I come from a family that used to be pretty strict on the whole “entertainment” side of things.

My parents migrated here from Hong Kong with not much to work with. They started out working in kitchens and gradually worked their way up to a number of restaurants, a take away store and a catering business. For those of you unfamiliar with the glorious hospitality industry, restaurants are hard work - it’s physically and mentally draining, with long hours and tight margins.

Needless to say, there wasn’t much room for trivial things in our household like “games consoles”.

I wasn’t entirely deprived, though. The crowning glory of my formative gaming years would definitely have been my GameBoy Original. I was stoked, because whenever I asked for anything beyond a calculator, the response would usually be a firm “no” . My mum even made a list of conditions I had to fulfil before she would buy it, and I accepted them blindly just to get the damned thing. My dad condemned the idea, saying that I had been spoiled rotten, and that my future was as good as gone. It was like I was given a pound of crack cocaine or something.

I reckon I haven’t turned out too badly.

But I guess their fears were confirmed - I played that thing within an inch of its life. I snuck in as much time as I could into that humble little machine. Before it came along, whenever I went to friend’s places I would always be so incredibly envious of their gaming gear. Their beastly 486s compared to my pokey Tandy TL-1000, their Mega Drives and their SNESes compared to my…nothing. At the time all I had was my GameBoy, and it was good.

(And before you think, “Why don’t you get a paper route or something and make your own money, you leech”, I was obligated to work for my parents. Gratis. Doesn’t leave much time for real work.)

They knew they made a mistake, too. They saw me playing and feared for my future (as most Asian parents do). They hid my precious GameBoy everywhere they could - on top of cupboards, in linen closets, in saucepans and under beds. I would spend a good amount of time going through the house just to find it and get my fix of 5 minutes more. Just 5 minutes more.

Getting a new computer only made matters worse. Remember when you could lock computers with a key? They locked me out of the family computer. Again, I would hunt for the key all over the house. I think I even went so far as to try picking at the lock.

Now that I am gainfully employed, I have a suitably powerful PC and a 360 with a nice selection of titles, as well as a DSLite for the train. I’m considering getting a PS3 on top of this as well.

I feel like I’m making up for lost time in my youth, but at the same time I’m kinda glad that I was kept in line. I doubt that I’d have any less love for games now than I would if I were spoilt rotten. Hell, I reckon I can appreciate them more for what they are instead of whining about slipped release dates and such.

So, to all those parents that are holding out on their kids - you’re most likely doing the right thing by them in the end. Just keep in mind that we’re going to spite you for it once we get our first pay slip.

Before the onslaught of new titles that came out recently, I’d been busying myself with Arcade titles.

I don’t know if there’s some kind of Facebook quiz out there that suggests I’m a raging limp-wrist for doing so, but in my defence these games are fucking great.

Shadow Complex tells the story of an everyday guy (that conveniently has a military background) that gradually turns into a power-suited, super-shotgun wielding, grenade flinging, kung-fu fighting mean motherfucker of God. Sure, it’s hefty at 1200 MS points, but I’m vaporising soldiers, for fuck’s sake. I can think of activities that are far less rewarding.

Then there’s Ikaruga, which is turning my hair grey. It’s like the game itself is mocking me, laughing at my pitiful attempts to dodge bullets and change polarities in time, flooding the screen with energy beams and tiny bullets, and crushing me with moving platforms. It’s one of the few games that I actually have to focus and try to connect with the game, and feel my eyes gradually dry out as a result.

I suppose since we’re here, we may as well as throw Geometry Wars 2 in the mix. For a game that blinds me with pretty lights, thousands of particles and floods of enemies, it’s still just as addictive as the day I purchased it. I recently played versus mode with a couple of other SOGC admins, and hilarity ensued as we stole geoms from each other, bated each other into enemies, and cheated death as many times as we could to try and take first place. It’s going to take me a while before I start making an appearance on my leaderboards, though…

Speaking of multiplayer, Rocket Riot and Castle Crashers are regular titles that appear on our games rotation among the admins. I think the appeal with these games is that while they are co-operative titles on the surface, there is still a sense of rivalry and every-man-for-themselves. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve copped a rocket in the face from someone else’s wild firing in Rocket Riot, or how often I had to fight other players for scraps of gold in Castle Crashers. There is a cruel irony in the description “co-op”.

