Monday, May 27, 2013

The Xbox One Reveal & Demo Time



The video game blogosphere was all a-buzz last week with Microsoft's announcement of the Xbox One and all that it can and is designed to do.  When I first saw the pictures of the system and controller, I liked it.  I thought it was a classy looking approach to a video game console that didn't shout out, "I play video games!"  I thought it looked a lot like a DVD player or cable box.  And I'll be honest, in that brief moment, I actually considered the purchase of the One.  That was before I watched the video on Kotaku (via Darkbeatdk) telling me all I needed to know about Xbox One.

Then, I remembered that I really/probably/most likely don't want one, what with all the "everything needs to be on" thing, and the Xbox Live pay accounts.  One last (amusing) thing about the Xbox One reveal, was the mention of the "newly redesigned D-pad." Wait, what?  Directional pads like that have been around since the mid 80s, and I personally, haven't liked the tinkering that was done for almost every non-Nintendo D-pad (Dreamcast aside).

That's all I'm going to say about this since I'm very much out of my league when it comes to most/all things related to the Xbox; I can honestly say that I've played/used an Xbox less than ten times.  Ever.


A couple of months ago, I did an article about the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate demo with the header of "Demo Time."  I would really like to turn this into a "thing."  While some games may not warrant an entire article, there will be times when I combine a couple of games that have similar themes or feel like two games are one-in-the-same, just with a different pair of underwear on the outside.

There will be some games that are obvious as to why I would play them, while others I won't fit within a single target area of a game's demographic.  The point is, there have been some games that I've been surprised by and others that I thought I might like and turned out to be a boring slice of dried cheese.  I will state thought that I may or may not play every available demo.

I currently do not have any plans to release Demo Time posts on any day in particular, but they will appear here and there.  Possibly when I don't have anything else on my plate or if there is a particularly engaging demo that I feel the need to share.


Lastly, I don't feel that it's any surprise that my goto for what a video game blog/article should be is Penny Arcade.  For a long time, I thought the phrase at the end of Jerry/Tycho's posts were little cryptic sayings that had to do with the article, even when they were labeled "instrumental;" in my head there'd be a dramatic movie music cue ready to go.  That all changed (last year?) when Jerry started actually hyperlinking the end phrase to a song, which is what the phrases were related to.  

Yes, I'm copying on some level, although I did something very similar with in-office emails when I worked for the State (of California).  I would have little taglines, something like "The marmots are really just framing the ferns until someone notices."  Nonsensical things with the intention of making people scratch their heads.  It's not as funny when you don't work with "professionals."  Although, back during the Myspace era, whenever I wrote a note/blog post, I would use a mozilla extension (FoxyTunes I think it was) to paste information on whatever song I was last listening to when I finished the posting.  For a while here I've been doing something very similar, although I would usually alter the song title or some of the lyrics to better "fit" at the end of a posting.  I will continue this practice and now, I too will hyperlink.

I've used too many words and should probably stop tippa-tapping now.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
He, The Aethyr



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