Who blogs here:
Erik spends his night and weekends saving worlds, slaying beasts and organizing mismatch shapes into straight lines. While First-person shooters (FPS),
survival horror and platformers are some of his favorite, there are no genre of game he won't play. From PC to PSP, Xbox to Wii. Erik is just as passionate
with playing games as he is talking about them.
J.R. is the sorta-completionist gamer. He almost always completes the main story arc in all games he plays, but seldom plays the "gamer's game" to complete everything. He'll never get all 120 stars or fight Emerald Weapon, but he will save the day. His favorite genres are RPG, Action/Adventure, Platformer, and MMO. He doesn't like fighting games and is rather picky about FPSs.
Ted has been hooked on gaming since the birth of the Atari 2600, when high fantasy adventure consisted of maneuvering a colored square through a castle maze while dodging pesky dragons that looked like 2D seahorses with beaks and wacky bats that took great pleasure in stealing your keys. To this day, while he enjoys platformers, first-person shooters and puzzlers, he is most passionate about RPGs and any other games which weave great stories into the overall experience.
Amethyst, a gamer that giggles at calling herself a gamer because she fits none of the glamorous stereotypes of female gamers, has been gaming since her father brought home the sparkly new Nintendo Entertainment System back in '89. Up until then she had dabbled with the Atari at a cousin's, but it was Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt and pounding with her hands on the Power Pad in World Class Track Meet that sealed her fate. Despite a three year stint that she doesn't talk about, she has been playing video games and other nerdly activities with enthusiasm. She enjoys puzzlers, RPGs, MMORPGs, certain shooters/fighters, platformers, magic carpet rides and um, mechanical pencil sharpeners. She hates, despite a couple of exceptions, racing games and sports games. Amethyst is married to Erik and is friends with J.R. and Ted.
My Cure for Gamer Fatigue
Spyderbyte
| 6/24/2008 9:42 am |
Game On
Criticize me all you wish, but there are days in my life when I don't want to play video games.
Before you burn me at the stake for my heretical statement, please allow me to clarify. I don't mean all video games. I mean the game I happen to be playing at the time. Why didn't I say that in the first place? Because I find verbal scenic routes to be much more fun. Have some sympathy for this fatigued gamer!
I've been working my way through Shadow Hearts:Covenant. All in all, I'm really enjoying the game, particularly the battle system which is innovative from the start and only adds more and more interesting layers as the game progresses. I'm nearing the end of the first disc, and finding myself a little worn out. It so happens that it's not the game itself, but rather a repeated technical glitch which has worn down my patience a bit. Specifically, on two separate occasions now while working my way through a lengthy maze, my game has frozen while trying to load a new area. This would not be an issue, save the fact that this tends to happen after sinking about half an hour of gametime in without a save point. By the third attempt, I've grown impatient and want to advance the storyline, but I don't want to repeat the maze and I've grown fearful of a freeze.
And given my nature, my mind strays to other things. Worse still, I begin to unfairly doubt my own skills. Will I ever finish a game again?
I tried a few things to change my attitude. I watched five movies this weekend. I played some Rock Band with J.R. I played through another chapter of Heavenly Sword last night. I teamed up with Amethyst to solve some puzzles from The Stone. All of those things were fun, though none inspired me to return to Shadow Hearts: Covenant. My biggest confidence booster, though, (thanks, Erik, for letting me play!) was logging into Portal and playing it through from start to finish. I'd put off this critically-acclaimed heavily-lauded game mostly because it was too critically-acclaimed and heavily-lauded for my tastes. I needed the hype to subside before trying it.
My opinion? As I expected, it was well worth the hype it received. The writing was top-notch. The puzzles were incredibly innovative and satisfying to solve. And the end credits and song were a delightful prize.
Thank you, Portal, for giving me the cake-induced sugar rush I needed to assure myself that I can indeed finish games. As an expression of my appreciation, I may indeed need to return to the maze-laden lands of Shadow Hearts: Covenant tonight to see if I might complete the first disc in your honor.
Wait a minute! Now I'm addressing video games as if they were corporeal beings? Is there something wrong with me? I really don't think so. Video gaming is an important piece my personal entertainment schedule. Criticize me all you wish, but that's not something I'm seeking to cure.
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