So it's been three years since I posted this when we last did the "10 Things" bit all over the cblogs. It's come back and this makes me happy, though I honestly had trouble coming up with ten new things to post. Here goes, bear with me:


1- I've thought about "taking a break" from Dtoid a number of times.
People that don't frequent the Forums may not notice it, but I'm here pretty much every day. Some days I feel like I'm "wasting" too much time here, and I should step back. But I love the people here too much to ever actually leave. Plus, I'd be really bored at work without Dtoid to peruse. I'll probably never leave this place.

2- ^^^ No, seriously, I love the people here.
Since I moved to Minnesota halfway through high school I never made any true "real" lasting friendships. I made new friends to make it through the last two years of school, but they were largely just school friends. I drifted from my best friends growing up, which is what happens when you're half a country away and becoming adults. Honestly, the best friends I have currently are people I met because of this site. Then there are the dozens of Forumites I bullshit with daily that might not be "friends" in the traditional sense, but I love just the same and probably would be if we ever met. Maybe sounds pathetic, but it's honest. I'm closer with a handful of people here than I am almost anybody else in my life.

3- Horror themes in video games fuck me up something fierce.
I love horror movies (aside from torture porn gore fests). They don't scare me in the slightest, haven't since I was a little kid, but I still get an enjoyment out of them. Compare that to horror video games, which dig into my head and leave me with all the lights on, jumping at every little thing. I think the scariest game I've played to completion is Luigi's Mansion. No joke, that game is a fright fest.

4- I used to love Deadpool.
This is piggybacking off of number four from my first list. I still own every appearance right up until I quit comics almost two years ago. I love the Joe Kelly and Gail Simone runs immensely, they're perfection, and dig a lot of the other stuff, but the character has been bastardized and butchered so much, starting with the Cable & Deadpool series and only getting worse in the runs since then. It's sad. I'm not gonna rant here, so if anybody would like to discuss Deadpool further, feel free to PM me.

5- My hedgehog is dead.
Again, piggybacking off of point five in the original list. RIP Anguirus.

6- I love to drive.
A couple folks have mentioned not driving at all in their lists, so I'm here to declare my love for driving. Back in my high school days I used to just drive around at night, listening to music, thinking. I remain a lover of driving to this day. Road trips are especially loved. I just like driving.

7- I can and will make a joke out of almost anything.
Damn near nothing is off limits when it comes to my sense of humour. Sometimes I think I go too far, and I know I tend to beat jokes into the ground, but humour is a giant part of my life and the way I look at things. And honest to God, I find most things funny, except:

8- Shit jokes. I hate 'em.
Seriously. Shit and fart humour does nothing for me, except disgust me. Piss can be funny, though.

9- I'm a dispatcher and router for a school bus company.
So I build routes, deal with schools, deal with parents and do all kinds of other stuff related to getting kids to and from school. Since I spend all day in front of a computer doing this job, I get to spend a lot of time on the internet. Big downside is that I will most likely never get to go to PAX Prime while I keep this job. It's always around the start of the school year, which is the busiest time at my job and the time that is near impossible for me to get off. I'll have to make do with the other events.

10- Video games aren't all that important to me.
Not any more, anyways. I still sink hundreds of dollars into them each year, and will "need" the next gen of consoles when they eventually hit, but rare are the games I spend glued to the TV for hours on end with. They exist, but intermittently nowadays. Now I think I'm more invested in the culture of gaming, and my own history with it, and the communal aspect of it all.

Posted this in the Forums over the weekend, but since Randy is posting his here as well I figured I could be a whore too. ;)

Think of the days before idle animation, where our platforming heroes did absolutely nothing unless we told them to via button presses. Set your controller down and Mario would just stand there not moving a pixel as a Koopa Troopa walks towards him with intent to kill. We were playing as Mario, he did nothing without us, but our view of the action was not his own. Somehow we're playing Mario out of body, watching our adventure from the sideline and telling ourselves how to proceed with a vantage of the larger picture. Looking at Mario's blank, dead, expressionless eye sockets gives a clue of how this can be. The player is actually acting as Mario's disembodied eyes floating off screen, somehow still telepathically telling him how to move and react on his mission to rescue the Princess.

