Destructoid Blogs

I keep worrying that I'm repeating myself on here but instead of pointing it out, I should leave it and not worry about it.

I'm back again and it's only been about two months, I thought it had been longer than that. I'm thinking of starting a blog on Destructoid, which is a video games site. Briefly having a look reveals that most blog entries get zero replies but at least there'd be a better chance of getting views on there than there is here. I will point out again though, that I don't write on here to get attention, quite the opposite - I get a strange sense of satisfaction writing on here, knowing no one reads it... Or least, I don't think anyone does. I did see just now that most of my posts get one view but I assume that is, for some reason, counting myself as a single viewer. It could be from viewing it when not logged in? But then it seems like I'm always logged in here. If there is one single person out there has actually been reading my posts, I'd like them to comment just so I know. The fact that I'm asking that will probably make them even less likely to do so, though.

All posts on Destructoid will be games related,  of course, but I'm thinking of writing them on here first, this could be considered the draft area. If I got into it, I could post there first and then copy them over to here, for no reason at all really, but it's not like it would matter to anyone anyway. Come to think of it though, knowing me, I'll probably write one entry and then lose interested and leave it at that. The most likely scenario is that I'll write about games today, on here, meaning to post it on Destructoid later, and then never do so. My allocated hour will run out quick so my musing on games will likely be short and / or unfinished anyway.

Dead by Daylight

I'm glad I read my old entry about DbD just now because I think I would have repeated some stuff if I hadn't. Most things from two months ago still apply, I have played a few more games but not to completion and not nearly as much as DbD, even if you only include the hours I've poured into DbD within the past two months. I have tried to cut down on it but I still play it almost every night. The addictive hooks still drag be back in because the satisfaction of doing well in a match is higher than retro games I try out for the first time.

So why don't I try newer games in an attempt to ween myself off DbD? Well, when I'm not playing retro games, the IDEA of playing them is really nice, I get that sweet nostalgic feeling. To clarify, in case anyone does read this, I'm not talking about old games I've played before. There's old games I've always wanted to play and there's ones I've discovered more recently, through spending way too much time going through massive lists. That's the kinds of games I mean, they're normally PlayStation games because that console continues to fascinate me and also be nostalgic. It replaced the Mega Drive for me in nostalgic terms several years ago, even though the Mega Drive was a big deal for me for ages.

Road Rash 2

There are some retro titles I have started to revisit though, namely Road Rash 2. I was curious when I saw someone had hacked it to improve the frame rate and then if you switch on the overclocking feature on the MiSTer Mega Drive core, it improves it further. I didn't think it was possible to smooth out this type of game - The type that is 2D pretending to be 3D, if you catch my drift. That type of 3D is more commonly known in Sega titles like Out Run, I think it's called Super Scaler technology. I thought it was just sprites representing the same objects, but of different sizes to give the illusion that some are closer to the screen than others. Which would mean there's no 'medium' size of those sprites between the ones that exist, so how could you increase the frame rate? Well obvious you can because it's been done by some talented people in Road Rash 2 and 3. Yes, they'd modded the third game too, I haven't tried that one though.

I also tried out the 'sort of' Road Rash 4 on the PlayStation which is simply called Road Rash. they were ahead of their time, that naming strategy reminds me of the modern era of reboots! I'd head it's pretty good but I found it to be pretty awful, I even struggled to get through the confusing menu system. Perhaps I didn't give it enough time though, I dunno. I should say before I go completely off topic, this FPS hack is impressive. It didn't seem hugely different until I loaded up the original game, it seemed pretty damn bad. I think it at least doubles the frame rate, it goes up to 30fps from about 15. Unlike most retro titles, I did think to myself many years ago that Road Rash 2 was pretty choppy, and even longer after that, that was the reason why I never revisited it. I can happily revisit real old games and be fine with their low end graphics but the Road Rash series was one of the very few which I thought would be difficult to stomach now.

Playing Road Rash 2 around the same time a friend of mine showed me Elite Dangerous and Stellaris started to make me ponder my personal experiences with video games throughout my life and in the modern era. Admittedly I didn't play this Road Rash 2 mod for that long so what I'm about to say may not be relevant but - Elite Dangerous and Stellaris looked like hard work I'd have to study for while Road Rash 2 was simple, to the point and therefor fun. There's always been complicated games and I've played some of them but most titles I've experienced are simple action romps. I am an ancient relic who grew up going to arcades a lot, after all.

