still have 3 sealed PS3 games still sitting behind me that I had got the end of last year that I haven't touched yet because of the mass amounts of games I got on Steam, which I've only played maybe 10 or so out of the 50+.

This got me thinking if your still a gamer and still just as passionate as you were when you were younger, does it come a time where you just want to buy the games despite not having time to play them? I'm not sure if I'm the only one that experiences this, but I sometimes feel as though I'll buy the games I want and then "get to them whenever I can", which could be months or years away. Usually this is because I'm in the middle of playing another game or two. I can never keep myself from buying a game that I want because I'm such a smart consumer whore. I basically just want the security of actually having the game so that in case one day every store in the world just stopped selling video games altogether, I can have no regrets skipping out on the mass amount of games that I could have gotten, but decided to save the money and space for something more important.

 Then there's the side of me that suggests I get into just simple collecting. No huge worries of buying games and then have to play them within a certain amount of time, just buy them to have them. Although that's a good idea in theory there's that small group of skeptical individuals that see a huge gaming collect and they ask the question "Have you even played/beaten all of these?" I'd like to be one of the few that can simply say "Yes, I've beaten most of these, but have played a good amount of every game here". My idea of collecting is more on collecting quality, fun, rare, and unique games and not just buying every single game good and bad. When I see such collections that have a lot of sports games, or really low quality games I usually assume the collector doesn't play every single game that they own, and just collect games for the numbers.

I currently own 403 games between console, handheld, PC retail, and Steam downloads. I'd say about 98% of all games were bought during the consoles retail lifespan, so I've spent a pretty good amount of money on these games (roughly $15,000). By now the price of my collection is probably more down to about $5,000-$10,000 even with all the console games in very good condition with cases and manuals and no scratches on any discs. This is usually another aspect to a collectors rule of thumb that all their games are in very good, almost perfect mint condition, and just about all of my games meet this rule with the exception of Game Boy and Game Gear games, which I only have the game and manuals for.

I love playing video games and I don't ever see myself quitting. Even if real life tries to take over, I will always try to fill some time in the week for my gaming needs if only for just an hour or two. Collecting video games leaves me with something to do on my down time from all the chaos life throws at me. If a game is unfinished or has not been played, I'll fill the time to play it all the way through, or at least most of the way so I don't find myself bored with nothing to do. There's also times where I find myself with TOO much to do on my down time, but I'm alright as long as I'm not dying from boredom!

Games are a great way to escape from the troubles and stress of everyday life in the real world. Though sometimes there's no way to get your hands on a controller or find any sort of time to just sit down and play a game. Sometimes when you think about gaming one aspect that would come to mind is the music that plays during the game, and a lot of that music would be stuck in your head for eternity. Many games are beloved by many partially due to the amazing soundtracks that come with the game. This is especially true to such classic RPG's as Chrono Trigger, the Final Fantasy series, Secret of Mana, and Legend of Zelda. The soundtracks are amazingly well done and are very memorable to many to be some of the best work produced on 8 and 16-bit consoles.

It's not just RPG's that have fantastic and memorable music. A lot of other genres can carry some pieces of music that are loved by many gamers from action/adventure, platformer, fighting, and even puzzle games. There's something about the simplicity of these soundtracks that are soothing to the ears and bring in that same kind of escape from reality as the games they are featured in. The music, when heard outside of the game, will usually bring you to that specific point in the game where the music was played, and will provide you some loving (or hate to love) memories.

Today's soundtracks are just as important in games as their older brothers from the 80's and 90's. Many soundtracks today are produced with actual instruments, practically orchestral. Even now with actual orchestras bringing back the older soundtracks and re-imagining some songs to give a new direction of those same memorable chiptunes we heard when we were younger. One such concert series that does these orchestral performances of video games is Video Games Live created by music composer Tommy Tallarico, whose done music for countless number of video games such as Earthworm Jim, MDK, Maximo, Unreal, and Metroid Prime just to name a few.

Whether your taste in music is for the classic chiptunes of yesterday, or the orchestral and rock pieces of today, there is sure to be a piece of music you heard in a game that really caught your ear. It's those kind of songs that can take us away to another land that is out of the ordinary and fills us with excitement, peace, and happiness all around.

