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Posts tagged TomTalksTooMuch
Gaming away from home
Mar 14th
Recently I’ve had to temporarily take leave of my main sources of gaming joy, namely my PC and moderate collection of various last gen/retro consoles, to move somewhere sans gaming equipment. Sadface. Luckily, I’ve been lent a laptop (Thanks again Rhys) for work and there’s a couple of lovely unsecured wireless networks hanging around, so I’ve managed to remain online. Fine for everyday use, but for gaming?
I’ve lost my specs, any games on my hard drive… my Steam list! All I could bring was my external hard drive.. so here’s my guide to gaming without your usual gaming equipment:
Kongregate is your saviour
MoneySeize level select screen
If you have access to the internet, Kongregate and other Flash gaming sites are an invaluable weapon against the neverending, futile struggle between you and the slow decay of your soul via boredom. Check out the top lists in categories of game you’re interested in, and then move to hunting down random games. If you’re the type of gamer who likes to whore themselves out in order to obtain little pictures and increment a number by your name, hit the badges page on Kongregate. You’ll love it.
(Recommendations: Insurgo [Review], Sushi Cat [Episode] and MoneySeize [Review])
ROMs are illegal
You should definitely not go and get some retro emulation software and hunt down some classic game ROMs, because that is illegal and I would never urge you to do something illegal. If I were to do so however (which I wouldn’t), I’d recommend KFusion for retro SEGA emulation, VirtualBoyAdvance for GBA or older emulation and ePSXe for PS1 emulation. Of course, I’m not going to urge you to download these, and therefore cannot recommend them to you for some lovely, nostalgia heavy gaming. Another thing I wouldn’t do is express how easy it is to get hold of ROMs for various systems online, and suggest you use your search engine of choice to do so. Good thing too eh? What with it being illegal of course.
(Recommendations: None, I told you! They’re illegal, don’t do it :3)
Indie or Older titles
GTA I and II are free from Rockstar
If, like me, you have a low-spec laptop or computer at your disposal, you might miss your usual lineup of demanding games and have this compounded by the irritation of attempting to play some games that simply won’t run on the machine. Hope is not lost! Have a looksee for some places offering older titles for digital download, or hunt down some newwer indie games, which often have less demanding specifications than big titles. You may have noticed, but I’ve been hooked to VVVVVV, an indie title from Distractionware with easy to reach required specs, go play it! Similarly, casual games will often have much lower specs, and just as much replayability, especially if you go for a good addictive one.
(Recommendations: VVVVVV [Review], GTA 1 and 2, Peggle)
Borrow, Borrow, Borrow!
Another easy way to get some gaming into your current, gameless, life is to borrow a handheld console from some understanding friends. I’ve gotten my hands on a DS from a relative (Thanks Katie), and it’s saved 40+ hours of my life from being boring. Albeit if you’re being lent a handheld, it’s probably not used much and probably won’t have the newest of games. So what? More games to play! Pokémon Ruby and Beyblade V-Force might not be staples of the DS games market (Especially as they’re GBA games, but you know what I mean) but they’re fun, at least for a while.
(Recommendations: Anything you can get your hands on)
Game through others
Gaming through others covers various ways of coping with the inability to game. You could go and hit some multiplayer with friends, you could read review after review after review, you could watch gameplay videos, or you could do my favourite suggestion, and listen to videogames podcasts. Have we introduced ourselves yet? :3
(Recommendations; Someone better than us)
You’re perfectly able to keep up a nice ritual of gaming without any serious gaming equipment, though you might want to get back to your usual habits as soon as possible. You might miss something new!
<3
PS: I wrote this post after getting confirmation of being accepted into two new beta testing schemes. Neither of which I can partake in ’till I get back to my usual PC, how irritating is that, eh?
Sharing your gaming habits
Mar 6th
This image represents my gaming habits good and bad points
This is the first of my written rants to appear here, and they’ll probably end up here before their original home over at MOREtotheGAME because they feel more… bloggy, besides I’m a whore for attention and two sites are better than one!
This time, it’s gaming habits. Recently, myself and various other MOREtotheGAMErs signed up to Raptr, a Last.fm-style website for games that’s been running since late 2008 (Never let it be said this feature isn’t cutting edge). Raptr takes your account names for various gaming services and compiles your games, playtimes, achievements and the like into your account, publishing new additions to your friends’ newsfeeds.
This happens in automatic realtime for most PC games and all 360/PS3 games. Other platforms can be added manually, but are less accurate and often forgotten by me at least. But it pretty much works as well as it can do, with older platforms having no way to automatically report playtime anyway! Steam achievements, 360 achievements and PSN trophies are all synced automatically too, so if you’re the achievement whoring type it’s quite handy for bragging rights.
Immediately I began to notice just how much time I spent gaming. The week before I signed up, I had to estimate how much time I spent gaming a week on a beta registration form. After a lot of umming and ahhing I think I ended up making a joke about my memory, and guessing around 15 hours a week. A week after installing raptr I’d played about 27 hours of games, and that wasn’t including the few times I broke the client, so probably around 33 hours in total, scary.
Another thing about this realtime sharing of what I was playing, is that I began to get people shout at me over my habits. Some people irritated I was playing instead of talking to them (Yes, I’ve chosen shooting zombies over a one-sided conversation with you about how you’re pissed off at someone I don’t know, deal with it?), had some fellow photography students yell at me for gaming when I had coursework to write and even had my grandmother comment on facebook after Raptr had sent an automatic message to my wall. Yeah, gaming isn’t seen as a legitimate hobby by many, and they’re usually the type to enjoy voicing their opinion.
Of course, this is less a criticism of Raptr, it’s more a lesson in how I set up my permissions on Facebook, but y’know.
The final and possibly worst reason sharing my gaming habits is terrifying, is that my gaming friends can see them, and criticise what I’m playing. Yes I play far too much Bejewelled Blitz, but please don’t call me a ‘casual gamer’ as if your hours of COD make you a better gamer than me. I like flash games, they’re an interest of mine… maybe 40 hours of Mass Effect don’t appeal to me? Hmm?
So yes, Raptr. Not without it’s drawbacks, but overall an interesting service. One I shall remain using, especially when I get my gaming PC back.
