Back in the 90's I was growing up around two of the best commodities a kid could have hoped for, the Megadrive (Genesis in America) and the Nintendo 64. Although the technology was so simple and the graphics so primative, they managed to convey a magical adventure to me as a child was it the epic scene in Ocarina of Time where Ganondorf is first introduced or finally gaining that last hyper emerald in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It was perfect and I would play the same games over and over for years to come.

Multiplayer was in an entirely different league than it is today with the rise of the internet. Now you can load up your console or PC and jump straight into a huge brawl, whilst when I was growing up I spent my whole week exciting over the prospect of playing Goldeneye four player with my older brothers's friends on an enormous 18' television screen.



I'm good at videogames, damn good. I can beat them on their hardest difficulty and I'll keep playing them over and over again, you see, I learn the game as if it's just another school subject. I know the map in GTA: San Andreas like the back of my hand and I like that, I enjoy beating the game at 100%. Some might say that I obsess over a game from time to time. Before everyone had the internet my friends would ask me how to beat a puzzle in Zelda or how to get that gold gem in Mischief Makers placed on a obnoxiously high platform.

There's this strange sensation I get from sitting alone, rain outside, heating up. It's cosy. It's nostalgic. It's just you and the game, no "FlyiNgFUcKfaCe1337 is online" notification.
Only two games have managed to give me this feeling in the last few years, Brutal legend and Darksiders, these games are doing it right. No single player for afterthought like the majority of recent popular games like call of duty or gears of war. Proper naratives to really imerse you into these games, just little things can really improve the experience like, I dunno, a charismatic villain with a English accent, yeah something like that.



Something else that really bothers me are achievements or trophies, whatever, they piss me off, why?
Well for starters, going back to my point of liking to get 100% in my games, there aren't enough to truly be 'achievements'. I can't help it because most of my friends play xbox and see achievements as the only way to really progress in games. Like a leach the xbox parasite has latched itself onto the gaming community. I miss the days of Timesplitters 2 where there was a page containg thousands of challanges to complete not to mention the huge amount of characters to unlock. Perhaps just as bad is when an obnoxious "Achievement unlocked" pop-up appears during a dramatic scene completely shattering the moment.

Argh! Achievements you've runined me for ever. (You too trophies)



Sorry, this kind of devolved into a rant.