Genericide Update: Excuses, Lists and Opinions

[ANNOUNCEMENT: I’ll be going on vacation in a couple days and it will have at least a week without updates (what else is new). Apart from this article I’ll try to get something out tomorrow, though it’s uncertain if I will manage. I really am sorry about the gaps in content. That’s the important bit, more below]

            In the theoretical situation wherein I had regular readers of this blog, regular readers of this blog may notice that it has a really inconsistent update rate. Part of this is the unavoidable nature of how my writing cycle works, which is approximately between ‘when I feel like it’ and ‘when I start to feel guilty’ o clock. The other part comes from the fact that I play a lot of games in my free time that I don’t feel motivated to write about. Just how many games, you may ask? Well I figured in lieu of having actual content to give you I’ll just give you a list of the many, many games I’ve been playing this summer but not writing about. Some will be accompanied with a brief write up, some will be accompanied by an explanation of why I’m planning a bigger write up later, and some will state my intent not to write about them at all. If you don’t care about said list, I’d still prefer you scroll down past it to the bottom of this article, because I have some questions for what few readers I have.

Some Top Video Game Explosions

[NOTE: Due to the nature of when giant explosions tend to be deployed, this article is home to quite a lot of spoilers. Read with care]

Today is the fourth of July, which as far as I can tell is America’s national holiday of blowing things up. In celebration, I decided to create a list of some of my favorite explosions in video games. You’ll note that the title says ‘some’, and that’s very much intentional. This is by no means a definitive list, and I encourage anyone who reads this and thinks of another to list it in the comments. Wide scale mayhem or general apocalypses aren’t so much the idea as big, bombastic balls of energy or fire expanding rapidly and wrecking the surrounding area. In addition, the order is fairly loose and is more of just a general index of how awesome the boom was. Without further ado, let’s get into the list:

Spyro the Dragon Review

            There are some times when I realize that I have far too many games to play. When I realize that I have so many dozen things I could be doing that I responsibly resolve to finish what I’m already doing. When I am tempted to buy or play a new video game but resist because I clearly have too much willpower and self-control for such things, and instead will dutifully and mechanically work through my list of things I already was going to do. This is not one of those times. Instead this is a time where I bought Spyro the Dragon instead.

And when I think about it, I can’t actually remember one of those other times…

Let’s Play Sphinx #5: Exposition, Eagles and Evil Ecosystems

            So our hero Sphinx was last seen hiring a ship in Abydos bound for Heliopolis. While he presumably has a fascinating trip on the empty ocean with only one other boring NPCs company, however, our point of view shifts. What we see next is a scene taking place inside Castle Uruk. In case you’d forgotten, that’s the one with the giant laser sticking out the top.

Can’t miss it, first building on the right, just past the land of eternal darkness

Platforming and the Third Dimension

            An idea for an article that’s been kicking around in my head for a while has been to talk about one of my favorite sub-genres of games, 3D platformers, and why they seem to be so horribly dead at the moment. I then considered splitting it into two articles, wherein the first one explains the platforming genre (games where you jump, essentially) in general and how it came to be. However, as soon as I started researching for the article I noticed that the internet already had covered that issue in more ways than I could ever reconcile, and with more authority. I know that original ideas are hard to come by and that it’s perfectly fine to retell old information with a new spin. But if I were to write just about the rise of 2D platformers I would be copying far too much of the article from Wikipedia verbatim for my liking.

Bottom line, we’re fusing the two ideas, with me first doing a brief overview of platformers in general before moving on to the variety with an extra dimension. Some readers more savvy to the history of video games may find some familiar information to begin with, but at the very least I can hope to put an entertaining spin on things to keep you interested. For example, Wikipedia can’t make terrible puns or toilet humor jokes. It’s one of mankind’s last bastions of defense against robot superiority.

More like WEEkipedia! …Y’know, like wee. As in pee. Like piss. The fluid. That is dispelled from your body as waste. …*cough*

E3 2012

            Given that literally all my content on this blog so far has been devoted to games nearly a decade old or older, one could be forgiven for thinking that I am broadcasting to you live from the past, via some manner of blog time capsule. Either that or I live in a cave. Er, a cave surprisingly stocked with video games and consoles from a decade ago. Whatever, you get the idea. However, the fact of the matter is that I do in fact live in the mysterious future-present year of 2012, and frequently interact with these new-fangled jigamawhatsits that are modern consoles.

The problem is that I frequently revisit old games for a number of reasons, and although I’ve also played modern games recently they’ve been fewer in number and, more importantly, harder to write about. You see these games have already gotten tons of coverage recently from people better equipped to speak about them than I, and they’ve also all been really good lately. In my experience I’ve always found bad games or fun but flawed games easier to talk or write about than good ones. Anyway, the point is that I don’t talk about modern games as much as a lot of other people. But now I’m going to, because I want to briefly discuss this year’s E3.

This was clearly the only important part of E3. Alright, we’re done here, go home.

Let’s Play Sphinx #4: Visit Scenic Abydos Sewers

            When last our adventure left off, we were yet again jumping into the hideous jaw of the portal god en route to a mysterious place called Abydos. Our eventual goal at the time is to get from there to Heliopolis, where Monkey Man is waiting for us. So the portal god spits us up like some type of picky lava worm and we find ourselves in a sewer. Pleasant. There isn't anything we can really do down here except walk down the passage to the door, so that’s what happens.

            As we emerge from the sewers we see the waterside city of Abydos. Near the entrance is a lady who grabs our attention to mention that the waters around the city are electrified due to an unusual infestation of electric eels. I understand the need to put walls around your game world, but really…electric eels?

For those unaware, it’s kind of hard to continuously electrify an entire ocean.