So yes - all in all, I’m rather pleased with the state of the “casual” games market. The calibre and quality of these games is well above expectations. The barriers to entry are fairly low, which means that anyone with patience, persistence and a good idea can follow through and potentially make millions.

And it’s refreshing to take a break from games that take themselves a little too seriously. I find it tiring to be continually inundated with ads and marketing campaigns, trying to convince me that this fourth sequel is so much better than the previous three. It’s nice to open up Steam and see a new title featured on the front page, with some simple artwork and a low price.

Hell, I haven’t even talked about PC and PS3 casual titles.

So, I’m back.

I’ve been busy with work (55-60 hour weeks can’t be wrong) and I’ve also been busy with the SOGC. Drama abound.

There won’t be as many reviews coming (hell, there probably won’t be as many posts coming) but I need a place to keep my game-related musings and rants.

We’ll see how long this lasts.

The unthinkable has happened - my 360 has died on me.

It’s not a run-of-the-mill RROD, either. It all started towards the end of a good gaming session when the graphics suddenly began to distort, as if the colour depth had changed to 16-bit. Eventually the signal output had completely vanished, leaving me with a console that could produce sound but no video. It was well out of warranty (and, if I remember correctly, the extended warranty only applies to RROD symptoms).

I was playing 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand at the time, so perhaps there was some kind of karmic force at work.

After a bit of investigation, I deduced that an X-Clamp mod was needed. After spending a bit of money on some opening tools and the necessary screws and washers, I cracked it open and got to modding.

All things considered, it went quite smoothly at first. The guide I followed to dismantle my 360 was extremely detailed and well written, and removing the x-clamps was not as difficult as I expected. Soon I had a neatly arranged pile of parts. With any luck, I could be done by this weekend.

Then I got to the heatsink.

It was a GPU heatsink that already had some standoffs screwed in. It had a hex head so you could use a wrench to remove it, but as I worked at it with the wrench I found that I was gradually stripping the edges. It was stuck fast.

Not to be taken aback, I decided to get a dremel and cut a line across the top so I could use a flat-head screwdriver to remove it. The screw was still stuck hard - so hard that when I tried using the screwdriver, the metal on the screw began to warp.

Dejected, I resorted to one last try - drilling a hole straight through the middle of the screw and using a screw extractor to gradually ease it out. After successfully getting the screw extractor to catch, I began to wind it out…and the tungsten screw extractor snapped clean off with a surprisingly clear *ping*.

So now I have a 360 GPU heatsink with a screw stuck in one of the holes. A replacement one is on its way to me.

Now that I think about it, I could have saved myself the money spent on drill bits and screw extractors and bought the replacement heatsink in the first place…but it’s the principle, damn it.

I’ve been playing a lot of fighting games recently. It started off somewhat innocently, throwing a few carefree fireballs in Street Fighter 4 and thinking nothing of it.

And suddenly I felt like something more. Maybe it was the lack of gritty realism. Perhaps I just wasn’t convinced that a Honda, a sumo wrestler, could exhibit such a display of dexterity and agility. Or it could have been the fact that Seth was pounding my characters skull into the screen while stealing my credit card numbers and using my computer as part of his spam botnet.

So I moved on to UFC 2009 Undisputed and Fight Night Round 4.

Fight Night Round 4 feels a lot more sedate than FNR3. FNR3 was about big haymakers, dramatic counter-punches and chicks in bikinis. It was larger than life, so to speak.

