Wrapping up

Recently I was informed that Raptr will be closing up at the end of this month.
So I thought I might take the time to reflect on this app as a regular user.

I first encountered Raptr in 2012 when a friend told me about it. And I took to it readily, delighted that there was this app that allowed me, a gamer, to record all my gaming times. It allowed me to add all my games in my collection and to enter the hours spent on them, regardless of system or era.
Indeed, it was important for me that this was something that provided a record. I had so many games that was important to see how much time I had spent on them, in relation to each other, and also call attention to other games that may have slipped my notice - indeed, there's something to be said to see a game that had been neglected for so long, race up the ranks.

Most importantly for me was, again, the record. I can't stress this enough: As the passage of time renders obsolete media, like optical discs and console memory cards, completely unusable, it was refreshing to know that I had such historical information preserved.
Granted this may not be what the makers of Raptr wanted  (I cringe at the thought of them making the first rank of pre-2000 games at twenty hours) but for me it filled a vital need.

Later on, Raptr moved away from the console field., This was a disappointment on my end as I enjoyed having so many platforms under the one umbrella. Granted the consoles of now may have their own game/achievement tracking device but it is disappointing they can't...well...mix. One can't underestimate the importance of having everything within easy reach and easily comparable (after all isn't that the main driving force of the technological advanced times we live in?).
Losing the consoles to me, however, was the turning point with Raptor and myself: Sure it was nice to record everything I played on Steam and GoG Galaxy but without console input, it was never the same.

And now Raptr is pulling up stumps and calling quits. It is disappointing that my record is now obsolete. Sure I have Steam keeping track of my game time but over a decade's worth of gaming has been effectively erased. Sure it exists as a file on my computer's hard drive, but somehow it doesn't seem the same.
Raptr may have failed to keep up with the times but for me it represented something that is not often thought of in the gaming community: An archive. The original idea may have been strong enough for the major companies to take notice but without an app representing, well, everything it doesn't seem the same.

So here's to you Raptr you magnificent archive you.
Hopefully something comes along that fulfills the niche you pioneered.

Console-Less

Recently Raptr announced it will cease all support for console games,

With each passing year I've found myself drifting further and further away from the console camp. Indeed, one could say this development could be another step in that direction. 

Foul Sand

Not much to say today except that, according to my Raptr account, I have surpassed 1000 gaming achievements.
Granted I suspect most of them are through having multiple characters in World of Warcraft but any milestone is worth some recognition.

Padding out

Recently I obtained new device for my computer: A Gamepad.

Previously I've never seen the point of gamepads. I'd always thought they were the exclusive of the consoles. Maybe it's me growing up through the nineties but I always saw the consoles as the exclusive of action and sport games whilst PCs the place to go for adventure games, flight simulators and strategy games. And when these two exclusives try to mix, the end results tend to look fake and ill-conceived.

But I do indeed have some games which aren't available anywhere else, mostly off Steam, so there is some use for my Gamepad. And I would be interested to see if Dragon Age and Knights of the Old Republic would work with the Gamepad as it's what I used when I originally played them. Plus the Gamepad may also save my keyboard from a pounding (or significantly less of a pounding).

Mind you, as those who've been following my Ratpr profile would know, I haven't been giving my consoles much attention: These past few months have seen me use my PC exclusively. And purchasing a Gamepad, once a major difference between a console and a PC, one can't help but think that a major link between me and console has been severed. Coupled with my current lack of interest in the eighth console generation, one think my days as a console gamer are numbered...

Fun with Mathematics

In a move related to my never-ending quest to overcome my Hall of Shame I actually sat down and took tally of my games.

Therefore....

According to Raptor I have 200 games.

67 are completed (33.5%)

31 are incomplete (15.5.%)

25 have no end and/or don't concern me if I don't complete them (12.5%)

21 have been started (10.5%)

10 have been abandoned (5%)

46 have yet to be played (23%)

Interesting figures to be sure - I thought the games I haven't completed (not played + started + incomplete) would yield a much bigger figure but as it so happens it's just under half of my collection. Which is reassuring I guess.

Still, what I can conclude from this is that the time spent working this out may have been better spent working on the games left unbeaten....

Rise Against

Recently, according to my Raptr account, I ticked over into the Elite category in World of Warcraft

I have no idea whether or not that is totally awesome or totally pathetic....

Hunting for Pandas

Recently a new addition had been attached to the World of Warcraft family. Everyone say hello to obligatory Panda character Kyuzo!

