NON-TOXIC GAMING

For considering myself a gamer, I was extremely late to the online realms of gaming in 'traditional' terms. World of Warcraft, for instance, came out in 2004. I wouldn't join it until late 2006. What was I doing before that? Well, Civilization games mostly; playing turns by email over at apolyton , Sims 2, or real life obligations. Apolyton probably best explains why I feel a draw towards the Nontoxic forums . Which reminds me, if you'd like to respond to a post here on the blog, that'd be a great place to go do it. Let's start some conversations! (I admit, I'm not a very subtle individual sometimes.) Aside from WoW, my next foray into trying online gaming was on my Xbox 360 (like I said, for some reason, late to the party.) I fired up Uno on a cool fall night, sat down, and expect to find other people who simply were out for a random match of the game in an evening. Boy was I ever wrong. The camera winked to life and I was confronted by a gr...

I am a girl. I am a gamer. I am a gleefully, glorious goddess…oh wait, did I take the alliteration too far? I have been a gamer all my life, as I picked up my first controller in 1978, at the age of 5, to battle the mighty ball that you could not let pass your bar. Yes, I am describing Pong, and it was essentially ping pong in the electronic format. Now, it sounds rather boring and it makes me wonder how video games ever advanced, but it was just the beginning of video games and my gamer life. It was the “gateway game” that led to my somewhat obsessive addiction to newer games and consoles. In fact, I was so enthusiastic about gaming that I turned my grandmother and mom into gamers. Eventually my grandmother was fighting me for the controller so she could play Asteroids on Atari, and my mom would wrestle it away from her so she could get her fix of Missile Command and River Raid. Thus, gaming is fondly ingrained in my memories and it will always be a part of my fabric. Sometimes it f...

It haunts us... Mocks us... Taunts us... Makes us question why we spent the money in the first place. It's our gaming backlog. Naturally, the first thing to come to mind is, geez, FF, that's a massive first world problem. I agree wholeheartedly. We are, generally speaking, our own worst enemies though, and it bugs me that I've 'wasted money' on games that I have yet to play. (Steam and humble bundles , I'm looking right at you.) My wife reassures me that I'll eventually  play them. Even if that eventually is when I retire in forty(?) years. Yes, this is the reason I've never sold a console system; I feel the shame strongly and don't want to lose the ability to play them someday . It's also why my launch PS3 is still connected to my TV since it can play PSone games. Time to fess up then. What is my oldest lame claim to shame? Final Fantasy VIII. I'll admit right now that I haven't played Final Fanta...

Come my friend, it’s time to put on the nostalgia glasses and come back with me to an era when after school cartoons were a thing and the Internet was a movie dream shown by a young Matthew Broderick or Tron. If I didn’t manage to make it home in time for X-Men then Goof Troop, Duck Tales, and TailSpin kept me in good company as I did my homework (if I had any). When I first got wind of the Disney Afternoon Collection it went to the top of my wish list. I remember renting both DuckTales and Rescue Rangers growing up and beating them triumphantly. Due to how often I rented them my mom even got DuckTales for a birthday for me back in the day. Having beat it, my young mind went for an unopened exchange of Base Wars at Walmart instead. The collector me of today still cringes at that decision. (Though I’d love a Base Wars remake at this point actually, staying true to the original. Hey, they did it for NBA Jam.) Have I beaten them all again yet? No. I hung my Playstation Network tro...

I have never written a review, this is my first one, so let's jump in with that in mind. Let's talk Flinthook, made by Tribute Games Inc.  If you know these guys you know they have made amazing games such as Wizorb, Mercenary kings and so forth. In my opinion, they know their platforming really well, and this is actually an understatement because to my surprise they surpassed what I thought platforming was. Flinthook has some of the best movements and hook shot mechanics I have seen. It also has a gorgeous pixel art brought to life by Stephane Boutin and Johan Vinet, and a soundtrack that I just can't get enough of. I am blown away by how precise and tight the game feels with a nice controller in your hands. When I move Flinthook to the place I want him to go he does it with such precision and grace. The shooting is pretty good and you can acquire upgrades for everything from a wonderful shop with little green currency, which is done by a card based system that yo...

The first time I remember picking up a gaming controller it seemed like such a foreign concept at the time. I was used to going outside and playing with friends and putting all our action figures together to have them fight wars, participate in heroic clashes against some of the most villainous characters, and that would create such epic battles only in my head. When I held that controller I did not have to imagine what the battle looked like because it was being transmitted to the television in front of me. The game I can first recall playing was a game that had been released many years before this was written, November 29, 1972 to be exact; a game that was so simplistic in nature but could be played for hours with many different outcomes. Pong may have been the first game I remember playing but it was most certainly not the most intriguing of games, intrigue would come later on. Now I did not actually play these games until the age of 5, or thereabouts, and at the time there had a...