The Geek Life Notblog

Hey, I’m Tim. When Matt asked me to join Mastergeek Theater he made it clear he didn’t want it to just be video game talk.

I’m about to disappoint him.

It’s almost November and all the big game companies have to push their huge AAA titles down our throats like awful lozenges. I’m not really looking forward to any games this holiday season because A.) I got too many games to play already and 2.) the vidya’s expensive and all too often, disappointing. I haven’t touched the 360 since… I don’t even remember, but Ninja Gaiden 2 wasn’t worth it, and the PS3 is a $700 Metal Gear Solid 4-playing machine. Which I haven’t touched since I beat MGS4. Boy, I sure am glad I made that investment.

The Wii is getting some play. Not any actual disc-based games though. WiiWare titles Bomberman Blast and Mega Man 9 have been at my fingertips since mid-September and they’re lovely. Metroid Prime 3 does sit inside the console, unloved and forgotten since last August.

Nevertheless, video games are screaming at me for their attention. Walking in Manhattan I found this on the corner of 36th and 10th Ave.

Now, I dunno about you but that’s pretty big. There are Fallout 3 ads on buses, too and “TV specials” (30-minute commercials) featuring “industry experts” (Kelly Hu?! Who knew!) talking about how great Fable 2 is. I figure it’s just because this holiday season is more crowded than ever and marketers figure getting hacks to shill their warez on Sci-Fi Channel and Comedy Central (which is pretty much The Shaun White Snowboarding/Spider-Man: Web of Shadows/Max Payne the Movie Network now) is the way to get attention. …It works I guess. I certainly took notice.

The truth is video games have been in the public conscious as long as they’ve been around. Or at least as long as I’ve been around. No longer do we have to suffer the slings and arrows of the Super Mario Mario Show or Captain N (awesome as they were). Now things have gotten a little more sophisticated. Now we have Michael Ian Black and David Wain to tell us which game has the best HD graphix and totally killar gaemplay this yeer. Or the ever-drowsy Liv Tyler poking away at a DS Lite white as her molars.

On the other hand it’s nice the terrible mainstreaming of my beloved medium gets at least a little reputable exposure. Here’s an article about CliffyB, the mind behind the Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War (okay, I guess I do look forward to Gears of War 2). The writer goes a little overboard with the namedropping (Cormac McCarthy? I suppoooose he has something to do with GoW…) and hifalutin jibber-jabber but it’s cool that a video game is sharing print space with, er, the higher arts. Y’know.

Political cartoons and such.

So gog.com went into open beta today, and if you haven’t checked it out already you absolutely should. It’s a video games vendor in the vein of Steam or Stardock, but for older games that we “hardcore*” gamers like to call “classics.”

I first heard about Gog from Shamus Young (over at www.shamusyoung.com) while he was particularly upset about DRM on today’s games.  Gog’s most exciting feature to me is that you’re getting all of the games 100% DRM free.  You pay them for the download (almost always under 10 dollars) and you get the game in its entirely, with no DRM to speak of.

Also, most of the games have been “updated” to work in Vista and XP.  No longer do I have to install my copy of Wing Commander and realize that since the games frame rate was tied to my clock speed, it’s running at a gajillion** frames per second.

Now excuse me while I go remember why the original Fallout was such an awesome game.

*note: I’m a hardcore gamer like Budwiser is a “hardcore” beer…

**that’s a one with a bazillion zeros after it.

Welcome to Mastergeek Theater.