I will not apologize for the length this post. I am warning you with peace and love.



Yesterday, someone left a comment:

I don't actually have a backlog... when I buy a game I usually try it right away and if I don't like it it gets traded back in. With new games it's usually only a $30.00 mistake because you can usually get 1/2 price for them in the first week or so... with older games I just give them away.

Woah. Really? That's murder. I don't understand how someone can pay sixty dollars for a game, then get half their money back within a week. Trading in a stack of games for ten dollars is complete bullshit. Not bullshit like the way blogs and gamefaqs changed video games, but bullshit of a higher flavor. A flavor so repulsive that I'm actually hurting for someone I don't even know. I've never sold any games, that I can recall. I own some fairly rare shit and I never want to sell any of it. I might loan it out and never get it back, and that's totally cool with me. I've given away games before, but I always tell myself that they're better off with someone else. Like my Armored Core on PS1 that I loaned to a friend over ten years ago or my original Fable that I loaned out in exchange for Conker's remake. I hate when that happens, but it happens sometimes. My greatest grief in video gmaes is that my favorite game, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, was borrowed by my half-brother and never returned. Not so much that I couldn't get any copy of the game, at least when I got the internet back and everything that we take for granted these days, but I want my copy. I want the one me and my childhood friend Quintin played on every afternoon for a whole summer. He moved away when we were kids and that would have meant something to have. Like my Godzilla toy that I got off my aunt who passed a few months ago. It means nothing to anyone and is probably very silly, but that Godzilla means a lot to me. As does anytime I watch Godzilla, I think of my aunt. And every time I play Zombies Ate My Nieghbours, I think of the days spent playing it and mastering it as a kid. As if every game really meant something to me. I've attached a memory to them all. Be it my half brother teaching me how to play fighting games or Buck Rodgers and Dragon Warrior. My first experience playing genesis. All the stories that I have are there. When you just trade off a game and get half price, it's like saying that games are worthless. That they're just there for the time that we play them and beat them, and that's it. I used to call that video game boxing, in that you would try and knock out a game and that was it. You were done. It was over and you move on. I hate that. I like to savor my games. I like to enjoy them as much as possible. They mean a lot to me.



Now loaning out games is awesome. It always has been. I'll loan anybody anything, even Suikoden II. I love Suikoden II, but I already beat it, so if someone scratched it all to pieces, which they did, that's totally okay. I don't care if my games are in mint perfect collectors edition boxes. I just want my games. I want to play each and every one of them. From Arknoid to Zombies Ate My Neighbors and everything in between. My favorite genre of game right now is the basic third person shooters, I don't know why. I love playing them. Kill.switch & The Club are so much fun to play. I probably won't finish Kill.switch as I've not played it in over four years, but for some reason it sticks in my mind. One day I might decide to pull it out and play it. I would be crushed if I looked for it and it wasn't there. Same with a game that I've already finished like The Suffering. Nobody seems to think these games are anything special, but I say they are. Video games of every kind are important. From the Shin Megami Tensei and Disgaea types to something like Halo and Mario. I've never been a halo fan, but ODST seems to be a complete package of Halo 3's multiplayer. I might some day think to myself or get invited by someone I know, maybe from Destructoid or somewhere, and they'll ask me to play and I totally can. But right now I can't. I'm not a huge fan of it, Halo 2 wasn't my favorite of games, but I do have it. It's there to play at anytime I feel like pulling it out and asking myself why didn't I love this? What was wrong with it? What can I learn from this? I've learned I like video games. That maybe I'm crazy and the only one who just wants to like every one she plays, but honestly, I like them all. In fact, I love them. I love video games. It's my favorite thing to do, besides cumming of course. Not to say I don't have other interests, but it feels like all of my time is spent in the pursuit of gaming.



Then there are games I'll try and play several times, but I just can't get into. Half Life 2 is a game that I just can't get into. If you listen to the newsy main podcast of Destructoid, which if you're into this place like I am you do, you'll notice they mention it every other episode. They seem to think its the most amazing game ever crafted. For some reason, I don't get it. It's a pretty good first person shooter, but I don't know. It seemed silly to me that you have TVs talking to you and you can run around hitting things. I've tried several times to play and I just can't find the motivation to get very far into it. Portal another game by that same developer I found hilarious and great fun. It was a puzzle game, but I'm sure I don't have to explain that. I probably could explain that Left 4 Dead was a game that I thought was not great. If you've talked to me or read around my piece of the internet, you'll know that the 360 was sold to me because of Dead Rising. I'm something of a horror fan and most horror fans are into zombies. Romero rules being the preferred zombies, but 28 days later types I can watch. So when it came to Left 4 Dead, I was horribly disappointed that the zombies only kicked and punched your character. That you ran through the same exact stuff over and over again with your team. I felt that in that one week rental I had of it, I'd seen it all. Compared to another game I rented recently, Madworld. In that game its a new beat em up where you're told to brutally murder everything you see and get as high a score as possible. And there are big boss battles. It was as if God shined a light down and let a really great game get made, but like all beat em ups it does get repetitive after a bit. Especially if that one game is all you play for a week. You know what though? I really want to buy it and play it again and again. It's the type of thing that I could revisit every six months and have the greatest time ever. Left 4 Dead 2 I'll try when it comes out, but I doubt I'll buy it either. Its strange figuring out which games are worth purchasing and which aren't.



