Yet Another List: Top Ten Games Of 2009: Low Hanging Fruit Is Oh So Sweet

The continuation of my series about stories in games is still in the works, and will be appearing as I manage to parse my thoughts enough to put them down for posterity without guilt or shame. You can correctly assume by reading between the lines of the above statement that I can't follow any sort of schedule, including one I've set for myself. Congratulations! Not to be outdone on the sarcastic entitled internet asshole front, I've done a bit of logical deduction on my own and have come to a startling conclusion: your mother. Simple, elegant, and altogether true. Sherlock Holmes would applaud.

Stories in Games Part 1: Or, Bioshock is Chutes and Ladders, not Requiem For A Dream

[Editor's Note: I've been working on this article a while now. Excuse my tardiness. I've been thinking a lot about stories in games lately. To be more precise, I played through Heavenly Sword and had a serious disconnect between the gameplay (which was basically filler) and the story (which was excellent). That lead to this article, which is tentatively a three or four part EPIC, discussing video games as a storytelling medium, past present and future. Of course, I'll sporadically make fun of Sonic the Hedgehog just so you'll know you're still reading Joe Q. Gamer.

This is sort of an introduction, an immense and baroque thesis, and I'm aware that I'm leaving a lot of obvious holes in my arguments. Rest assured that I'll be addressing them in upcoming installments.

It's gotten to the point where I really should just say "fuck it" and write a book. In fact, I might do that anyway. Until then, though, you get my rambling for free. Ain't the internet grand. ]

Controls And Gaming: Or, I Hate The Universal Remote More Than Analog Sticks

My gaming set up is pretty simple, as far as it goes. I have everything running directly into my TV, a 37 inch LCD, which outputs audio into my surround sound system via an optical cable. That's a PS3, a Wii, an Xbox 360, as well as component cables for the PSP. Nothing fancy here. My video capture card complicates things a tiny bit, but that's nothing that most people have to deal with. I'm dumb enough to write about games, so it's a headache I've brought upon myself.

My brother and his boyfriend, on the other hand, have elected to set up their entertainment center to cause physical and emotional pain to anyone who attempts to operate it. The receiver hooks into their TV, but nothing else makes any sense. Watching cable is right out. Getting the audio to work while playing on the PS3 is improbable. I'm not even sure that their 360 is even hooked up, though there's a setting for it on the receiver. Christian claims that, if I were some form of vertebrate with frontal lobes, preferably of the mammalian persuasion, I should have no problem at all figuring out how to get it to work. My position is that he's a fucking liar, and some kind of sadist to boot. Try as I might, I can't figure out any other way to explain his attachment to the ultimate expression of the entertainment center's complete ambiguity: the Universal Remote.

Gaming Time: Or, All Work And No Play Means More Street Fighter

Astute readers will no doubt note the (nearly!) two month span of time between my last post and the one that you're currently staring at. I blame three things. Gainful employment in a terrible recession, maintaining a rapidly crumbling home with duct tape and spackle, and a rare case of genuine spring fever. Take it up with them.

It isn't just Joe. Q. Gamer that's suffered from my desperate lack of free time. Friends gnash their teeth in frustration, unable to connect with me in any more meaningful way than the occasional text message. No less than two editors have a tab open in their browsers dedicated to emailing me, requesting projects that are beginning to redefine the word 'overdue'. My cat misses me. So it isn't just my blog. As a result of all this goddamn time sink malarkey, I haven't had much time to actively game lately. I feel like a high schooler returning to class after a lengthy case of mono: everyone is ahead of me all of a sudden, and I'm not sure how to catch up. I mean, what the hell is Plants Vs. Zombies? Do I really need to play Bionic Commando? There's yet another batch of New Fallout 3 DLC to get through? Sunny isn't dating Mike anymore, and Mr. Johnson the science teacher blew up the chemistry wing? Where the Hell was I?

How to get 'casual' players into 'hardcore' games. Or, stop shooting me so much.

One thing that always amazes me is how big time publishers can be so out of the loop.

I often wonder whether game publishers forget that their triple A products are not yet ubiquitous pop culture staples in the minds of the world at large. Sure, games make more money than movies or music, but they're also significantly more expensive at retail. Halo 3 was on the cover of Time magazine, but that's one game: how many movies or TV shows have graced the cover of Time? More than one, that's for sure. You can sell a hell of a lot more copies of Bejeweled or Tetris, or even any given DVD release of a popular movie, than you can Gears of War, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon. Publishers need to realize that if they want to reach a wider market than their traditional audience of 'core' gamers, then they need to change how their products are perceived by the world at large. Because, as it stands, many of the ways in which their games are produced and structured are instrumental in keeping triple A games in the province of the hardcore, and the hardcore alone.

Street Fighter IV: Fighting Games Casual? Or, Capcom Lies To Everyone

Street Fighter IV is here.

