Hilarious shit I've found here on this site today:



WARNING:
ONCE YOU'RE INSIDE YOUR FRIENDS WON'T BE SEEING MUCH OF YOU!

...sounds way dirtier and truer to the "18+ Game" vibe than...

ONCE YOU'RE INSIDE, YOUR FRIENDS WON'T BE SEEING MUCH OF YOU!


You can now carry on about your business.

A videogame can teach you things. Not things like moves, or tactics, or any of the usual things you learn when you play a game. No, every once in a while, a game can do something special that you never quite expect - and that is to teach you a valuable lesson about yourself, who you are, and what you're really made of. Bioshock: Infinite has done just that, and not in a way that I would have ever seen coming.

I'll warn you: tharr be spoilers ahead. I haven't finished the game, myself - but any discussion of the plot is revealing pivotal twists and turns to anyone who has yet to play it for themselves, so, you've been warned if you have yet to step into the game, or haven't gotten to this specific part just yet.

Still waiting for you speed-readers to stop scanning the page, and risk picking up crucial details purely on accident.

Finished? Are they gone now? Then, let's begin.

---

There is a part in the game where you are chasing down Captain Cornelius Slate, looking for the Shock Jockey vigor. You are taken through a sideshow attraction that details the Battle of Wounded Knee and the suppression of the Chinese Boxer Rebellion, and you learn crucial character details about Booker DeWitt, things about his personal history, the atrocities he's committed, and the scars he's both given and received. Bioshock: Infinite does a fantastic job of making you feel like you are in the shoes of its main character, but when they give you a choice of whether to execute Slate when you finally catch up to him (no boss fight, no nothing, just a tired old man), they give you a point in which you can at least feel like you are directing a path to redemption for the fundamentally broken DeWitt by choosing to spare him.

What I didn't realize was this - if you do not execute him, he reappears later in the game, strapped to a chair and scars prominently shown on his head (I found out later that these scars were always present on the character model, but as I had just noticed them at the moment of this scene, it colored my experience in a much different way). This, along with his catatonic state, would suggest that he had been tortured into nonresponsiveness, or has simply been lobotomized. Then, Elizabeth remarks about the reason why he had asked to be killed in the first place - and with that, I look at Slate again. I pause the game, put the controller down, and step outside the character I am being tasked with directing and instead into my own head, my own thought process and logic.

---




Personal story.

I have been hunting before. My father is quite the avid outdoorsman, and while I can respect the great wilderness, I do not have the profound connection with hunting that my dad has. I had been steeped in survival skills and hunting techniques from a very young age, and had been skinning and gutting animals from the time I could hold a knife reliably, kills that my dad and I would bring back from our jaunts into the woods about 80 miles outside of the city in which I grew up. But, I would not actually shoot until I was about the age of eleven, and I never realized that I would have an incredibly transformative moment inside my own personality after my first successful hit on an animal forced me to face a cruel truth.

The first time I shot at and hit an animal, it was not a clean kill. I hit the deer in its side, shattered a section of its spinal column with part of the shot, thus paralyzing its back legs, the other pellets piercing its abdomen and rib cage, but not killing it. Mortally wounding it, yes, but it would die in agony, a slow death not wished by anything in this world, and not wished for anything in this world by anyone that has even the slightest trace of a soul. My father told me what I needed to do, and that was to take his pistol and fire one round into its heart. I was mortified. I had never seen an animal suffer like this in my life, and I had never wanted that kind of suffering to be dealt by my hand. I was eleven, mind you.

I mustered up all of my testicular fortitude and finished the job, but I felt nothing good about any of what I had just done, and most definitely didn't feel like much of a man. My father was proud of me. I was disgusted with myself. I never hunted again after that day, which puzzled my father, but I didn't care - I was never going to let my choices cause another living thing to suffer in such a way ever again for as long as I lived. I can still listen to hunting stories, I can still hang out around the camp, I can still eat meat (because venison is some delicious shit, let me tell you), but I cannot kill another living thing anymore, because the sight of that deer trying to use its front two legs to frantically crawl away from a fate it never saw coming still haunts me to this day. Its eyes are burned into my soul for the rest of my life. And it's not something I talk about often, or openly.

