A Gay Post

I’m not gay. Did I need to mention that? Does it matter? Will your opinion of me change now you’ve discovered that I don’t have a penchant for sucking pole? Is using that phrase derogatory to the act of man on man oral love making? What of ladies who love ladies?

The reason I’m clumsily shuffling into this mine field is because gay rights and attitudes towards those who gay seems to have been prominent in the media recently. From online evangelists demanding that some polygons never intersect other polygons to the forthcoming debate and vote in parliament on gay marriage.

As it’s not something I’ve had cause to speak with my children about I found myself wondering how my attitudes and things they may hear in passing might influence them. When putting my eight year old daughter to bed last night I decided to ask her.

ME: [REDACTED], if a boy wants to marry another boy, should he be allowed to?

HER: Boy marry a boy? I guess.

ME: What about girls. Should girls be allowed to marry other girls?

HER: If they want to.

ME: What’s the most important thing then if two people want to get married?

HER: That they love each other. And they take care of each other.

This parenting lark is a doddle.

No Escape

It’s been a tough couple of months. Financially things are finely balanced, as I think they are for most people. Austerity measures bite into the support that low income families rely on. We’d prefer not to, we’d love to be completely independent, but my historic lack of academic performance, inability to co-ordinate my faculties into production, and my social ineptitude have combined to ensure a salary approaching the national average shall remain as lofty a dream as that of those who purchase lottery tickets. But I have my PC. My wonderful PC which takes me away from, well, me.

Or at least it did. My ageing system is finally starting to fail. It has been a wonderful companion over these past few years but I can no longer resist the need to replace its innards. That of course brings us back to our austerity issues. Gaming PCs aren’t cheap, even low to mid performance components for those on a tight budget will stretch you to a couple of consoles worth of purchasing power. Sure, in the long run the PC will work out comparable if not cheaper overall, but it’s still an eye watering initial outlay.

Thankfully I’m not frivolous with money and the years of abusing my body with alcohol, tobacco and drugs are long behind me. I still eat far too much, but I think that’s pretty typical of those who lack a degree of self worth. Whether that’s a result of my being an unwanted inconvenience to be paternally abandoned as an infant leaving me with trust issues I don’t know.

It’s been the ever present monkey on my back: If my own father didn’t like me enough to stick around and I don’t particularly like me, why should anyone? Which leads me to think they don’t and so must be lying if they say they do. And if they’re that deceitful how can I then trust them? That’s pretty tough to resolve when you’re married with children.

The sooner my PC is back up and running and I can stop being me again the better.

Pavlov's Writer

I’m struggling. Things aren’t going well. I’m broken.

My first little bit of scribbling thoughtforms onto the intersplodge this year was to be a review of BIT.TRIP.RUNNER for GamingDaily.co.uk. Around January last year I reviewed BIT.TRIP.BEAT for the site and a quirk of fate had landed this other BIT.TRIP game in my lap so, “How fun” I thought, “it would be to review it as a call back to that other piece.” The problem was when I wrote the RUNNER review it was, well, shit. An uninteresting description of the game and its mechanics. A lifeless interpretation of an otherwise enjoyable, if shallow, platform romp. It simply would not do.

There was a time I’d have sent it in anyway and let Craig (Gaming Daily's Editor) fix it or throw it back at me with pointers as to how to fix it, but not now. Now I would be embarrassed to show it. I was as surprised as anyone to discover I’d developed standards. I’m sure they’re low standards, but standards none the less.

I intended to rewrite the review but first I had to undertake a joyless experience in the playing and reviewing of Postal 3 for plughead.net. I didn’t expect it to be joyless, I expected contrived controversy and poor humour. If only it were that crude!

The review was difficult to write, not least because I was somewhat enraged by the game, and I did seek assistance as to its content prior to submitting it to the world. I was attempting to straddle the line Postal 3 failed to. I hope I succeeded.

