My attention for the last month or so has been on OTHER things so the reveal trailer for Resident Evil 6 slipped by me completely until Jeff mentioned it to me randomly. As soon as he did, I rushed to YouTube to watch the trailer and boy did I like what I see…

Just so we can have the source reference front and center, here’s there reveal trailer…

…and here we go…

Story

The events of Resident Evil 6 take place over 10 years after the events of the Raccoon City outbreak and after Resident Evil 5. Leon S Kennedy (as well as Hunnigan) is returning along side Chris Redfield and a new unknown character. The story of these three characters all take place in different places, the latest BOW outbreaks are happening simultaneously around the world and each of the main characters are playing a part in the story which at first will seem disconnected from each other.

Leon will be dealing with a situation similar to the original Raccoon City outbreak he faced as a rookie cop while Chris Redfield and the BSAA are tackling an outbreak in China. The third character, who is still unknown to us all, appears to be some kind of mercenary who is protecting a blond girl who some think may be Ashley Graham, however the voice actor for Ashley, Carolyn Lawrence, has stated that she hasn’t been contacted by Capcom to voice any parts in Resident Evil 6… at least not yet. It’s hard to tell just yet but there is a very good chance that the blonde girl in the trailer may actually be a grown up Sherry Birkin. I’m sure we’ll have confirmation in the near future just which characters are returning for RE6, but information is pretty slim at this stage.

That being said, Capcom has revealed that the three story arcs you can play through in the game can be played through in whatever order you choose and are all selectable from the Start screen at the very beginning. However, another tidbit from Capcom says that Ada Wong also returns in RE6 and that she will be featured in content you open up once you finish with the three starting story arcs. Again, Ada is the girl behind the scenes who probably knowns a lot more about what’s going on than anyone else in the game.

Characters

Fuck yeah, Leon! It looks as though Leon is the character to look out for in every even numbered Resident Evil game… and I’m glad. While Chris seems to be very similar to how he is in Resident Evil 5, it looks as though Leon may have changed a little from the time we saw him in RE4 and Degeneration. Of course, the fact that one of the opening shots in the trailer was of Leon shooting a zombiefied version of The President of the US (Ashley’s father), it’s no wonder Leon seems a lot more angry and serious in the trailer. I do hope that he still has his light moments though, some of the best parts in Resident Evil 4 were of Leon’s ultra campy dialogue with other characters in the game… “Saddler, you’re small-time!”

The trailer itself is pretty dramatic so I’m not too worried, though when you think about it, these characters have over 10 years of zombie filled experiences, so it’s not going to be any wonder why they’ve changed over the years, though the real worry people have is that this game may destroy the original personalities of the characters involved.

As I mentioned before Leon shot Ashley’s father, the President of the US who was infected at the time however the voice actor of Ashley Graham says she hasn’t been contacted to play a role in the game yet. I really hope Ashley does have some kind of part in the game, I can’t really see Leon shooting an infected President Graham and not having Ashley in the game for at least some kind of cameo of some sort.

Another thing folks are noticing is that, again, Jill is missing in action, though I’m sure she’s just busy with other matters the BSAA has to take care of considering the scale of the outbreak occurring in the game. I wonder what other established and new characters will show up in the coming months as more is revealed. I’m already pretty happy with the current listing of confirmed characters. After all Leon was created for Resident Evil 2 as a counterpoint to Chris in the original Resident Evil. The two have never met directly, however, for the first time they star in the same game together.

Fanboys and girls around the world are dreaming of an RE6 ending where Leon and Chris brofist at the end and the credits rolls, I’m sure…

Gameplay

Two player online and offline co-op returns in Resident Evil 6 from RE5 with Leon being partnered up with a new character named Helener Harper and Chris with another BSAA agent. The third story arc seems more like a throwback to Resident Evil 4′s escort type gameplay, though we can’t really tell all that much from the trailer.

The three main arcs of the game have very distinctive differences in style, Leon seems to be in a more survival horror type situation similar to RE2 and 4 while Chris is in a more action orientated situation bringing him back to the style taken up by RE5. The new character also shows some interesting features in his side of the story, particularly the few flashes of melee gameplay you see in the trailer.