---



Back to the game.

After thinking long and hard about what I had to do in this situation over a rather large load of laundry, I sat back down on my couch with grim determination. I unpaused my game. I looked at the catatonic Slate in his chair, a victim of the "kindness" I previously dealt him. In this moment, I ceased to embody the character of Booker DeWitt. I stopped being the character placed upon my point of view, I wasn't the "White Injun of Wounded Knee," I wasn't a former Pinkerton agent with a massive gambling debt to reconcile, I was merely myself, facing the consequences of a mercy I thought I had extended.

I saw the old soldier in the chair, a literal shell of his former self.
I raised my rifle, aimed at the unscarred side of his skull, and waited.

I wondered if someone would do the same for me, if I were ever in such a situation.
I thought of the deer, and my father telling me what I had to do to stop further suffering.

I fired. I ended Slate's life, just as he had asked me to in the first place. Elizabeth suddenly piped up, and said "I guess that's what he wanted." And after that, I got to the next autosave, and turned my PS3 off, internally shaken by the experience. I could have chosen to let Slate sit there. To begin with, he's not real. None of this is. It's a completely fabricated experience, in a place that does not truly exist, with characters that have never lived. And yet, here I am, connecting the experience with a past memory of blended trauma and regret, and I have become far more personally involved in this experience than I planned due to a completely ancillary event in the plotline of the game's events.


---

Closing thoughts.

I'll pick it back up, eventually. But for today, I think I need a break.

For all of its wanton violence (and however that makes you feel, of course), I can now say with absolute certainty that there is an emotional connection to one scene of this game for me, and that has made it unforgettable. I won't be able to talk about this game ever again without thinking of the events that transpired this morning. And that's the sign of something special, a connection that only video games are truly capable of. For that, I'm glad.

But for now, I'm way too emotionally compromised to continue. I'm not in a bad place, but only in a place I didn't expect to be, which is something that videogames have the power to do (since they directly ask for user involvement / investment), and when done well is something entirely unique to the medium.

I knew as soon as I fired up the demo for MGR:Revengeance that it would most likely end up being a very polarizing title. First of all, it's Metal Ge(eeee)ar, secondly, it's Platinum at its finest, and lastly, it's simply not for everyone. This won't be the end-all, be-all action game for every taste, so I expected some bad reviews coming from people who weren't going to appreciate the game.

What I didn't expect, however, was why the negative sentiment for Revengeance would come. The source of that criticism came as a total shock to me.



I can see people being turned off by the characters. I mean, there's a stereotypical Russian man named Boris, a big-boob blonde, a schizophrenic protagonist with a bad case of Jekyll and Hyde syndrome, Jar Jar Binks as portrayed by a 13-year old boy, not one, but two lumbering rednecks, an odd amalgam of Will Smith and Ludacris, the slutty boss, the creepy boss, a returning cast member who only got more cliche and annoying, a German mad scientist with a heart of gold, a robot wolf and samurai Antonio Banderas. I get it, it's zany, it's Nihon-kitsch, it's Metal Gear at its finest. But this wasn't the thing that most negative reviews focused on. It wasn't the soundtrack either, which in my opinion isn't half bad, and pumps high-action scenes along wonderfully well.



No, it's the gameplay that threw a lot of "professional" game reviewers off.

I understand that the VR tutorials don't really give you "all you need to know," and the shop screens give you unlockable attacks but no real idea how to execute them. This is a wonderful thing, if you ask me. It forces you to learn how to play the game effectively.



