AKA “Medal of Honor: The Electronic Fun Game” or “How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Video Games”

I tried not to turn this into a diatribe on how derivative video games are. I kind of failed.

Ever since Nidzumi was sold I’ve had a lot more free time. While as much as I would like to convince myself that Football Manager is a worthy way to burn that time, it’s probably not. So, call it a summer project with long term ambitions but I’ve recently launched my next project.

You see, ever since Nidzumi was sold and subsequently closed (apparently) I’ve been listening to more music. It’s been great really. The only problem is, and I’m trying not to sound like one of those people, that not many people are aware of the cliché-free hip-hop I’ve been listening to. Now I’m going to stop there because we’re entering pretentious music listener territory, which is the opposite of what I wanted to achieve with the site. So instead of rambling on I’ll let you visit Lesson Six.

In a shocking turn of events, I’m back where I started. Three years ago I started writing, for the first time, for MSXBOX-World.com. Three years on, I’m back writing for them. Progress!

Anyway, here are some thoughts on Tiger Woods 11.

Since April, or selling Nidzumi, I’ve only penned two reviews. The second is for Split/Second on GamesAreEvil. It’s not a bad little site even if the front page needs a bit of a redesign. Anyway you should read it because I’m strangely proud of this one.

Oh and encase you were wondering the first review was about those men who kick footballs. Digital men though, they aren’t real.

Now that the veil has kind of been lifted on Daniel Lipscombe’s (Former Reviews Editor at Nidzumi) upcoming project, why don’t we blog about it? Naturally I’ll be covering the design of the whole process but I’m actually more excited about the prospect of writing for the site.

Back in the early days of Nidzumi I occasionally wrote features called Back In Time. Now BIT were short retrospective reviews of old games – basically just an excuse to indulge in a little nostalgia. I only wrote a few of them but the time spent going back with a critical mind on games like Blade Runner, Omikron and SimCity were some of the most enjoyable moments while running Nidzumi.

I’m really relishing the opportunity of going back through the years and reminiscing with some classics, digging out some diamonds in the rough and having problems getting old games to work. Alright maybe not that last pint but it’s an exciting time, a brand new site and all.

Instead of making a important post about the Election, I’m just letting you know of a new project I should be working on soon. It’s called B4HD (Get it?). It’s a blog that regales you with tales of yesteryear, at least tales about specific video games made over five years ago. I’ll probably be writing about SimCity, Omikron and Blade Runner – yes I know, those last two were probably bad but I was young.

Anyway, you should check out the holding page.

One of the most important questions within journalism is who is the right man for a review. One that I had to constantly ask myself while playing through the popular JRPG, Yakuza 3. Now I’ve said in the past how RPGs aren’t really my thing and it’s something that definitely came up with my criticism of Yakuza 3.

However, I rarely think that anyone is particularly wrong for a review. For example a few months back I reviewed Borderlands from a perspective of someone who doesn’t really play RPGs. Admittedly I couldn’t get too in-depth with the RPG half of the game but it put a unique spin on the review. I guess that’s what makes journalism so exciting, everyone has their own angles and opinions on things.

Now with that in mind, here is my Yakuza 3 review.

Be kind.

I wrote some words about MotoGP 09/10. For those who are too lazy to click on the link, it’s not bad. I haven’t really written much this year and I’m looking to step it up over the next couple of weeks with more words about Yakuza 3 on the way.

Metacritic is a funny site. It gives reviewers more power than they really want.

What I’m talking about is the horrible bonus culture within gaming that relies on an aggregated review score. Why am I thinking about this? Well because Daniel Lipscombe recently wrote our 200th review, which is the minimum requirement for acceptance on Metacritic. We aren’t guaranteed anything yet but it’s bringing up some interesting questions. Am I qualified? Do I want to buy into and feed this practice? Why does this feel like a massive accomplishment?

I guess probably, maybe and 200 reviews is the achievement would be the answers. It’s exciting nonetheless.

Every now and then I wonder why I’m actually doing this blog thing. I’ve been getting the feeling recently that I don’t lead an interesting enough life to make one blog post everyday. I mean in the last week, most of my blog posts have been about games or my shiny new PC. Personally I don’t mind talking about all that nonsense but I know it doesn’t create interesting reading.

I’ll probably have to find the real reason for signing up to this challenge. If I don’t I think I’ll have to stop, there’s a big fear of boring everyone to death – something I already do enough outside of the confines of this blog.