Naia's Gaming Resoultions and Retrolutions

I'm relaxing in my parents house in cold New England, eagerly anticipating my flight back to warm Los Angeles California. While I keep warm I take a listen to my favorite podcast ever Retroforce Go! (I swear I'm not kissing up either). I started to think about some of the things they said and come up with my own goals for my gaming hobby this year.

For starters, I will try to devote time every month to play some retro games. I go through retro cravings, but they are sporadic and I would like to try and spread it out a little bit better. I usually play the same games over and over again and I want to add some new ones in the mix, such as Super Metroid, and Secret of Mana. I've completed all of these games multiple times, but it is always fun to play them again.

I REALLY want to try to catch up with my backlog. I've been fighting a backlog for almost 8 years now, but I've gotten to the point where I will no longer play a game just to play all of the games in a franchise if I don't like the game. I was able to walk away from Suikoden IV, and I can do it with something else.

I want to give FPS's a chance. I'm not saying I will like them or get all obsessed with teh Haloez, but I do want to play Bioshock, and I've been told Half Life is really good. I also want to play a Halo game to see what the fuss is all about. I have a feeling I won't get it.

Like the Retroforce guys, I also have some things I would like to see the community and industry resolve to do:

Fewer FPS's more ANYTHING else: I agree with you Retroforce! Regardless of whether or not a game is good, total saturation of a genre in a short period of time is not good.

Third party devs should look at the Wii like the DS. I'm serious about this. I recall the first year of the DS's life a lot of games shoehorned touchscreen controls and they didn't work well. For a while only Nintendo was getting it. Eventually developers realized they didn't NEED to implement touch screen controls in every game and to only add them when it felt natural and/or did something for the gaming experience. Now there are plenty of great DS games that use very little of the touch screen, but are just good games. Why can't we have some decent Wii games that don't use much of the motion controls? Who says a Wii game has to have them? Couldn't we have a "traditional" game that uses the wii-mote on its side, you know kind of like Super Paper Mario (although even that has some pointer control)? I think the motion controls were meant to promote creativity, not throw on useless mechanics.

Gamers, quit your whining. Some gaming communities are better than others, but I can't help but feel like there are a lot of gamers that are never satisfied with anything. It's one thing to rant like Rev. Anthony (or myself. I like to rant), but I think it's a whole other when I have to ask "If you're so unhappy, why do you play video games?" A lot of things in gaming piss me off, but there so many gems that make me very happy to play and give me warm fuzzies ^_^

But seriously is it the end of the world if a game is X framerate instead of Y framerate? Does it matter if a game is colorful or not? Does it really matter if person A owns a system that person B doesnt? Does that give person A the right to think that person B is a fucktard for owning that system? Seriously grow the fuck up. Can't we all just enjoy the games we play?

Once again, my two cents turns into two dollars.