I remember playing Street Fighter II, the original arcade classic, at my local skating rink in 1991. I remember there wasn't the screen border art that told you how to do special moves at that time, you had to learn by playing, or learn by someone teaching you because they had either found the technique themselves or learned it from someone else. Either way, someone had to have figured it out on their own, and that gave you a certain sense of accomplishment when you learned something that, pardon the pun, changed the game. It was empowering.



In a game based on controlling a protagonist with damn near limitless power (and surrounded by enemies who act as reservoirs of your power), that sense of empowerment is not given, it is earned. Sure, you earn the move by unlocking it with your BP currency, but learning how to utilize it reminds me so much of SFII - there's no cheat sheet in the game, you're going to need to experiment in live combat to figure it all out. You're going to learn how to dodge and parry punches because you're tired of getting hit. You're going to learn how to use Blade Mode correctly, parry effectively and to how to consistently trigger conditions for Zandatsu attacks. Because if you don't, you will have a frustrating time with this game, and that isn't necessarily the game's fault for being that unforgiving. It only rewards those who truly learn from failure, instead of lamenting over their losses, blaming anything and everything but their own lack of understanding and never turning back.

I've read a review (not listing which it is, just hit Metacritic to check through the low-ball scores) where the reviewer didn't even finish the game due to sheer frustration. I've read another where the reviewer lamented over the lack of a dodge attack, even though it's so low-priced that it's able to be picked up from the shop as soon as you enter the very first stage where you can access the skill tree. At that, it's not even the least bit difficult to use (X + A / Square + X), and it's not a very long experimentation stretch to find it once it's been unlocked. I'm seeing a strange trend of polarization that cuts (again, pardon the pun) a very well-defined line "between the boys and the men" who play this game, and while everyone is most certainly entitled to their opinions, I find myself having trouble understanding the criticism of gameplay. Maybe it's because I come from a time where Megaman 2 forced you to learn the pattern in Quick Man's stage, or else those beams would forever bar you from even finishing the stage, or you'd sacrifice your Flash Stopper to get there without the one weapon that would serve the most purpose.



There are some who will not understand that the length of the game is suited to multiple playthroughs, rather than a "one-and-done" kind of experience. If you play it and beat it, play it again and notice the difference. Situations that gave me trouble in the first run are now absolute and total fucking slaughter scenes. The power they give you in this game is overwhelming. Most games shy from making your character "OP," but here, they completely revel in it. They bathe in the power you're granted, in fact, it's more like they drown you in it.



Case in point - the first three soldiers that jump you in the demo are the same that jump you in the true first stage of the game (past the prologue). I have always fought them with parries and chained attacks. On my second playthrough, I jumped and immediately entered Blade Mode, and proceeded to swipe a perfect horizontal line, completely vivisecting three enemies in tandem. The fight, which took 48 seconds on the first playthrough, was shaved to ten-point-five-nine, from start to finish. Give me another game that gives you that degree of "fuck you, you're dead, goodbye" kind of power. You may find one, but you'll be hard-pressed to do it.



In closing, I know that the game wouldn't be for everyone, because it would require effort and patience - a strange cocktail in a game seemingly based on immediacy and frantic, visceral action. But hear me well when I say this to you: if you are finding it hard to do something in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, then believe me, you're doing it wrong, and it's nobody else's fault but your own. Own up to it, and get better at the game.

The question is, will you have the patience to learn how to do it right? If you do, you'll find what might be the most intrinsically rewarding game you've played in a long time, same as I did.


And on that note, I'm up out this bitch.

(Note: I'm sorry about the horrible quality of the pictures. I can't figure out how to make them work right, so they're little squares of stuff rather than the horizontal-fill I wanted.
BrowneyeWinkin is a very nice fellow. You should all be nice to him.)

