My Gaming Landscape [August 10th, 2015]

Welcome to the new Gaming Landscape! In the past, I used these blog posts not just to talk about the games I’ve been playing but to chronicle and keep track of what I had been playing. However, that has become constraining as sometimes I don’t have much to say about some of the games I’ve been playing. This is why I stopped writing these for a few months now. What’s more is my initial thoughts on a game are usually on my Twitter account now (follow me @Colorwind, FYI). For this reason, I thought at first to end the Gaming Landscape series. However, I realized that there’s a need to a longer form of casual discussion about video games. I think that’s why this series has done fairly well to begin with. So for that reason, I decided to keep the name but with a different format. These posts will now talk about my thoughts and feelings on games and the industry as a whole as I seem to be perceiving them at the moment. This will surely bring up games I’ve been playing as well but this will no longer be the focus. I won’t even break up the post by games anymore. So with that in mind, enjoy the new Gaming Landscape!

The main reason why I brought back My Gaming Landscape is because of something that has happened to me this whole summer. I’ve been in a gaming rut. For some reason, ever since E3 of this year, I’ve been playing mostly nothing but bad games or games that didn’t hold my interest. It started with the Uncharted series, which I wrote a highly controversial blog about. I didn’t like playing that series at all and only ended up beating the first game, although I got close to the end of the second.

What the hell is this? Why did Naughty Dog think this is what their platformer series needed?

After that, I played The Jak Trilogy. I liked the first game, though I didn’t think it was anything amazing. However, after that, I didn’t like the second or third games. I found the second game to be tedious and confused, as if Naughty Dog didn’t know what kind of game they were trying to make. Jak 3 just wound up boring me and it didn’t help that most of the game, or at least the two or so hours I played of it, consisted mostly of the worst aspect of Jak 2: the driving. The controls were a bit better than they were in the second game but I think the only reason they felt better was because you were driving hover bikes anymore.

Around this time, I was also trying to play Fallout 3 on stream but nothing really compelled me to come back to it after an initial stream. I was initially hyped to play it because of the announcement of Fallout 4 and the gameplay shown at E3. But that didn’t last. Same goes for Dishonored, which I popped in for the first time. After all this, I had a bit of luck with playing the Crash series on the original PlayStation. The first game hasn’t aged well but Crash 2, Crash 3, and Crash Team Racing are still fun games. Playing through the original Metroid was also a lot a fun and I wrote a review for it as a result.

Sonic, why?

The real thing that has hampered me is the games I’ve recently reviewed for Middle of Nowhere Gaming. First was Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. I knew it was going to be bad before playing it but the game ultimately was more boring than bad. Honestly, it was the best game I reviewed overall. Next was Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition, which was so goddamn tedious since there’s “new” campaigns for all of the new playable characters which are exact copies of the original game’s campaign, right down to the backtracking. Finally, I just finished a review of Legend of Kay Anniversary and I’ll just say that it hasn’t aged well. At all.

Other games I’ve been trying to get into but have been stopped for whatever reason are Final Fantasy X HD, Tales of Vesperia, Metro 2033, and Devil May Cry 1 for the DMC Diaries series I’m doing. Even some games that I’ve kind of gotten into, such as Gears of War 2 and Rocket League, haven’t sucked me in enough to keep playing them. It doesn’t help that there hasn’t been too many games coming out recently that have peaked my interest. Also, for some reason, there are some games, like Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, that I know nothing about.

One bad or uninteresting game after another, like clockwork.

I think I need to go back to a game that I know I like to get me out of this rut. I know that I’ve been in the mood for something a bit laid back mechanically and during long periods of relaxation, like the summer, I like to play long games. So I think I should play an RPG and I did try that with Final Fantasy X HD and Tales of Vesperia. However, I got stuck on a boss. So instead, I think I’m going to finally do something I’ve wanted to do for some time now.

The first RPG I ever played and the one that got me into the genre was Final Fantasy VII. However, I’ve never actually beaten it. See, when I was first going through the game, my save file was corrupted after parachuting back into Midgar. I’ve never been able to go back to the game and play it seriously because, man, that still burns me to this day. However, I loved playing that game and maybe now it’s time to finally do it. I own the game on Steam and it’s just been sitting there. I don’t have to worry about corrupted data that’s to the Steam Cloud, and it’s a game that I know I like but haven’t beaten.

So wish me luck on Final Fantasy VII. Hopefully, this will be what I need to pull me out of this rut. Have you ever been in a gaming rut, where nothing you’re playing is good or holding your interest? Did you like the new Gaming Landscape format? Leave your thoughts and opinions in the comment section and check out my blog colorwynd.wordpress.com for more posts on games, music, movies and more. Peace and Love, Gamers and Players! Colorwind out.