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REAL LIFE STORIES- Feb 2010

Occasionally gaming comes up in real life and gives you pause for thought. The other day I attended a barbecue at a friend’s house. He was moving overseas for a new job and had invited a lot of his childhood friends, his high school friends, and some work friends. It was interesting to see a person’s life divided up into stages and the types of friends they had through each stage.

(if you aren’t a fan of more mundane stories, come back next time. Also, we talk about these events on the next podcats so feel free to wait for that)

So the childhood friends were all tall, slightly jock-like though always friendly and inclusive. After lunch, these guys retired to the lounge to play Boom Blox. I joined them for a bit and they (never having played it before) handed me my ass. These guys worked in local radio and the like.
The high school friends were much shorter, some were accountants, and Asian (from various parts). These guys were into anime and JRPG’s big time. After lunch, these guys decamped to a family room to play fighting games on a PSOne.

So, as my friend is moving away to Quebec for work in the cold, we all sweltered in the Aussie heat to bit my friend adieu. One of the High School friends presented to our mutual friend a boxed Famicom version of Final Fantasy VI. My friend is grinning away like mad showing it off to us as we line up at the makeshift buffet. He shows me and I just casually joke “What’s the matter? Doesn’t he like you?” After that, I just laughed and moved off to get my lunch. My wife noticed the expression on the giver’s face. She described it as someone who’s just taken a knife to the chest.
Later in the day as I’m wandering around and High School Friends are huddled away from everyone else, I overhear Chief Otaku describing, in detail, fine variations in packaging, translations and other assorted facts of import to those who worship at the altar of Square. “It’s not been the same since Enix,” apparently.

Over the years, I have often taken a contrary stance on some videogames franchises. I dislike most Japanese games yet love Metal Gear, Katamari, Mario and Zelda. I dislike most RPG’s yet love Fallout 3 and Mass Effect. AS I hang around nerds who play a variety of games, it is not uncommon to overhear conversations about why Killzone 2 is better than Halo, why Forza is better than Gran Turismo, why consoles are shit (heavy PC bias at my place of work you understand). I have just grown a thick skin when someone bags CoD or Halo and just heap shit on TF2 and WoW in return. It’s jokes. But I mortally wounded Chief Otaku that day.

Another thing is the loud and often pious whingeing I’ve been enduring. As I said, I work with a lot of people who are big PC gamers. These days there are few PC only games since the games actually sell better on consoles. So the topic du jour is often how console versions are the cause of PC games not being up to snuff.

Funnily enough, it not because of Modern Warfare 2 where feature parity between consoles and PC is do the detriment of the PC version. It’s EA’s upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The first game was 360/PS3 only and it looked and played great (I played on PS3). Same with Battlefield 1943 (played on 360), which uses the same Frostbite engine as the Bad Company games. So the guys I used to play CoD4 with were hoping BBC2 would lift them out of the doldrums that MW2 apparently put them in. So a bunch of us preordered on steam. Some got the beta and played it, a beta which is the source of anguish for a many with an expensive PC rig. Forgetting the fact that it is a BETA (ie not final or finished) and the fact that these whingers MAKE GAMES FOR A LIVING AND ARE SPENDING 95% OF THEIR WORK TIME WITH UNFINISHED AND OFTEN BROKEN GAMES, some have decided to cancel their preorder (which Steam doesn’t make easy).

So I’m stuck with a PC version even though I’d prefer the 360 version at this stage. Oh well.

In other news, Mass Effect 2 is the shiz. A Now Playing will be coming soon.