Irish Coffee, March 29th, 2013

The forth wall dosen't exist this morning (if it ever did), so let's get right to it. Oh, and sorry about all the ads that were tastelessly festooned all over my blog. I was mucking around with my page design and forgot to turn adblock off. Should be much cleaner now.

Oh sweet jesus, why did I do it? I suppose that’s not important now, the damage is done. I am hungover. My hangover has a hangover. It feels like my brain is swaying around the inside of my skull on a pendulum. Just one big, viscous blob of gook trying desperately to mold itself into a usable object. I’ve cut down on my drinking, but one day a week I allow myself to get college-level shitfaced, and last night was my night. I couldn’t handle my apartment anymore, as I hadn’t left it in 6 days. Just writing and gaming, and not attending to my more carnal requirements. So I went out. Consumed half a bottle of Jameson. Explanations aside. Here I am, and I am viciously hungover.

Between the protein shakes and Aleve, I’ve been playing Bioshock Infinite. There’s something magnificent about gaming when hungover, provided your equilibrium can handle something fast paced. The escapism is never more pronounced that it is when your brain’s turned to jelly. It’s a far easier thing to suspend disbelief when your mind’s only half awake, I suppose. I don’t think I’m much past alpha sleep right now. Another symptoms of hangovers (at least my hangovers), is an emotional instability that would make Hera blush, and Bioshock Infinite is attacking my feels with extreme prejudice.

Very minor Bioshock Infinite spoiler ahead. It won’t ruin anything for you. 

You lovable bitch.

Elizabeth, the girl you’ve been tasked with rescuing and your A.I. companion for most of the game is one of the most - and I’m sorry for lack of a better word, here - "real" game characters I’ve ever come into contact with. This was, as I understand it, no easy task. While watching the PAXEast Bioshock Infinite panel last week, it was mentioned that the most difficult part of development was programming Elizabeth to interact with and “think” about the environment around her using a giant well of animations, reactions, and voice recordings. She doesn’t react to the world around her because it was scripted, the AI just organically and randomly reacts to points of interest (a painting, a view, a rose bush, a corpse) selected by the programmers.

Apparently, the degree of difficulty for creating her was such that they had a “team Liz” and according to Ken Levine many “dark nights” were spent considering whether they could scrap the character completely and still have a meaningful game. In much the same way I’m considering scrapping this blog post all together, because thinking this hard and staring at a screen with this intensity is making my hair hurt. It was the only thing that didn’t, up until now.

What all of this means for the emotionally vulnerable end user who had far too much Jameson last night is a level of attachment to a companion that is completely unparalleled. So unparalleled, in fact, that when I was separated from Liz after the first few hours with her, I actually missed her. And not just because she was no longer around to toss health and ammo my way during a fight. The whole thing is kind of creeping me out, if I’m honest. Thanks, Irrational, you’ve made it weird.

I’m going to stop typing now, as my throat and my keyboard feel like they’re made of granite. I’m also excited to dive back into Bioshock Infinite and get my companion back... I just realized the last second fiddle that had such an emotional impact on me: Companion Crate. But that was just projection, Elizabeth almost feels real. Again, weirding me out.

I need to do something masculine. Perhaps Hair of the Dog this hangover. I feel like I’m losing man points all over the place this morning. Wait, I got it:

Where the fuck did Elizabeth's tits go, huh? I want answers!

Mission Statement

Just a quick note, but an important one: I can’t stress enough that everything you read on this blog is created in one shot, is not edited beyond elimination of outstretched typos, and is otherwise a literal account of the first 400-800 words to spill out of my brain on any given day.

As such, any claims I make are the fever-dream of a caffeine junkie. any opinions I have are far from fully formed, and any perspective offered shouldn’t be shared by a human with a firm grasp on reality.

Just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page. For the record. 

All professional work can be found at nedlesesne.com.

Now play a fucking video game. Or have a drink. Or have a talk with a friend. Or see a movie. Why in god’s name are you reading? Don’t waste your time with this massively outdated means of conveyance.

Yours in honesty,

Ned Lesesne

Irish Coffee, March 28th, 2013

I need more coffee. Also, it’s Thursday, and I’ve banged out over 14k words this week. They’re getting weaker. I think I need a break. Some time on the beach. But winter isn’t going down without a fight in Charleston, SC, and while its efforts at further relevance are futile, its tenacity is starting to piss me off. I must surf, and I fucking hate wet suits, so that means waiting on the weather. Today's blog is... well, it's there, and that's about all you should hope for. I'm going to dive back into Bioshock Infinite, and perhaps I'll emerge with some inspiration for tomorrow.

