1. My latest Uncharted 4 correspondence for Videodame’s Co-Op Campaign is up! Check it out here. 2. Earlier this year I wrote that I was done with Lego games, having struggled to finish Lego Marvel Avengers.. To be more specific: The voice acting is mostly taken from the movies, except each line reading feels strangely sleepy …
Some quick ramblings while the snow starts to accumulate: 1. I’m roughly 14.5 hours into Far Cry 4. The front splash screen tells me I’m only 36% complete. I clutch my head in despair. I find myself pressing on in spite of everything telling me to stop, including the game itself. For example: I’m in the mood to do …
It’s nearly 5:00 pm and I’m only now getting over last night’s NyQuil haze. This doesn’t bode well for future winter-related headcolds, and I barely managed to put this thing together as it is: 1. I’d hoped to unveil a new feature today – the SFTC KILL COUNTER, which would be a running tally of how many …
I. 2013 was a year of great change and transition, and as you might expect it was both very good and incredibly surreal. On a personal level, I became a father; I released a solo album; I moved into a new apartment; I got over my fear of brain pills and started taking anti-anxiety medications …
On Monday, I said that I wouldn’t write any more about GTA V until I finished it. On Monday night, I finished it. I pushed through the last 5 or 6 missions in one go, including the setting-up and execution of the last heist, and then finished the final tying up of loose ends. The Social Club …
I’ve been getting a little weird about GTA V over the last few days; I’m in that super-hyped-up pre-release phase where it’s pretty much all I can think about. Hell, I played an hour of Red Dead last night and ended up having non-stop dreams about GTA. I say this all the time, that comparing …
I was in daddy-day-care mode earlier this week, and so I ended up finishing Saints Row 4 on Tuesday afternoon, during the kid’s nap. It took me a little over 20 hours to get to the end; after the credits rolled I jumped back in so as to finish finding all the collectibles which ended up …
Before I get into Saints Row IV, I should explain why I’ve been quiet here this week. It’s certainly not for lack of things to talk about. I finished Gone Home last Thursday. And I’ve been wanting to talk about it, all the time, here; but instead I ended up writing a 1000-word review of it for the NY …
Not to be too melodramatic here, but I’ve been feeling bummed out about games lately, and I came pretty close to shutting this blog down. To be more specific: I felt disconnected from a hobby that I’ve been passionate about for almost 30 years. I felt like I wasn’t able to connect with games anymore, …
Last night, the wife and I had a tough conversation about money.
Our 3-month old son (that’s him in the site’s header image, by the way) had his first “transition” daycare visit this morning, and he starts going in earnest in 2 weeks. And for us to be able to afford daycare – and keep ourselves in baby supplies, and pay the rent and the rest of our bills, and also eat – well, we’re already cutting it pretty close, and there’s not a hell of a lot of wiggle room. I’ve also got some rather sizable debt to pay off, too, and while I’ve made considerable progress on that front I’ve still got a ways to go, which makes this all the more anxiety-inducing.
Something’s got to give, basically.
And after some online banking and some soul-searching (and a little bit of drinking), I came to the realization that the only thing I really spend any extra money on these days is games.
This kinda sucks, as you might imagine – I am a self-professed consumer whore – but the more I think about it, this is not the worst time to be a broke gamer. If I’m truly honest with myself, there’s really only one game coming out this year that I need in any sort of non-negotiable way. Steam will have having its Summer Sale any minute now, too, and I could probably see myself picking up one or two things on my wishlist if they’re discounted enough – but let’s be honest here, after all the previous Steam Sales, there’s really not all that much that’s left for me to buy. And I can certainly pare down my Gamefly account to one game at a time, as opposed to three, to be able to handle the rest of the to-do list.
Hell, let’s look at that to-do list (aka my GameQ) while we’re here, and I’ll take this opportunity to debut a new feature I’m calling Keep or Cut:
Now, you’ll notice that there’s no next-gen titles on this list. That’s because I probably can’t afford a next-gen console this year; but even if I could, I still haven’t yet decided between the PS4 and the Xbox One. I’m obviously leaning towards the PS4, but if Microsoft continues its backtracking ways and decides to play ball with indie developers by putting a less-restrictive self-publishing policy in place, well, that might keep the pendulum swinging the other way. In any event, the only real “next-gen” game that speaks to me in any meaningful way is Watch Dogs, and that’s also coming to PC – which is a platform that already speaks to my current gaming habits anyway.
And speaking of the PC, the other clear upside to being on an austerity budget for the foreseeable future is that there’s really no excuse anymore for me to not finally tackle the GIGANTIC backlog of unfinished games I have in my Steam library. Hell, even if I only stuck to seeing all the stuff in Skyrim that I never saw on the 360, that would be plenty. (Now I just need to get over my seething Skyrim rage, which I’ve never quite managed to quell.)
I kinda don’t feel so terrible about this anymore. I’ll call that a win.
