Ever since my primary school days, I always realised that people tended not to play games after a certain time. That time specifically refers to the age of eighteen years. (i.e. They just disappear after that point of time) You could attribute it to NS but I think otherwise. Something happens that makes RL more important.
Being eighteen now (for the past 7 months actually) and accompanied by first hand circumstantial evidence, I suppose it can be safely concluded that hormones for the most part contributes to the death of gaming. Also there is the want to properly project the "correct" image that they feel that they should look like in their community which has resulted in this particular phenomenon.
Keeping it simple, now is about the time where gaming is dead. I don't quite like this sentiment, but agree with it mainly because we would never have the time nor resources to pull off playing games for hours on end any more.
I used to enjoy having the hours go by through sitting out a Final Fantasy or the thrill involved in levelling up a character in an RPG. As of now I'm rather jaded in a sense. Things get too boring too easily for me. Instant gratification plays a rather big part in this as my scope of interest has been shifting from one area to another too quickly. Games are also becoming homogenised and casual to an extent where the ones who wish to partake in serious and strategic methods in their approach of the game are left behind. It has come to the point where games just don't manage to fixate my attention any longer.
To end off, I'd say that I hope that I would never come to that point in my life. It would result in the dissolution of the nuclear gaming circle. (Has it dissolved already though?) I mean after all we've been through much, experienced camaraderie through the numerous "battles" be it on garena , BF2 or on steam. But people have to go tend to greater things in life, and hence leave gaming for good. Gaming is one of the few avenues where I can offload stress on, and with good future titles to come, may gaming live.
Liberated? Not at all! Its as if the time available now is akin to an extremely long weekend, rather than a well longed for reprieve after that harrowing onslaught of exams.
Anyway, since Monday (Same day which had chemistry paper 1) I've been going out almost everyday. Tried out drafting for Magic: The Gathering. Eye opening experience, but requires money as just everything else does >_> Much more fun as compared to fighting other people's decks with your own. (Which IMO gets damn boring after a while) Lots of strategy involved but thats a totally different story. Did enjoy myself quite a bit though it left me quite drained. Like i mentioned above, it's not the standard deck versus deck kind of battle but there's a more diverse and random factor. Without having the nee
Went for a haircut. Another first in a long time kind of thing, never been to a hairstylist/barber in quite a while. What? About roughly 7 years? Left me the usual impression I had on others who went to such places (To those who don't have that clean-shaven look) Costly. No difference. Small, but numerous snips here and there around your noggin, to justify the damn cost. As usual there's the retarded language barrier to boot. You'd think going to such a place and paying such an amount of money would allow no room for such a problem but.. fuck! Hard to communicate as for some reason they always seem to speak Chinese or something only, making the process difficult. I don't understand what advice the dude gave me at all. I was supplied a placebo explanation from a friend that "Oh, you'll see that it's a long term investment". I can only say "We'll see.. we'll see...".
Mark just formatted the computer to get rid of the bloat the computer has suffered from the numerous read/writes since we move so much data about. After the format I got my old games in backup, gonna install them slowly over time. Went to play a few rounds of custom maps on Warcraft 3. Brought back pangs of nostalgia, made it feel like sec four and before the A levels yet again, sans stress. Holy smoke (LOL) brought the public to their heels in bships, from full house to none just like the old days. Had jpark and td as usual and some really neurotic chat happening throughout. (cue "what school you come from?" and lots of "anass rhamming" innuendo)
Browsed for some electric guitars and went to check out Sitex 2009 in that week too. These events made for quite an interesting day as there was much to see and learn. It was cool to finally see Arj in like 6 years since primary school (Okay not counting the brief meetings in between be it NCC or chance encounters) and have a proper outing. Met him and his MJ classmate and went from east side to town and back again before heading to east coast. What a day with so much walking and travelling done. I must say there were some cool flying Vs and axes on sale, though exorbitant they may be. Hopefully we might be able to get a bass and an electric somewhere in the coming weeks, to complement the lessons that we're going for.
I found Sitex rather lacklustre this year compared to the previous years. Maybe for some reason it just became too commercialised to my liking. After realising how the hired hands giving out brochures had some sort of commission system going on, the impression that Sitex was the ideal place for clinching a good deal was dispelled. Saw Arj's friend get a printer only to get the feeling that he'd been ripped off by the ridiculous setup they offered. What to do? Imperfect knowledge man... The trend has been shifting lately to netbooks. Been seeing lots of tiny little laptop clones ever since the EEE PC came out, and the large influx at Sitex by the numerous brands left me with little desire to continue browsing at Sitex. (Once again, the catering to the masses sentiment kicks in) The AAR would be that Sitex offered nothing of great note except if you are in wanting of a laptop/printer/monitor/television. The games section was awfully pathetic, apart from the standard 360 setup there's no computer terminals boasting games like Borderlands, Dragon Age or Modern Warfare 2. (Srsly, wtf?!) Wonder why Nintendo is missing amongst the crowd. I guess this shows that PC gaming is dying out as people are getting less and less bothered to properly keep up to date with updating their specifications, preferring the convenience offered by consoles. (C'mon computers are really fun, don't be such a pussy!)
