Compression

I still have the box for Grim Fandango, sitting carefully preserved on a shelf, complete with the original manual and little advertising flyers inside. I don’t think I could ever bring myself to throw it away. Preparing for a move to the far north of England in the coming weeks, I spent last night removing all of my other games and movies from their cases, placing the discs in a plain binder, and throwing away the plastic. A frighteningly tall pile of plastic. Perhaps I’m in shock, but I don’t think I actually care. I won’t miss them, certainly not like I would miss that Grim box. My only qualm was to double check that the packaging is, in fact, recyclable. (It is.)

Is this the decline of game packaging? Or is it merely that I’m older?

State of Affairs — PC Gaming

Coming up on two years since I purchased my PS3 — the first console I’ve owned since the original Gameboy — I find I’m enjoying gaming more than I had in quite some time. This has me thinking about the current state of gaming on my old platform: PC.

To the Bitter End….

With Good Old Games continuing to post old Sierra games, most recently a handful of King’s Quest titles, I’ve been thinking back to how many of these games I’ve actually finished. I spent hours in King’s Quest V and VI, but I don’t think I ever actually finished either one. In the last couple of years games have been designed more and more with the intention that the player will actually see the ending. Games have gotten shorter, and the objectives in front of you as you play have become less obscure. Good or bad, it is rare these days that you don’t know what you are supposed to do next. Except for one area: boss battles.

Mass Effect 2 Review

Mass Effect 2 is one of those special games that you never want to see end. Partly this might come down to its structure, allowing the player to wander through the bulk of the game at their own pace, but always with the impending pressure of the much hyped ‘suicide mission’ that makes up the final act of the game. From the moment that you gain control of your ship, maybe an hour into the game if you take your time, the ‘mass relay’ that will carry you into that final act sits there on your map, a constant reminder as you travel the galaxy building your team. But with that glowing, red icon on the map, there always seems like there must be just one more thing to do before moving through to the endgame. One more thing to make sure you are prepared….