What a year gaming has been so far. If the next gen console wars between the PS4 and Xbox One weren't enough, other companies decided this was the year to make their own consoles. The first of which was the Ouya, an Android-based console which started off as a Kickstarter project that raised $3.7 million in just two days! The best part about this console is that it only cost $99. However the console, and the customer service tied in with it weren't not as devoted as one might think. Many problems followed the Ouya's pre-release from the shipment of the console, to various controller problems and lack of replacements. Upon official retail release, however, many of those problems were greatly reduced and solved, however sales of the console were not as demanding as people had hoped, with the lower-than-average price tag. This didn't stop other companies like Google and Amazon to think up possible gaming consoles for the future. Will they succeed or be a mediocre release much like the Ouya?

If the overwhelming news of gaming consoles didn't hold you up enough, the games certainly make up for it, and then some...or much more. There were a vast amount of big releases (and disappointments) this year including reboots such as DmC: Devil May Cry, and Tomb Raider, and sequels to fan favorites like Metal Gear Solid: Rising, Resident Evil 6, Saints Row IV, Bioshock Infinite, and Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Remastered old classics were brought into the mix such as Ducktales: Remastered, and the soon to be released Castle of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse. The online gaming world saw it's next big release with Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, which is also a sort of reboot/relaunch to the first release of the game, which met with a majority of negative feedback from fans. So much so that SquareEnix decided to pull the plug on the game and recreate it from the ground up, and this was a good move on the companies part.

Of course we're not at the end of the year just yet. There are still many more amazing releases to come including Grand Theft Auto V, Batman: Arkham Origins, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and Call of Duty: Ghosts. This year is looking to be quite an extraordinary year for gaming with just about everything from reboots, sequels, new IP's, new online games, new consoles and new controversies. There's a whole lot more I could get into about this years games and console news, but I'll save that for my 2nd half of 2013 post. As with all the previous years in gaming it doesn't matter who wins what war, because the real winners are the gamers.

There's been quite a bit of news lately on the next generation of consoles including the situation on backwards compatibility. For a few gamers this rose the question of "What's the point?" When the PS3 first launched there were only few models of the console that were backwards compatible with PS2 games, and this was great news to some folks...that is until they discontinued production, leaving all available future models of the console not backwards compatible. This angered some people and leaving many puzzled as to why Sony made such a decision.

I had a conversation with a co-worker recently and he was talking about playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl with his son and having a real blast with it. He talked about how much he plays the game and knows everything about it. I went on to tell him that people hold tournaments for that game at various on site venues like Las Vegas, San Francisco, New York, etc. and he made "the" comment. Yes, he went on to say how those people need to get lives, probably still live with mommy and daddy, the usual stereotypical statements. I could have continued on and mentioned the constant League of Legends and DOTA series tournaments that are held daily and are as popular, if not moreso, than the usual sports events broadcast on TV. It was unfortunate that this conversation happened during work hours or I could have brought some light on his opinions on gamers for another few hours. My boss is the only older person that knows I play video games, and he threw me in the stereotype pretty much instantly after I had mentioned I was going on vacation to go to PAX East this year. That's how fast society will label young introvert males if they only mention video games one time as an enthusiast.

After leaving this conversation I thought about all the gaming communities I had joined over the years and the number of people I would have never met and became friends with had I not gone so head first into gaming at a young age and stuck with it all these years. Even if years down the line, your new found friends play very little or hardly have any time at all for games, you can still count on them as being part of family that you treasure and know that you met through a simple video game. Of course not everyone you meet through gaming will hold on to that friendship, which is ok, people come and go in our lives no matter how we meet them. It's those certain individuals that touch our hearts in subtle ways that no one else in the real world could really comprehend. Maybe it's the distance that brings in the tighter bonds, or perhaps the similar ideas, interests, and experiences that bring us closer? All in all the end result broadens your own horizons and exposes you to different cultures and worlds that you would have never experienced within your own city (or country) limits.

Living in the country is a very dull and boring experience to me. I grew up in a sort of elderly neighborhood with no kids to play with outside. It was mainly just me and my dad passing a ball, playing baseball or kicking a soccer ball around. I was pretty much alone and I wanted excitement and fun all the time, which is what I found in video games. All throughout my childhood and through high school I would go to school, talk with some friends, and occasionally go to their house and play Nintendo or Sega with them. By the time I graduated high school and entered college I never really spoke with those friends anymore, or hardly at all. I have maybe one friend I still talk with on occasion who moved to Florida after my sophomore year. Entering college I made a new set of friends who I still keep in touch with and hang out every once in awhile. It was at this point I turned to the internet (still in its growing phase) to meet new people and make new friends through various video games that I would be playing at the time.

