Showing posts with label getting older. Show all posts
Showing posts with label getting older. Show all posts

Friday, May 4, 2012

Infinite Undiscovery...Will Remain Undiscovered


Not too long ago, I attempted to play Infinite Undiscovery and I really didn’t give it a fair chance. I have no idea if it was a good game or not because after 20 minutes I stopped playing, put it in its envelope, and mailed it back to Gamefly. In those 20 minutes I got to press buttons (and not to get more text to appear on the screen but for actual gameplay) for maybe 3 minutes. And I’m being generous on calling it 3 minutes. There were so many cutscenes and things to read that I just got annoyed and called it a day. For an actual critique from someone who clearly had more patience than I did, here you go.

I had chosen this game after reading about it (I think in GameInformer, but I’m not exactly sure) because of its unusual name and decided to give it a try simply because of its unusual name with no knowing of pretty much anything else about it. This could be the greatest game ever…but I will never know because I got annoyed with all the cutscenes and textboxes.

A friend of mine once told me that part of dating is figuring out what you will and will not put up with. I’ve found, as I’ve gotten older that this advice applies to pretty much every aspect of life. When I was younger I put up with a lot but as I got older, my propensity to grow annoyed has gotten stronger. In my youth (see early 20s), I would put up with long cutscenes, but now I won’t. They simply have started annoying me and I have outgrown them. Realized that an overly long cutscene is not something I will put up with in my videogame relationship anymore.

A game should be more than just a string of cutscenes where the player gets to intermittently mash a button in between. I’m fine with cutscenes if they’re brief and don’t interfere with the flow of the game. A cutscene should not be so long that I can fix a bowl of Froot Loops (and some have been so long I can even eat said Froot Loops.) The story should be integrated into gameplay with cutscenes being minor and not tedious. 
Was able to eat the whole bowl
 Infinite Undiscovery could be the most fantastically awesome game ever, but I will never know. I don’t know, give it a try – maybe you’ll have more patience than I did.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Back In My Day, We Had To Walk All the Way to the TV to Change the Channel...And there were only 99 channels


On October 15 I will be turning 29. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I am very lucky to have a friend who boldly goes into these ages a month ahead and then reports back her findings. Into the abyss; kind of like an age reconnaissance.
            Usually I feel excitement and dread when it gets close to my birthday; right now I almost feel nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about an event occurring on my birthday, Extra Life, but I’m having trouble mustering up anything for the actual birthday. I can tell I feel a little down about it but I can’t seem to connect with it even though I can tell because of some of my sleep habits are going more odd than normal. Perhaps it’s because I feel so far away from most of my friends and family. Perhaps it’s because these last few months seemed to go so fast that I’m having trouble grasping that my birthday is around the corner. Perhaps it’s that I’ve already had 28 of them so what’s one more? I feel numb with an undercurrent. It’s almost like I’ve been shot through with Novocain and the feelings of excitement and dread are hovering, waiting to take hold.
            I always say that birthdays are great because they take me further away from 22. I’ve been feeling 22 again and I’m realizing that 22 was really not that bad. I was angsty, but I’m always angsty to varying degrees. With my recent relocation/ joblessness with mostly school and my writing to keep me busy, I’ve gone back to my 22 personality with a 28 perspective and I realized 22 was not as bad as I made it out to be. At 22 I was very angsty but nothing that bad. Looking back I realized that I spent much of 23 – 27 feeling numb and not really myself, just going through motions because what else was I going to do. I felt much more myself at 22 and I’ve started feeling much more myself now. I don’t feel like I’m turning 29, I feel like I’m turning 22 Part 2 (or is it Part 3 now?) I have to admit I prefer feeling angsty to feeling numb and just going through the motions of my life. It is a horrible to feel absolutely nothing and to feel that you can’t even catch a glimpse of yourself anymore.
            On Saturday I will be turning 29 and I look back and it’s sometimes like watching someone else’s life go past. Some of the events don’t seem as long ago as others and the chronology is all messed up. Everything is disjointed and disconnected.