The ability to move and shoot at the same time has been confirmed and it looks like you may also be able to dual wield certain weapons in the game as well. Of course, of course we won’t really know much more about the gameplay until someone actually ends up playing it or we get a gameplay trailer to work with. The few shots we’ve seen so far suggest a more action-packed type of game than most old school Resident Evil fans would want, but like I said, it’s too early to tell since trailers have a way of misrepresenting the final product.

I’ll be keeping a close eye out for more information about RE6… I’ve been a huge fan of the series since it first came out despite not owning a PlayStation and Leon is my favourite Resident Evil character… the fact that he’s in this game alone has gotten me hyped for it but there’s so much more I’m looking forward to. This is a series with a lot of lore and it definitely didn’t end with the defeat of Albert Wesker at the end of RE5. I’m also glad that the rumours of RE6 being a reboot of the series turned out to be false… there’s still a hell of a lot to explore with Resident Evil and I’m glad Capcom is giving us more.

I may not have bought as many games this year as the last and there are plenty of games released this year that I REALLY need to get… but it’s been a pretty good year.

So, how has this year treated you in terms of the vidya?

I started off the year by playing a hell of a lot of Borderlands which I had just bought in December the year before. After that the first big game to start off 2011 was Dead Space 2, a game many people choose not to play despite it being one hell of an entertaining game. Seriously, I wish more people would get into Dead Space, it’s just so much fun…

Next up came a couple of DS games, Pokémon White (I was meant to get Black but the cover art confused me) and Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective from Capcom. I absolutely love Ghost Trick and recommend anyone with a DS to pick it up if they ever find it on store or online shelves, it is so worth it. Soon after in April, the Nintendo 3DS was released in Australia which ended up being quiet the lackluster system riddled with so many poor design choices and the lack of a compelling library. It’s certainly not the great successor to the first DS a lot of people hoped it would be. No surprise then that I haven’t been playing much of it after finishing Ocarina of Time 3D. A couple of more games worth buying have come out for the 3DS, but in all honesty, they’re nothing compared to a game like Ghost Trick. That game alone eclipses everything released on the 3DS so far.

One of the more interesting releases this year came in the form of Duke Nukem Forever… a game that many thought would never be released and some wished never was. I, on the other hand, loved the fact that this game was actually going to be released. When it came out I got exactly what I expected from it, a very mediocre game that was half baked and too outdated for its own good. Some people tried to take some bullshit high-brow moral stance on the game, saying that gaming had grown up and that there is no place for Duke in today’s age… these people are idiots. The day video games takes itself too seriously is the day it stops being fun. Sure this game isn’t going to win any awards, but it’s pretty damn funny that it was even released to begin with. I have my collector’s edition version of the game and as far as I’m concerned, I own a piece of gaming history.

Moving on this year has been pretty quiet on the Wii front compared to previous years. However, Australia and Europe were lucky enough to see the release of Xenoblade Chronicles from Monolith Soft… and damn do I absolutely love everything about that game. I spent well over 100 hours on my first run on the game and I still want more. If it wasn’t for the next two games I’m going to be talking about, I’d still be playing Xenoblade… I just can’t get enough of it!

Another game on Wii that made my year of vidya great was The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. A game that promised much in the way of motion controlled sword play and delivered every step of the way. It was one hell of a celebration of Zelda’s 25th anniversary and has become one of my favourite games of all time.

Finally, to end the year on a pretty high note, the Star Wars MMO from BioWare, The Old Republic was finally released after years of development and with a huge amount of anticipation. Officially, Australians won’t be enjoying TOR until March, but I just couldn’t wait that long.

Along with all the games I finished this year, there have been plenty that, unfortunately, I haven’t gotten around to completing. The two that come to mind most recently are Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. But the game I feel really bad about not finishing is Shadows of the Damned.

