| Action | Metroid Prime 2: Echoes |
| Target | Star Fox: Assault |
| Adventure | The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker |
| Tactics | Pikmin 2 |
I went to The Art of Video Games exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. yesterday with my brother. I'll upload more of the video we took when I get back from the two-week road trip I'm leaving for tomorrow, but I wanted to show off one of my favorite things at the exhibit: the guestbook. This guestbook was laid out for visitors to sign just a few days before on August 30th, and it already had quite a few people write in it. There are a lot of nice messages in there, along with people mentioning their favorite games or drawing their most beloved characters. It's a little lengthy, but I recommend checking it out to see what fellow enthusiasts had to say about the exhibit and video games in general. You can see my brother and I put our own messages in at the end.
I didn't see any mentions of Giant Bomb in there (I'll do that when I return to the exhibit later this month), but someone did draw the NeoGAF logo!
Go to the 15:00 mark for my hilarious suggestions for what my brother should write.
I'm so lazy that I photoshopped the dust out of this picture instead of just cleaning my desk.
Controlling an in-game character using the motions of your body has been a concept I've been interested in for a long time, well before anyone even knew what a "Revolution" was. Rumors of a motion-controlled device by Microsoft had been in circulation for a little while, and the Kinect, known then as Project Natal, was officially revealed at E3 2009. I was optimistic, understanding the unique gameplay opportunities if the Kinect worked as advertised.
I had already been let down by the prospects of motion control once with the Wii, and though some of that may be my fault for letting my imagination get carried away when it was first revealed, the general consensus I see is that the desired support for the Wii never really arrived. And when it comes to what I've wanted from motion control, the fidelity just wasn't there. While there are some great exclusives for the system, the Wii ended up just like my GameCube several years ago, becoming something I rarely bothered to hook up, spending most of its time in a closet or drawer collecting dust. This is in large part due to my home theater setup, in which I play everything on an HD projector which doesn't work too well with motion games (most of the 100-inch screen ends up being covered by my shadow, and the only way to set up the projector in this room is to have it directly behind the couch), and the fact that the HD monitor I use for the Kinect and PlayStation Move doesn't have a component hookup, which is an issue I plan on remedying soon. Regardless, I've never made much of an effort to fix these problems as there just isn't much I'm interested in playing. I mean, I think it's a great system, but there aren't that many exclusives I care about. I think my referring to the Wii in the past tense for most of this paragraph is pretty indicative of my experience with it.
When it comes to consoles and gaming hardware, I like to own everything so I can play everything, and I knew this would be no different with the Kinect. No matter how it turned out, I knew I would be getting something out of my time with it, and I just hoped that the device would come closer to my younger fantasies of my real-life movements having an impact in a game. I headed over to Amazon on June 14th, 2010 and pre-ordered the Kinect with release-date delivery. I later pre-ordered Dance Central in October.
Fast-forward to November 4th, and I'm watching a live stream of Jeff and Ryan as they play all the Kinect launch titles, checking the shipment progress of my own. Eventually, late in the afternoon, the status changes to "Delivered" and I immediately open my front door to see a small package that obviously contained Dance Central, but nothing that could hold a Kinect. "Hmm, that's odd. Maybe they're delivering it later for some reason?"
They really should be commended for their work done that day.
So I waited, checking outside every so often, even checking the backyard to see if they placed the package there. The Kinect never arrived. Now, I don't remember how this next part played out, whether it was customer support telling me what happened or if it was something I discovered when I went to the Amazon order page, but the reason my Kinect never showed up was because... well, because it was delivered to my old address in Texas. I had forgotten to update the shipping information after I moved to my new place in Oklahoma, and someone in my old house just got a free Kinect.
Amazon is an amazing company, one that I have always loved and supported, and what they did next only solidified my loyalty. They immediately sent me another Kinect. For free. They fixed an error that was totally my fault, and even knowing the full story, didn't question whether I was trying scam them or anything. The Kinect isn't some cheap device, either, selling for $150. I actually felt bad, and the nice, helpful customer service lady seemed confused when I showed concern for what would happen to the original Kinect and whether they would get it back or not. I hope that they did.
Being impatient and not wanting to wait until the 9th to get my motion-controlled gaming on, however, I went out to try to see if I could get a Kinect that night. I got the usual "only if you pre-ordered" deal at both of the GameStops I went to, so I went where I always do when they fail me and headed to Walmart, but they were sold out of anything that wasn't a console bundle. Getting desperate, I used my phone's GPS to locate any places in the area that would sell video games, and found another Walmart a few miles out in some rural area I had never been to. Maybe it being a little out-of-the-way helped my chances, as when I walked back to the electronics section to see stands where a large amount of Kinects once sat, there was still one left. "Man, this thing must be pretty popular."
