50 to 60 hours long ! Sorry but I have a life too.

You know what kind of games I used to like? jRPGs. Back in the days (10 years ago or so I guess), I loved to play those long lasting RPGs, be it FF4/5/6, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and many more. I have fond memories of those times. I was also 12.

I just saw on Kotaku that the new FF13 (confidence: I never played beyond 6) will be a massive 50 to 60 hours long to complete. How true is that? I don't know and I really don't much care.

You see, the last RPG I completed was Lost Odyssey. A great game; very touching, nice cinematography, nice classical gameplay, but a quite clichéd storyline. It really threw me back to my younger days where I would sit in front of the TV and carefully select the attacks of my characters. I guess I was a boring kid.

Do you know how long it took me to finish this monster of a game? 40-something hours. Do you know how spread those 40 hours were? Over a full university summer vacation; from May to September.

You see, I am not 12 anymore. I work, I write, I study, I read, and I watch movies. Sure, I also game, but my gaming periods are pretty much spread thin. I'm currently at the end of my term and the only gaming times I get are on Thursday when I'm back to my parents house (to refill on food and clean clothes) and when I'm not burrowed under papers.

My brother bought Assassin's Creed 2 on launch day. Most of the gamers that did the same finished the game by the end of the same week. It's been 3 weeks and I barely touched Venice. See, that's why I don't play jRPGs (or much wRPGs for that matter) anymore.

Where would I put 50 to 60 hours of game and still have time to play anything else ? What I'm going through happens to a lot of older gamers that are starting to have less time for gaming as they have other priorities or interest.

Don't get me wrong now, I still love video games with a passion. It's my domain of interest. But when it comes to leisure time, my gaming will either go to games that pikes my interest (the reason I play AC2 is because of my interest in history represented through games) or games that will give me a quick satisfaction.

What used to be a major selling point to me, as it is for most gamers, just became a sort of a warning. It's not about replayability anymore. It's about whether I will get to finish the game or not.

I'm sorry FF13, but unless your story touches the subjects of traumatic memories, collective history, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, or actual historical events, I guess I will have to pass and invest my time in writing my papers.

I just noticed the irony of writing this instead of my actual papers.

Machinarium and Kill Screen

First thing first, my review of Machinarium is up on GW. Check it out dudes and gals.

Second thing, thanks to the lovely Leigh Alexander (birthday girl today), I found out about the upcoming new gaming magazine Kill Screen. Looks like someone is finally making the kind of gaming magazine that I've always been looking for:

"We were asking "Why doesn't something like this exist?" We talked about games all of the time but there wasn't something that met the bar, both intellectually and aesthetically, for this genre. That's not to say there aren't lots of lovely blogs that write wonderful things about games and their obvious cultural import, but we wanted something we could hold. An artifact. An object. It had to be beautiful. The sort of thing that stays on your shelf and you pass on to your children. We wanted Kill Screen to be an heirloom."

The only gaming magazine I was ever subscribed to was (shamefully now that I look back on it) Nintendo Power. I will now have to look for a place to store all those old mags to make place for the new ones if they, hopefully, make more than one issue. Suffice to say, their vision was enough to sell me backing them up with a nice 50$. Can't wait for more info on this.

Critic vs. review

From Destructoid:

"However, I'd suggest that all contributors to the specialist games media should err on the side of criticism - they are, after all, writing for gamers, not casual onlookers who happened to have glanced a game review while looking through a newspaper."

I totally agree on that point. The issue here is that most gamers don't make the difference between a review and a critic. A review is simply pointing out the pros and the cons of a game in order to give an idea if I should or not buy the game. A critic may give a quick overview of those points but will rather look at the themes of the game's story, the different gameplay methods used and if it's relevant to the media as an whole, especially to such a young media as gaming. Games like Mirror's Edge needs reviews and critics to look at both side of the issue. One to look at "if gamers are gonna like it" and the other to look if it will leave a mark in the history of the medium which will interest more the academics than the gamers.

It's also a matter of where you're looking. If I want a deep critic of a game, I'll go to the escapist, not Destructoid.

Also @ Cyberxion
"Why does Wario get slammed almost entirely for its lack of innovation, whereas a game like Megaman 9 gets a pass? "

It's because Wario as the pretencion of being a new game but does little to actually do anything new. From a reviewers standpoint, it may not be a bad thing ; don't fix what isn't broken, but from a critic point of view that game isn't really relevant. Megaman 9 on the other was made to be some kind of window to an older era. It gives a glimpse to younger gamer of how it was back in the days. It's like making a movie in black and white in 2008. The style (and gameplay in the case of a game) is the same but they rely on modern technology. You may argue that gameplay evolved since then and you are right but gameplay is also a very important aspect of the medium and had to be the same for the main goal of the game from a critic standpoint "opening a window to the early NES era" to succeed.

Beginning of the game

My name is Bruno and this is my blog.

The funny thing is, I created this site a long time ago. Like a year I think. But I never had(or took) time to post in here. But for some weird reason I decided, yesterday, after an hard day of essays and exams, that I needed even more work and so I will start a bunch of new things. I will try to write more, both on this blog and on other stuff like game reviews, stories and articles. I will even post some of my works on here so the world can see it and hopefully give helpful critics so I can get better. I also decided to start learning some new things on my own. One of them being Flash. Thankfully, I ordered the book "Beggining game programming with flash" and at the same time Kotaku ran a story about this site. Seems like the stars were aligned.

For right now I won't be posting anything really interesting but starting tomorrow(or maybe even tonight) I will start to post some more. I am currently finishing the first part of a short article about survival horror games and how to make a realistic one, I have a few writing made of stories, character creations and general game designing stuff that I could post and by the end of the week I should have a review of Saint's Row 2, if my brother bought it today while I'm at university. I know it seems crazy to add even more work to my already busy life. I was already juggling between work and school and now I will add self-education. It's like going from juggling two knife to three flaming chainsaws. But hopefully I will make it, cause I'm doing it for my love of games and creation.

Peace out.