My Turn!

Also, it turns out this is my 50th blog post, sweet. So I spruced up my profile with a thought about these blogs and two minor stats.

These aren't in any particular order, since I'm sure there are more pertinent unknown things about myself, but due to my horribly inefficient memory I bet they're not listed.

1. I played and loved Evolution Worlds on the Gamecube.

It was one of the first games I bought for the system, and the purchase was almost entirely based on the fact that it was an RPG, and that I had yet to see one in stores for the Cube. I pretty much thought that the cutscenes in the game were the best thing ever. I was horribly dismayed when I stumbled across an old EGM review of the game to see that they had ripped it to shreds. It took me a long time to admit to myself that I had liked the game when I first played it. For a long time I let that review utterly control my opinion of the game to the point of completely lying about why I bought it (for my little brother) how much I played it (once for 25 minutes), and if I enjoyed it (piece of shit).

2.I have five younger siblings.

For a long time games, consoles, and controllers did not have terribly long lifespans in our household. A few casualties I can remember include Guitar Hero 2, Final Fantasy XII, two Super Nintendos, two GBAs, two Gameboy Colors, one Gameboy, one Gameboy Pocket, one Sega Genesis, one Playstation, one computer, 3 Gamecube controllers, 2 Xbox controllers, two Sega genesis Controllers, 1 SNES controller, two Dance Pads, and 1 Wii Sports. I'm sure there are plenty more, but I doubt I could remember them all, so hopefully this taste is enough for you guys to get the overall picture.

3. I'm majoring in Earth Systems Environment and Society with a minor in Informatics.

I'm basically majoring in environmental policy, which means I do a lot of reading and writing. Actually, pretty much all I do is reading and writing. I'm not really sure what I want to do, but as far as I can tell my two options are either: a. Go to law school and become an environmental lawyer, or b. Head to Washington and try to get in on the ground level of consulting/lobbying/whatever. Of course with either of those options I will find time to continue gaming.

4. I love to play sports, but I don't like playing sports videogames.

I get bored with those games very easily. The sports games I tend to enjoy the most are those in the Mario franchise. Specifically I love to play Soccer and Rugby, although I don't mind almost any other sport. I've played soccer since I was five, and every one of my siblings followed in my footsteps. Because neither of my parents played, we're kind of an anomaly American family in that soccer has become our biggest love, with each sibling pretty much getting progressively better because of the aggregation of knowledge and ability related to the game. Similar in how I don't enjoy playing sports videogames, I don't really enjoy following the various real world leagues either. Nothing can match playing the sport for myself, although some big U.S.A victories in the next World Cup would certainly come close. I also helped to found the Rugby and Ultimate Frisbee teams at my high school.

5. I don't edit any of my posts. There are no rough drafts.

I will often jot down some rough ideas in class when I'm bored, but when the time comes to actually write the article I do it in one go, and don't look back. It's the same method I use for writing papers for school, as terrible as that is, and it has yet to catch up to me. I think this is because I was such a voracious reader when I was younger. The multitude of books I devoured endowed me with some minor skill in avoiding hugely glaring and painful errors, while increasing my ability to spell words correctly dramatically. I do have some issues with commas though, because in my head I can hear the pauses almost anywhere, as well as a few other things, but generally I like to think my posts are fairly coherent.

6. I have only broken one bone, my skull.

It was a head on head collision in soccer that took me out of sports for a year, and ruined any possibility I might have had to possibly play for a lower tier (probably D3 maybe D2 if super lucky) team in college. I had a headache for three months, and also broke everything in my nose. The pain was also, by far, the worst I have ever endured. It happened before our season started too, in a tournament, so I missed most of my final season. The team I was on at the time was far better than any of the ones I had previously been on, and to this day I'm still not sure how I made it through try-outs. This may have been a minor blessing in that when choosing what school to attend academics and cost were the only things I had to consider.

7. My most enduring memory of EGM stems from one of Seanbaby's Post-E3 articles.

I think this was around 2003, although I could be mistake. It is simply the quote "3 bars on every block and breasts bigger than your head." I'm not even too sure if that is the correct actual quote, and since most of my old magazines got thrown away when I left for school I'm not sure if I'll ever find out. I'm pretty sure he's describing Los Angeles. I'm not sure why this quote stuck with me so much, but it did. To the point where today, whenever someone mentions EGM, or E3 this is normally the first thing I think of.

8. I'm horribly obsessive compulsive in certain games, especially old school Final Fantasy games.

I will check every tiny nook and cranny multiple times to make sure I don't miss any errant potions, and generally just explore every tiny bit of the game environments to make sure I don't miss anything. This generally ends badly, because I focus so heavily on a game in a short amount of time that I end up hating it, and myself to the point where I won't play it again for years. After a certain period of time though, I begin to crave the feeling that went along with obsessively exploring every little thing, and repeat the same process over again. I think one side effect of this is how much I hoard money in games that have it. I will sell everything except the clothes on my back and the weapon in my hand. This only really becomes a problem in games with extensive crafting systems, when I am afraid to sell anything in case I can't make a new item or upgrade an old one later on. My two little tics then compete, with terrible amounts of grinding in order to either gain enough of a hoard to be satisfied or to max out the amount of an item that I can carry so that I can sell one. Normally the item maxing comes first.

9. I really don't enjoy World of Warcraft at all.

I tried playing it, and just didn't find it any fun. I had a network of friends already in the game so that wasn't an issue, however the stupid amount s of grinding and (as superficial as this is) the horrendous graphics just turned me off to the game in a way that few have. This may have been bolstered by the fact that I really enjoy and still play Guild Wars, which not only looks much better, but also has far superior PvP, without the excessive grind generally associated with MMORPGs (probably why the parent company refers to it as a CORPG). Guild Wars does have grind in the titles, but attempting to achieve those is up to personal preference for the most part.

10. I enjoy Team Fortress 2 far more than Left 4 Dead.

I really like Left 4 Dead, but it just doesn't capture the magic for me nearly as well as TF2 does. I stupidly absolutely love the idea of a zombie apocalypse, and have seen most Zombie-related movies out there, even such oddballs such as Fido and Black Sheep (although Black Sheep is really just about genetically modified sheep it sort of fits the general schema of a Zombie Movie), while also very much enjoying some books, like World War Z. Despite all of that though TF2 just holds more of a special place in my heart. Maybe it's because I'm better at TF2, maybe it's because people not talking in L4D can have such a huge impact, while it's much more negligible in TF2. It's also entirely possible that I've just been playing TF2 for much longer, and will some day come to love L4D just as much or more than TF2.