Victorious and reinvigorated, I headed back home to set the device up. I had heard that at least five to six feet of space was needed to use the thing, so I was a little worried about how this would all turn out. I had about that much space between my door and desk where my monitor sat, but there was this incredibly stupid step that led out of the room, taking an unnecessary foot or so of much-needed space. That foot of space was all that it took for the Kinect to not see my feet, effectively making my avatar during the calibration tests do the Kudo Tsunoda dance. I tried pushing the Kinect back and even stacking it on game cases, but there just wasn't enough space. I was going to have to reorganize my entire bedroom.
And so I did, taking my desk from its place against the wall and putting it in the very middle of the room, sacrificing aesthetics for usability. I now had plenty of room, and the Kinect worked marvelously. I did what many people do when they celebrate and started dancing, except I had the benefit of owning a video game which focuses on just that. And you know, I must say... there's something really special about unlocking achievements using your whole body.
The 9th came around and the original Kinect arrived, which I ended up selling on eBay for a nice profit. Since then, I've beaten Kinect Adventures (pics and video coming soon!) and received Your Shape Fitness Evolved as a gift. I plan on beating Dance Central and getting as many achievements as possible in Your Shape before their sequels come out later this year. I also intend to play Child of Eden, Fruit Ninja Kinect, Rise of Nightmares, and The Gunstringer relatively soon.
Awwwww yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
So far, I've gotten good use out of the Kinect, with the only annoying issue about it is having to move my 360 back and forth between my office and the living room, but that's just me being lazy. It's about to get used a lot more as I try to overcome my heart condition that I've had since the age of 16, hoping that the unpleasant ordeal it's sure to be will be masked by the fact that I'm playing a video game and unlocking achievements. But that's a blog post for another time.
Note: NOT my collection.
Playing games since the age of three (or maybe earlier, who knows?!), a 21-year-old is likely to have beaten a lot of games. Going through a database of pretty much every game ever made, I made a list titled "Games I've Beaten", which consists of exactly what you would think. After finishing, I was surprised by my results. The following is a list of the number of games I have beaten per platform:
Arcade - 4
Game Boy - 3
Game Boy Color - 3
NES - 10
Nintendo 64 - 12
Nintendo DS - 9
Nintendo GameCube - 6
Nintendo Wii - 7
PC - 7
PlayStation - 21
PlayStation 2 - 30
PlayStation 3 - 16
PSP - 5
Sega Dreamcast - 5
Sega Genesis - 18
Sega CD - 2
Xbox - 22
Xbox 360 - 69
This all comes to a total of 249 games. The reason I was surprised by my results? I figured the number would be a lot higher. I was also shocked to see how many Xbox 360 games I've beaten compared to every other platform. Thinking back to my past though, these numbers started to seem less crazy.
Over the years, I have played a LOT of games. If I were to make a list of games that I've played but never necessarily beat, that 249 would turn into a much larger number. When I was younger, I owned several more games at once than what I do now. I would often get new games without first beating the ones I already had, and eventually the number of games amassed to such a large amount that I would never have enough time to play through them all. The new games became old, I would lose interest, and then I would get something newer. This continued until around the time of the Xbox 360.
Another factor that plays into the low amount of games beaten is local multiplayer. When I was younger, all of my best friends were my next door neighbors or people that lived on the same street as me. A game that a single person would play through once or twice and put down became a game that lasted several months amongst a group of friends. Games like Cruis'n USA (which I have discovered recently a lot of people hate), Super Smash Bros. (99 lives for all!), Mario Party, and various Sega Genesis games would be played for several hours a day. Even games without a multiplayer component, like Mega Man Legends or Pokémon Snap would rarely be played alone. Then of course, you had Pokémon Red/Blue, in which everyone had their own Game Boy and would sit outside playing through their own adventure, occasionally trading (and later came the actual trading card game, which also lasted us all a while).
Mmmmmm. So good.
Eventually, everyone moved away from each other, and with us all being console gamers and online play not yet viable, those several hour long multiplayer sessions sadly came to an end. Living in a new area full of douchebags I wasn't interested in associating with, playing games by myself became more common (until Halo, but that shall be reserved for a separate post). As I've become older, the importance of beating the games I play has increased, and I figured the new generation of consoles would be a fresh start and a great way to change my game-playing habits. Now, with services like GameFly, playing through more games has become easier and cheaper than ever before.
So, I have decided to start a series of posts titled "Games I've Beaten", in which I dedicate a post to each game on my list. Going through the list alphabetically, I will write as much as I can about each game, so depending on the game and how long ago I beat it, the amount I write could be miniscule, or it could be quite long. I will stray from the alphabetical format for every new game I have beaten as well, after there has been enough time since its completion. This is to ensure I have had enough time to actually think about the game and the aftereffects of hype have worn off.