From this heavily opinionated post, I must say that the week in general was quite packed and thus fruitful to a certain extent. It had roughly the right amount of downtime in between events too, perhaps almost too long? Hope I can spend the weeks to come in a similar fashion and make the most of the time available. Heh, gotta crush the habit of playing till 4 or 5am and waking up at 1pm before it becomes a habit.
From Natural Selection custom map fame =D Can remember sec 2 to 4 playing the game and hearing this over and over a few times. Glad to finally have found it.
Lyrics fit the title well, all I can say.
That Guild Wars dance compilation had this music in it, been looking for it for quite a bit.
In summary, techno/house/trance/europop or whatever shit you call it (Lazy find out) I've been listening to. Here are some things totally unrelated to the above "genre" (more like mish mash of heheh) that sends shivers down my spine.. though in a good way.
Hope I can watch a musical or play like that in the future.
Is that a violin right there? Can't identify music very well =/ Quite an epic game, played for quite a bit in sec school: Imagine 40 over main characters to recruit and play as, each with their story reasonably fleshed out. Plot is confusing but meh, at least not as screwed up as Xenogears or Xenosaga.
Finally assembled the glass display casing that got delivered yesterday - Here are the results.
Before: (Old Place)
Now:
Much more space now compared to last time, hopefully can fill it up even more with classic games like Starcraft and Diablo which I have never owned physically before.
Might need another one of these things to fit some of those Tamiya models and papercraft in the future.
Movies I would want to watch in the near future, not in any particular order or desire:
Year One (Jack Black and Michael Cera, what else can I say?)
GI Joe (Maybe? Its pure action lol, pretty mindless) Ahem, girls in bodysuits anyone?, quite chio LOL
Public Enemies (Based on an actual professional bank robber IRL)
The Hangover (Trailer was quite win, I wanna see how they got so fucked in the first place)
Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 'nuff said, though its a hit and miss as most of his films go)
Bruno (Borat 2, watched the original way before anyone else had, when it was released in the states)
Funny People (Adam Sandler and Seth Rogan, Seth of SuperBad fame)
All I can think of. There's a supposed 300 sequel coming up next year I think, really looking forward to it. Mindless as hell, but manly to an extreme degree and oh so stylistic.
Heh, what I'd hope for would be a Warhammer 40k movie, Warcraft movie or TF2 short to come out. Hell, maybe even Diablo. Wouldn't expect those to be great though, unless the game devs themselves were actually running the show.
Now, on to something else: How to find games not boring. (Greatly applies to people who I hear play old games and find them boring)
1. Know the plot. It really helps to understand the whole thing to make in interesting and immerse yourself in it. This rule really applies to single-player games and MMOs. You don't listen or read the damn story, fuck playing it. You'll either end up getting stuck, not knowing what to do (Ahem, single player games especially) or have no aim or direction at all (MMOs in particular)
Interesting facts to know would be like in WoW, or any other cheap F2P game made by Koreans, has some storyline embedded inside that long tedious quest list. Especially in WoW, whose story is properly developed and is character-driven to a good extent with certain recurring and pivotal characters well fleshed out like Arthas the Lich King, or Thrall the Farseer and King VarianWrynn.
2. Love the mechanics, understand it and fuck around with it. This applies to those not interested in the storyline of let's say an MMO (Which i think is really critical) You could hate PVM/PVE but love PVP, yet get bored because you get owned/own due to little variations in what you do. Diversify and play around, try to get numbers and figure out damage formulaes or something. That way you'd be focused about how to build your character or what gear you'd want and in doing so find new life in what you do in a game with your newfound goals.
Knowing how important skill synergies are in making your build stronger, knowing the runewords to an item, finding out how magic item find % is damn important in getting good loot for D2 are examples. Knowing stuff like proper damage mitigation in PVP for WoW, Guild Wars and a whole other games certainly make the game interesting.
That's all the rules to not make a game boring.
That aside, would love to introduce to you some custom games by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. He makes super impressive games of his own on a simple game creator, that has actual interesting plot that would send quick shivers down your spine as you progress on the story. Check out here, under the games section for the games.
Recommend playing 5 Days a Stranger, Trilby's Notes, 7 Days a Skeptic and 6 Days a Sacrifice. Oh and Episodes 1 to 3 of 1213. Mindblasting, and fucking scary. Its point-and-click, and I highly doubt its most of you guys cups of tea, but I encourage you to try it out.
Finally, would like to show some music of which I've been finding solace in, to satisfy my boredom.
3 nice power metal songs
I like Warhammer and its games and associated books alot.
The Beatles are just awesome. Hope you enjoyed their frolicking and mucking around in their earlier and happier times.
That's all for today.
Word of advice to anyone out there: In need of help, always RTFM first, before you actually ask anyone. Don't be lazy, you could learn a thing or two and be a better person. What does that mean?