When this image popped up on Hideo Kojima’s Twitter feed last week, I should have known something was up. When The Phantom Pain debuted at the VGAs, I should have known it was a Metal Gear game. Clearly, I’m not too perceptive. Either that or further attempts to shoehorn knowledge into my brain less than half an hour after rolling out of bed should be avoided. Whatever the case, we’ve been given a full trailer, it's Metal Gear Solid 5, and Kojima has gone completely Tarantino. Observe:

Unkillable hero wakes from coma and has lost use of their legs. Garbage track with a Kill Billian guitar twang bubbles up from the beginning of the trailer. Editing violent scenes to serene music. I don’t think I need to draw a map. All stuff Tarantino stole first.

Welcome to 2013, where the ideas are incestuous and the points don’t matter. This whole thing’s getting so meta it might as well be a Reddit post. Tarantino steals from anime and live action Japanese cinema to make Kill Bill, which is then stolen by the most Japanese person I have ever read a tweet from. (You should click that link and follow his feed if you don’t. Kojima tweets with the frequency of a Suburban-American teenager, but with a slightly better grasp of the english language.)

Flights of mutual pastiche aside, I must say this trailer made all the tingly bits jump up and take notice.  Full Solid Snake. I don’t know that I’ve been this hyped for a next gen Metal Gear since I saw screen shots of Metal Gear Solid 2 in PlayStation Magazine fourteen years ago. And it will most assuredly be next gen. Playable at E3? Probably not, but even one as coy as Kojima can’t hide the truth when he’s presenting graphical showcases of this caliber. MGS5 confirmed for PS3 and 360, but this trailer isn’t running on either of those platforms.

Then they gave us the bad news: David Hayter will not be returning as the voice of Snake. Tingly gone: Full Liquid Snake again. I honestly don’t know that the game will be playable without Hayter's voice. What are they going to do? Hire someone with a completely different voice? Have them do their best David Hayter impersonation, which in itself was an impersonation of Snake Plissken from Escape From New York? Hayter’s dulcet tones have been wooing me since I was a sophomore in high school, and I don’t know that I can handle a Metal Gear game without him.

Whatever the case, the prospect of an open world Metal Gear Solid running on next gen technology is an exciting one, if dulled by the departure of Snake's One True Voice. I had a hard enough time dealing with old Snake in the last game, now I'm going to be stuck with even older Snake that doesn't even sound like Snake anymore. I'm excited, but sad at the same time... Sooo... Slushie Snake?

The preceding was one giant dick joke. You're welcome.

Irish Coffee, March 27th, 2013

A few minutes ago - when I wrote this - I was in a good mood... Not so much now. For some stupid fucking reason I decided to again take the easy route and digitally acquire Bioshock: Infinite. The download process went more smoothly this time, but GODDAMNFUCKING PSN added double the requested funds to my "wallet!" Now I'm in the bowels of Sony's support page, which works so well that it's making me want to burn things. Krrghh... Anyway, good morning and what-not. On with the show.

I spend a lot of time complaining about video games, and I’m not alone. We hardcore gamers and game writers spend inordinately large swaths of time dismantling every aspect of game creation, debating their artistic merit, and downright complaining about everything from obtrusive objective markers and murky color palettes to cookie cutter male leads and unoriginal weapon choices. This game’s not good enough because ____. The game industry isn’t realizing its potential because ____. 

But deep down, below the debate and the bullshit and the need to belittle multimillion dollar projects, I’d like to think we do it for the love of the game. And while our childhood clutches a Ghostbusters action figure as it slowly backs into the time fog, I’d like to think that every once in a while, we’re allowed to forget all of this “adult” shit and just stand in awe. I mean look at this fucking video game.

I sat through all 17 minutes of that video with a stupid grin on my face, and managed to keep Cynical Ned (the rat bastard) chained up in the back of my mind for the duration. That’s what the hardcore/game writer set seems incapable of doing. Though one excuse is understandable: Every time a person on the internet gushes about a video game, the fanboys descend, tearing him to pieces. If a reviewer does it, accusations of bribery fall from the sky like birds in a Hitchcock movie.