FNR4 is more grounded. There’s a lot more focus on how inside work is done, thanks to the improved model clipping and counter system. Stray punches can get caught in the opponent’s arms and wild blows can be hit and miss. Counters are somewhat easier to pull off and are a lot more punishing. Leaning isn’t as effective as in FNR3 but the addition of Weaving is useful (if somewhat open to abuse). The controls are bit more accessible and don’t require as many buttons. Clinching is still pretty rudimentary, since you can just press a button to push the other guy off you.

Undisputed, on the other hand, makes FNR4 look like a tickling competition. Nothing says “mainstream lower-middle class society” than glorifying no-holds-barred fighting, and Undisputed is king of the hill in this regard. Within 15 minutes I was going Muay-Thai on some poor sucker’s ass, whipping his neck and driving my knees into the bastard’s face. The submission/ground work wasn’t all too intuitive, with a lot of stick and button mashing to get some kind of action going. (Not to mention that seeing two sweaty grown men writhing on the ground can easily give the wrong impression.)

That wasn’t to say that, after spending a session on it, I felt the urge to drink a glass of raw eggs mixed with protein powder and join a kickboxing gym so I could “defend myself” after I’ve had a few drinks and some guy was trying to steal the girl I’d been hitting on all night.

I also find it amusing that the Government elect decide to say one thing about how it’s bad that we’re jacking cars in GTA, and yet they decide to classify a game that involves two grown men beating each other to submission in a cage. But hey - I figure the youth of today need to know when to tower over someone and beat their opponent’s face in.

The people at my work don’t look like they play games. They always talk about skiing trips, hiking treks and salsa classes. Some of them look like they’d barely know their way about an analog stick.

Yet it always surprises me when our lunch time talk turns to games; from debates over hardware and consoles to the latest and greatest titles, as well as reminiscing over old ones. (I guess it’s hard not to expect this coming from an IT environment, but I figure that we have a lower proportion of hardcore nerds compared to other companies out there.)

The push from companies to promote gaming in the mainstream is impressive. Games that I never thought would’ve taken off are overnight celebrities - Guitar Hero, Brain Training, The Sims. Game previews have moved on from the full page spreads in gaming magazines to rubbing shoulders with movie previews in the cinema. My local game stores are packed full during sale season to the point where I find it hard to move around, and the larger retailers now have whole sections dedicated to games instead of the piddly aisle or two.

And, to be perfectly honest, I would have never thought that the Wii would have taken off like it did. But it was so accessible. The learning curve was as difficult as you were proficient with handling a remote control. The interface had decreased from the 360’s imposing 10 button + two analog stick finger trap to a wand with a thumb button and a trigger.

What many adults had cast off as a bit of childhood fun has now suddenly become “socially accepted”. (Well, tell that my workmate’s newly wed wife who doesn’t want him to spend his days going “pew pew pew”.) Let’s ride the wave while we can.

I’m not against advertisements. They’re a great way to let us, the money-soaked public, know of new titles that we can look forward to soon. If the advertisement is witty / amusing / insightful in some way, then all the better.

What I’m against, however, are those background-cum-sidebar ads you see on various gaming sites. Am I the only one who finds them incredibly intrusive? I understand that these kinds of sites live off adsales - it’s their lifeblood. But I believe they’re less effective than marketers make them out to be.

Let’s take IGN as an example - this month, they have an advertisement for Assassin’s Creed 2. Fantastic; I’m looking forward to it very much. I wouldn’t have known it was Assassin’s Creed 2 if it weren’t for the other 2 flash banners ticking away on-screen, because the images consist of some blurry photo of a guy being strangled from behind, and a generic gloved hand with a patterned blade underneath. I could convey the same meaning by smearing Vasoline on a camera lens and going to a local goth pub. As for Gamespot, it feels like that there is more ad than content, thanks to the awkward “navigation bar” at the top of the screen and the giant image of Altair pushing the content about a third of the way down towards the fold.

I don’t like the fact that background ads are becoming more popular because they’re intrusive enough as is. I’m just dreading the day when we’ll all be wearing Internet implants and we’ll be getting these ads burned into our brain stems.