Then let's talk RPGs. I'm a sucker for an RPG. You give me statistics and math to play with and some storyline thrown in, awesome. Especially when its in something nobody else does. Like say a high school in Japan with lots of demons. Or maybe hell itself where you play as an Overlord having wacky adventures. I've spent the greater part of a year buying and playing two sets of games on PS2 that you probably don't care about or have the stomach for. I've even found out that fans of the Shin Megami series are split between several groups because some games play like the first person ones (which I admit, is not my thing but the more I play them the more I get used to it and like it.) the Persona dating sim/dungeon ones, and the hardcore Nocturne fans. Even on my own article about the series, some debate was brought up when I said that you should get Nocturne or Persona 3 if you had to get just one. In what I've played, those two are my favorites and the ones I think would be the best to start with. However, one awry character said that I was wrong. Horribly wrong. That Nocturne was the worst place to start off. Why does that matter? Why do we argue like this on the internet? Can't we all just have opinions and share them with each other. Simply saying "I disagree, Nocturne is a bad start." would have sufficed. But for some reason, as the types who are into games we could go back and fourth all day saying which one is better. That etiher Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter is the better game. If someone just likes Mortal Kombat more, that's their opinion. Or say Turtles in Time's remake. Completely shitting all over a game is awful. I never understand that. A few years ago everyone was upset about the new Zelda getting a bad review, then that same guy got fired over something else, but no one seemed to mention the Zelda score. I recall it, and I'm sure several other types like myself do too.



But as someone who hates everything, I always try and remain polite when writing about games on my blog. If you ask me about games that I'm not writing about, generally I'll be super negative. I could point out things that one game ripped from all day. I hate that I hate everything. My one joy is to love video games and keep that going as long as I possibly can. In some ways, it's all I've got left. So if keeping games means I end up with stuff like Death by Degrees that was so awful that I was a little repulsed when I played it, but then sometimes I'll end up with something like Yakuza 2. I like having all the options available to me. Going around the internet on video sites are the most brutal and difficult games, often I like to find them and try them out. Like SIlver Surfer on nintendo. For some reason, I felt that I could play it and have fun with such a murderous video game. And I was right, the thrill of victory beating a level in that is something that I have to talk about. But that's the problem. The problem that here we are, beating games and making progress enjoying them. You're ready to move on to the next one. Beat it. Then the next. Beat it. Next up. Oh this one's too tough to finish, so I'll try something else. But that one that I didn't beat will agonize in my mind. It's all about the reaction that you get when you play a game, but nothing tops the feeling of beating one. That nervous feeling when you know you're at the end of a game. That this is it. You've played all day or for weeks even, and this is it. You're at the twelve part final boss and you've prepared to fight it. Then you die. All you can do is re-try and have a good time doing it. But then I'll play Mario and suddenly I become more profane than ever before. Any missed jump or death brings out the sailor in people. Why is that? That missing a jump and dying, even though it doesn't really matter, makes me momentarily angry enough to curse out loud, but dying at an end boss that I spent months getting to didn't phase me. I just knuckled back up and tried again.



These are things I think of when I want to talk about games, but most podcasts only discuss what they've been playing. For some reason, I love that. I love talking about what I've been playing with someone, because I never know what I'm going to be playing until I reach for the controller. Like this morning, I'm now searching for a game called Sorcerian, that I read about on a website and would like to try out. Never heard of it before, but I want to try it out.



This is a bit long, so I'll try to summarize in a less crazy and not-worked-all-night long rant. But I did work all night and as most would claim reasonably nuts. So staying on target is rather difficult. Anyway, the summary:

Video games are important. If only to me. Why sell them off for half price? Why trade them off? Why get rid of them at all? Even if you can't beat them or can't stand them, there has to be a reason why that game entered into your hands. Maybe just a reaction from you at that exact moment in time. I love video games.