Of course, it’s not like I didn’t want to finish these games, it’s just a matter of finding the time to play them all and unfortunately, being in Uni and doing a Bachelor of Education to become a teacher takes a lot of that time I would normally be spending playing video games… But now, at the end of the year, I have a nice, long break before the next year of uni starts in March to play as much vidya as I want…. most of which will be taken up by The Old Republic, I’m sure.

There are plenty of other games I have bought and played this year, but I think I’ll leave it at that for now and let others tell us about their gaming experiences of 2011…

On a final note, this entry was written up completely using nothing but QuickOffice HD Pro on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Some of you may or may not know, but I’m at university doing an Education course to become a teacher, so to that end we get sent out to schools to observe how things are done in the first year and get more practical experience in the years following. This year, I have discovered that many schools in Australia use, what looks to be an educational version of Second Life called “Quest Atlantis“…

Now, being one of Australia’s future teachers, you’d think I’d be more interested in that kind of jazz, but I’m not. I have absolutely no interest in talking about Quest Atlantis, however a thought did come to me while thinking about today’s educational games. There was this one game I remember playing long ago that I knew was an educational game but for some odd reason, I couldn’t stop playing it. It’s only recently after I thought about it for a little while do I remember the title of this game…

Operation Neptune

I used to play this game every chance I got, however I never owned it, this was a game that my cousin’s used to have on their ye olden PC back in the mid-90s. It’s a game that puts you in control of a submarine and feels very much like every other DOS based arcade game of the generation, though with math problems thrown in regularly. Instead of going into a long winded explanation of the game, here’s a video of the introduction and first parts of the game.

I gotta say, watching it in action again, it still seems as badass as I remember it being. Though I remember in later stages you got to the really deep sea areas where everything was dark and gloomy and you’d have to go up again anglerfish and electric eels which would one hit kill you. This wasn’t just some tame math game that wanted you to do math, it challenged you in many other ways too which made it fun to play. I almost feel like trying to find this game on the net and playing it again just to see how far I can get… or to actually finish it this time.

When thinking about this game and the way it got me hooked, I wonder what the state of educational games is like in today’s generation… are there any real gems out there like Operation Neptune or have they all become as lame as what Quest Atlantis looked like? It’s kind of a strange thought to be had though, especially after all of these blog entries treating video games as simply another form of entertainment.

So the question is: Have you ever played any kind of educational game before and if so have there ever been any that you have actually liked?

A couple of months back just before I started my second semester of uni for the year, instead of whittling down the huge catalogue of new unplayed games I have on my list, I ended up going back and playing two games I’ve recorded hundreds of hours on already… Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

It only took a single picture somewhere on my PC to ignite the flame that started to spread throughout my mind and before I knew it I was already playing Path of Radiance. Now, while you can mix things up quite a bit in the game by using a different set of characters and going through the maps differently, I’m one of those kinds of people who can’t help but use the same characters and do things the way I usually do them on multiple playthroughs. It’s the reason why playing games like Mass Effect again is pointless for me because as far as I’m concerned, the way I did things on my first playthrough is the only way it should be done.

Anyway, I spent four full days of non-stop goodness only taking breaks to eat and sleep while I played through Path of Radiance before moving on to Radiant Dawn… it was glorious. Of course the ridiculous part didn’t come until I was a quarter way through Radiant Dawn when I thought I’d actually try something new for a change…

So, I took out the Radiant Dawn disc, put Path of Radiance back in and REPLAYED through Path of Radiance. I did almost everything the way I usually do things but for a change I put experience points into Sothe so that by endgame all of his stats would be capped at their highest levels and he would be at level 20. I also made sure that all of the characters that I was going to use for the endgame in Radiant Dawn had their stats capped and at level 20 by endgame of Path of Radiance. Why? Because you can get stat bonuses for those characters when you transfer your save data from Path of Radiance to Radiant Dawn.

So after spending three days (I was more efficient this time around) of non-stop goodness only taking breaks to eat and sleep while I played through Path of Radiance AGAIN, I moved on to Radiant Dawn and spent another six days playing Radiant Dawn only taking breaks to eat and sleep until I finished it.