No flowery lead-in, I'm going right into the belly of the beast, because I feel like there's something that most people discussing this blog entry's subject are missing. This is chock full of editorial speculation, but I've thought long about this subject and played devil's advocate against myself trying to see what points were legit. Here's what I came up with:



The big rumor currently swirling around the everywhere is that both the upcoming Sony and Microsoft consoles will have some sort of measure in place to deny the owner the right to play used games, and in some fashion, require an internet connection to even play them. This would be a revolutionary step for the videogame industry, an era geared toward the outright elimination of piracy, and stopping used sales from robbing the publishers and developers of the hard-earned dues. This is also what some financial experts are pointing to as the cause for a decline in GameStop stock prices and recent plans of store closures. Above all else, there's people I personally know that are convinced that this is how things are going to be.



The problem with that logic is simply this: it's a stupid, stupid idea. Blindingly so.


(Blue Dragon Video Games, Ormond Beach, FL - A GREAT place to spend money.)

First, and probably most importantly for the health of the industry itself, it damages the resale of videogames. Like it or not, this secondhand market is an industry upon itself, and does far more good for the consumer than it does ill for publishers and developers. There's massive chain stores, online marketplaces and good old mom 'n pop shops that rely on this very industry for sustenance. If they aim to eliminate that from the equation, they threaten to undermine the very stores that sell the most significant quantities of their new product. This measure would even threaten the ability to borrow a game from a friend, one of the most time-honored traditions of trying a game (or never even giving / getting it back). Imagine not being able to borrow a game...and this leads me into my next point.



Secondly, let's assume that they put a system in place to "lock" a game to a particular user. Say goodbye to rentals, because unless they have some special, nerfed version that exists for rental (Redbox already does this with their movies), you won't be able to play a rented game because that verification measure for that particular disc has already been used before. This affects online rental such as Blockbuster and Gamefly, as well as kiosks like Redbox. There's significant revenue stream there that is being threatened by this proposed practice. The days of try-before-you-buy will change for the worse, therefore bringing me to yet another point to consider.



Third, the inability to rent or buy used will likely begin to force people to buy games at a new-release price point. This, I believe, is the main (theoretical) reason for such a system to get put in place from the hardware manufacturer side, as they want to guarantee new software sales as the main source of revenue. Therefore, they would hope to provide more feelings of financial security to large publishing houses and their stables of contracted developers to make more titles available on their systems, because they know that money would go directly to the people who made the game, and not the business that resold it to a second, third or fourth owner at nearly the same amount, except in pure profit.



While this seems like a great business idea in theory, it would likely cripple the very industry they are trying to save or at least treat with these measures, and cause at least a partial deflation of said industry, if not begin a systemic collapse of it in some fashion. I would expect see consumers turning their backs on the large companies, maybe not enough to cause them to fail, so to speak, but those who were one-hundred-percent sure to purchase a new console would definitely think twice before they did, because nobody wants to buy a sixty-dollar game on faith and be permanently locked into their purchase if it doesn't satisfy them. It forces a very real brand of inescapable buyer's remorse upon those customers, and as such, creates a very uneasy environment for repeat purchases - all games would be a dice roll if you weren't the type to scour the internet for reviews and news. Games that may have had a fair shake at better sales thanks to word of mouth and rentals might never see a profit because the buying populace began to get gunshy.



Also, this would likely cause upstart consoles like the OUYA to begin taking significant chunks out of the overall pie, as they would practically be giving them a pool of disenfranchised buyers, independent developers and other industry players a place to not be shackled by such policies. You would start to see the indie culture that thrives on the PC begin to invade the console space at a faster rate than the "walled garden" consoles could ever hope to match. I would expect to see Microsoft and Sony backpedal on their system of consumer control, but after burning so many bridges of goodwill with customers, storefronts and the general gaming culture at large, I wouldn't expect to see them recover for a very long time, if ever.

This has all been speculation, but here's the reality: the technology has been openly discussed, announced, and all but confirmed to be implemented. Doing so may not cause the preceding events discussed to occur, or, it make make all of them happen. But I am one to think that the people who run these particular divisions of these particular corporations that make videogame consoles are not so blinded with dollar signs to see how much of an obvious bad idea this is. It would do more harm than good. It would cut off the nose to spite the face, throw the baby out with the bathwater, and quite literally punish paying customers to stop the very small minority of pirates. I'd like to think these companies aren't actually stupid enough to go through with this line of thought by making it a very real action.



