Disclaimer: Despite the subject I am neither living nor any part australian.
So, for fear of my kinect2 nsa-cam steaming my information and my playstations sneaking over to my wallet to take my card info and my Wii and WiiU plotting to kill me this year.. no.. next year, please understand i wont be too detailed as to my identity, so no name or exact location, or detailed back story for you, despite not having any of this information of course you are free to run up a huge bill on my card buying Fifa packs.
Now, with all the generalizations out of the way, Hi.
Kinda late in the process of doing this introduction so forgive me. If you're here to try and figure out which console I'm a fanboy of so you can peg all of my future posts are irrelivant because im either trolling or being a fanboy, you'll be leaving decidedly dissapointed for I am rather boringly platform agnostic.
While I refuse to go as far as claiming I am unbiased because it's my firm belief nobody actually is, I will go out on a limb and say that if a game is good, and I enjoy it, the game that disk or cartidge is currently stuck in to plays absolutely no part, what-so-ever in my opinion of the title, just as it does not do so if i dont like the title either.
I did not, for example put down the controller, conflicted, not sure if i should keep playing and having fun or "stop playing the enemy" when I sat playing perfect dark zero at the launch of the 360, nor when I sat through several other great games such as Halo and Alan Wake, nor did I do so when making accurate rally liveries for people in Forza Motorsport 3.
I did not feel a shred of guilt or betrayal the occasions I would instead reach for my WiiMote and play Xenoblade or later, Last Story and my wifes favorite, Fragile Dreams.
I did not feel a shred of guilt or betrayal when I plugged in my launch edition PS3 and played Resistance Fall of Man and Motorstorm, or at any point throughout the lives of all three systems as I played each and every game that took my interest.
In November I imported a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (More on that later), Buying content for these consoles digitally through Amazon and similar stores, Playing and thuroughly enjoying Dead Rising 3, Killzone Shadow Fall, Forza 5 and the PS4 version of Battlefield 4, switching back now and then to previous consoles to play Beyond two souls, GT5 and even back to my Gamecube to play Resident Evil Zero.
For all intents and purposes, i DO NOT CARE who made the system, or the game, i DO care however, about the games.
That does not mean I do not hold opinions that many will translate into hatred of certain consoles, so I'll ream these off for you nice and early, be sure to take note.
Uncharted - I am excited for Uncharted 4, but the first three did little for me, or my wife, Like her I enjoyed the exploration angle of things and the occasional secret hunting, but the rest of it I found to be mediocre.
God Of War - There is not a single game from this franchise that I can stand to play for more than 5 minutes.
Ryse - Basically a man version of heavenly sword, all looks and little else, if you took heavenly sword and the iOS game Infinity Blade, and they had a child, Ryse would be it, worst $60 I ever spent.
Gears of War - I have only played the first three and I doubt I will ever play any more, If i wanted to hear a bunch of sexually frustrated men grunting and swearing, trying to be macho and generally being a bunch of dudebros, i would go back to college where i would at least come away with a degree instead of a headache and an aversion to the color brown.
Mario - I didnt always dislike Mario, I loved the NES and Snes games, and the gameboy games, but right about the time of the GC i just fell out of love for the obese italian cliche, not a single mario game since has enticed me back to play except for the 3d world copy that came with my first 3DS (one I ended up losing at TGS and buying myself a Zelda special edition and a Monster Hunter 4 bundle for my wife).
But other than that, I avoid Mario like the plauge.
That isn't to say I don't see the artistic and creative merit of modern Mario games, and why they sell so well, but personally, Just not for me.
Kinect - Yes its popular, but billions in advertising and aggressive pushes to force market penetration kinda do that, It doesnt mean however that I like it, so when one of our cats took a stroll over the coffee table and knocked the new Kinect 2 down the back into the nest of wires, i could count all of the ducks i could give on a beadless abacus. It has been there since November and will probably remain there until we move.
Now on to other topics.
Current state of affairs.
Despite carrying no particular preference for any manufacturer, there comes a time at least twice a generation where a platform holder screws up, and screws up big time.
Microsoft did it with Xbox One, and piss poor customer interfacing with their XBL account status in the early days of the 360 as well as the red ring of death dabacle, Sony did it multiple times with the PS2 disk read errors, then later with their own version of RROD, the removal of OtherOS, Backwards compatibility in hardware, and later still lots of PSN hacks and issues.
More recently Nintendo have done it by abandoning their Wii for two years, replacing it with a poorly timed product and failing to deliver on their promises, barely advertising their shit and failing on every level to send a clear message to its consumers on what the thing even is, as such with the recent financial situation just how badly they have messed up has come to everyones attention, and as such I am quite rightly pissed off about it and openly voicing my opinion and dislike, just as i did for all the Sony screwups, and the Microsoft screwups, and the day Sega decided to tell me the dreamcast that was sat under my TV was now a defunct product they would no longer be supporting.
Now with all of that off of my chest, I'll move on to less hot-button topics.
I have been playing games since I can remember, everything from Colecovision to high spec PC / Xbox One / Ps4, I fairly often go back on myself and re-play games in their original form on the original consoles, properly, not through emulation.
As such I ended up with quite an expansive collection of consoles and games, many of which I can't even take photos of because a large portion of my collection is in the UK (Where I am from), I moved to Japan quite some time ago, bringing more of my collection over each time I make the 15 hour flight to the UK.
I would estimate that I have roughly 200 games for each console I own, more for the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 3, but generally the game genres and types are as expansive as you can get, everything from dancing games to racers, simes and fighters.
Often I will pick up a game even if it's had nothing but bad press, simply because I am an individual and as such even if the entire world hated something, it isn't an absolute certainty that I would too, so I end up with a lot of games other people hate but I enjoy, and if I dont enjoy it then I hold on to it incase my wife or friends will.
Generally speaking I have no favorite genre, I'll play virtually anything.
As for work, I started out with one job, a games developer back in the saturn days, through that and meeting the woman who would eventually become my wife, I end up where I am now, Living in Japan with two jobs, a developer and artist at a large studio and a product design engineer for a peripherals and accessories manufacturer, I basically design controllers, addons and things like that and the packages they go in to for several large Japanese and American retail chains.
When I'm not working, I am playing games at home, working on my cars or at an old convenience store down the road that has an old SNK cabinet outside, putting in 10y per credit for some retro goodness.
I'm a no-nonsense kinda guy, so I often come across blunt, cold, assholish or worse because I don't put in the time or effort to be subtle about whats on my mind, you can blame my wife for that, I guess you could say over the years shes rubbed off on me.
I have extensive knowledge of videogames, 1960s-1980s Japanese car mechanics, Solidworks, Commercial product design, C, Networking protocols and supporting frameworks, late 90s and early 2000s Sony console design and development processes, mostly learned through work or abssesive tinkering with hobbies.
With that in mind, before I'm asked what cars i tinker with, I have a 1969 Hakosuka Skyline, an R34 Skyline GT-R, a 1991 Celica GT4, and later this year will be taking delivery of a 2013 Nissan GT-R Black edition, I did have a Lancia delta integrale back in the UK (where my Celica currently is) but it was stolen in 2009.
So to finish up, I am a fan of games, not consoles, you should all try it sometime.
Anyway, if you're curious about anything i havent covered by all means ask.
PSN: ODY-Zero
XBL: xanxion
Steam: Nyonako (shared account, be warned!)
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