I could probably just leave it at that, because anyone who reads gaming blogs can probably fill in the rest for themselves. I obviously won't though, because... Well, I don't have a reason. Pure, unmitigated verbosity, I guess. It's a trait of mine.

The hype machine has been churning overtime on this game for quite some time now. Websites, magazines, and blogs have been covering the release non-stop. Capcom, the developer and publisher of the game, has already sold two million copies in less than two weeks. The hardcore fighting game crowd seems to have embraced the game wholeheartedly, with very little in the way of reservation. Online battles are easy to get. Trash is talked, strategies are learned, and character tiers are being debated.

I don't think it'll last long, though.

Why The Hell Do I To This To Myself? Or, Post Holiday Gaming Apocalypse

Thank fucking God. The holidays are over. My savings account survives another year: scarred, wounded, but not defeated. Victoria.

The holidays are a financial apocalypse for me, and every year it only gets worse. On top of gifts for loved ones and friends, I end up spending way too much of what I choose to call 'disposable income' on all the triple A games that an irrational and confused games industry hoards for months and months, ignoring the obvious fact that, hey, people play games in June too, before gleefully releasing them in a frantic stampede in the months of November and December. That I continue to obediently buy them all raises the possibility that I too and irrational and confused, but let's not discuss that right now. I need all the credibility I can muster.

After the dust settled on my annual financial doomsday this year, I ended up with a soul-crushing stack of new games. I felt their quiet insistence that I play them as I put them away on the shelf, untouched shrink wrap tormenting me. Free time is at a premium for me, always: when would I get a chance to play the games I had been given or purchased? When would I be able to validate both my idiot compulsions and the good intentions of friends and family? Compounding the issue is my addiction to Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and Persona 4: both time sinks of incredible density and power. Even when I have the time to play, those two games are always my first and second choice.

This year? Much sooner than usual. For once, the games industry has done me a solid(albeit accidentally). There is literally nothing coming out that I want until Street Fighter 4 in February. That is nearly unprecedented, and leaves me almost two months to play catch up and knock out some of my back log. All of which is very handy, because I had begun to experience what I like to call 'collector's depression'. Anyone who seriously plays and collects games knows what I mean, but we'll define it just in case anyone rational ever reads this.

'Collectors Depression: If a collection of games grows at a faster pace than a collector can play those games, then eventually playing the games stops being fun and becomes a job, leading to that collector temporarily abandoning the hobby and taking up knitting, crochet, or religion'.

So thanks, Games Industry. You've coincidentally helped in keeping me out of fashion, for which you deserve a medal; especially considering my taste in clothes and questionable manual dexterity. I'm already a man of the cloth, so obviously you weren't much help in the past, but hey. It's the holidays, and I am a reverend for some reason. All is forgiven. We'll move on so no one thinks too hard about this paragraph, and the ugly truths contained within.

The games residing in my immediate backlog are, in no order, Folklore, Lair, Far Cry 2, Gradius Collection, Siren: New Translation, and Suikoden. It's not as bad as some years, but still a mighty and powerful stack of software to wade through. Interestingly, I realized as I was putting them away that none of the games I mentioned are new at all. In fact, Suikoden is a download for the PS3. I have no real desire to play Resistance 2 or Gears of War 2, the huge platform exclusive shooters for the PS3 and 360 respectively, and I'd already bought and fell in love with Little Big Planet long before the Christmas season. Prince of Persia? No thanks. I've already beaten Fallout 3. Tomb Raider? No, sir. Legendary? Are you kidding?

The powers that be have granted me a respite, and I intend to use it. Collecting games is fun and sometimes profitable, but often leads to a 'less gaming, more collecting' mindset that I intend to avoid. One of my new years resolutions is to not buy any game until Street Fighter comes out: that gives me a month and a half to cleanse my backlog and shore up the holiday related bills in preparation for next year's assault on my money. Why would I do this? Why alter years of habit and subject myself to Lair on purpose? Because I realized something else over the holidays as I was talking to my friend Randy at work. This guy never has more than three or four games at a time. He buys them, plays them, sells them, and buys some more: lean and mean gaming at it's finest. His philosophy? Games are for playing first, collecting second. He told me, "I've beaten every game I've played, unless it was so bad that even achievements couldn't make me continue". A quick glance at his gamer score affirms this mighty declaration. I was impressed, because I have nearly five hundred games for more than fifteen systems, and I've beaten probably a quarter of them. That doesn't seem like a very good ratio. I figure I've got some catching up to do.

So. What did I realize with the able assistance of Randy? Resolution number two: play the stupid goddamn things. I didn't get into this hobby because I love having all my free space taken up by plastic and cardboard. I got into it because I love to play video games. I should spend more time doing that, instead of adding yet more crap to the collection.

I'll start with Lair, because it's the shortest game on the stack. We'll see how dedicated to this premise I really am when someone invites me to play Street Fighter.