geekgasms.org

With the release of Assassin's Creed: Revelations a lot of people are once again talking about how it shouldn't be an annual release. How Ubisoft are killing the franchise releasing games so close together. How only two games ago, Assassin's Creed 2 was hailed as a masterpiece and look how much it's fallen already.

What this has us asking is why is everyone in the industry so desperate to have annual releases? There's so many examples of it not working.

Last week my work was reduced massively and this blog is late because Andrew Smith of Spilt Milk Studios visited. We were even sharing 'office' space which had some distracting elements to it. However, while the work might not have been getting done movies, games and drinking certainly did.

There has been a few revelations (Faster is AWESOME, Hobo with a Shotgun was SHIT) and we also finally got Resident Evil: Dark Side Chronicles finished. My previous stance stands, and I was really shocked at how little bonus content there was. The little there was was so incredibly cheap Capcom might as well have not bothered.

Once Resi was out of the way we took on Dead Space: Extraction, a present from Monsieur Smith to feed our light gun game habit. I'll say this much, this game is Fucking Quality, with a capital Q.

To keep a theme running I'm once again going to go on about comics. Yes OK I'm missing my weekly trip to the store to pick them up, and then get home and devour them over a coffee.

Moving at the end of August means that I've not been in a brick and mortar store since DC's whole new 52 kicked off. Just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, DC has rebooted their entire universe and every single issue was a new number 1 from the very beginning. Sort of. OK it's not that simple but I'm not interested in that right now. What I'm here to get at is Digital Comics and pricing.

It's been nearly a month since I've moved back home. My diet's a little better, my alcohol consumption has dropped dramatically and I've even been doing a little bit of exercise. Overall my body is probably a little bit healthier. However, my geekiness is suffering. Scunthorpe has no comic shops and I can't seem to find any role playing groups at all.

I knew this was going to be a problem as soon as I made the decision to shift 400 odd miles south. It was a problem I thought I could cope with. That doesn't seem to be the case.

As a self-proclaimed geek and having often been regarded as someone holding a high office within that establishment I'm ashamed to say I've never watched Fringe. I remember a lot of noise being made at the end of one season (see how little I know) when there was a bunch of comics seen from an alternate reality that were slightly different to the ones we know and love. At the time I thought “Huh, that's pretty cool. I should probably watch that.” Yet I still didn't get off my arse and bother.

To be fair I've done my 24 and Chuck marathons, plus Supernatural while I was on break from here. When Smith started moaning at me for not watching it I thought it was about time I pulled my finger out and with the big move I've got a lot more time on my hands so I decided to see what the fuss was all about. Boy, I should have gotten round to this sooner.

I've never been a big believer in a person's politics affecting their art. If Adolf Hitler had done some rather fantastic paintings, they wouldn't be less so just because Hitler was the man behind the brush. The paintings wouldn't any the less beautiful just because a deplorable man painted them, and conversely he wouldn't be any less evil just because he's painted some pretty pictures. Why do I bring this up? Because I'm going to talk about Orson Scott Card.

Although this article about Saints Row 3 is a bit old, within is a comment I found quite interesting and have been saving it for when I finally got round to writing the blog again.

“Unfortunately, as with Red Faction: Armageddon, Volition has decided to remove competitive multiplayer from the game in order to put all of the developmental focus on the single-player and co-op. It stings a little, but it's kind of understandable given that every man and his FPS-playing dog will probably be playing either Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3 online come November.”

I like this. A lot! I wonder how many people are slowly realising its practically impossible to take on the big FPS' with a game like Saints Row. Over recent years I've repeatedly banged my head against a wall for decisions made during production of games that I've seriously been looking forward to. EA seems to be one of the worst for it too, and not the be all and end all of 'evil' computer game companies Activision.

So, I've moved home. One of the biggest decisions of my life, bizarrely made when I was half-cut in the middle of a park. I could go on about the repercussions its going to have on me, but lets not bore anyone here. Two things are important to this article.
1. It means I'm going to start writing my blog again so yes there is a blog, which is why this article exists.
2. This is going to have serious affect on my comic collecting.

As I started working out the minor details of my four hundred mile move, one of the things to take into account was how was I going to get hold of my comics. Now this decision was made months ago and with each trip to the comic shop I often wondered what would be kept and what would I start weening myself off straight away.