I don’t care what anyone says, it was something I needed to do… just like when the Metroid Prime Trilogy disc was released for Wii I played through all three games back to back… only taking breaks to eat and sleep, naturally.

That’s my story, but how about the rest of you? Is there a game or games that you just can’t let go and feel like you need to replay over and over even forsaking newer games you haven’t played yet?

But before we get totally crazy with the E3 2011 entry, it’s time for us to think about what we may or may not see during this years E3. So here we go…

What are your predictions for E3 2011?

This years E3 is going to be a killing field for Nintendo with all the news of their next generation console floating around. The big reveal will happen with a look at the console itself, its controller or controllers and plenty of demo games on the floor as well as a big stage presentation at Nintendo’s press event. People are very excited but it’s going to be interesting to see whether Nintendo’s new console will live up to the hype and be a worthy competitor to the yet unannounced next generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo will also need to have a strong showing for the 3DS since it definitely needs all of the attention it can with its lackluster launch and slow sales. As for Wii, I think the only thing they’d have to show off on that front would be more Skyward Sword footage and possibly another demo… if they bother to focus on Wii at all this year.

On the other side of things, Sony has had a run of bad luck with multiple hackings to various parts of its online networks and are undergoing some serious damage control. They’ve definitely got their hands full at the moment and it’s going to be interesting what they’ll have to say about the entire thing during E3… if at all. That said, I’m sure Sony will try to brush off the events of the last couple of months and try to focus on the NGP… or PlayStation VIta as it may be called. Sony is in a good position to take a good stab at the 3DS this year with Vita, let’s hope for their sake that whatever they reveal about the handheld can do just that and surprise us all.

Finally, the last of the big three companies, Microsoft… has been very quiet. I don’t really know what to say about Microsoft because while all of this crazy stuff has been happening with Nintendo and Sony, Microsoft just seems to be sitting back in a comfortable chair smoking a pipe and wearing a monocle. Will they show more Kinect games or is it just going to be another line of games that are coming out later in 2011/early 2012? If so, it’s going to be a pretty boring show for Microsoft… or they could surprise us all and reveal their next generation console out of nowhere. I honestly have no clue… if anyone has better predictions for Microsoft, I’d like to hear them.

Speaking of individual developers, it’ll be interesting to see if there’ll be any big news coming from BioWare concerning Star Wars: The Old Republic. Many people are hoping E3 is when they’ll reveal a proper release date, but I highly doubt they will. I’m sure we’ll see a bit more of Mass Effect 3 though.

While I know that Gearbox Software has been very busy getting Duke Nukem Forever to us (which will be released around the world during the conference), I really hope they reveal Borderlands 2 (or perhaps Borderworlds?) and Aliens: Colonial Marines… which is a sure bet considering the teaser trailer that just came out.

Anyway, that’s enough of my crappy predictions, I’ll leave the rest to you guys in the forum…

This entry actually comes from a strange memory that popped into my head earlier today about a time when I was nine years old. At that age you’re dependant on your parents for a hell of a lot of things such as the number of video games you’re able to own. For me, I was restricted to getting video games during my birthday, Christmas or hiring them from the video store… though not always.

So have any of you done whatever it took to play video games when you were young? I have a couple of tales to tell on the matter…

Mail order vidya!

When I was nine I finally owned my first video game console, a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and it was great! Though, at the time I could only hire games occasionally and the only two games I ever owned for the system were Donkey Kong Country 2 and Yoshi’s Island. I had a thirst for more video games, but what could I do? I was only 9 and didn’t really have any means of getting them on my own.

However, one day early in 1993 I came across a mail order catalogue that had one of those really cheap 100-in-one portable game systems. You know the kind I’m talking about, the type that had a left button, a right button and an action button. The screen was bigger than the original Game Boys but the games that were built into the system were all variations of block games… the two best ones being variants of Tetris and Arkanoid. There were other games as well, however unlike what the advertising said, it was not 100 individual games, rather 10 or 15 games with different difficulty levels and variations. It was a pretty good system actually… for $29.95 (Australian dollars).