Well with a new race being introduced into Azeroth one would think that creating a character based on said race is somewhat inevitable. Still, having taken Rithendal through Pandaria, I found the narrative rather compelling and I become curious to see how it may work through the perspective of a Pandarian. The Pandarian campaign, of course, is based around the Alliance and the Horde blundering their way into a foreign land - and the inhabitants of said land being less than thrilled with the intrusion and being forced into picking a side.
Therefore, there is appeal in seeing the Pandarian campaign through the eyes of a Pandarian: A countryman bringing a newly found conflict to his homeland. And I have no hesitation admitting that the Pandarian starting zone is indeed one of the best.
And another Hunter? Well this warrior class proved so successful the previous time around that I decided that I might have another go – only this time it would be a Marksman hunter than a Beast Mastery hunter. And whilst I may be used to the pet doing all the work, I am finding some appeal in the shooting and the pet has done well at holding their own in the fighting.

At time of writing I am at level 26 – a long way from the Pandarian campaign to be sure but still there is some interest to be had. What is interesting however is that this past week I’ve invested more hours in WoW than I have in previous weeks. This in turn reinforces my theory that WoW is at its strongest and most appealing during the first 60 levels. Why else would I lavish so time on a new character when I have three stuck in the Outlands?
 But going back to the hour investment, whereas previous weeks I was, according to Raptr, investing 4-6 hours on WoW per week, this week however I’ve sunk over 20 hours. One could make the argument that any new character would make the world of Azeroth seem completely new no matter times one has been over the same locations – but I’m reminded of the suggestion that game developers going out of their way to make their game addictive as possible to in order to make sure people play it. And if that suggestion is indeed correct, one can only wonder how many psychologists Blizzard have on their payroll.

I'll tell you when I've had enough

Inspired by my recent posting of the behemoth that is my games collection, I was inspired to add more of these titles to my Raptr account. Thus my game total on Raptr stands, at time of writing, at 182.
An impressive figure to be sure but it does raise a question: How big can a gaming collection get before it becomes too much to handle? When does a gaming collection get to the point where no games whatsoever are actually getting played? My current game total has nearly doubled in size from my original plan to hunt down a particular hundred but it's come to a point where it's more about the collection than the games itself.
Hardly a good a sign.
Of course it all comes down to how much time can be invested in playing so many games - and in my case I've got far too many games and staring down a incalculable amount of time that is required to get through them all. Indeed, I can only wonder how Bajo and Hex can, on a regular basis, get through so many games, still keep a fresh perspective on them AND still whip out a weekly TV show.

But I digress. It's baffling, at least to me, how my game collection ballooned to a point where it's about the games and not actually playing them. So, in an attempt to find some answers, I used Excel to make a tally of the games I've purchased from a particular date (in this case it was January 2009 when I had a PC and a Playstation) and the source of the games in question.

The result is as follows:

So what does this tell us? Well it is unsurprisingly to see large numbers with two completely new consoles (in this case the Wii and Xbox 360) but perhaps the main offender is, of course, digital distribution: A means where many games, from no matter what their era, are easily available, can be purchased & ready to play within moments and being far, far more cheaper than games available in a store.

But to me it is yet another reminder that my Hall of Shame isn't going to go away anytime soon.
Oh well....

Thats my Steam

On January the 4th of this year I took a brave step into the unknown: I signed up for that thing called Steam. So what do i think of it?

Well for a while I was unsure what to make of it: I saw the wide range of games available - many of which caught my attention. But out of the ones I was interested in, many of which I had already purchased through GoG. So what was left?
Well I did like the idea of game specific browser but my current OS offers the same thing. And the sharing of gaming records? Funny, I thought that was what Raptr was for. So ultimately my first impression of Steam was that it did things that had already been done.

Since then however my view has softened somewhat: I can see that the browser has it's own range of useful features and the range of games includes some titles that I've been interested in playing and aren't available anywhere else. Of course it seems stupid that I should be getting more games considering my commitments to World of Warcraft and the Hall of Shame but in the terms of playing games that escaped me the first time around (as is often the case with my taste in gaming), as well as a method of keeping abreast with newer games, Steam has proven be quite a handy gadget.

Beyond 2000

Not a lot to say today but, according to my Raptr profile, I recently surpassed 2000 hours of game time:

(edit: 24th February 2013)

Not bad for a decade+ of work

On the Road Again

Recently I had the pleasure of striking another game from my Hall of Shame (they're falling like bowling pins!). This time it was Sam and Max Hit the Road.

