Leveling Down

My 70+ 360 games…will I really play any of them again after beating them?

cmfl3x and I have both feeling less into gaming as of late, and after talking a bit about it, we’ve made the decision that starting next week Leveling Down will switch into summer hours mode. We’ll be going from alternating posts each weekday to only posting on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. cmfl3x feels that maybe on his end, he just likes to be out more during the summer so he won’t be spending as much time gaming. On my end, I’ve suddenly started taking gaming less seriously and will share my thoughts further on that after the break. Regardless, we both feel that we aren’t able to write up enough content daily for the next few months so we’re scaling back a bit. Maybe when Fall hits, we may jump back to the daily posting schedule again but starting next week, expect for the first entry to come from cmfl3x on Wednesday (Monday is Memorial Day holiday here in the states), and I will post again on Friday. In a way, this will be good too since we won’t necessarily be “struggling to come up with new articles to write”. The truth is, we’re just not consuming games quickly enough to write as much as we used to.

Read on for my introspection as to what has changed for me in my gaming life.

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Doom 2 on Xbox looks exactly the same as it did when I was 12.

I’ve put it out there before, but Doom 2 was the first person shooter that put first person shooters on my map. I found every single secret and spent hundreds of hours playing deathmatch and co-op over my dialup modem. It got so bad that my parents changed our phone plan (how’s that for support!? I should thank them). Anyway, I came out of my Xbox fast to download the Doom 2 demo, fully expecting to move on.

What I quickly realized is Xbox is NEFARIOUS. First, let me just say that Doom 2 is basically a straight port. It looks exactly the same, has to use letterbox, and is as pixelated as the original. It also costs $10. Why am I considering a purchase then? It’s because of the nefarious….ness. For starters, I only got to play through the first level, which I can practically play through with my eyes closed. Then, like all XBLA games, it told me when I would have unlocked an achievement and offered to unlock it RIGHT THEN AND THERE if I purchased the game right then and there. Then when I quit the demo, in true Doom fashion, it asked me if I REALLY didn’t want to buy the game – three times.

I didn’t buy it, but I’m definitely considering it. $10 seems steep for a game that came out a million years ago, yet I really want to play through all 32 levels again. Also, the achievements are something I can definitely handle since I’m so familiar with the game. Plus, it’s kind of enticing to play deathmatch. I don’t know…it seems like a stupid nostalgia purchase, but I’m going to do the same thing with Monkey Island 2 in a month. Gah!

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Is it possible to feel asleep from too many games?

This last month has been super packed gaming wise. I bought Super Street Fighter IV, FIFA World Cup 2010, and downloaded Steam for Mac. To top that all off, I finally got into the Starcraft 2 beta and the Halo: Reach beta came out too. So why have I been playing LESS games lately?

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Wait, is that a t-shirt with two guys wearing cardboard boxes? Is that a Metal Gear Solid t-shirt?!

For those of you that didn’t notice, I’ve been MIA for the last couple of weeks as my wife and I were on a two week vacation in Japan. cmfl3x held down the fort pretty well in my absence, and since I haven’t had much of a chance to do much gaming these past two weeks, I’ll post a couple entries on gaming related topics from Japan.

If any of you remember one of my earlier posts, I lamented over the lack of anything video game oriented that  I could buy as an American visiting Japan. Well fortunately for me, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (originally numbered as Metal Gear Solid 5), was released in Japan at the end of April. This allowed me to partake in a little bit of a new major video game launch in the Land of the Rising Sun, even if I was about two weeks late to the launch party. Still, Uniqlo had me covered though. Read on for what this curious Japanese clothing store has to do with Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
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Advance Wars: Dual Strike is one of the first games on the DS, but is still one of the best.

It’s no secret that cmfl3x loves adventure games, and he’s talked a lot about how much he loves Phoenix Wright. How he feels about adventure games is probably how I feel about strategy games. Like him, I’ve decided to do a retro review of Advance Wars: Dual Strike since I just spent the last couple of weeks on my commute to/from work playing it after I beat Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. I’m glad I finally got around to playing through the entire game. It’s a game that just keeps on giving and giving. Read on for why.

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Getting married isn’t Game Over, but you have to take advantages of your nights alone

I love my wife. I especially appreciate her patience with me when I’m playing video games, a habit she’s not fond of, but one that she accepts nonetheless. We’ve come to a balance, I limit the time I spend gaming while she limits her grousing about the matter. As anyone who is married knows, there come those rare times when you get the house to yourself and you need to make the most of it. So, here is cmfl3x’s Aging Gamer’s Guide to a Night Without the Mrs. (or Mr.), designed for maximum enjoyment!

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Is everyone on your friends list really a friend?

A little while back, some kid added me as a friend on Live. Being a friendly guy (and also nowhere near the 100 person friend limit), I went ahead and accepted his friend request even though he didn’t really introduce himself. Shortly after that, he asked me if I would help him beat all the Spec Ops missions in Modern Warfare 2. I replied and said, “Not right now – maybe later.” In my head I told myself that if the kid asked me for help again, I would take him off my friends list. And what happens? Maybe 15 minutes later, he messages me again and asked if I could help him then. I removed him from my friends list and hoped to never hear from him again. Of course, he did try to add me as a friend again the following day, but I didn’t accept, and ever since then he’s been forgotten. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me, but it has gotten me thinking lately about what it even means to be an online friend.

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After more time with Reach, I’m starting to really appreciate armor abilities

The Halo Reach Beta is pretty much over, but Bungie released two more game types last week that I wanted to talk about a bit. When Bungie started releasing information about the beta, Invasion and Generator Defense were the two gametypes I was most interested in, for two reasons. First, they are new objective based games, which I generally prefer to slayer. Secondly, they pit Spartans vs. Elites, which I thought could lead to some excellent gameplay nuances. How do the two modes end up stacking up? Hit the jump for my impressions, and some final thoughts on the beta.

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Is the Alan Wake Collector’s Edition worth $80, or can it go through the one month test?

I’m a very practical person, but I have to say that my weakness is buying games. Anything else I will easily wait for an amazing deal on before I buy it – food, electronics, tickets, etc. Yet with video games, something just sort of takes a hold of me and in several cases, I must get the game asap and I’ll pay the full retail price. I don’t know if I pay retail price on anything else in life!

After I bought my PS3 and had to go through that whole month+ long wait to finally get it, I have been self reflecting as of late on that wait and the amount of time I’ve played the system since I got it. Could I have waited longer to buy it? Sure. But now I’m going through the same mental anguish with the upcoming PSP Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker bundle. Will my “One Month Test” help guide my potential purchase?

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