But today, and consequences be damned, I’m going to gush. Look how far we’ve come. The complexity of the modern video game is astounding. Motion capture, weather effects, lighting, physics, sound effects, music, AI, all coming together in a ballet of interactive storytelling. Game developers have managed to turn animated board games into the storytelling and artistic medium of a generation. Like it or not, play them or not, video games are an entirely new means of conveyance that are just beginning to understand their own greatness, and they belong to our generation.

In spite of arguments about their being violent and encouraging anti-social behavior, digital distribution and the general awesomeness of The Video Game has spread these creations around the world, bringing together people of all races and religious backgrounds so they can call each other fags on Xbox Live. So what, we’re all having a good time. 

They aren’t quite there yet, but games can change the world. They can deliver experiences and messages without language or edict, and will be the legacy of a generation. The artistic medium of the digital age.

And I suppose this gives us some answers as to why we complain so much. Games really can be so much more than they are, but seem at every turn to be ham-stringed by ultra-violence, sophomoric philosophy, and over-muscled supermen. But dissecting a game, popping the hood and seeing the dozens or hundreds of men and women that manage to put these things together, and it seems high time that we step back and applaud their efforts, for creation of these games is no easy task.

And did you see that trailer?! The dude was all bang-bang-bang, and the building was all BOOOSH... That shit was awesome.

Irish Coffee, March 26th, 2013

Everybody’s playing Bioshock: Infinite, and I’m just sitting here physically abusing a teenager. Tomb Raider, people, get your mind out of the gutter. With luck, I shall have Bioshock: Infinite in the coming days, but for now, some Tomb Raider stuff. Cuz no one on the internet has been talking about that at all. Nope... 

Everyone involved in gaming, from well respected developer to lowly controller jockey is presently embroiled in an age old debate as it applies to video games. It's been around for years, but it's been popping up a lot lately:

• Games with exclusively female heroines don't sell
• No gun toting Ellen Page on the cover of Beyond: Two Souls
• Remember Me... protagonist had to be a female
• And this ridiculous piece of shit from a pillar of journalistic integrity: 40 Hottest Women in Tech

I have a rather long winded article on this subject that will have Tomb Raider woven into it (coming soon!), but I have a few thoughts to go with your second or third cup of coffee this morning. Or your afternoon beer. Or evening shot of heroin. Whatever, I’m not here to judge. 

First, a broad point: This isn’t just an issue for video games. How many action movies star a tough female lead? How many recently? I can only think of Haywire and that was a fucking amazing flick because Steven Soderbergh can do no wrong. But it took a star that was a former UFC fighter to tie the whole thing together. There aren’t many professional fighters that make good movie stars, and just by the numbers, even fewer professional female fighters. Gina Carano is a special breed. Gorgeous by the Americanized standard of beauty (she can do/be this), and capable of beating my ass, your ass, and just about any ass she deems in need of a beating. Oh, you don’t believe me? 

Before I dig myself into a hole with a blog I write before I’ve had enough coffee to think clearly: We (society, the planet) have a set list of things that we categorize as badass, and this list carries with it stereotypically masculine traits. Women, therefore, have a rough time of it. Nobody likes an unattractive movie star (especially in the heightened reality of the action genre), but big tough women don’t normally meet an admittedly ridiculous standard of beauty born from years of misogyny and half-dumb, slack-jawed consumer focus groups.

The need for heroines that look like models and fight like Wolverine in a cage match is representative of a societal issue, and not exclusive to the sphere of video game development. Art imitates life in spite of arguments to the contrary. The debate moves forward at the glacial pace it moved in our own country: How long before an LGBT hero/heroine other than a FemShep controlled by a drooling teenaged boy? Without using Google, how many black or middle eastern or hispanic game heroes can you name? Lead character heroes; on the cover heroes.

This brings us back to Tomb Raider, a game with a modernized but still admittedly idealized Lara Croft. Everyone has mentioned her bust size, and while they aren’t nearly the traffic cones they were in the late nineties, the world moved past a love for silicon basketballs around the time Baywatch was cancelled. According to shitty mens magazines I don’t read, the focus seems to be the likes of Megan Fox and Jennifer Lawrence. A far cry from Pamela Anderson.

And while Lara remains an unrealistic representation of the feminine form, and while her character development falls apart after the first hour of gameplay, she embodies many of the advantages of a female action lead: She can be emotional without being histrionic, she can be tough without being “masculine,” and she can brutally slaughter wave after wave of baddy without need of space armor or a chainsaw bayonet. Specifics aside, she is a fucking action hero and little mention is made of her gender past one-liners from bad guys: 

“It’s just one girl!” 

