tekHedd – the blog

As much as I love to generalize, it’s probably wrong. So I probably shouldn’t point out that new games suck. It reminds me too much of people who constantly rant about how all new music is inferior to the classics. Well, of course the classics were great: they’re the tiny number of songs we still listen to. Most of the songs back then were crap too.

And yet, most of the new games are inferior to the classics. I’m taking another look at games I thought weren’t that good, games that I got bored with, didn’t bother finishing, and traded in. Because my standards were pretty high five years ago. Now, the games focus on looking pretty–because that’s all you need to sell. And looking pretty is expensive! So we have a crop of expensive games that really aren’t that fun to play.

Well, maybe the art of game creation will refine and evolve and game developers will find efficient ways to make high-resolution eye candy. Maybe, but I doubt it. Instead they’re looking for ways to slip advertising, micropayments, and downloadable (for money) content into the games. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

In the meantime, we have vintage games. I just purchased Arcanum for 5.99 on Good Old Games. This is yet another game that I never finished. Well, it seemed complicated in those days, but now it looks like a welcome break from the parade of dumbed-down console games. I guess I’ll see.

Well, this looks like a reasonably fun time, but it’s yet another console game with a crappy PC port. Did they use Unreal 3 engine, the one with the jerky, deadzoned mouse support? Yes. Did they bother to make the menus PC-friendly? No. How about Field of Vision? Funny you should ask: lots of people are reporting that playing in widescreen with the default FOV makes them actually sick.

So, I guess there’s fifty bucks I won’t be wasting after all. Sad.

exchristian.net posted my relatively uninteresting and certainly not very unique or unusual deconversion testimony. I don’t think it’s a very interesting or unusual story, but I’m hoping it may be helpful to someone else in the same situation, as theirs were to me.

As is the convention, I’m posting it here in the blog too, because, you know, it’s my content and that’s what you do with blogs. But don’t read it if you’re not prepared to be bored. :)

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