2019 Gaming Resolutions

I was kind of lazy…the entire year of 2018. I didn’t afford myself many chances to enjoy things. It has been a tough year personally, and even professionally. I never really allowed time to escape into leisure activities, and instead would sort of…crumple into myself. While I did this, good games came out, there were things to be done, and I let it pass me by. 2019 needs to be better for me, on a few fronts, but honestly enjoying myself is one of the big ones. I need to learn how to relax more, my jaw hurts all the time from stress, I need to learn how to take a break. To that end, I am setting some gaming resolutions that you know…I will hopefully follow. We’ll see.

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My Most Anticipated Games for 2019

With the holiday season now in the rear-view mirror, and New Year’s quickly approaching, it is time to look forward to the games of 2019. Granted, I have a backlog so big that if I were to put all of these games in a single PS4 game-case, the pile would be dozens of feet tall; and would fall over on top of me, killing me with the sheer weight of my wasted dollars. However, the march of time is inexorable, and games will continue to come out despite my backlog. Worse even, there will be some games I want to play, and will have to inevitably spend money on, making sure some of those backlog games will stay in the backlog.

So in the style of so many other articles about upcoming games for a year, I have taken a look a lists of 2019 in video games. I have chosen the ten games that appeal to me the most, and have ranked them based on my level of anticipation. Note some of these games don’t have set release dates, and some of them are not even guaranteed for 2019, I just believe they will come out then. Even if they don’t it doesn’t much matter, I didn’t write this article under penalty of perjury or anything. Let’s get on with it.

This is…different

Proof I have not written anything in a very long time. I am writing in what is apparently the old-school editor, that is about to be replaced by a new one. I guess I shouldn’t get too used to this. I miss the old-old editor…but I am old, and I like the things I am used to I guess. I have no idea why I am writing this specifically; I have just felt the need to write for about a week now, but never indulged the urge. I guess I miss putting my thoughts down on (virtual) paper and just letting whoever have access to a small part of my idiot brain. Once upon a time, when I was much younger I thought I could do this a lot; write, and write, and write some more, get something of an audience, and maybe make a go at writing about games full-time. I’m old now, and I know there is never any way that would happen now, especially in this era of video and personality-driven content. I don’t know how to do video stuff, and I really don’t have much of a personality.

Review: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Gecko Games

 Game: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Platform(s): Nintendo Switch(reviewed), Wii U

Release Date: March 3rd, 2017

Price: $59.99

In 2017, it is fair to say that The Legend of Zelda is a franchise that Nintendo has kept pretty close to the chest.  While they’ve never turned out something truly horrible, the past ten or so years have seemed somewhat stagnant. Windwaker is a fantastic game with some slow points, Twilight Princess has some amazing Dungeons, but it’s bleak and dark art design left me wanting. While other titles like Phantom Hourglass tried too hard with gimmicks like touch based controls.  Most of these games are fantastic on their own merits, yet still, stick to concepts and gameplay elements Nintendo had been using since the era of the SNES and A Link to the Past.

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with…

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Do I Play Games Anymore?

Fuck I don’t know. I feel like I really have not for a long time. I dick around some in games. Dick around some in WoW, played some Record Keeper on my phone, and I was flipping on Assassin’s Creed: Unity a bit and trying to finally get some of that DLC done. Didn’t get far. I look at my Steam library a lot, does that count? No probably not. Definitely not. Point is, I am at school a lot, and doing school work more often than not.

But I am starting to turn it around. I recently got my hands on the newest Assassin’s Creed title, Syndicate. I find this game so much fun I am making time for it. Also I am trying to get myself back on the stick with my computer. I did buy this Alienware after all, it should be used. I have been steadily making my way through a replay of Batman: Arkham Asylum (you know, the good one), and I started Fallout: New Vegas the other day. Also the Mega Man Legacy Collection is damn near perfect in execution, which makes it damn near perfect. That isn’t a game to “get through” though; it is a title to sit down for a bit and dick around with.

I have other titles on deck, stuff like Massive Chalice that I really want to get to. Also I haven’t forgotten about Persona 2. It just…Persona 1 is better. Also I need to sit down and finish that damn thing I started forever ago, talking about Wrestlemania. I know I come off as really lazy, but I really don’t think that’s the case. But bear with me. It gets better, I think.

-Ray

Review- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona

Originally released in 1996, Revelations: Persona was a game firmly rooted in two schools of JRPG game design. First, it was a RPG from Japan that was released before the huge sea change that was Final Fantasy VII. It was never a glamorous game, it wasn’t a multi-disc affair held up with overly long cut-scenes. It was poorly translated, with every Japanese element of the game being Americanized, in an effort to apparently make it palatable to Western audiences. It was also rooted in the Atlus RPG philosophy of making grind-filled, long, fairly difficult games. Atlus also likes to make games with many systems layered on top with one another. Their best known series of the time, Shin Megami Tensei was a series that was known for a layered, punishing turn-based combat system, that also involved talking to and recruiting the help of your demon enemies.

Running with many of the mechanical premises of SMT, the new spin-off series, Persona dropped the SMT prefix that was present in the Japanese edition and came to American shores, and seemingly sold kind of okay. The Persona series has since floated itself through the PS1 and PS2 eras of RPG’s, changing and reforming itself the entire way. It all came to a head with the late PS2 title, Persona 4. After riding high on the large popularity bump Persona 4 gave to Atlus, they decided to go ahead and give the people an enhanced remake of the first Persona game, this time on the PSP. This happened in 2009. I finally finished my first step down Persona memory lane the other day, on the Vita. Let’s talk about it for a bit.

New Computer Inbound

I have had a Dell laptop now for a while. It was my second computer, the one I mainly used at work. It was a big, hulking thing, weighing in at close to 10 lbs, but it also had a 17 inch monitor, and was decently powerful. It had no intention of running high-end games, but it could play WoW, it could run Marvel Heroes and it could allow me some quality time with Diablo 3. However, that all came to an end a few weeks ago when the screen broke. Don’t ask me how it broke, but it did, and it is not being fixed. Funny enough, the physical damage protection plan I got for it expired only this June. So instead of shelling out the money for a new screen, I decided to use the line of credit I have with Dell and finally take the plunge on buying an Alienware laptop.

Unlike the giant screen my Dell machine was sporting, this laptop will only have a 13 inch screen, which is still totally serviceable considering I can just hook it up to my 24 inch monitor when I am using it at home. But I have had the machine now for a week now and I have to say it is pretty great. It is definitely a machine that will carry me forward through the next few gaming years. It’s actually a little funny, I never considered myself a PC gamer, but maybe that was because I did not have a machine that could play everything I wanted to. That is different now, and I have to say, it is nice having options.

-Ray