“Well that one girl is kicking our ass!”

Tomb Raider is a gritty reboot action title on par with the best in the business, and the hero happens to be a heroine. As a guy that’s controlled every roided-up space marine this side of the Oort Belt, I must say I’m really enjoying my controller time with a strong female lead. The world could use more of them.

And dat ass. Jesus.

Irish Coffee, March 25th, 2013

Happy Monday, dear reader! I'm running a little late today, but it's not my fault. It's PSN's fault. In an effort to download Tomb Raider, I jumped through more hoops than an abused bengal tiger in a circus tent...made of abused metaphors... At least the experience has given me a topic for my warm up. It's extremely rough (and short) today, but I had an extremely rough weekend. It's also Monday. Fuck Monday.

If I have one hope for the PS4, it's that Sony fixes their completely broken network. I don't care that it's free, I don't care that they've offered some really amazing services of late (such as Day 1 Download), or that PlayStation Plus members have awesome services and "free" games thrown at them on a daily basis. An attempt to download the full version of the new Tomb Raider should be a smooth experience. I am, after all, giving them sixty dollars. But it wasn't a smooth experience, it was a misery of error messages and wasted time.

I had no trouble adding funds to my PlayStation wallet (go figure), but it was all down hill after that. Pressing the download button: Session Timed Out. Second try: You have been signed out of the PlayStation network. Couldn't log back in and restarted my console. Ok, logged in, signed into the store, Tomb Raider is in my download list: You do not have enough free space on your hard drive. Fuck. How much space do I have? Answers found in the bowels of the XMB, have to delete most of my game data. Hard drive clear, back into the store, click download on Tomb Raider: You do not have enough free space. Fuck. You. I have enough free space, don't be a dick.

Restart the console, check the HD, plenty of space. Back into the store, click download: Session Timed Out. MOTHERFUCKERAREYOUKIDDINGME!?! Log out, log in, download starts. I have a little over two hours to wait before I can play. Convenience made manifest. /sarcasm

I don't live very far from a GameStop, but I'm a profoundly lazy person with a job that affords me the luxury of working in my underwear or my Ezio costume (should the urge strike me.) I'll take sitting on my couch over getting dressed almost any day of the week. Especially when winter decides that it isn't quite done with the South Carolina low country yet. But this isn't the only reason for today's digital purchase.

The tide is turning toward digital distribution dominance in the game world, and surfers know first and foremost not to fight the tide. I've been using Steam effectively for quite some time, but until today I've never used the PlayStation Network to download a full game. As I mentioned, I'm rather proud of my collection of little plastic cases. I know I'm first world probleming right now, but dammit they're providing a service that takes hard earned dollars from many-a broke video gamer and it should function a little more smoothly.

Sony seemed aware of these problems during their PS4 debut, and all signs point to an improved pay-to-play network in line with Xbox Live. I'd be fine with that. Charge me, overcharge me, call me your bitch while you do it, I don't care. Just as long as the service works, I'll be a happy camper.

However, complain as my under-caffeinated brain might, in fifty-eight minutes and I can play Tomb Raider and I'm still in my underwear.

The future is so bright! And pantsless.

Irish Coffee, March 22nd, 2013

Good morning again. This consistency must be scaring you. Don't worry, it's scaring me too. Shh... Sorry, did that get weird? At present, PAX has just ramped up and Blizzard is debuting it's latest cash grab in the form of a tradable card game for tablets and...otherwise, I would assume. I don't know, I have it muted. More on that tomorrow, probably, as I already feel a rant brewin'. Today we talk about...

I don’t know how many times I’ve walked/driven/parkoured straight into a wall or off the side of a building because of an objective marker. Little glowing bastards. Like a moth to a flame, or a drunkard to a bar, we blindly follow bright yellow or blue or red flashing lights that tell us where to go. Taunting us as they hover in the air near our goal point. At their best, objective markers can give us an idea of where to go within the ever-growing game maps being thrown at us by developers. At their worst, they kill immersion and force us to run down the same alley seven times, because how the fuck am I supposed to know that I need to cut through a sewer to arrive at my goal.

