OK – I started this post last week and never got around to finishing it. It’s not a particularly difficult post or anything; if nothing else it’s a collection of scattered E3 thoughts that I was trying to write down before my short-term memory said “fuck it, you don’t need this.”
Today, as I attempt to write this, I am feeling very anxious. It’s the sort of anxiety that I’m recognizing as if it were from a bad dream – I feel like I’ve forgotten something terribly important, and there will be terrible consequences if I can’t remember it. This feeling could also just be due to me drinking a very large iced coffee and taking a Claritin-D for allergies – so my heart is racing and yet I’m feeling spaced out. For whatever it’s worth, as far as I can tell, I haven’t actually forgotten anything; today is my wife’s birthday, but that’s already been sorted out – gifts received, dinner reserved, etc.
So I don’t really have any E3 thoughts, as it turns out. All the big press conferences happened when I was unable to watch them – I mean, I did watch a little bit of the beginning of Microsoft’s presser on Twitter on my iPhone, because I needed to get some Scorpio info – but that was probably about it as far as paying direct attention to the event itself.
Before you ask: yes of course I’m getting an Xbox One X. I’ve been saving money in a special savings account ever since it was first announced for that very purpose, and by the time it comes out I might even be able to pick up a 4K TV, too.
I’ve been spending most of my gaming time on the Xbox One lately, as a matter of fact; during their last big sale I ended up buying a bunch of games I already own on the PS4, because I’m an idiot who has started to feel the burn of Achievements again. Truth be told – and I may have already said this here, but I’m too lazy to go back and check – I really do prefer the user experience of the Xbox far more than the PS4, even if the PS4 is the technically superior machine. (Will I get a PS4 Pro if I do end up getting a 4K TV? Probably/eventually, if it gets a price drop, and if I can easily swap in my 2TB hard drive.)
And as it happens, if you were to ask me what it is I’m playing these days, I’d be hard-pressed to give you a quick answer. I’m kinda playing at least 10 different things all at the same time, some new stuff:
- Dirt 4: kinda ugly, and has an unusually shitty UI (which is especially odd considering how glorious and pristine previous Dirt UIs have been), but very fun and contains possibly the best rumble technology I’ve ever felt – I mean, you can feel the curved grooves in the road. It’s extraordinary if only for that specific reason.
- Lego City Undercover: I bought this hoping my son would play it with me. He’s sorta interested, sorta not. As far as the game itself, it’s Lego GTA, and it’s quite charming. It suffers from the same horrific platforming bullshit that has plagued every Lego game since the dawn of time, and it has a weird tone issue wherein it’s clearly aimed for young kids, but filled with references to movies that no young kid would ever go near. But whatever. Sometimes you just want to screw around in a consequence-free environment and break stuff into littler stuff, and this game does a really good job at that.
- RIME: Alternates between being a beautiful, serene exploration game and a frustrating, obtuse platformer. I’d like to see this to the end, but who knows.
as well as a bunch of backlog stuff:
- Assassin’s Creed Syndicate: because I got a little jazzed seeing the forthcoming Origins and wanted to remember what those games feel like; this is the first time in a long time that I can remember actually looking forward to a new AC game. I remain hopeful that the 2-year break served the development well.
- Fallout 4: because I stumbled across a fantastic video analysis of the game by Joseph Anderson, which does such a remarkable job of articulating everything I hated about FO4 that I kinda want to go back and play it again. No, that does not make any sense, but does anything make sense these days?
I have more to post, I think, but I’m not quite in the navel-gazing mood at the moment and I’d prefer to save that stuff for a different time. In any event, I’m alive and the Ativan has started to kick in.
(exhales)
Shouts From The Couch 