But how did I end up getting it in the first place? Well at first, as any child would do, I asked my parents… and they said “No” which seemed like the end of that. However, the budding gamer in me refused to let it go. I decided that I would have to get this portable system on my own… So, after spending a month or two saving up part of my lunch money for school, I finally saved up enough for that portable system. All I needed to do now was send the money off with an order slip that was in the catalogue and it’d be mine.

The most stupid part of this story is that the money I had saved up consisted of coins… $29.95 worth of coins. I remember I had put it in this small cardboard box that was originally a box full of candy of some type. I had made sure to wrap it up in enough masking tape so the money wouldn’t fall out somehow during transit. Attacked the small box was a letter with the order inside and the usual stamp, etc. Thinking back on it now, I’m amazed that the order actually got through and the company actually accepted the mess of coins in that box. I kind of wonder what the hell they thought when they received it or what the folks at the post office thought as they were sorting it, haha.

About four weeks later I got the first mail delivery ever intended for me in my entire life… and my parents were pretty damn mad at me. But what could they do? I had paid for it and sent the order and they had sent me what I wanted. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t care what they thought, that portable system was mine and I played it for many years… though I lost interest in it later on when I got a hold better games on better systems.

When being cheap costs you a lot of money…

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of my most loved video games of all time… it’s also a game that my parents refused to buy for me because it was too expensive. I remember during the last months of school back in 1998 the local electronics store had a pre-release grey cart version set up for people to play. I would go there after school with a friend of mine and play it for ages until the folks in the store would kick us out. OoT was being released in mid December, just before Christmas and was #1 on my wish list… in fact, it was the only thing that concerned me. I only wanted that game and didn’t care for anything else.

When Christmas finally came around, there was no Ocarina of Time. I can’t remember what I did get but I remember being very disappointed by whatever it was… however, what I couldn’t own, I would hire from Blockbuster video. So, during the first few months of 1999, I got my parents to hire Ocarina of Time for me… and it was the only game I hired for awhile. In fact, I hired the game so many times, over and over again, it began to add up. I estimate that it cost my parents three times as much to hire Ocarina of Time until I had a 100% compete save game file than what it would have cost them if they had bought the damn game for me for Christmas 1998.

My parents learned from their mistake by the time Majora’s Mask came around though and on Christmas 2000, they bought it for me, no questions asked… a wise choice.

It’s always fun to speculate stuff and I thought I’d start a discussion regarding what you think Nintendo will do with their next generation console, what you think they should do and what you think they should avoid doing. I know there are heavily divided opinions of Wii so I think this’ll end up being quite interesting…

Here’s what I think Nintendo may or may not do…

• Name: Nintendo will definitely keep the Wii branding, I’m kind of betting that they’ll call it “Wii Plus” rather than Wii 2 or Wii HD.
• High Definition: Will definitely be HD capable, 720p, 720 upscaled to 1080p (this is what most games do on current generation consoles) and full 1080p HD.
• Hardware Capabilities: “More powerful” than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360… I put that in quotation marks because as we all know, power is relative and it depends on the architecture of the hardware for Wii 2. I’m thinking it’ll definitely top the PS3 and 360, but will probably fall short of Sony and Microsoft’s next gen consoles.
• Controls: They’re definitely going to keep the Wii Remote + Nunchuk type controls with a few tweaks. They’ll probably find a way to integrate the Wii Vitality Sensor in there some how, oh and built in motion plus or some kind of upgrade to motion plus. I’m hoping they can somehow integrate a more traditional controller layout directly onto the Wii Remote + Nunchuk and eliminate the need for having to buy any type of Classic controller altogether. However, what I really want Nintendo to do is refine and perfect the pointer/cursor controls they started with Wii.
• Disc storage: DVD is nowhere near enough any more and I doubt Nintendo will embrace Blu-ray. There have been rumours that Nintendo has been investing in holographic storage technology. Whatever they’re up to, you can bet that Nintendo will be going about this in such a way that doesn’t allow you to watch movies using the system.
• On-board storage: Taking a wild guess here, but at least 32GB flash storage and SD card support for up to 32GB. Though I’m sure most of us are hoping for 500gb HDD storage since that’s what we expect from all three console manufacturers.
• Backward compatibility: BC for Wii games but I don’t think they’ll go as far back with GameCube games. It’s a possibility but I have doubts. They can easily allow the use of current versions of the Wii Remote and accessories since it’s all connected through the Wii Remote’s bluetooth. They’ll include an option to transfer WiiVC and WiiWare titles through a similar transfer system the 3DS employs to transfer stuff over from your DS/DSi. However, the biggest thing I’m looking for is the ability to transfer save files over from your Wii to the new console since some of the saves are “locked” on the Wii console. Also hoping that it’ll upscale Wii games up to 1080p… the icing on the cake would be if it did anti-aliasing as well.
• Online: They will most likely use the 3DS system with a universal friend code and the capability of tracking your friends and joining games that they’re playing. I doubt Nintendo’s online plan will hold up to PlayStation Network and Xbox Live though.
• Release Date: I’m guessing some time in 2012, possibly later in the year.