I've Lost My Way (aka nostalgia gripping me like it always does for old men like me)

The new thing that has happened, which should have dawned on me far sooner, is that I've drifted away from my roots - those old, simple arcade games, or arcade style games (they can be old consoles games, too) Is that a bad thing? It wouldn't be if I was happy but I'm not, I've become disillusioned by modern video games. So many games are released every week now and the older I get, the harder it is for me to get excited about any of them. I spend more time watching videos on YouTube about games, or of other people playing them, than playing them myself. That is a different discussion for a different day though. On a side note, I do enjoy absorbing the history of the gaming world at large, even some modern stuff. It certainly helps with the quiz I write once a month.

The thing is, even if I do get way back into old titles, the entire reason could be boiled down to a combination of two simple things - 1. Nostalgia, 2. Low quantity of brain cells (I'm not smart, is what I'm saying). Are these bad reasons? They may seem so at first, especially to any youngsters, but at my age you start to realise that it doesn't matter why you like something, just like it. Or maybe it's just me, since I've had depression issues, so I have spent a lot of time over-thinking things. At times I'd think man, I gotta keep up with contemporary games, don't get stuck in the past. But... why? Does it really matter? They're just entertainment after all. I think the only good argument, in my case at least, is that playing cutting edge games means I have more to talk about with my friends. Some of my mates are younger than me, you see. They aren't interested in 16-bit and 32-bit era games, I get the impression that stuff is garbage to them, it's ancient history. It's back when controls were stiff and janky and graphics were an eye-sore.

Going off on a tangent here - You know what? PlayStation games kind of ARE an eye-sore but I love them. Again it is probably just nostalgia, but my excuse is that looking amateur-ish is more appealing to me than our current state of realism found in the AAA industry. The environments largely look all the same to me which is the most cliche old man thing I could say but they really just do. They do look pretty, don't get me wrong, but there's something about all these identical, lush forests and fields which feel like they have no soul to me. OK they don't look exactly the same, they do have small differences between each other. What I like about an amateur look is you can see that human beings worked and struggled though these creations.

Ironically won't players be saying the game thing about PlayStation 5 titles when the PlayStation 10 comes out? Oh boy, look at how quaint and old fashioned PlayStation 5 games look, is what they'll be saying. Which means all this love for the past is in my head, which is worrying but again, perhaps I shouldn't care, perhaps I should embrace it. It is perhaps inevitable and how many times can I say the word perhaps. Old people do it with movies and music too, they say it's whatever we experienced in our teenage years, they are the informative ones. A more upsetting way of saying that, is that they are the best years of our lives, which certainly feels true for me. I ask the question again - But why? I honestly think it's because our brains are dying, we can't retain as much anymore. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, they say. That, combined with seeing roughly the same things rehashed over and over again in the entertainment would. I mean how many times can I get excited about a dude running around in first person shooting other dudes or monsters? They will look prettier, they will have small mechanical changes but they eventually aren't different enough to hold my interest.

Wow this got dark didn't it. Unfortunately it's where my brain is at, and it's been like this for a while. I'll try not to be like this all the time but I'm not promising anything. Also I should mention I'm pretty sure I'm going through a mid-life crisis, that is definitely another way of framing this. I have more to write about but I've been on here far longer than intended, as usual. I shall post this on my 'drop in the sea' blog and think about weather or not I'm going to post it on Destructoid. Now that I've written something, I realise I'd definitely have to edit it before posting there, because there's a lot of fluff, jabbering and angst which would be embarrassing to post on a more public platform.

Extra extra! I'm adding this bit at the end because after finishing this blog entry, I read all of my last entry and the bit that stood out was - 

"I this post may be very uninteresting to myself in the future because I rarely spoke about anything specific, like one big thing I was going to talk about was my bad dream concerning an old relationship. That's the main reason I feel down today. I'll talk about it another time if I remember to do so. I really should go do some exercising in the park now."

Funny thing is, I can't for the life of me remember this dream. I really should be happy about this and I kind of am but I do find it a little interesting that I can't remember it at all. I do sort of remember being upset that day because of it, but it certainly wasn't as bad as THAT dream I had at my mums a lot longer ago. I shouldn't be pasting this section here because why remind myself twice in the future out this? Well, I still can't remember it do I guess it doesn't matter. But now I'm even reminding you of the dream at my mums, which is kinda bad but that's one I've never forgotten anyway. Perhaps because I did actually try to do something about it after... which didn't exactly lead to something great. I... still can't remember this other dream from a couple months ago though, which is kind of a good thing but at the same time it shows how crap my memory really is. We really do forgot a lot, don't we. How much do we forgot?! Like, the majority, perhaps. Anyway, bye.