Blog / Games

For the longest time I thought that expression was referring to something other than drug possession. Driving without a seatbelt. Driving after having crapped your pants. Driving without a license. Driving while in desperate need of a car wash. That sort of thing.

Forza Motorsport 5 provides another definition: treating a previously pristine simulation-quality racing game as a demolition derby. I’m not sure if I should attribute this solely to the Drivatar system, but laps around Forza are more bumper cars than follow-the-leader.

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After two straight days of Assassin’s Creed IV I’m starting to lose my grip on reality a little. My initial high from the game is about over and I’ve mastered almost all of the mechanics. Hunted a couple bull sharks and almost lost my lunch. You know how PETA complains when any animal is injured in any game ever? They’ve kind of got a point here. You harpoon a shark (or whale, which I haven’t seen) and let it tow your rowboat while you throw more harpoons into its back. When it’s dead you lift its bloody carcass onto your ship and get one piece of its leather. I’m not sure why this feels different than all the land hunting I’ve done in Far Cry 3, but it’s disgusting. Ick.

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Day two was about Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. It only took five years and six games, but Ubisoft’s pirate adventure is the best entry in the series and my selection for Game of the Year.

What makes a good game? More than books, music, and movies, video games let you feel like you’re someone else. The graphics, sound, story and gameplay mechanics merge together to turn a dual-stick ten-button controller into a gateway to another world.

Ninja Gaiden for Xbox was the console game I remember to give the sensation that you’re someone else. As Ryu Hayabusa I could flip off walls, toss shurikens, and cast awesome magic spells. The mechanics were so finely tuned that with some practice Ryu became an extension of your own will.

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What you notice first about the Xbox One is also what you notice second, third, fourth, etcetera. I’ll let Ron Burgandy awkwardly blurt it out. The system is black. That much you’ve known for months. What you might not know is that it’s proudly rectangular with sharp edges. The power supply is all rectangles. Kinect is a rectangle. The USB cable ends in a rectangle. If Microsoft were selling the Xbox One on Cybertron I suspect the controllers would be rectangular. I’m not sure how this is supposed to square - ahem - with the fact that the Xbox logo itself is inscribed in a circle.

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Last night I arranged my current generation games in their final resting case. I almost filled up a 128 disc game binder with Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, and PS3 games. Oh, and Wii games too I suppose. Unless something amazing comes out for the PS3 or Xbox 360 I expect I won’t add any more titles to it. The feeling was slightly melancholy. I’m not getting rid of the hardware nor the games, but they’re obsolete now. Entombed in plain sight.

Yet the journey to the next generation will be arduous. This is the first midnight launch I’ve attended in years. Maybe even decades. The first one I remember was for Halo 2 in Tallahassee, Florida. The line stretched 1,000 feet to the nearby Publix. Gamestop employees raffled off shirts and posters. It was crazy.

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Online shopping is fun. Online shopping under a time limit is maddening.

This morning I woke up at 4:57 AM to try and grab a few Xbox Ones Amazon had left over. While the site was being hammered, it wasn’t exactly slow. You just got a glimpse into what Amazon used to look like in its early betas. Click the “Buy now with 1-Click” button and it takes you to an error page. Add it to your cart and it disappears. Reload the page and it’s unavailable. Reload again and it’s back in stock.

After seven minutes of fumbling I found it by going to the “More buying choices” section and 1-Click ordering it from there. Went to my orders page and refreshed a few times to ensure it stuck. And it did! What a relief.

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Every six months or so the planets align and I’m compelled to disassemble my entertainment center and put it back together, better than it was before. Okay, usually there’s a real reason, like a new console coming out or I’ve become disgusted with my previous efforts. After doing this probably 20 times I think I can call myself an expert. Last night I achieved my greatest cabling setup to date.

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As much as I’m supposed to revile Gamestop’s trade-in policy, being able to turn an unwanted 3DS XL into 25% of my Xbox One preorder is pretty sweet. While in the store I also got to watch a few minutes of Octodad on a PS4. It’s impossible to describe. Even the videos don’t do it justice. Just watching someone trying to pilot a rubber dad impersonator around a room is a hoot. It makes me think of Chicken Boo from Animaniacs. What would a video game for that joke look like? A stealth game where you avoid the one person who realizes you’re a chicken?

But trading in my 3DS made me look more critically at my current game collection. I promised myself when I got my Xbox 360 that I would stop trading in games unless they turned out to be terrible. I wanted to build up a library of games where polygonal characters didn’t look like paper dolls.

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Yesterday a GameStop employee called to check on my Xbox One preorder. Apparently I could trade in hardware for 90% more credit towards a next generation system. This is obviously intended for people ditching their Xbox 360s, but I’m holding on to mine.

What else could I trade in? I came up with an answer pretty quickly: my 3DS XL. Cue dramatic thunderclap, right?

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Jetpack Joyride ruined free casual games for me. Beautiful, fun, free-to-play and totally addictive. I can’t begin to count the number of hours lost to that little diversion. But I can count the number of dollars: zero.

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