Words On Wednesday

I'm a HUGE fan of trophies and achievements in video games and RetroAchievements has made it where I can get that same experience with games that were made well before achievements became commonplace in the industry. Don't ask my why I like achievements and trophies so much. I genuinely don't know, I just get a little dopamine hit every time I see one pop up. And I realize that a lot of people don't really like achievements, some even go so far as to hate them, so systems that allow you to turn them on or off really are the best of both worlds.  Furthermore, I do want to explicitly say that these games were not incomplete or inferior WITHOUT achievements. I'm not going to tell you that Super Mario World became a better game with achievements. It's just a neat thing for me to be able to see individual accomplishments listed together in a single place across all my games on that platform. So what IS RetroAchievements? It's a site that tracks tasks for older...

I mentioned a while back in January 2024  how I really wanted a Steam Deck. It seemed like a dream come true for a traditionally console gamer wanting to dabble in PC gaming. I certainly couldn’t justify the cost of a desktop gaming rig or a higher end laptop, but the Steam Deck is closer in price to (or even cheaper than) consoles. Furthermore, it maintains that console simplicity with SteamOS where you just select a game from your library and install it. Everything about the Steam Deck seemed to be exactly what I wanted, it checked all the boxes. As with any big purchase that I’m considering, I did a deep dive. Buyer’s remorse is awful and I tend to be more able to avoid it by digging in and understanding the product before I buy it. If I realize it isn’t what I need or I don’t want it as bad as I thought, I can pull the ripcord and get out before I’ve spent any money. It isn’t fool-proof, but it’s pretty effective. I looked up reviews. I joined the subreddit. I asked friends wha...

A new Zelda game comes out later this month and I’m still not really sure how to feel about it. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94RTrH2erPE I’m excited, for sure. New Zelda is always a good thing. But I pre-ordered Tears of the Kingdom and I still haven’t actually played it. The kids did, and they seem to have enjoyed it. For me, I just couldn’t get enough uninterrupted time with the Switch while I was simultaneously interested in picking up something new. Alas, I OWN TotK, I just haven’t bothered with it yet. Echoes of Wisdom is interesting in that it actually stars Zelda, the namesake of the entire franchise. Despite the propensity of players to name their character “Zelda” in some past entries of the game, Link has always been “that little green man” (as my grandmother called him) that we got to actually play as. That finally changes with Echoes of Wisdom, as Princess Zelda is the player character. I’m glad we finally get to play as Zelda. That’s a cool theory that fans ...

“ Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ” is a Metroidvania (or “Igavania”) released on the all major platforms in 2019. As a spiritual successor to Castlevania games produced by Koji Igarashi, Bloodstained originated as a Kickstarter project when IGA (as he prefers to be called) parted ways with Konami in 2014. The intellectual property of Castlevania stayed with Konami, but nothing was stopping IGA from creating a new IP in the same style of side-scrolling exploration platformer with gothic styling. Nothing, that is, except funding. The Kickstarter was WILDLY successful, meeting 11x the original goal of $500,000 with over $5.5 million. I didn’t personally back it , but I was very tuned into it as a long-time Castlevania fan. I wanted the project to succeed, but I didn’t have any console to play it on and I previously didn’t have much faith in Kickstarter after the OUYA fiasco . Instead, I just watched from afar. When “ Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon ” was released after meeting the ...

I am fiending for a Steam Deck, and I’m not even ashamed about it. Although I have discussed before how there is a time and a place for consoles , I’m finding myself gravitating more toward the idea of PC gaming lately. I’m not saying that I’m done with console gaming; I still think the Nintendo Switch is probably the best gaming console ever made from the perspective of form factor. A single device that can be both a handheld and traditional console is amazing, and my family leverages that capability to great extent. And maybe that’s why I’m now becoming more interested in PC gaming specifically with the Steam Deck. Effectively, it’s the PC equivalent of a Nintendo Switch. It can be a handheld, you can dock it for a more stationary experience, and the OS seems to be very much geared toward browsing a game library and selecting something to play. My aversion to PC gaming traditionally has largely involved the difficult decision between building out a desktop rig and buying a high end l...

A new Ratchet & Clank game has been out for nearly a year, and I still haven’t played it. Anyone who knows of my gaming preferences can tell you that Ratchet & Clank is one of my favorite intellectual properties. I’m talking in the same echelon as Zelda, Metroid, and those kinds of classics. I LOVE Ratchet games. The graphics, the music, the shooting mechanics, it’s just all amazing. I’ll play them like a gosh dang addict until I’ve upgraded every weapon, found every secret, and satisfied every skill point. I even managed to get my wife on board with Ratchet: Deadlocked and we both had a really good time eking out everything that game had to offer. So, you’d expect that I would be on board with a new release on day one. And in some other scenario, maybe I would be. The problem is, I don’t have a Playstation 5 and I won’t, at least not for a long time. I can’t even blame it on console shortages and scalpers buying up the few that are made. I wouldn’t buy one if shelves were stoc...

I really wish Nintendo had a trophy system on the Switch. It’s a topic that has been discussed back and forth, with plenty of evidence for  or against  them, so I won’t try to assert my opinion as fact. Personally, I would just like it better if trophies were available. As a confession, I used to be a self-proclaimed “trophy whore.” On my PS3, I would specifically seek out games that I could get the platinum trophy for, essentially the mark that a game has been finished completely. If I walked away from a game without the platinum, I felt like I wasn’t getting my money’s worth. When I finally did get platinum for a game, I could confidently say I had milked it for all it was worth and continue onto the next game. Back when I had more time to play video games, this wasn’t an issue. Gaming took up the bulk of my free time, and there was plenty of that to go around. If anything, I was more concerned with making sure I had enough game to fill up my time, rather than enough tim...