I would like to pretend that I am a pretentious video gamer and that I don’t need video game reviews to help sway my buying decisions, but that is simply not true. I, like most gamers, do not have the luxury to spend hours playing a game before they buy it. There are always going to be games where I don’t need a review to help me buy it, like Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, but for the less popular games, reviews help me decide wether or not I should shell out $60 for a game or not. I was listening to the latest podcast episode of 1-Up’s Retronauts, where they were talking about Final Fantasy: Crisis Core where I heard Jeremy Perish give the game a rating of B+.
Continue reading Your Game Gets a C-
Ahh, pinball. One of my great joys, as they are fun to play, plus provides a good challenge every time you plunk some quarters into them. I wouldn’t consider myself a fantastic player, but I do have my moments and some machines treat me better than others. That’s why it’s fun to find a good player to watch and learn some new skills to take into account and progress to becoming a better player.With this in mind, when I found out the Pinball Hall of Fame was hosting the IFPA 5 tournament this weekend, I was kind of stoked, it should no doubt be filled to the brim with lots of great players and should be a lot of fun. Right?
Unfortunately, that wasn’t really the case when we went in there today. Probably the only good experience that came out of it was a respect for playing machines on tournament mode, since they are a true test of skill. A lot of features are locked out or changed when switched to this form, making high scores a sometimes-impossible task. Machines that normally have replay scores in the hundreds of millions, mainly because getting points isn’t hard on normal play, become much lower due to any shot giving you practically nothing. But, oddly enough, it makes getting scores that much more gratifying since you really did earn them through playing well.
Continue reading IFPA 5 (or: How Professional Pinball Players Are Douchebags)