I started off in the SSX community back in 2003 where I found a video on the Twin Galaxies website of someone getting 2 million points on the Mesblanca track on SSX Tricky. Now keep in mind I'm not super big into extreme sport games, but watching that video caught my interest in SSX. I went and bought SSX Tricky, visited Merqury City and posted on their forums on a pretty regular basis to improve my game and be as excellent as in the video I saw. In the process I met a number of amazing people who were just as fond of the game as I was. These were the first group of online friends I had met mostly from around the US, but some from countries like Sweden, France, and the UK.

After a few years with the SSX community free MMORPG's had started to grow in numbers and I decided to pick up and try a few out including Maple Story, Ragnarok Online, and FlyFF. In 2006 A brand new game called Audition: Online Dance Party had just come out and it played a lot like Bust-A-Groove on the PS1. This was probably the one major community I took heavy part in joining the (now RIP) GoAudition forums and met a majority of the friends I'm still very close and still in contact with to this day. I started as a member of the forums and gradually worked my way to moderator, super mod, and admin for the forums. Because of my admin status many members mistook me for being the owner of the forums since I was so active in the community and the actual owner had just simply made the forums, tweaked the looks and left. I feel my journey from member to admin in such a small community (at the time) is what brought me the friends I know today. I've actually just recently started traveling to different countries to meet up with some of them. 2011 I went to Amsterdam and this past summer traveled to Vancouver. My next stop may be around the homeland and I'll visit some friends in California, but this may change depending on what kind of money I have.

Today I'm part of the speedrunning community, mainly the folks at Speed Demos Archive (SDA). This is a community that I've actually been lurking about since 2003 watching various speedruns of a lot of my favorite games. It wasn't until 2008 when the Classic Games Done Quick marathon was streamed over the internet that I got to see speedruns done live before my very eyes. This was the spark that started my interest in serious speedrunning aside just being the casual watcher. As more marathons were held, my interest kept growing and growing until finally in April of 2012, I registered my name on the site and started routing my first game, Catherine. I still see myself as "just another member" at the moment, but I'm slowly starting to build relationships and making friends with other runners.

Even though I'm still fairly new to the community, watching the marathons and seeing it as one huge welcoming family really showed me that having a similar interest can bring people together on a much more personal level than just a bunch of guys playing video games. It's the kind of community that would let you into their home when life has got it tough on you and you need a place to meet up with people and escape the reality to help you out and just plain have fun! Gaming, and the communities behind them, bring the level of excitement and entertainment that I've been looking for and it allows me to see and meet millions of people to interact with and get to know all within a comfortable space without the slight anxiety of face-to-face meetups.

It's in these communities that can one day set you on the front door of the industry and interact with famous gaming journalists, and even the developers of some top games. This could eventually bring you into the business itself based on how motivated you are to want to work with the best to create high end, quality content. So as a final thought, don't ever go with what society tells you how a certain group of people live their lives. There's maybe a very small fraction that live the way they say, but a majority have found ways to break that stereotype and manage to live just like any other human being on the planet while continuing to fully enjoy the games they love...and they are enjoying every minute of it.

Who would have thought up the idea of placing virtual bets on random, obscure, and interesting fighting matches such as Superman vs. Terry Bogard, Ronald McDonald vs. Wolverine, or even Spongebob vs. Mega Man? With the combination of Twitch, MUGEN, and simple web programming, Salty Bet came to life.

The idea of Salty Bet is quite simple. When you sign up (completely free) you start off with $400 Salty Bucks. Two characters appear on screen and you're given 45 seconds to place a bet on who would win. The match then begins as the two characters (both controlled by the AI) fight it out in a first to 3 match to the death. The winner receives a piece of the pot from the losers side. So if the winners side bid over $1,000,000 and the losers side is only maybe $24,000, the bidders on the winners side may only receive $5 as their prize. Of course there's always closer odds with better payouts so it varies between matches.


As of now Salty Bet is serving roughly 4,000-5,000 daily viewers on Twitch, but I feel this will drastically grow as the months pass.  This is still a fairly new idea that's started since this past May and as addicting as it is, I feel that this might be the next stream to compete against League of Legends streams if enough word gets around and interest arises.