Now here’s one final thing I want to talk about that I don’t want to include with the others listed…

• 3D: Nintendo has said themselves that they’re not going to be going with 3D on their next gen console like they have with the 3DS. I doubt they’ll follow Sony’s line with 3D either… but I do think that they will have a 3D effect happening with their next gen console based around head tracking. This can easily be achieved by adding a camera to the sensor bar… won’t work very well for multiple people playing on the same console, but excellent for the single player or online multiplayer experience. Having this as a standard for all games (which can be turned off if necessary) would be so damn awesome.

So those are my predictions for Wii 2… what do you think Nintendo will do?

It’s not something you really think about because you’re too busy enjoying your video games to even consider it. Of course, you’re given plenty of warnings to never turn off the power to your console or PC to prevent such a thing from happening in the first place… but at some point, it probably will catch up to you and you are going to lose a save game file as I did about an hour ago…

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the PC version of Borderlands recently… A LOT of time. According to Steam, in less than 2 weeks, I have spent over 156 hours playing that game. Today I had just gotten my Lilith up to lv54 and had just found a newer, better Maliwan Combustion HellFire to burn everyone and everything with. It was another day of gaming for me and I was off to find more rare and awesome weapons for Lilith to use.

And then while I was at one of Scooter’s Catch-A-Ride stations, it happened. The fan turned off (it’s summer down here in Australia) and the lights went out. My HDTV remained turned on as well as my PC for a brief moment and I suddenly realised that the save game icon was flashing in the top corner of the screen. In that very instance I knew what was coming next… they had warned us about it time and time again, but I had no control over the situation and could do nothing about what was going to happen next!

As I braced myself for the worst, the TV and PC switched off and I was in complete darkness at 9:56pm… A second later the power turned back on, the fan, lights, TV and PC came back to life and I waited those few agonising seconds for my PC to reboot and to load up Borderlands to see with my own eyes if my worst fears became true.

!Corrupted

As soon as I saw that… I felt like I had just lost someone I cared about… their entire life extinguished in an instant. I felt light-headed and was in a daze… I didn’t know what to do! What could I do? The power outage killed my Lilith! BRING ME BACK MY LILITH!! I was so distraught that I had forgotten something very important… in modern medicine, a human life can still be saved, even after the person is declared dead. In modern computing (modern computing?) data is not always lost and can be recovered/restored.

