Interesting to hear someone be honest about how gaming negatively impacted on their ability (at least in the early stages) to engage with other people about things other than games or those things generally that circle around gaming (wrestling, anime etc.).
I share a lot of your story too. Up to about 13 I was pretty active (if a little shy) and spent plenty of time outdoors with friends playing football and hide and seek etc., but once I hit secondary school I retreated into games so that by 16 I was pretty much unwilling to engage with anybody about anything if it wasn't games.
I grew out of this at Uni and when I began work and now have a much broader range of interests than just games, but it certainly wasn't easy to break that mold!
Anyway nice article mate! And the Vita is still awesome (although probably now outsted by the Switch)!
I certainly seem to be in the minority when it comes to this game. Me and my wife played through this when it came out and both loved it. We found the pace perfectly suited to the environment. The quaintness of the setting would only be cheapened by breezing through it.
In terms of story, I appreciate that it might be frustrating if you miss some important beat, but for me the most touching moments were the little side vignettes you get by moving away from the orb and exploring the village.
The game felt like a personal journey for the developers, and that intimacy they had with the setting really charmed me and my wife. It might not work for everyone, but for me it was my favourite game of that year (and is still up there as one of my favourites of this generation).
Anyway, if you want to read my thoughts on the subject then you can always read my blog entry on it (where I somehow manage to avoid talking about the score - which is excellent!).
Sorry for not keeping up with your blog mate! I always do enjoy it when I read it!
"I love half of Final Fantasy IX, but despise the other half"
Don't worry. From hereonin in the series that percentage will change more towards 60/40, 70/30, 80/20. And by that I mean you will hate the majority of it! Unless you're one of those people who likes X or XIII (XII is okay, I'll let that one off the hook), in which case you need your head seeing to! :-p
I can certainly appreciate the lack of any notable power boost over the WiiU, but as somebody who regularly games on the Vita while doing other stuff (like listening to podcasts or watching TV) then this seems right up my alley! If the whole process is as seamless as what they showed then I'm all in!
But man that was a quick blog! Did you have secret behind the scenes access or something? :-p
I think the grind in these types of games is just indicative of the padding-phenomenon. Neither Destiny nor Forza should require grinding to give the games length and bulk. Destiny does it to make up for a lack of decent content and Forza does it because everything has to be an RPG nowadays.
I'm currently in the pre-writing process for a post on how game writing is largely overwritten and padded out with nonsense in order to mask the fact that the writing itself is quite simply overly infantile or just not up to snuff.
I think there's definitely a link between these two phenomenons. Both grind and bad writing practices reflect a lack of confidence in games creation as a whole. It's telling for me that many of my favourite games over these past few years have been wordless or sparse affairs, with little to no grind.
Anyway good writing man. Always enjoy reading your stuff when I have the time!
Does it have the same issue as HitmanGO where you (or at least the more unskilled among us) are constantly moving back and forth in order to get an enemy to move to the required spot?
While I enjoyed the concept of HitmanGO, I did find it quite tiresome towards the middle and latter stages. That may just be down to my ineptitude in seeing more than a couple of steps ahead, but still it became more of a grind for me than fun.
Wow man, that's a beautiful piece of writing. It's almost like No Man's Sky itself... I found it incredibly engaging without fully understanding why that was. :-p
But yes, on a broad level, I think there is some kind of spiritual-like joy to be found in NMS. I'm sure there is one planet out there where all the elements work together in perfect harmony in a way that creates something absolutely awe-inspiring!
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