Those who've been following my progress on my Hall of Shame would note that I've been playing a lot of adventure games. Nothing wrong with that: Point and Click adventue games is something that has eluded me in the past so it's great to sit down and play through some of them. Now normally, the genre I play the most (at least according to Raptr) are RPGs - and adventure games really come across as something of an antithesis: Whereas RPGs are serious, PaCAs are fun and witty; whereas RPGs are loaded with action, PaCAs don't; whereas RPGs are mostly confined to fantasy/scifi settings, PaCAs are a lot more inventive with their settings. And whereas RPGs demand a lot of hours on the player PaCAs take a much lesser amount of time investment. 
And ultimately after playing so many RPG's, playing a PaCA comes across as a breath of fresh air - and it makes me enthusiastic again to play games and jabber on and on about them.  

Anywho, about Sam and Max. If anything this game surprised me - but not for the reasons one would think so. You see, looking at the box art of the game, one will notice a Parental Advisory sticker that has been incorporated into the artwork:

Recognizing the image I went in expecting to see crude humour - the likes one would find on South Park - but with Sam and Max this was not the case. (of course now I look more closely at the 'sticker' and find it is indeed a parody).
Of course it would've been obvious to have some crude/offensive humor in a game featuring some goofy looking critters in some bizarre juxtaposition (looking at you Conker's Bad Fur Day!) but again, this was not the case.

What I did get was indeed one of the funniest games I've ever played. There are some real laugh out-loud moments (with particular favorites being the Dinosaur park and the Frog rock) that are egenuinely funny. Now humour is a very tricky aspect to handle in gaming as it can trip and fall on it;s face very easily but that doe snot seem the case with Sam and Max: The humor is genuine and natural and never once feels forced - which in gaming doesn't come as often as one would think. Indeed it could've gone all so wrong, as indicated by the previous paragraph, but it didn't. It sounds like an impossibility but here it worked a treat.

So yeah I really enjoyed Sam and Max - they were lots of fun and bursting with both personality and hilarity (I'm still trying to common-parlance the fact the Sam has the same voice actor who does Disney's Goofy). The world they inhabited was kooky, bizarre and great to get around.

So all in all, this game is another winner for LucasArts. Yes I've been saying that lot with the Adventure games I've been playing but with games boasting quality like this, why would I bother with the rubbish?

Raptr Preservation

Yeah it's Halloween so what have I got up my sleeve for this evening? Something completely unrelated! Ha!

Anywho, it's been a week since I started using Raptr. In that time I've notched up over a thousand hour of game time.
Of course, this is only through me going back over my game files, over several consoles, and adding them to my Raptor profile. Thus the 1000+ hours is the product of seven years not seven days (so you can kindly cease typing out that email denouncing me as a loser).

Why go to all this trouble? Well I like the idea that this, Raptr, is there to serve as a record for one's gaming achievements - and not just XBLA achievements/PSN Trophies. I like the idea of Raptr being evidence of doing such things and it serving as a record that may last for years to come. Of course that may not turn out that way but I do like the idea of it being set in stone. Who knows? You come back in several years time and think: Yep, I did that :)

However me going back over my old gaming files does ultimately defeat the purpose of the reward system that Raptr is plugging. The rewards system seem more focused on more recent games not on the classics. There there is really nothing really gained from me putting in so much hours for classic eighties/nineties games. Still I must admit that it's kinda nice to be ranked the no.1 player for Adventures of Lolo, Final Fantasy 1, Secret of Mana, Super Mario Bros 3, Ogre Battle 64, and Burnout 3.

Of course the 1000 hours are the time-frames that I've been able to recover on my PS2, Wii and 360. I have invested many hours in other games on other gaming platforms but they're sadly lost to time. Indeed, I'd like to know how many hours I've blown in Baldurs Gate. However I don't WANT to know how many hours I've sunk in World of Warcraft....

Halt! I am Raptr!

This was passed on by a friend (thanks Aef!): Raptr. A site where gamers can log in and share achievements, notch up game time, share what games they're playing and assess games they like and hate.

True some of you might already be on there but I've signed in and already picked the games I like and enjoy playing. I've even collected data from old save files to add to my game time - after all, if this is going to last for years to come, then I may as well preserve history.

Not much else to say but I approve of this handy little gadget :)