And let's not even get into requiring an internet connection, in a country where some internet access is slow-assed-satellite-or-nothing, and pushing that into a global marketplace where some folks don't even have internet to begin with. I myself have a few friends who come over to my house to use my internet to download a title update or DLC onto their system just to go home and play it because they have no internet connection of their own. I can't think for one second that they'll cut off paying customers like that, because how do you pirate games online if you have no internet to begin with, and how can they afford internet when they're too busy buying games? Games that are most likely used, since they're more affordable?



This might be hyperbole at its finest, and I apologize if there's any tone of sensationalism in this, because I don't mean there to be any. I only want to bring up very crucial points about what the implementation of this may bring, and point to the likelihood that these companies have no doubt kicked this around so much that they would have had to bump up against these very obvious potential effects.

My only question left is this: if this does come to pass, what do you blame it on? Sheer greed blinding companies from starkly visible truths and potential outcomes, or brazen willful ignorance bordering on "we give no fuck about any of you" territory? It's borderline suicidal, like being so convinced you can fly that you have lost all semblance of touch with reality, and are completely convinced that if you jump off the roof and flap your arms as hard as you fucking can, you'll totally start flying, brah. It's full-blown crazy talk, no matter how you look at it.

If this is a thing that happens, the answer won't shock you, but you will most certainly be disappointed in the reason why. This disappointment should stick with you.

Evolution is necessary. Let's just get that out of the way, first and foremost. Nothing survives in this world without changing, without adapting to the times and the environment that surrounds it. Sometimes all it takes is a simple modification to a behavior, sometimes all it takes is a single tool to do something you couldn't do before, and sometimes it takes a complete overhaul of everything you know to make survival possible. No matter the measure or the reason, evolution must take place in order for survival to remain possible. As times change, tastes change and cultural / technological landscapes change, so too must we all.



With that out in the open, I'm going to switch gears to an idea of mine that I want to flesh out here and now, so that everyone can see it, and perhaps the great powers that be can see it as well. It is an evolution of an icon. It is what must be done, and I'm hoping that this message reaches the ears of those who need to listen. This is not just an evolution, but a potential revolution if done right.


And you should listen to this in the background.
Pardon the image, I think the Splash Woman titty-squeeze is beyond stupid, but it was the best quality version I could find, audio-wise...whatever. Just roll with it.



Megaman is a strange subject for me these days. It's an iconic franchise that has shaped me as a person. I have lived my life according to tenets passed down from its gameplay mechanics, if that makes sense - you tackle difficult situations in order to earn weaponry, items and lessons that allow you to tackle other difficult situations, eventually culminating in your ability to defeat major obstacles in life. I know that's corny, but it is so very true - and it's been the recipe for all of my successes. I also played a fair amount of Metroid when I was growing up, exploring labyrinthine worlds and all of their nooks and crannies, looking for secrets and items, much in the same fashion as I would a Megaman game, but from a different approach if still seeking the same sort of final resolution.

With the Megaman franchise in the most dire of ruts, but the fanbase being stronger now than possibly ever before (and with the fact that they have become more vocal and more united due to repeated tragedies), it's time for a major shakeup. It's time for more than a new coat of paint - it's time for a revolution in evolution. And I'll tell you how I see it, my personal vision for the next step into the future of the Megaman franchise, from a fan who gives quite an awful lot of damn. I can't make this game, but I sure as hell hope somebody can or does, and wants to involve me in the process (I'd be honored).