I finally played through the entirety of Deus Ex: Human Revolution recently, and (spoiler alert, by the way) I still couldn’t tell you whether there are three or four regions of the China portion of the game. A map twice visited. I’d just follow the yellow and blue markers, and after some trial and error, I’d arrive at my goal. Certain areas of the map managed to burn themselves into my head after a period of time, but I don’t really know the city in any real way. Take it back a few years, and I can tell you the entire floor plan of Resident Evil 1 or 2, recite the regions of every Zelda map up to and including A Link to the Past, and Yokosuka from Shenmue hangs in my memory like a town I grew up in. None of the latter utilized objective markers, and as a result, I was more immersed in the game world. 

Then I fell into the sewer.

I’m not saying that objective markers aren’t necessary. It would takes years to play through Grand Theft Auto or Saint’s Row if you had to stop to look at streets signs every block with the police actively trying to kill you. (Saint’s Row wins that war, by the way, with their racing-game-inspired turn markers) But a game like Deus Ex could have benefited from elimination of objective markers, thereby requiring the player to read mission descriptions carefully and study the environment to find their goal.

The only explanation I can think of for use of these things aside from something as simple as “It’s just what we do now,” is a matter of difficulty. The whole game industry seems to be in a race to dumb itself down fast enough to keep up with the atrophied minds of the social media generation. “You mean I actually have to read things and use intuition and situational awareness to find my way around this carefully crafted digital world that took thousands of collective man hours to construct? LAME! I’ve gotta speed run this bitch before the new CoD comes out!”

I don’t think it would be a stretch for game designers to include something like objective markers as at least a toggle option. Or to go a little out of their way during development so that goal areas could be found using subtle clues in the mission outline (ala Shenmue). This isn’t simply a matter of “how convenient is it for the player,” but a matter of immersion. The golden goose of game creation.

Presently, millions of dollars are being spent to develop new, shiny, expensive hardware in a bid to create the next generation of immersion. Oculus Rift, next gen haptics, 3D cards that can render the puss inside of a blackhead on the face of the villain holding you at knife point. All of this effort, when something as simple as taking a glowing yellow icon off of the screen could push us forward by taking us back.

And I’m one failed parkour attempt away from another broken controller, so let’s get this done quickly.

Irish Coffee, March 21st, 2013

See? Told you I was back. I'm putting myself on a self-imposed and rather tight schedule, so my intro is going to be brief... Whelp, see ya later!

Maybe we are just a bunch of suckers, and maybe big game publishers know it. After all, they track our purchase history, make us like a Facebook page to access their latest trailer, know how many people are willing to shell out an extra fifty or a hundred bucks for a special edition game filled with 10 bucks worth of cheap, molded plastic “collectors items." If it earned us extra DLC we’d probably lick an active nuclear reactor, or run naked through the streets of Harlem hurling racist epitaphs for a exclusive purple costume or a +2000 Sword of Murder.

What I’m getting at is that we’re suckers, they know it, and they’ll never stop cashing in- Oooh! Look! A shiny!

This game is presently wadding up my nerd panties something awful. I was a unique child, in that I absolutely loved the Ninja Turtles... Wait, that’s not right. I was exactly like every child on the face of the planet that had evolved beyond drooling on to a nappy (and some that hadn’t), and watched gleefully as the Ninja Turtles marketing machine took my parents and their savings account behind a 7-11 and viciously attacked them. As such, I will be buying TMNT: Out of the Shadows on day one, and will happily punch and nunchaku (Mikey4Life, bitches) my way through as many Foot Clan as the game can throw at me. Even if the game (which is looking fantastic) somehow manages to suck, I won’t particularly care. Or more to the point: I won’t notice. It’s Ninja Turtles, and dammit, that’s enough.

I’m not in some way suggesting that this Ninja Turtles game is some sort of cheap marketing tool in the form of shovelware designed to skim the pockets of an aging Ninja Turtles fan base. It looks like a lot of love has gone into this game, and the combat seems to have a Batmanian refinement to it (if it benefits from the expected improvements from alpha to final launch.) But would it be as exciting if it weren’t another Ninja Turtles game? Or even a Final Fight reboot? What if it were just some guys in tank tops? Or chicks with big tits (whole different set of PR problems, there.) Or a tie-in to the Michael Bay movie that’s still inexplicably being made? What if it didn’t benefit from nostalgia? Would I still be as excited? Probably not.

As gamers, we’re willing to put up with a lot for new content from franchises we love, and there isn’t a lot we can do about it. Fans will complain all day about things like the Durango’s inability to play games directly from the optical drive, but at the end of the day, they’ll only have one question: Ok, but I can still play Halo 5, right?

