Bummer of Arcade - [SSC 20]

By bonbolapti August 7, 2011 8 Comments

  
I always say, when you want to take your writing seriously, you should always write on a more professional platform. That's why I have a wordpress. But when it comes to gaming talk, I always find myself writing things up on here. I just feel like video game rambling has found a home in this spot, but when it always comes to more serious pieces I go back to the other one where I feel it belongs. 
 
So, It's been a while since I wrote a Sunday Social Blog. But I feel like this is going to be the last one. When I started these I kept it as a motivation on writing practice. If I kept myself to a schedule and stuck to it every week. That I would be able to improve my ability while talking about things I enjoy. Then I answered a call to arms, about a gig writing about video games and I took a chance. I used examples of reviews and editorial pieces, even used some of these blogs as example of my work. SO because of the Sunday Social's I actually got the job. So now, instead of writing these for fun. I'll probably end up writing these for work.
 
And I couldn't be happier.
 
But with that in mind, I thought it would be nice to at least end on a note of being the 20 in this series. SO... let's just get down to it.
 

Bastion

A lot of my work has so far, entailed playing all of the summer of arcade games as they've been coming out. Bastion was the first on this list, and as much as Supergiant Games has been a friend of Giantbomb (which in turn, because of the fan-base 'sold quite a few copies') I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to. It was the narrative that killed it for me a little. I don't want to get into it as much as I've been talking about it on TL;DL but there's been parts where it took me out of the experience and I just started getitng all blah about it. Maybe I raised the bar a little too high for it, maybe I really just wished for other people to talk. 
 
I mean... it's a good game to play and all.. but... UUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH
 

From Dust

A hell of a lot more enjoyable, and so much more simpler then your Black and White. I wasted a lot of my time playing it, because it was just so gosh darn easy to. There was something oddly relaxing about that game. It was just so low key in it's civilization building aspect. I'm surprised it never got any more complicated beyond beyond weather disasters. But I think there's something really good here. They really have something here, and heaven forbid if there's a sequel or DLC it would be awesome to see them elaborate on ideas. Just as long as we never see a giant stupid animal. Hahaha
 

Insanely Twisted Shadow planet

All the fun of a Metroidvania with the bewildering controls of a dual Joystick shooter. It was fun at time and it was frustrating at others. I really did enjoy it enough for the most part and the “Lantern Run” Multiplayer is actually a really cool idea. But as art goes, it's considerably underwhelming. It did get increasingly darker over time though, which I guess is something you expect out of a shadow planet.
 
So far these Summer of Arcade games are okay. Bation was the weaker one for me by far, but I'm sure Fruit Ninja will knock mediocrity out of the park M I RITE?
 

FIGHTING GAEMS

If it one thing I can always count on, it's catching the EVO bug. That was such a phenomenal weekend of fighting game prowess, and I wanted it to rub off on me a little but. I know I'm not very good at fighting games but so are a lot of people. Aside from Besting Sleepy_Insomniac Half the time in Marvel vs Capcom 3. I've been trying to give myself serious practice with SF4 especially since I recently purchased Arcade Edition to keep up with the times. I've come a long way, I still can't figure out charge characters for the life of me (and hell I've been practicing.) I think I need to step my game up with an arcade stick because that Xbox controller is still shit after all these years.
 
I also never thought it was possible to get the Fivepeat achivement, but 10 wins in a row online will look like nothing but a dream right now. :P  

That's it, that's all I want to say for this one. Thanks to people who actually read these and enjoy them. I think the only thing I'll try to keep up doing around here is the TL;DL podcast just to ensure that I'm not going away completely anytime soon. 

One of the things that I hope I can bring to the table of this new job is a kind of rationality in games Journalism that you never seem to see anymore. I think for more that a couple of years now, it's definitely gone up it's own ass. But I do think that's thanks to most forums and Kotaku itself feeling like if Fox News wrote for video games. It's easy to be jaded about a lot of things now a days. It's like we all feel like we need to be jaded, or it's cool to be. So I've always felt like if I was in this position of writing for games, I wouldn't want to go down that path. It's only a matter of time I guess

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