IT'S ALL SO OBVIOUS!!!

I was digging through old notes and sketches this past week and came across a short list of games I was at one point looking forward to, excluding handhelds. Comparing it to release dates on Wikipedia I've figured that at the latest the list was from early 2005. It may not be interesting to anybody else but I found it neat thinking about what had become of the games, and how I couldn't even remember all of them. It's a list of games I loved, games that were delayed, and a couple games that were cancelled (though one of those two eventually made it out over here in North America). There's also a note on the list about how the impending 360 launch was going to hurt the 2005 me's ability to get the games I wanted and have any money left over. It's pretty bizarre, considering I don't recall ever writing notes of that sort to myself. So yeah, this is pretty damned dorky.





So first on the list was Cowboy Bebop, a game my current self completely forgot existed. Turns out it was a PS2 action game that had it's supposed NA release scrapped, after it already came out in Japan and apparently got past me pretty interested. Considering how little I loved the PS2 Lupin III game, maybe Cowboy Bebop's non-release was a blessing. That said, I'd still like to play that damned DS Gurren Lagann game...

Next up, Dragon Quest VIII. It came out, I loved it, still love it. Happy ending for all. The same can be said for Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, so I'll skip that one later.

Twilight Princess was faced with delays and I eventually got it launch night with my shiny new Wii. I dug it, but can't see myself going back to it, unlike Majora's Mask or Link's Awakening.

Evil Dead: Regeneration, the first Evil Dead game I genuinely liked. I bought Hail to the King and Fistful of Boomstick, but had little to no fun with either. Still I looked forward to Regeneration, and while it was repetitive and derivative, it was also good. Not great, but good. I wish I had an iPod touch to pick up the new Evil Dead game, because as a fanboy I totally would. C'mon folks, give us a new console game!!

Conker: Live & Reloaded. Oi, I hated this fucking remake. I wasn't a fan of the fuzzy graphics. I wasn't a fan of it going from Live & Uncut while in development to Live & Reloaded sometime before release, because somehow it became more censored under Microsoft than the original was on the N64 under Nintendo. And I wasn't a fan of the new multiplayer. I'd have greatly preferred the original's various modes + online play, instead we got an abomination that just didn't feel right.

Soulcalibur 3 was fun, and I dug the character creation addition, but it felt like a letdown after Soul Calibur 2. It's sandwiched between two better games in the series, in my opinion. But I do like Tira, so there is that...

I never actually bought or even played Ninja Gaiden Black. How's that for a game "I cannot wait for"?

The Shield. Ah, The Shield... I'm a massive fan of the television show it was based on, and back when the game was being made the show was in it's "classic" state, before the big twists of the final three seasons had come into play. I had greatly been looking forward to this game, where the player was to be tasked with playing as Vic Mackey while spending their time juggling police work and the character's criminal activities. Get too corrupt and the other cops will take notice, that kind of thing. Then the game got canned while in development. I was extremely bummed. It eventually was revived and made it to shelves two years later as a budget title on the PS2 only, and did it ever deserve that budget release. As I discovered with other games on this list, fanboyism will only take a player so far, and that wasn't far enough with this game.


So that's it. There's my list of games I supposedly couldn't wait for. It helps me remember that all the games I supposedly need to have right now could easily be either mediocre memories or not a memory at all in the future.

As any true bro knows, there's trouble in brorum paradise. I'm sure you've seen the comics and micro-games. If you haven't, go check out the other Forum Adventures blogs. I'm not here to rehash the rivalry, I'm here to show show you how it all ends. Through advanced technology I've been able to divine the aftermath of Gyrael and Gobun's epic struggle. Look below if you feel prepared.

Love,
ZombiePlatypus







Also, cocks.