We are an extremely devoted group, us gamers, but we often put on fan-blinders for the sake of denying harsh realities. We’re the idiot in a horror movie that goes outside despite the killer’s having just been out there 45 seconds ago. We’re the abused partner in a relationship that keeps taking back the other, even after fifteen acts of infidelity and a flaming case of gonorrhea. 

And like a character in a movie, we are trapped. We have no where else to go. They can as easily walk off of the screen and out of the theatre as we can leave games behind because of corporate greed that still refuses to use lube before it fucks us.

But seriously, this new Ninja Turtles game looks fucking awesome.

Irish Coffee, March 20th, 2013

I'm back baby! The following is a little heavy, but I promised that the posts on this blog would be uncut warm-ups, and that sometimes means that they're as heavy as Nibbler poop (two Futurama references in as many sentences. Woo!) This is the first day of my return to the daily blog I abandoned to work on a book that is almost done. It will be released, and I'll drop details here when it's ready, but for now, here's the usual half-awake, half-readable mess you've come to know and tolerate. Expect updates four days a week Mon-Sat., from now until the end of time or until I'm an old rich burnout... Or the blog moves. Viva la whiskey!

No matter the convenience, I refuse to refer to the list of downloaded titles I have access to as my “video game collection.” My video game collection sits comfortably in huge stacks around my home, serving as decoration. Row after row of pressed plastic, dusted and organized. The case is all part of the experience of buying a new game. Driving home from the store with excitement rippling through my nervous system, peeling back the impossibly durable layer of cellophane, and opening the case to be greeted with that new game smell. It is in these moments that I find a tinge of the youthful excitement that defined video gaming for me during the first decade I played. This nostalgic moment also brings me face-to-face with an unfortunate reality: I’m turning 30 in a little over a month.

Hard to believe, and harder still ignore. Age hasn’t had much of a physical impact yet, but it’s starting to change the way I think. I’m trying not to let it make me heavy, but a combination of the low-def video and wide-legged pants represented in historical documentation of my youth are making it difficult to avoid the encroaching sepia tone fog that simultaneously blurs and idealizes my past. See? Right there. Fucking heavy. Let’s lighten the mood: Poopie pee-pee fart penis... Jesus, that just felt disingenuous. If I can’t laugh at genitalia or bodily fluids, what’s left for me? I’ve lived my life in a perpetual state of adolescence, and age and responsibility are making it increasingly difficult to drink Mountain Dew and laugh at my own farts, as is my wont. Stupid age and responsibility.

But enough about my 1/3 life crisis. I will buy games in little plastic cases off of a shelf until such behavior becomes an impossibility, or impossibly niche and expensive. I’ve already managed to leave behind this concept in relation to movies, but I can’t even entertain it in relation to video games. It could have something to do with a youth spent with very little money and more affordable VHS tapes on my shelves than video games. The dream of my youth now realized holds some emotional importance for me. Or it could just be that I have a more intimate relationship with video games, and that in spite of my love for film, video games will always mean more to me. 

Or it could be that the most amazing film experiences of my entire life have occurred in giant dark rooms miles from home and lasted a maximum of three hours, while the most meaningful gaming experiences have occurred in the comfort of my own living room. It could also be the aforementioned decoration, and that my nesting instinct compels me to surround myself with physical reminders of the many worlds I can escape to and explore. 

Or it could just be the smell. Bear with me.

The experience of playing a video game as a kid involved that smell, the sound of the cellophane, all of the aforementioned physical cues that tell my mind that it’s time to get down to some serious escapism with a new video game. I’m like Pavlov’s Dog, salivating at the bell even if there isn’t a playable video game in sight. All of these sensations amount to the experience of playing a new video game, and they are hardwired. I almost need them for the full experience.

I’m sure that one day, once on-demand and streaming game services have done to GameStop what Netflix did to Blockbuster, I’ll access most of my gaming experiences in such a way. I’m not unaware of the future or frightened of it. I’ll move on. 

But one day I’m just going to choke back a tear as I walk into my game room and remember the past, cane in hand, the last wisps of hair dancing on my head. I’ll have saved a game. Just one. I'll leave it wrapped and never play it. I’ll open it on that day, and it will all come flooding back, and I’ll be young for another moment. And I'll play.

I wonder if Mountain Dew will keep for fifty years...