Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
|
|
| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
|
|
Saturday, June 26, 2004 The Pitch: It's like Ennui meets Apathy! Hello. I am here to bore the shit out of you.I haven't written anything in a week, because I haven't wanted to. But since it is very quiet at work, and since you can easily skip over this entry should you so choose, I will now proceed to possibly bore myself. Because I will be writing about, instead of playing, video games. I spent most of my days off playing Psi-Ops, a run-and-gun with very cool psychic powers. Like The Hulk, the super cheap PS2 game I played over the last month, Psi-Ops is all about the ragdoll physics and the serious slapping about of minions in between numbingly annoying boss fights. Unlike the Hulk, though, you keep getting cool powers as you play through the game--by the time I returned the rental, I had only gotten up to mind control which, like mind drain, took the definition of the powers enjoyably past the point of good taste. (I sometimes wonder, by the way, if Pauline Kael, were she starting out today, would make a go at being a video game critic--I think the industry needs someone like her: the recent Salon excerpt from Craig Seligman's Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me got me thinking about how necessary Kael's distaste of seriousness was for preserving many of the unique charms of American cinema (although ultimately aiding, I think, the art's steady erosion by corporate blockbusterdom). Someone who can appreciate simple pleasures and tawdry aestheticism might be able to steer video games from being more than uninspired b-movies with interactive action scenes. (If nothing else, Kael championed the *inspired* b-movie.) Fortunately, in all the bitching about the lousy story, the reviewers seem more than capable of appreciating its mind-blowing--literally, once you get the proper psi-power activated--charms.) To return to my point: I'm playing too many video games. Before I started playing Psi-Ops, I decided to finish my second play-through of Champions of Norrath just to see if my wood elf ranger was just as overpowered as she seemed. (Yup.) Then, while playing Psi-Ops, I picked up the hideously well-reviewed SSX 3 for under twenty bucks and played it for a bit. Then, I became obsessed with getting The Two Towers game while it was on sale at Target...which led, somehow, to me buying the Space Channel 5 Special Edition for nine bucks. As can be the case with addictions, inappropriate behavior can be rewarded which can result in the reinforcement of that bevhavior. In this case, I ended up with a totally terrific game for only nine bucks, and I only had to spend two and a half hours driving to three Targets to do so. This isn't even underscoring my purchasing of three video games in 36 hours. Succor, such as it is, can be derived from only renting, and not buying, Psi-Ops (a purchase that would have cost more than the three video games I did buy), but this is cold comfort. If Psi-Ops drops to $37.99 or lower on tomorrow's sales, will I then go dashing off to a Target or Circuit City to buy it? I honestly couldn't tell you. Next up (I hope): GTA: San Andreas and why I'm an idiot. posted by Jeff Lester | 2:48 PM | |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
