My OperaInsert Credit
Friday, January 23, 2009 1:29:03 AM
The credit crunch, people losing their jobs, others struggling to find them, money too tight to mention. Things are hard and it's not much fun, the bills are all coming in and those new things you wanted to kick off the year seem further and further away. There must be a silver lining though surely, anything, no matter how much you're kidding yourself?
There sure is! The obvious silver lining is that there's sales everywhere, bargains to be had. The problem with that approach is it assumes you've got the money to spend, and to be honest a lot of the stuff that's on sale now was also on sale before christmas, like we've had a perpetual state of £20 new games. It certainly is a silver lining though, anything you missed in the over-flooded end to 2008 can be picked up now. Whatever you pick up will still feel recent enough to scratch the itch for a 'new' game that we all get, all the time, relentlessly, gnawing away until we eventually cave.
No, the silver lining that's my current saving grace is due to being completely broke. No games at all since the turn of the year, actually I bought Ninja Gaiden Sigma for a whopping £2 but have yet to play it. I got games for christmas like I'm sure most reading this did, and handled wrongly they would get ignored. One of these games I got for christmas is actually the spark for both this lining and this post. I got World of Goo on the Wii from a secret santa (which I've still not played), but I couldn't download it because I needed to update my Wii. Unfortunately updating the Wii meant ending my sporadic love affair with the Freeloader disk. There are a couple of import games I'd still like to pick up, but my real issue was that I still hadn't played No More Heroes.
I know I could eventually have picked up the pal version, maybe even matched the sale of my U.S. copy with the cost of an EU copy, and I know this is a bit of a juvenile excuse, but I wanted the blood. We can get into the minutia of this some other time, but I wanted to play the game in its 'true' state. In short, I had a deadline and so sat and played the game. Within 5 days of starting it was done, the further into the game I got the more I loved it. I'd had it for months, probably more than half a year, but never got myself together to play it. But now I had no choice.
Metal Gear Solid 4 was my next game. Borrowed from a friend it's been in my possession for a while, again I didn't start it when I got it, but when I did I made slow progress through it. I really enjoyed what I played, but the time dedication was putting me off. Again though I had a deadline, I'd promised to get it done as my next game post NMH's, and so I had to sit down and finish it. And finish it I did, it might have even usurped Yakuza 2 as my game of 08. There's problems with it sure, but as an experience there's nothing else like it, it's something that needs to be played!
I've games that will no doubt get forgotten about, and that's what this current climate is good for. I picked Braid and Rez up prior to the new year, both hidden away on my 360 hard-drive, but I've completed Braid and am inching my way through Rez due to over familiarity. leading up to the new year I bought Motorstorm Pacific Rift and Resistance, neither of which I've played since the turn of the year but illustrate my point. As does, probably more than any other game, Valkyria Chronicles, a game I've got for christmas and wanted for months, but still haven't spent any real time with.
Things being tight is forcing me to fight the itch, to go back and actually work my way through the games I've bought recently. I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to buying games, my eyes are bigger than my mouth, or thumbs, or whatever. It would be all to easy to wander off from Mororstorm, despite enjoying it far more than I was expecting, there's new games on the way, shiny things, and I'm not committed to play it for any reason. Resistance too, I was enjoying that, it's not a classic sure but it's fun enough. The thing is the difficulty just spiked (again) right when I had to stop playing, it kind of kills the motivation to go back when that happens. Valkyria Chronicles is probably the quintessential forgotten game this generation, wonderfully presented and offering a fresh take on an old genre, but it's so easy to leave on a shelf.
So it's not all bad news, and certainly being forced to sit and play some of the best games of last year is hardly a hardship. The real test isn't due until next month with the arrival of House of the Dead, Street Fighter 4, then Resident Evil 5 and Killzone 2. So I guess it's a race between how much I can get done and how much I can save. Then there's the issue of what to do if society falls apart? If I've burnt through my back catalogue in January and we're in some Mad Max dystopia by April I'm going to look quite the fool!
There sure is! The obvious silver lining is that there's sales everywhere, bargains to be had. The problem with that approach is it assumes you've got the money to spend, and to be honest a lot of the stuff that's on sale now was also on sale before christmas, like we've had a perpetual state of £20 new games. It certainly is a silver lining though, anything you missed in the over-flooded end to 2008 can be picked up now. Whatever you pick up will still feel recent enough to scratch the itch for a 'new' game that we all get, all the time, relentlessly, gnawing away until we eventually cave.
No, the silver lining that's my current saving grace is due to being completely broke. No games at all since the turn of the year, actually I bought Ninja Gaiden Sigma for a whopping £2 but have yet to play it. I got games for christmas like I'm sure most reading this did, and handled wrongly they would get ignored. One of these games I got for christmas is actually the spark for both this lining and this post. I got World of Goo on the Wii from a secret santa (which I've still not played), but I couldn't download it because I needed to update my Wii. Unfortunately updating the Wii meant ending my sporadic love affair with the Freeloader disk. There are a couple of import games I'd still like to pick up, but my real issue was that I still hadn't played No More Heroes.
I know I could eventually have picked up the pal version, maybe even matched the sale of my U.S. copy with the cost of an EU copy, and I know this is a bit of a juvenile excuse, but I wanted the blood. We can get into the minutia of this some other time, but I wanted to play the game in its 'true' state. In short, I had a deadline and so sat and played the game. Within 5 days of starting it was done, the further into the game I got the more I loved it. I'd had it for months, probably more than half a year, but never got myself together to play it. But now I had no choice.
Metal Gear Solid 4 was my next game. Borrowed from a friend it's been in my possession for a while, again I didn't start it when I got it, but when I did I made slow progress through it. I really enjoyed what I played, but the time dedication was putting me off. Again though I had a deadline, I'd promised to get it done as my next game post NMH's, and so I had to sit down and finish it. And finish it I did, it might have even usurped Yakuza 2 as my game of 08. There's problems with it sure, but as an experience there's nothing else like it, it's something that needs to be played!
I've games that will no doubt get forgotten about, and that's what this current climate is good for. I picked Braid and Rez up prior to the new year, both hidden away on my 360 hard-drive, but I've completed Braid and am inching my way through Rez due to over familiarity. leading up to the new year I bought Motorstorm Pacific Rift and Resistance, neither of which I've played since the turn of the year but illustrate my point. As does, probably more than any other game, Valkyria Chronicles, a game I've got for christmas and wanted for months, but still haven't spent any real time with.
Things being tight is forcing me to fight the itch, to go back and actually work my way through the games I've bought recently. I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to buying games, my eyes are bigger than my mouth, or thumbs, or whatever. It would be all to easy to wander off from Mororstorm, despite enjoying it far more than I was expecting, there's new games on the way, shiny things, and I'm not committed to play it for any reason. Resistance too, I was enjoying that, it's not a classic sure but it's fun enough. The thing is the difficulty just spiked (again) right when I had to stop playing, it kind of kills the motivation to go back when that happens. Valkyria Chronicles is probably the quintessential forgotten game this generation, wonderfully presented and offering a fresh take on an old genre, but it's so easy to leave on a shelf.
So it's not all bad news, and certainly being forced to sit and play some of the best games of last year is hardly a hardship. The real test isn't due until next month with the arrival of House of the Dead, Street Fighter 4, then Resident Evil 5 and Killzone 2. So I guess it's a race between how much I can get done and how much I can save. Then there's the issue of what to do if society falls apart? If I've burnt through my back catalogue in January and we're in some Mad Max dystopia by April I'm going to look quite the fool!
