Out Came the Wolves

Happy new year! Happy new decade and the rest.
And what better way to start the new year than to announce another removal from my Hall of Shame:
Say goodbye Wolfenstein 3d!

 Original image located here. Accessed 15th January 2020

To view this game from the distance of nearly three decades presents an interesting case. It may be the grand-daddy of all first person shooters but there have been both countless of innovations to the genre and just as many technological advancements. So how does this game hold up?

Surprisingly well.

Sure there's not much to the game. Sure the 3d effect is all scaling trickery. Sure there is no narrative, only three guns and a level design that is completely bonkers. But ultimately, this game still maintains interest on several fronts:

• The level design may be insane but the mazes are compelling - enough to have me looking around every corner, wary of any baddies in hiding.
• The game is kind of tough - especially on hardest difficulty where health items are scarce and you find yourself wading through ammo clips.....
• I mentioned previously that Doom presents many an opportunity to go full desperado (ie you versus a room full of baddies) - unlike many of it's successors. But now, I think Wolf 3d does it even better than it's younger brother. 
• Its always impressive to use the gatling gun on a room full of baddies. However, now that I think about it, it does burn through ammo quickly - considering there are so many countless ammo clips around, was I being encouraged to use that particular gun?
• Some of the bosses are really tough. And fighting them becomes a tense affair. Which is quite the achievement for a game made in 1992. 

So in the end the original Wolf 3d, somehow, still holds up.
Who would've thunk it?

That was the year it was: 2019

And we come to the end of another year. This post will mark the final post for Game Tumour in 2019.

This year has been a quiet one. For me, a lot of my time has been committed to both Elder Scrolls Online and my newly-acquired Retropie. But having said that, there’s more to that than meets the eye: I’ve invested a lot of time in ESO and, much like fellow MMORPGers World of Warcraft and Star Trek Online, the time has come to move on.  Similarity, I think I have spent more time addressing issues running the Retropie than actually playing it.

But getting to ESO for a moment: It has dominated my playtime recently – indeed it is telling that I cast only one game from my ever-present Hall of Shame this year. However, the end of my time spent with ESO is within sight: I have (more or less) set out what I wanted to do and I feel there is nothing left for me to see therein (or at least without traversing over previously trodden ground). I knew I quite WoW when I realised I didn’t want to do it anymore and the same could now be said for ESO – the only difference was WoW’s ending was abrupt whilst ESO’s ending has been a long and slow detox.

Read into that what you will

I also think it’s fair to say that this blog has suffered as a result what with posts that were either about ESO or somewhat inconsequential. True, this blog has been going for nearly a decade which is an abnormally long time in Internet terms. And yes blogs seem very much redundant compared to Vlogs and Twitch. But I have no intention to give up on this blog – not whilst I have many more games to check out anyway.
So a new decade is a good excuse as any to walk away from ESO and towards a fresh start.

That being said, this concludes Game Tumour for both 2019 and the 2010s. Thank you for following me for all this time and I hope to speak to you all again sometime in 2020.

Five Man Band

Reports have been circulating on how the PS5 is in development. So I guess its safe to say that we are advancing towards the dawn of the ninth generation, whether we like it or not.

With each passing generation, I guess it is inevitable that we will keep moving forward at a rate that is difficult to keep up. But really, the days of computer/video gaming as a niche interest are long gone. Gaming is so commonplace, across many a medium that it is difficult to find something new to say.
I grew up during the Golden Age of Gaming (as some commentators have dubbed the 16-bit era) and I know how it was: Someone gets a great idea, it becomes a massive hit and clones come charging out of the woodwork. Super Mario bros. Doom. Street Fighter 2. But whilst that practice is still in place, it is not as prevalent as it once was.  Oh sure any JRPG made now would owe a considerable debt to Final Fantasy and any sandbox game is walking the path set by the Grand Theft Auto series, but now, any game is building off something else. Its harder for anything new to be said when everything is moving in a loop and forgetting what came before.
It's kind of like drawing off the John Lennon cover of Stand By Me instead of the Ben E King original.

It has been my experience that every new gaming generation has to bring something new to the table to blow away everyone;s mind. I mean, even better graphics than before can only keep you going for so long

Nothing quite like it in the entire galaxy

Yesterday I received an email inviting me to try out the closed beta for Gog Galaxy 2.0.

Needless to say i jumped on it straight away.

So far I have added the games I had obtained off of GoG, Steam, Origin, Epic and XBLA. I've even added the games I got for the Virtual Console.

Despite whatever reservations I have previously had about Gog Galaxy 2.0, I have to say seeing all my games arranged under the one umbrella is nothing less than a thing of beauty.

Thirteen years of service

In saddening news, I have retired my PS2 after thirteen years of loyal service.

It was 2006 that I purchased my PS2. At that point in time, the sixth generation was on the way out  so it may be strange of my to buy a console that was facing obsolesce. But what did it matter? I had the money, I wanted a console so i got a silver slimline PS2.
From, there I spent countless hours on that machine. I built up a formidable library of games, both PS2 and PS1, and discovering games that had passed me by years earlier. I took it with me when visiting friends' places, where it got plenty of shared use, and when I moved house. The PS2 may be the best-selling console of all time but my experiences are unique to me than the many other people who owned one. And whilst I purchased more consoles in the years to come, I never lost sight of my old friend.

Ultimately, however this has been a day that has been coming given that gaming technology is continually moving at a pace where it's difficult to keep up. Far too easily is something cast aside for something new. Indeed, it's a sobering thought that hours spent on one console can be erased with ease. Sure, I can play Final Fantasy X on Steam now but it's a far different experience when compared to firing it up for the first time on a PS2 after years absent from gaming.

Still, I will forever acknowledge the PS2 for the games it gave me, the times I spent using it and it being the endpoint of a drought and the true beginning of me as a gamer

.......So Long Old Friend......

No words left to sing

Recently an announcement was made that Singstar will be shutting down servers this coming January. This means no more DLC and Singstar effectively coming to an end.

This news is currently meaningless to me as I pretty much ditched Sing Star when I jumped ship to the Xbox. Still I did have a number Singstar games back in the day and I found them a lot of fun. It was great to get some friends around on an evening and belt out karaoke.

Still this does represent that gaming as we know it is more or less fad driven. And not much thought is given to the long-term or preservation. I'm not sure that the makers of Singstar would ever guess that people would be playing their games over a decade down the track.

And I doubt they would ever care.

Conan the Adventurer

Apparently Death Stranding will feature a cameo from Conan O'Brien

Source 

......This game keeps getting weirder and weirder.
Which in turn raises the suspicions that no matter much weirder it gets, it subsequently raises a level of expectation that could not hope to be met.
At this point, one gets the impression that this is going to turn out to be one troll move from Hideo Kojima (and it wouldn't surprise me if it did)

..........But I could be wrong