today i bought zero video games

Today's Kind Of A Big Deal if you didn't already know. Two big games came out today: Mortal Kombat and Portal 2. I tried to come up with a clever title combining the two. While I did come up with it independently, I did a Google search and apparently I'm not the only person who thought "Portal Kombat" was clever. Over 99k other websites agree. Next I tried "Kortal Pombat" taking it one step further. This one only resulted in one Google hit, but that was still one too many for me. So instead I just gave this post a factually correct title. How nice.

Today I bought zero video games. I did not buy Mortal Kombat because I don't have a lot of interest in it. I think I can get everything out of it that I would ever need just by watching a couple YouTube videos or this. While the game looks comically brutal and entertaining to play with friends, the fighting system just doesn't look that interesting to me. It looks *too* similar to the old games (read "pre-MK3"). I'm afraid I've been conditioned by Capcom and MvC3 and every other game in the "vs"/X-men series before that to only like one kind of fighting game, and the new MK just isn't it. I think. I have to add that qualifier because I do not know that I don't enjoy it, and I probably will never find out for sure, so all I have to go on is what I guess.

I am interested in Portal 2, though. I see myself buying this game as soon as I have the spare change and I've cleared out a bit more of the aforementioned backlog of games. The big question about this game for me is this: will I be able to avoid spoilers until I am able to beat the game myself? I hope so. I'm not going to go to Markus Persson levels of net deprivation, rather I just hope (maybe futilely?)that I'm able to play it before I find out that Snape kills Dumbledore all over again. Speaking of which, I do not recall if I read Harry Potter 6 before I found out about that spoiler, or if I knew all along that was going to happen when I first read it. Either way I enjoyed the book and I'm certain I'll enjoy Portal 2.

So yeah, today I bought zero video games. I'm not sad about it. I'm still working on my backlog and doing school stuff. I'm actually kind of taking a small break from researching so that I can finish off a class project for the Last Class I Need To Graduate (you know the one, right?). I still have my research on my mind, but I'm just not doing anything about it other than writing down little notes here and there. Until next time.

BTW, I wrote this while listening to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTTrXAE7OPU

border rage

No, not *that* border. I was just trying to come up with a clever title that reflected how similar the environments in Borderlands:

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-borderlands-pc/17-1552/

look to id's upcoming game Rage:

http://www.giantbomb.com/five-minutes-of-rages-dead-city/17-4026/

Now sure, there are some important stylistic differences. Rage doesn't have Borderland's cartoon-y cell shading, and Borderlands doesn't have Rage's nasty organic quality to the monsters. When I saw the Jeep-ish car thing in the Rage trailer, though, I called shenanigans. The environments, the settings look pretty similar to me.

At first I couldn't tell how Rage was supposed to be an id game. By that I mean that I wasn't absolutely blown away by the graphics at the very beginning of that trailer. It wasn't until the video showed wide shots of the gigantic city where that part of the game takes place that I realized that, yes, this was an id game, graphics and all.

Graphical quality in the previous decade was defined by lighting models (shadow volumes, "HDR," and whatnot). I think the coming decade will be defined by scale, scope and animation. Included in animation is physics (perhaps the most important animation of all). Now, the animation in Rage hasn't put me in awe yet, but it didn't offend either.

The scale of that city, though, did blow me away. It all *looked* explorable, although I'm sure it won't be. With graphics all you *really* need to do is create that illusion and then make me never need to fully explore the environment. Better if I'm so pre-occupied having fun that I never even want to explore it all.

Anyway, it looks very interesting. I'm much more interested in Rage as a tech demo than I am as a game. I don't really play that kind of game any more, but I do still enjoy me some pretty (or gross) graphics.

moving back to diamond

I have a large backlog of unfinished video games. I'm more of a game collector than a game player. I'll buy a new game, play it for a few hours, and then ditch it. Last night, though, I actually "finished" a game I'd bought months ago. The game? Pokemon Soul Silver. Yeah, pretty nerdy, even for a video game.

The quotes around finished are there because I didn't actually exhaust everything I could do in Soul Silver. I only got the first 8 badges, beat the elite four, and got the second 8 badges (all 16 in the game in total). I didn't go back to the elite four for round 2, and I didn't fight Red (played by Kurtwood Smith, I think). I also didn't collect any of the legendaries, other than Lugia. A while ago I told myself that collecting the 16 badges would be enough to "beat" Soul Silver, so that's all I set my sights on.

So I'm pretty proud of myself. Not that beating any video game (especially a Pokemon game) is a big accomplishment, but that I didn't totally waste my money those many months ago when I bought the game.

This scratches one off the backlog list, but there are still a few I need to tackle. I'm just restarting Pokemon Diamond right now (which I also only made it a fraction of the way through), and other than that I'm going to knock out Final Fantasy 13 and Super Mario Galaxy (the first one). After I finish those 3 games, at least, then I will consider buying a new game. I just don't want to continually add to my collection without adding to my list of completed games.