In my moment of despair, I had forgotten this very important fact… until I went onto skype to share my bad news and was reminded by a guardian angel of gaming XD …

[9:58:09 PM] Lynk: i’m going to cry
[9:58:16 PM] Lynk: i want to cry
[9:58:22 PM] Lynk: i’m fucking depressed now
[9:58:34 PM] Lynk: fuckit, i’m crying
[9:58:38 PM] Lynk: power outage
[9:58:43 PM] Lynk: borderlands was saving
[9:58:47 PM] Lynk: data corrupted
[9:58:53 PM] Lynk: lost save
[9:59:06 PM] Lynk: lv54 lilith gone
[10:01:51 PM] Lynk: i don’t know what to do now
[10:04:13 PM] leXX: ouch
[10:04:49 PM] leXX: try doing a restore on you pc, you never know it might work
[10:05:09 PM] Lynk: how do i do that? XD
[10:05:22 PM] leXX: what os are you using?
[10:05:27 PM] Lynk: win7
[10:05:59 PM] leXX: accessories, system tools, system restore
[10:06:08 PM] Lynk: ah here we go… previous versions
[10:07:08 PM] Lynk: okay restored to a version made 1pm today… 9 hours ago… hold onto your butts
[10:07:16 PM] leXX: good luck
[10:08:21 PM] Lynk: XD thanks leXX, i would’ve just given up and been all depressed
[10:08:30 PM] Lynk: i’m back to lv50, but i can live with that
[10:08:33 PM] leXX: you owe me ;)

Thanks to leXX for reminding me that you could do that with Windows 7. If it weren’t for her, I probably would’ve just been depressed for the next two weeks until Dead Space 2 came out and I focused my attention on that.

Lilith is safe now… the restore file was 9 hours old and she lost 4 levels and is back down to lv50… but I can live with that. With the save game restored, I’m reminded again why I love Windows 7 and realise that if this had happened on a different OS or on a console, I wouldn’t have been so lucky. I don’t actively backup save game files… but I think I’m going to start now.

So anyway, that’s my story… but the question is, have any of you had a similar experience? Were you able to restore your save or was it lost forever with all of your hard work? I honestly don’t know if I would’ve ever gone back and played Borderlands again if I had lost that save completely… it’s not something I want to go through ever again.

Last year felt like a pretty busy year for me in terms of video games… I feel like I bought and played more video games than I ever had before… but this year was different for me… When 2009 had ended and I had written up my previous entry, Vidya of 2009, I felt that it was definitely one of the greatest years of video gaming for me since I had bought more games that year than any other year before it… and a lot of them were pretty damn good. At the beginning and most of the way through 2010, I felt that it wasn’t as good a year as the last and that the games weren’t quite as good.

However, as I look through my list of purchases for this year and compare them to last year, I’m starting to wonder how much better last year really was… cause this year has just achieved a new milestone for me beyond anything that I could’ve predicted.

Last year, I had bought around 40 games, most of them okay, some of them being excellent… and for the most part, I was able to finish those games pretty quickly after I had bought them… but this year… damn.

2010 may have started off like every other year for me… five games starting off in February with the two most mentionable being Mass Effect 2 and BioShock 2, the rest of the months followed pretty closely to how 2009 went. Pokémon SoulSilver, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Halo: Reach, GoldenEye 007, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Donkey Kong Country Returns just to name a few of the ones I enjoyed the most.

All very enjoyable games and until December rolled over, I had about 10 fewer games bought this year than last year… of course things changed when I downloaded Steam thanks to Mav gifting me Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. Steam ended up having one of its famous sales and I think I just went mad. So yeah… 181 games bought this year (SO FAR, there’s still ONE more day left) with 141 of them being Steam games and 8 of them being games downloaded from Good Old Games.

I can’t say that I’ve finished all of these games, let alone started the majority of them… but I certainly won’t be game starved for a very long time… though, it makes me worried because there’s a fuck-tonne of things coming out in 2011 that’s going to bury me even deeper in games to play. It’s gonna be totally nuts!

Of course… there is one last thing I would like to talk about before I end this entry…

Usually, it’s very difficult for me to pinpoint what my favourite games are at any time. You ask me that question and I won’t know what to answer with because I end up liking a lot of things. To add to that, I have never actually hated a game until a certain game that was released in September… You all know the one I’m talking about. Metroid: Other M… the first game ever in the history of my gaming life that I have ever HATED. If it wasn’t for Steam and all the games I had bought in December, this one game would’ve ruined 2010 for me completely. That’s all I want to say about it now, I’m done with it.