It's pretty awesome seeing old 80's and 90's games get reworked for the current generation of gaming. DuckTales is no exception to this. Unfortunately I was one of the unlucky few children who never owned a NES when it came out. I was the one with the Sega Master System, or Sega Genesis (Megadrive). However I did get a small bit of gameplay out of DuckTales when I was a kid on a friends' NES that I went over to and played quite often. I vaguely remember my experiences with it back then, but I do remember enjoying it quite a bit. Of course I play it a lot more often on emulator, but it's not quite the same as playing it on the actual console and probably not as enjoyable as it would if I had an NES back in the day playing it nonstop when I was 7 or 8 years old. Anyways I will most definitely be getting this little gem and most likely playing (and enjoying) the hell out of it!

Speaking of remasters, another Disney classic game is being remastered and should be released later on this month or next (Summer 2013), and that is Castle of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse. Of course, this was the game that I played for hours upon hours on the Sega Genesis when it first came out, so this will be my personal revisit down memory lane. Watching the gameplay videos of this certainly put a smile on my face as I saw all the levels and music redone for the current generation to love just as much as I had the original. This will surely be a Disney filled couple of months for me until Watch_Dogs, Assassin's Creed IV and Beyond: Two Souls come out.

 You would get an indie game from the great minds at Michael Todd Games called Electronic Super Joy. If you've played such grueling platformers such as I Wanna Be The Guy or Super Meat Boy, this game will feel right at home. What sets this game apart from the others is the groove-alicious environment, quirky humor and the amazing bass-heavy electronic music by EnV.

I first came across this game at this years PAX East hearing the games music overtaking the ambient sounds of the Expo Hall. I'll admit the music was the first thing that drew my attention to the game and wanted to learn what it was all about. After watching some other people playing the demo I grabbed that controller and stood there for roughly an hour and played through the whole demo from start to finish. I must have been the only person to ever do that, never mind do it in a single...well, standing. It definitely showed that I enjoyed the game very much and was probably the perfect example to show the level of difficulty that was not the "this game is too hard" *ragequit* kind.

The game is now available for early access on Steam for $4.99. It may not be as huge of a hit as Super Meat Boy, but it's definitely a sleeper hit in my book.

Long time no see everyone! Obviously I stopped blogging due to AdSense telling me to bluntly "fuck off", but one day I decided to look back and see that people actually enjoyed what I had posted in the past...and it got me wondering just why did I stop?

So I may start posting again from time to time just for fun and give my thoughts on various happenings with my gaming life, such as:

It's pretty crazy how much Steam has grown over the years and I never had the thought to even sign up for it and join in on the crazy sales Valve gives it's customers everyday of the year! Well it all changed this past May when I finally decided to break down and sign up for myself. I had to buy a game to even start adding friends to my profile and it's probably the one and only game I'll buy at full price. That game was Your Doodles Are Bugged! a simple $4.49 game that plays much like the classic Lemmings where a large number of bugs appear on a paper filled with little doodles, and you must draw various lines to lead the bugs to their home (some jar-like object filled with honey?) Granted I know there were much better games out there, but this was the cheapest I could get at the time. Of course the following weekend was a sale for the BIT.TRIP series, which are probably a lot more enjoyable. I still need to get myself BIT.TRIP Runner 2 when I see a worthy enough sale on it to exercise my wallet.

Speaking of wallets, lets get into a little bit of this years Summer Sale. I probably did the most damage to my wallet that I'll ever do, even when it comes to the upcoming Winter Sale. To keep it short and simple, the last day of the sale I spent $51.25 in games, and my library shot up from roughly 11, to 45 games purchased...Seriously, I DO plan to play all those games before I die.

Then there's this weekend's Quakecon Pack of 45 various id Software and Bethesda games for $89.99. Personally, I would just get the games you really want so you don't waste money on those that you know you're not going to play. This is exactly what I did as the only game I bought was Doom 3 BFG Edition for $4.99. A lot of those games offered I could simply pirate for free (they don't even include achievements for all the old DOS based games, so what's the point really?), or I just have no interest in playing. Even if I wanted to buy the pack just to increase my Games number closer to 100 it's a little bit pricy considering some of those games have the potential to go beyond 50 or 60% off in the future. Maybe for the DOS games I'll get them all for $1-3 each or whatever, but for games like Dishonored and the Elder Scrolls games, those could get better sales by themselves during a Winter Sale or some midweek/weekend sale.