Kr1spy, reporting for duty

I believe I've been trying to do this in one form or another for about 4 and a half years now. Why I didn't just sit down and do it proper before this moment is beyond me. I am in firm belief now that this is the best form our idea could take. From now on, with some recurring frequency I can hope, Evan and I will be updating this blog with whatever we feel like talking about that is video game related. Be it news, what we're playing, what we will play, what we need we play, what we'll never get around to playing, but trust me when I say that we will cover the vast majority of subjects that you have come to love and expect from such a source. Oh reviews, we'll do those too. Yes we will.

So where am I now? It's August 5th, 2008 and yesterday I beat Mass Effect for the 2nd time, consecutively of course, with one playthrough requiring another one following it immediately, ala Bioshock. The variety of choices you have to begin with are enough that a second playthrough is no such burden for the sake of those oh so tempting achivement points. Even just the premise that I could sleep with a different girl shows that Bioware demanded that all their hard work be seen from a different angle. And god damnit, that is how you end a game, with a fucking epic bang, a lot of closure yet still a little peep hole into the future of what the series could hold, not a fucking 30 second FMV that looks like it was rendered on mid 90's Pentium II's. Not that I'm trying to bash Bioshock, in fact I'll probably replay it again in the coming weeks, just with 2 games being released in such proximity both with re-playability based on factors of "choice" within the narrative, of course being good and evil, I just felt the need to compare the two for this example. That being said, I loved Mass Effect and felt that if a few aspects were just a little more polished it would've easily been top 10 material for me as so much of it was engaging in a way that I feel few games ever will be. I'll have a review up for this soon. Perhaps Mass Effect 2 can take care of these issues. Although I'm not sure how they're going to deal with the continuity aspect that arises from the multiple endings scenario you're presented with; the choices you make are just too wide in range to have one kind of "cannon" ending that the 2nd could follow.

Backlog. Some people who have the time and dedication to play a game from start to finish every time a new one is released don't even know of this word and the meaning it carries. I, on the other hand have a very long, tired history with this whole backlog thing. While no longer being a physically present employee at Gamestop has certainly cut back on feeding this monsterous beast, I still have knocked out only a few of the many titles I told myself I would conquer this year. 2008: The year of the backlog.



This does not even include handhelds, PC games or anything older than last gen, for which there is quite a surprising amount of stuff I still haven't finished. Lay off the FFVII spoilers please, my virgin ears would like to remain that way. I know there's supposed to be a statute of limitations on these things, but come on, I swear I'm going to play it this time, and then proceed to cringe because I have more fingers on my hand than Cloud has polys in his body.

After completing Mass Effect, such an epic, vast game, and an RPG at that, which is no small feat for me (I've probably completed maybe 10 in whole life, yes I grew up without a PS1, we just covered that) I decided that hopping into the gigantic sandbox that is GTA IV might seem like finishing off a 4-course meal with a whole cake, or several cakes for that matter, provided that they are not made of lies. So I with my decision slightly tipped in the favor of the Gamerscore whore inside me who I suppose had been in hibernation all those months with my hands tightly wrapped around my Wiimote and Dualshock controllers, I started with those light-green cased games. Browsing through the 360 games that I own and still currently have, I'm thinking that I will play what I can and catch up on those points I thought I'd left behind long ago. Beautiful Katamari is what's currently spinning in the box, I beat it last night but there's still more content there. Assuming you believe that playing the same 3 stages over and over again but this time trying to roll up different random shit, hoping that they happen to be present filled boxes or even better yet - your cousins - is some kind of extension of the game once it has been beaten. Yet I am in love with what Katamari is at it's core, so they can keep selling me the same game and I will keep playing it because nothing is quite as strange and Japanese as this game is, and how I love what is strange. When I get my PS3 back I will most likely dive right into ICO before taking another trip down MGS lane. I only have about a month left of summer and I plan to beat the crap out of a lot of things before it's over. Wish me luck!

-Kr1spy(Ryan)