Having no further use for Postal 3, I uninstalled it, performed an exorcism on my HDD, and bleached my eyes. I was now free to returned to the BIT.TRIP.RUNNER review. The problem was I sat reading through what I’d written and couldn’t see a way to salvage it, so I decided to start afresh and deleted it. Blank page, fresh start. That blank page stared at me for an hour. I started to panic. I just couldn’t express myself. I’ve exhausted my catalogue of reproductive organ jokes, similes, metaphors, and innuendos, suddenly finding myself unable to perform.

I blamed it on BIT.TRIP.RUNNER. Clearly the game was mediocre and so couldn’t inspire me. I needed something grand or something dire. Something to juice me up a bit.

Gaming Daily were instigating a Friday Night Race Night. I’ve always enjoyed racing games, though like most genres I enjoy my ability lags far behind my enthusiasm. In the discussion to seek a suitable game for the inaugural event I got to thinking about all the various racing games out there and a way for the venture to be completely inclusive. I figured the best way to be all inclusive would be for a game that anyone could pick up easily and cheaply and that wouldn’t be too demanding on hardware. I came to the conclusion that such a game would be Need For Speed World. I decided to check it out.

Having checked it out I decided I should warn others and so sat down to explain why when it comes to racing games you certainly seem to get what you pay for. The fact you’re reading this rather than that should convey how well it went.

These failures have been on pieces I was doing because that’s what I used to do, have an idea or thought about a game and squirt some words out. I’m thinking that as for over a year now I’ve been doing what was asked rather than what I felt like my brain now salivates only when an assignment drops.

I’ll get to test this theory over the next week or so as my review copy of point and click comedy adventure Da New Guys is inbound.

Being Nice

Despite most professional game reviewers being well educated literate people, I’ve noticed an increased level of resignation in much of their work and comments. If you look closely you can see the wreckage brought by the knowledge that irrespective of what they write their opinion is instantly dismissed in a tidal wave of contempt that washes over from the curse that is this communal online cesspool.

It’s the digital age. Zeroes and ones. Right or wrong. Game is the best thing ever, game is the worst thing ever. Scales and degrees are lost and the nuances of descriptive narrative are removed in favour of following the man with the arrow over his head, with the validity of such a movement being the consumerism of the ignorant.

You people make me sick.

The reason I say this is because for all the time I’ve reflected on the games I’ve played and written about them, and as with this blog thing, I am constantly worried about the words I use and whether I’m accurately expressing myself with those scales and nuances I like to experience myself. That’s quite tough for me because as anyone who knows me will appreciate, and I’m sure I have mentioned it here before, I’m an uneducated buffoon. And I don’t say that to be self depreciating or ironic. This isn’t a platform to branch out into a career in comedy podcasts or TV. Certainly not with this face, these teeth, and that hairline. Rather, it’s the confession that I have yet to write anything without a dictionary and thesaurus to hand because I fear using the wrong words. Something that was highlighted recently when we had the plughead.net Game Of The Year discussions and I found myself opining without my usual safety nets. It was a great debate to be part of, but equally terrifying. I suspect that’s why when things get a little tense I revert to knob and tit gags.

I’m aware that even when choosing the correct language and being suitably descriptive and reasoned my opinion isn’t worth a carrot. Highlighted over the festive season by my brother announcing a recent game acquisition which he then sought my opinion on over drinks. I naturally expressed concern and a degree of hurt that he hadn’t read my review and suggested that perhaps rather than me providing a summation he would be better served by reading my review in its entirety.

He asked me for the score and a good / bad list.

That’s what has become of reviews. Marketing is king now and people only (skim)read reviews to validate their hype lead purchases. People don’t want to know what the game is really like, they want nice comments about how they’ve made the right choice.

So why not just be nice? Why not just say what people want to hear? Sure, in a few months they’ll have finished the game and be looking to trade it in, but that’s fine because when they were playing it they felt okay about it. You stroked their head and told them how clever they were. They were culturally relevant because they had bought The Emperors New Franchise Entry and you were in it all together, but all together and all together, you’re all together as complicit and deserving of my scorn.