Press Start!: Killstreaks Groinal Leakage.
Press Start!, press select!, who gives a shit! This is the column where I blather like the droll man I am about five things that caught my eye in the world of gaming this week. Buckle up for the suck. As I type this, the PSN is reigniting its engines, and word unconfirmed by yours truly is that the United States can actually play games online once more with their PlayStationing machinery.
There’s that! Pour a Dew out for my homies who have assuredly ended themselves, cut off from their virtual machine gunning and karate kicking.
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#1) Modern Warfare 3 Leaks All Over You.
The Call of Duty franchise is a favorite of mine, even though I can admit it’s a Churn Factory of the highest-order. In what seemed like fittingly impressive espionage for the Cloak and Dagger And Senseless Violence franchise, the good people at Kotaku were able to unearth a fucking fuckload of material regarding the game prior to an official announcement.
Like, a serious fucking fuckload. Mission details, images, purported sound bites.
Even if you dismiss the franchise for the Action Movie Derivative Echo Chamber that it’s become, you have to admit the sort of effort the people over at Kotaku went through, and then exploded upon the gaming landscape. These sorts of releases are so heavily secreted that to pull down the pants of one of gaming’ annual superbeasts for everyone to behold was flat-out fucking outstanding.
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#2) Diablo II Beta Is Coming; Fucking Hencemen Exposed.
This week I finally fucking canceled my World of Warcraft account. I’ve barely played it since last year’s expansion, and I figured it was time to pull the plug. The machines softly pumping life into my care for the title quietly came to a stop, and what was once an obsession quietly passed into the afterlife. Not with a bang, but a whimper!
Six years at $15, Blizzard has made some fucking fat loot themselves off of me.
Just as I was gazing at the skies, looking for the Gaming Lords to deliver me an online experience, news erupted out of the belly that there’s going to be a public Diablo III beta this year. Fuck yes, huzzah, et cetera!
Also dropped was a video giving a little look at the ragtag motherfuckers that will be able to accompany you on your journeys. An enchantress, a scoundrel, and a templar! This may only be exciting to a dicksore like myself who has been sweating this title for the past goddamn decade. But to me? Set Boners to Throb!
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#3) Oh Shit! Chrono Trigger On Virtual Console!
Next week, Chrono Trigger is dropping onto the Wii’s virtual console. This may very well be one of the only and best reasons to boot up your Wii this year. It’s what, this and Skyward Sword? I’m probably missing something that a dork is going to sweep in with the thunder of Thor himself and remind me about.
But still! Fucking Chrono Trigger. Downloadable and strokable.
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#4) Arcade: The Last Night At Chinatown Fair Is Nostalgia Bomb.
I have never been to the Chinatown Fair in New York City, but the trailer for this upcoming documentary twiddled my nostalgia tits. The project, which is being funded entirely through Kickstarter, documents the death knell of the joint, which had survived for an insane fifty years. Chock it up to another thing worthy of my time that I never got to do, as I probably jacked it and grinded five levels in the aforementioned WoW.
Yet, I can feel some empathy for the vibe, as someone who also grew up in arcades and have watched their continual demise for the past decade or so. I spent many an adolescent evening burning through quarters with friends at local shit-show arcades. Saturday nights spend fatalitizing and ultra-comboing with friends before being picked up by a various Mom or Dad.
Check out the trailer, and so help me, if you have a soul you’ll dig it.
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#5) Square Enix Braces Investors For ‘Extraordinary Losses.’
Dovetailing somewhat off that lovely news of Chrono Trigger is the news that Square Enix is bracing its investors for ‘extraordinary losses’ from their last fiscal year. It appears we have a thematic current to this installment of Press Start!, and that would be unrepentant nostalgia. Square Enix, you guys could probably make some more money if you still made good games.
Yeah, I said it. Fuck Final Fantasy XIII, and fuck you too.
If there was a place I transitioned to after the arcades, it was in front of my Super Nintendo and PSX and a fucking litany of Final Fantasies.
I could feel the final vestiges of my childhood burning off in the sunset last year when I booted p FFXIII and promptly booted all over my balls. I don’t know if was me simply moving on from the tropes I had loved while growing up a teen: overwrought philosophical proclamations, absurdly effeminate male leads, and convoluted religious conversations, or if all those tropes had rotted on the vine under the hands of fading talents.
Whatever the case, a part of me died, and I was sadly, sadly bummed to find Square no longer made the sheezy that I loved so much. I don’t fashion myself alone in this feeling.
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There’s my Shit List. E tu, fuckers?