So, with that, the real question is… How was your gaming life in 2010? …I wonder if anyone has bought as many games as I did… damn.

Thanks to a more robust online system for video games in recent years, we’ve all enjoyed a lot more competitive and cooperative gameplay in our games and it’s become an important inclusion for developers and publishers alike. The whole video game industry has become a much more social place thanks to various factors… though it’s interesting to see how people end up playing with each other in these multiplayer situations.

I better start off with the discussion question first so it doesn’t get lost at the end of the entry… With the variety of competitive and cooperative games to choose from, which do you prefer?

Back in my younger days, when the Internet wasn’t so readily available for me to use for online gaming, I relied on the multiplayer abilities of my consoles and a group of friends to come over and play games like GoldenEye or Perfect Dark to experience some multiplayer mayhem. In those days, I had a pretty mean competitive streak as well and the biggest reason why friends would all gather at my place rather than anyone else’s was because they all wanted to try and beat me.

That competitive nature of mine led me to play certain games religiously to practice tactics and manoeuvres as well figuring out what made these games tick, how I could take advantage of whatever game mechanics there were, etc… suffice it to say, I probably put a little too much time into the games I played against others than they ever did.

There were a few games that did have a co-op mode though… though that really didn’t end up any better since I’d end up running through and clearing all of the rooms with my friend trailing behind complaining about all the empty rooms and me replying “stop being so slow.” …Damn, I was so damn obnoxious back then… But years later, it looks like I’ve grown out of my competitive younger self and into an older, more cooperative me.

For quite a few years now, whenever it came to playing online or with others in general, it was always through some kind of co-op mode. For example, I’ve played through the entirety of Resident Evil 5, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach with Jeff on the Xbox 360… and more recently I’ve played a few co-op based games including Red Alert 3 with Mav.

There’s lots of good fun to be had in cooperative games and certainly, Left 4 Dead 2 would continue that trend which is why I jumped straight in… only to find that it was I who was complaining about not being able to kill everything because everyone else had cleared the area before I could get a shot at a single zombie.

I mean, sure, it’s the first time I’ve played the game… and sure, I may not have played a PC FPS game since the days of Quake 2 and 3. I’ll get better and I’ll get used to PC gaming again, though I think the thing that’s most effected me is that I’ve lost my competitive edge I used to have as a kid.

I was more worried about trying not to shoot my own friends rather than killing zombies… and while they were all busy trying to steal each others kills, I was sitting there saying “oh wait, no need to worry Jeff’s taken care of that… oh wait, no Mav took down that Boomer… oh, cool, Sam‘s taken care of the Witch.” I’m honestly not concerned about the scores at the end of the game as I am with getting through it and helping my friends out… but really, anyone who has played Left 4 Dead knows that it doesn’t really take that much to survive.

Sure there is a cooperative element to the game, but from what I can tell, it’s more about helping the other players not die so you don’t have to restart the level more than anything else. The rest of it is competitive mayhem in the form of who can kill the most zombies and how many special zombies they can take out before anyone else.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking back only a couple of weeks before when I’d send in my entire army over to Mav’s base in Red Alert 3 and watch them get wiped out trying to defend his base from an overwhelming attack and giving him a chance to rebuild his defences and forces. Hell, in Alien Swarm the character I ended up choosing was a Medic with my second weapon slot being taken up by the healing gun so I could make sure everyone else survived through the game.

It’s not that I mind the switch from being competitive to cooperative… it’s just that I’ve only really noticed the change in me now. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to be competitive in my video games ever again or if I’ll continue to remain a cooperative player. I do think cooperative is more fun nowadays though and can’t be bothered with all of the extra pressure of competitive play.

I dunno… what do you guys think? Are you more competitive or cooperative or have you somehow found a balance between both?

On a final note, thanks to Jeff for gifting me the US version of L4D2 so I could bypass the stupid censored Australian version altogether… it’s amazing this game is even censored. I haven’t seen anything in this game so far that’s anywhere near worse than what has come into this country completely untouched.