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Older Features
About Me
I'm just a scrappy student and freelance writer trying to weave his way through life by over-analyzing video games and writing a piece or two on more legitimate topics. |
Adventure!
By this time tomorrow I hope to be madly running around Frontierland in Disney World, reveling in my childish obsession with all things wilderness and fort-like. I'll be there for a week, getting absolutely nothing done productivity-wise. I cannot. Wait. Things you should read:
Posted 5/31/10 by Jon
Lone Wolves Starve
Thumbing through the preview of the upcoming Official World of Warcraft magazine, I came across a rather intimidating passage that read something like "If you aren't in a guild by the time Cataclysm (the upcoming WoW expansion) hits the ground, consider this fair warning." The short piece when on to explain Blizzard's focus on getting everyone, even the most casual players, into guilds. For me, this read capital D doomsday for one of my all time favorite hobbies: slogging through Warcraft with absolutely no schedule commitments and no regular group of friends to run with. Would I, the perennial lone wolf freelance raider, finally be forced into the drama-laden land of guild raids and lock out exclusivities? Posted 5/24/10 by Jon
Lost Luster
Let's not kid ourselves; when Starcraft II is released, there will be rivers of joyful tears, much global rejoicing, and four weeks of absolutely no productivity in South Korea. That's a given. But now that I've been messing around with the beta for four or five weeks, my excitement over it has mellowed to a minor hum, a tiny sliver of joy on par with a Reeses peanut butter easter egg. Why? Posted 4/5/10 by Jon
Flesh Wounds
I remember the original Half-Life's modding scene through a blur of wild, chaotic memories riddled with un-updated Geocities page, horrifically animated models, and downright broken zip files. Zip files hosted on FilePlanet and painstakingly downloaded through my 56k modem. In short, that period of my early teenage years was my equivalent to Robert Downey Jr.'s drug and booze binge circa Ally McBeal. Only with Half-Life mods. Posted 3/26/10 by Jon
Ruse Impressions
"Where's my goddamn kubelwagen!?" I scream as my opponent's puny infantry send three of my King Tiger tanks fleeing from the forest from which they fire their annoying anti-armor missiles. I hurriedly queue up a recon plane and order my artillery to let loose on the strip of trees sheltering the enemy troops. I zoom in to watch the carnage as the barrage reduces the forest to little more than a barren stretch of charred ash and stumps. I'll win this round yet, goddamn it. Posted 3/26/10 by Jon
The Make Believe Game Designer
Wouldn't it be grand if, for whatever divinely effected reason, us poor common gamers had an entire game development studio come into existence, whose sole purpose was to bring our vision of what a game should be into reality? I annually find myself relapsing into wishing for exactly that. About once a year I get the sudden urge to download a lot of freeware game development kits or mod tools and set about crafting something. Posted 3/1/10 by Jon
The Old Magic
There's a beat up Converse shoebox that resides under my side of the bed. Nothing's scribbled on it in sharpy marker, no label's slapped on the side of it to identify its contents. But within this relatively small, nondescript box resides such a massive chunk of my gaming heritage, that I hesitate to tell anyone about it lest they kick in my front door and wrench it from my bony hands. This is all a very dramatic way of saying that, yes, like many other closet geeks, I have a box cram packed with Magic: The Gathering cards stashed in my room. Considering that I spent an inordinate amount of time beating Baldur's Gate 1 last year, who would've thunk it? Posted 2/20/10 by Jon
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