First, let's talk visuals. 8-bit is great, it's got a retro charm that never loses its spark, but it can wear out its welcome (and has done so). There's so many games out there that have done 2D art some amazing justice in the HD era we live and play in, from simplistic yet clean to complex and frame-heavy, there's no excuse to not move things forward with the Megaman franchise. The one thing that keeps coming to mind is how Arc System Works made their visual stamp on the Contra franchise with Hard Corps: Uprising. The visual style of the game is beautiful to look at, wild, vibrant, colorful and just imbued with a sense of life, albeit a very anime-styled life. An anime-styled life that worked very well in Megaman 7 and 8, actually. So, this kind of look is a natural fit to bring Megaman into the 21st century with the same design aesthetics he was born with almost three decades ago.

You don't have to go all hand-drawn - you can pull a New Super Mario Bros. and use 3D assets on a 2D plane, just make sure that the visual aesthetic matches the tone of the series. Keep it light, keep it cartoony, but don't go too far with that - there's got to be some grit in there, as things definitely blow up in the world of Megaman. Everything blows up eventually. And I would have the final acts be rather dark territory for the series, with Megaman looking beat up and run down...and perhaps acting as a segue from the classic to X series. You never know.



Next, let's talk gameplay. Nothing is as cool as selecting a boss, running a stage, beating said boss and stealing his shit, just to go kick his buddy's ass with it. I love that gameplay mechanic. But what it needs is something new, something larger, more expansive...something that might let you go back and explore an area again, like the X series. Here's where my Metroid-addled idea comes into play:

Let's start with an intro stage, like MM7 / MMX. Let that flow right into the discovery of a massive Wily Compound, with eight sections, and a central hub - this central hub is where you will choose your Robot Master stage, and therefore the eighth of the compound you'll tackle. Exploration of this stage will not be like previous Megaman games, at least, not exactly - exploration is the key word. There will be things to explore, items to find, abilities outside of boss weapons to locate and utilize, and suspicious surfaces that you cannot do anything to...at least, not yet. You'll locate the minibosses, defeat them, and move ever closer to the Robot Master in charge. You'll eventually locate him, fight him, defeat him, and take his weapon. Standard operating procedure, right? That should be expanded on as well, but in new and exciting ways for the player.



What if the weapons are crucial to breaking part of certain walls, opening certain doors, just like a Metroid game? What if there are secret areas between stages, a network of additional sections that connect these stages in strange ways, ways that become integral to the game later on? These are idea that need to be explored in order to make this work, but using the Megaman formula, something much larger and more expansive can be created from it - a Megaman adventure, much like the Legends series, only in 2D and set in the original, classic Light timeline.

What if we take a cue from the X series, and have other locales change because of a system failure in another stage - defeating Chill Penguin causes the lava in Flame Mammoth's stage to harden and no longer be a threat to you, correct? Same rules apply. This also leaves a very cool way to bring back Robot Masters from the past - defeating the fire guy makes the fire wall protecting a certain avenue of approach to another area turn off, but when you come back on the return trip, it's back on? "Fire Man and Heat Man return!" or something like that. The possibilities are endless with that, really. You can make all sorts of Robot Masters from the past make triumphant returns, and their weapons / abilities can give you new ways to traverse the environment. Shadow Man wall-running ability? Top Man ability drills down to new areas? Gravity Man allows heavy equipment to float, revealing a new path? Untapped potential everywhere.



Mega Man Universe had given me the spark for this idea. I always wanted to make my own Megaman game, with my own bosses, my own levels, so on, so forth. But with that canceled, I felt like this idea would never come to be. Maybe, just maybe, with all the attention that they're giving the guy for his 25th, the one gift they could give him and his fans is a brand new lease on life. I think this, while incomplete and obviously reeking of some conceptual issues that just can't be resolved by any sane dev team, this is probably the best way to make something old new again. This is the evolution the franchise needs. This is the revolution Capcom needs to fund. This is the only thing I truly want, really.



And The Megas / Entertainment System / Year 20XX need to collaborate on the soundtrack. Yeah.[/center]

I haven't written a Destructoid Community Blog in over two years. Two whole years. In that span of time, I've changed jobs twice. I've moved twice. I've become a father to a beautiful (and demanding) baby girl. And I have found myself with way less time to play games as a result of all of it.

