Gyaru Gamer - A Retrospective Rant

No fashion post this week, folks! Today I'd like to try something a little different....

Ugh!

So, if you've been following my Twitter lately, you'll recall my elation (read: tantamount relief) in finally beating a game I purchased on the Wii's virtual console, Breath of Fire 2.

A game that I purchased right after completing A Link to the Past and have played consistently.

Since November.

Honestly, the gameplay investment felt equivalent to passing a kidney stone. I know there are some long games out there, but this...this was a LONG-ASS GAME.

I think it was around the 2-month mark when I finally said "f*ck it" and consulted the help of a walkthrough - something that I NEVER EVER do and have NEVER EVER done prior to playing this game (except to blatantly cheat or to give characters gargantuan-sized heads...but THAT'S a rant for another time).

So BOF 2 is done, but I've decided to take a break from RPGs for a while. Don't get me wrong - I love RPGs, especially the JRPGs of the earlier consoles, but I needed to take a sabbatical because a) the Wii hasn't added any games I've wanted to play since aught-07, and b) because I need to time to reflect on the cold-hard fact that...maybe I'm not as adept at playing video games as I thought I was.

The signs are all there. My brother consistently whups my butt at fighting games (most painfully, Smash Bros. where he just beats the unholy ish outta my fighting-Irish Pikachu), and I'm a veritable failure at any racing game that doesn't begin with the words "Diddy Kong".

Don't even get me started on sports titles.

So I thought I would be the family’s RPG expert. My first real experience was with the Pokémon series. Sure, in a link-cable pokémon battle my brother still came out on top, but I took pride in the knowledge that I played the game to completion. While he was busy powering up his Charizard and the rest of his party to obscene levels (“How the fack is a 6-on-1 battle fair in Pokemon Stadium if your Pidgeot's level 72??!”), I was accruing bragging rants by capturing the legendary birds and spending my weekends bartering with neighboring friends to bolster my Pokédex. I can safely classify capturing all 150 inaugural pokémon as one of the greatest accomplishments of my existence. Take from that what you will.

Pokemon robbed me of a conventional adolescence!

Also, it gave me epileptic seizures.

Anyway, for the longest time, I used to think I was pretty game-savvy, even if wasn't one of the best. Up until my teens I thought I knew everything that I needed to know about video games.

Then I saw the first annual VGAs on Spike TV.

No, I'm not getting into what's already been said ad nauseum by gamers and anti-misogynists alike (and I'm CERTAINLY not touching the much-maligned Angry Joe fiasco with a 10-foot pole - again, that's another rant), but I credit this moment as the first time the realization hit me that: "Hey...maybe I'm not a hardcore gamer. Maybe these games aren't for me”.

Going back to the 90s, I was a Nintendo child, so I lived blissfully unaware in my child-friendly bubble of Super Mario World, Sim City, Pilotwings and the like. I still remember predicting Wind Waker as the runaway victor for the VGAs; imagine my surprise when, not only did Wind Waker not win ANYTHING, but - save for a few titles we owned on Gamecube - I didn't recognize ANY of the nominated games.

After that moment, what seemed like a fairly gender-neutral industry turned out to be a testosterone-driven virtual warzone. I was a long way from the bright, vibrant, candy-coated colours of games like Yoshi's Story and Mischief Makers; I was suddenly more aware of these "mature" games, these gory zombie games, these hard-hitting, military first-person-shooter games with their depressing color palettes of muted grays and browns.

Not quite sure what's going on here...but just goes to show that a lil' colour can solve anything.

So what am I getting at?

Well, I've learned to accept the gaming industry for what it has become...actually let me rephrase that: thanks to web series such as "The Angry Video Game Nerd", I've learned there has always been a mature market that catered to gamers - it was just sterilized and glossed over with a kid-friendly veneer in the 90s and I was too young and blind to notice. Games like Breath of Fire 2 taught me that tackling heady subject matter like religion is nothing new – it’s just more out in the open.

Which brings me back to the RPGs. I'm still going to play them; RPGs are my favorite genre of games (and one of the few I can consistently beat; I’m in my 20s and A Link to the Past was the first Zelda game I’ve ever completed).

One of the perks of getting older is having a little bit of disposable income to purchase all those old games I used to see in gaming magazines but never have the opportunity to play. For example: I spotted a copy of Lagoon at our local used game shop. I distinctly remembered this game because of its 1-page spread in the Super NES Players Guide magazine that I happened to own at the time. I was soo excited to get my hands on this game, after all these years.

Mind you, I was just a stupid kid back then, and had not yet developed my own sense of cynicism or an accute detection of B.S. There's a reason certain games get only a 1-page spread in a 300+ page magazine.

Again...that's another topic for another time.
;D

University Sucks: The Redux

As of about 6:00 PM yesterday evening, I discovered that I had not, in fact, horribly failed the four courses I took in the fall.

I use that bit of information to rationalize that while I did not have my best term, I at least performed to the minimal capacity required to fulfill my credits.

In other words, I am now eligible to graduate.

...

That word, that phrase, that CONCEPT - it just all seems too foreign for my feeble little mind to comprehend. Just four years ago, I stared in anguish at abyssmal first semester marks, experiencing Hell on Earth in the form of shame, humiliation, defeat, failure....and a myriad of other emotions that made me contemplate if suicide was, in fact, painless.

I've changed my major twice. I've changed my career goal twice. I've dredged through some of the most dull lectures, some of the most (for lack of a better term) balls-breakingly difficult labs that spanned an unforgiving 3 hours.

I like to joke that it took me four years to learn that I officially and unequivocally despise science.

My parents still want me to pursue a career in the medical field. Not doctor, mind you - just a position in a field that the Baby Boomers will dramatically alter as they begin to retire and require further care. My mother blindly insists that I consider Ultrasound - which is an excellent and honorable profession - but she neglects to understand that:

a) I have no interest in Ultrasound,

b) Physics is required, and after undergrad I vowed to never again subject myself to that....subject,

and most importantly of all,
c) it requires more education, something that my mentally-taxed brain and sensitive, fiscally-raped assets can no longer endure (at least for the time being).

So now my mother has decided to disown me, since I can no longer reliably provide her with a comfortable retirement consisting of weekly cheques in the five-figure range. Quelle dommage.

I've other siblings, though. Perhaps one will become a doctor or lawyer and properly fulfill their duty of fealty to our parents.

Not me, however. From the looks of things, I'll enjoy a bright future as a struggling freelance writer that moonlights as an amateur porn actress, only to marry a wealthy (but physically and morally repugnant) middle-aged man who will gladly fund my eventual Vicodin addiction in exchange for kinky public sex....that is, until I refuse and suffer a nervous breakdown, only to be found curled up in a delapidated and soggy cardboard box, dead at the ripe old age of 29.

I can't wait.