Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Gaming Is...

Upfront, I must confess my biases. It is my belief that all good writers should, in order to inform his reader, while in turn earning their trust.

1. I am a Star Wars fanboy. No ifs, ands, or buts about that. I am proud of this fandom, and will explain its' genesis to anyone who asks (just not right now).

2. DC Comics... if anything could come close to my love of Star Wars, it would be my love of comics, and most especially those from Detective Comics Entertainment. Batman, Green Lantern, Power Girl, the list goes on... DCU Online is going to take up FAR too much of my free time once it launches in November.

3. There has been no better show on television in recent memory than Lost. And I will personally fight you if you say otherwise!

4. Finally, and most pertinent to this blog, I am a PlayStation gamer. In my childhood and teenage years, my family owned and I played on four gaming console, not including personal computers: the SEGA GameGear handheld, Nintendo Game Boy Color handheld, Sony PlayStation, and Nintendo GameCube.

Fifty percent of my consoles were products of Nintendo, but I would say that 90 percent of my gameplay growing up was on consoles and handhelds from that company. Whether played with friends at their homes or borrowed consoles at my own, I grew up with Mario, Donkey Kong, GoldenEye, Rogue Squadron, and (more recently) Wii Sports. It helped that the products of one of my other obsessions were heavily featured on Nintendo consoles, as LucasArts pumped out several classic games in the 90's for Nintendo (Shadows of the Empire and Rogue Squadron topping the list).

But with age comes maturity, and my first (and, so far, only) console purchase in adulthood has been the PlayStation 3. My reasoning is this: a) blu-ray movies--Sony made 'em, and this was my primary reasoning for buying a PS3--I love films, and with Sony's victory in the HD wars, the PS3 became the ideal meld of two loves; b) I owned a previous Sony console, and based on that experience, as well as familiarity with a roommate's PlayStation 2, I had confidence that my purchase would be a worthwhile one; c) a growing buzz around PS3's first-party software appealed to me, as I had little love for XBOX exclusives such as Halo and Gears of War; but games like Uncharted [modern day Indiana Jones], inFamous [superhero], and Heavy Rain [noir-ish mystery] appealed to me more.

So when I'm reviewing games for this blog, or expounding upon gaming culture, understand that it comes from a bias towards the PlayStation systems. I will review PC games as well, and multi-platform titles, but there will be few--if any--XBOX 360 or Wii reviews coming from this reviewer.

As always, comments are welcome. Live Long, and May the Force be with you.

4 comments:

  1. I can definitely concur about his love for Lost. One time I talked about Sawyers hairstyle and the next second I was dodging a blue light-saber. True story.

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  2. I'm assuming this is James T. Skywalker in this post. Perhaps you guys should specify which one of you is writing before each post. Perhaps individualized catch phrases!

    I also agree with the love for LOST. Though, I will have to admit, I may not think it's the BEST show in recent memory. I'm not necessarily saying that because I think another show is better, but I also like The Shield and Rescue Me very much (to name a few). And I can't decide which is my favorite. They're all up there. In fact, I love LOST so much, that my friend and I still get together every Tuesday and watch it even though it's over. Since we miss it so much, we just decided to start over. And we'll continue the cycle indefinitely!

    I might also suggest that perhaps some of your love for LOST comes from the occasional Star Wars references, particularly with Sawyer's nicknames for people.

    Good to know your biases and where you're coming from!

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  3. So yeah...ya know the bottom of the posts Burnout? Have you perhaps looked at them?

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  4. Oh, some of the LOST love does come from Star Wars references, but they "had me at hello" from the first episode which, IIRC, had no direct references to SW.

    But anyway, I will admit that the last decade has offered up some fantastic televison: The Shield, The Wire, The Sopranos, Rome, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The West Wing, and a whole lot more. But I've never been as involved in a series as I have been with LOST, and that includes my 90's love-affair with Star Trek.

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