I used to be the kind of person who would buy a game a week, maybe every two weeks. I'd burn them out as fast as possible, trade in the ones I didn't want to keep, and keep the ones I wanted to archive. Financial difficulties forced me into a situation where I had to sell 90% of my game collection, including merchandise, collectibles, consoles, games...you name it. I had a fire sale where the only fire was the one under my ass to keep my daughter in diapers. I got rid of almost all of it, and it was nothing short of painful to watch all but the most treasured pieces go sauntering off into the world, destined for hands that I could not guarantee would take as good care of them as I had done.

I was not aware of it at the time, as we are always unaware of the future and its events - but that moment was the most positive, transformatively profound event I had ever experienced as a gamer when looking back in hindsight.

There were things I didn't want to let go of - Tengen Tetris on NES, the original Final Fantasy (box/book/map), Chrono Trigger (box/book/map), my Megaman games, my Street Fighter collection, my Saturn imports, other assorted you'll-never-see-this-again-and-if-you-do-it'll-cost-you-a-fucking-fortune-to-reacquire treasures, but after letting go of everything that wasn't those things (both in the sense of monetary worth and emotional ties - my dearly departed aunt's copies of Puzznic, The Guardian Legend and Kickle Cubicle, for instance), I found myself not only lightened, but enlightened.

I had become the thing I believe no gamer should ever become. I can only say this because I've seen the other side of some chasm, some divide where which you cannot see through your own need to collect and hoard all things digitally delightful. You wish to save them from a fate of a used rack in a mom 'n' pop game store, priced far below where they should be, and given to a dirty child to use as a frisbee because they couldn't get the complexity of Grim Grimoire. I had become the video game enthusiast equivalent of a crazy cat lady.

I had promotional standees over ten years old. I had figures from pre-order bonuses still in the packaging from the Saturn days. I had all, and I mean ALL of my system boxes, from the NES up to the PlayStation 3, and that was every Nintendo home system, every Sega home system, every Sony home system, every Microsoft home system. And, I had the systems. And the controllers. And the games. And the boxes for the games. And on, and on, and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

I got rid of it all. Well, as I said before, almost all. A good, vast majority - let's put it like that.

I stepped back from games in a big way. I still play, but I play less than I used to. I still buy games, but I buy one every three to four months, rather than every one to two weeks. I choose my purchases very carefully, play the ever living dog shit out of them, then archive it, just as I used to do. And this practice, this stepping down from a mountaintop made of peripherals and plastic monuments to what nobody but myself and those like you and I will consider time well spent, it saved me. It allowed me to enjoy games again. It allowed me to be more patient, to savor the experiences they gave and to not feel the need to "catch 'em all," so to speak. It allowed me to pursue a career doing something meaningful, it allowed me to pursue a life outside of my digital domain, and while her daddy's Spartan Rank currently sits at a hearty SR-96 (130 is so very close now), my daughter gets more quality time with me than she ever would have had I not done this.

This was not a situation I was forced into - this was an undertaking based on a choice, a choice built on thousands, millions of sequential choices undertaken earlier, both conscious and unconscious. But I chose to spend my life playing less and owning less in order to play more and have more, and the "more" that I have now is far less tangible but so much more real to me.

I have no idea why I decided to write a rambling confessional as the first thing I decided to slap on this digital parchment in two years. But I needed to. And I appreciate you taking the time to read it, whoever you may be.

P.S. - I don't recommend parenthood for everyone, but for those who want to take the journey someday, it's the most infinitely rewarding, infinitely terrifying, sublimely beautiful thing you'll ever experience. My daughter changed me for the better, and while I can still clean your teeth with a DMR on Halo 4 or FADC into Ultra 2 in SSF4:AE, the achievements I'm hunting these days feel way better when you get them, and the sound of your child's laughter is the unlock noise.

Okay, you're free to shit on me for getting sentimental.