DayZ And Me

RIGHT THEN! First big rant for this blog incoming! Brace yourselves.

 Back in my second blog entry where I was describing the brief history when console gaming was my primary source of entertainment I mentioned in minor detail the tribal mentality of gamers and the way it feels justified to defend your actions/buying practices for whatever piece of hardware you chose, sometimes to a fanatical degree but what I didn't really jump upon was the fact that the defence of a chosen gaming franchise can be just as brutal as the machine you choose to play it on; a classic example being the Fifa/Pro Evolution Soccer yearly debacle or for a slightly less niche sample over the past 10 years you could use the annual iteration of Activision's Call of Duty when compared to EA's Battlefield/Battlefront cash grab as an example... but that rant is for another time. Coming from an outsider's perspective when it comes to games like these, (I've enjoyed both football and first person shooter games on both sides of the argument over the years but never enough to outright defend the "honour" of them) I find it fascinating that someone would uphold the prestige of a game, any game, for good or ill. Which leads me on to my featured topic for this blog entry, the game DAYZ.

But first: Did you know that I originally started my YouTube channel back in 2012 with 90% of the content being DayZ? I bet you didn't! The reason being for this lack of a past before regular uploads began once again 2 years ago was the fact that I was a little embarrassed to the extent of which I had DayZ content on the channel compared to other games and I didn't want anyone thinking my choice of video content from then is how I feel about gaming today, which I like to think has a much broader scope compared to how it used to be. I also have a lot more disposable income these days which probably helps too but I digress...

 Like many of you, I discovered this open world zombie survival game due to a Reddit post to the video The Days Ahead - Welcome to New Chernarus which starred a guy going by the name of CHKilroy as he and a group of "Survivors" went around the Chernarus map in Arma 2 trying to keep the undead hordes at bay in a fairly amusing fashion. This was continued for several episodes before the videos stopped for whatever reason, but by that point and along with over 100,000 other people I was enamoured by the concept of surviving in a open world zombie apocalypse. Now if you haven't guessed it already from what I've showcased on the channel over the last couple of years I think it's safe to say that I am a zombie FREAK. I love all kinds of zombie fiction and I'm sure that come Z day I won't be one of the first to die through lack of knowledge... lack of exercise yes, but not knowledge. So to have this game which dumps you in the middle of the Eastern Bloc and says "get on with it" motivated me to see what all the fuss was about. There was only one problem with my initial hankering for the end of the world; I didn't own Arma 2, let alone know how to play or even mod the bastard and that turned out to be as challenging as learning to play the game itself! For anyone who is unfamiliar with DayZ in the Arma 2 engine all you really need to know is it can be classed as "in depth", (over-complicated) and "clunky" (a janky mess at the best of times). This is partly the fault of using this particular engine for this particular mod; most options available to the modder makes anything created within the engine very customisable but from a player's perspective  it could and did lead to having to tweak the game quite robustly in order for it to run smoothly and  for some users for it to even work at all. The flip side of the coin to this though is to settle for a less powerful and customisable engine then trying to do more than what it was originally created for, a good example being The WarZ. (Later know as Infestation: Survivor Stories and as it stands it's the largest viewed video of my old recordings with just over 15,000 views... before I deleted it. See, I can be modest!) All this merges in to what can be a very jarring experience to anyone unfamiliar with the intricacies of the Arma 2 engine, which as it turns out was about 99% of the people looking at playing this new mod for a game who would have otherwise never have even given a serious thought to playing this military simulator. A lot of us from a more casual first person shooter experience had to wade through what at times felt like an academical study of all the various buttons and key bindings as well as the contextual menu which would pop up when it felt like it whilst trying to do such mundane things as opening a door, but for me this feeling of being overwhelmed by everything all at once is a feeling I haven't felt since playing World of Warcraft... and if I was going to be completely masochistically honest with you it's a feeling I chase to this very day with every new open world game or MMO I play. The first time I logged in I felt completely lost, even after watching multiple playthroughs of various other YouTubers along with reading as many guides and "hints & tips" as I could for what was at the time a little known mod to a niche game. But I LOVED it. For me it was the first time the phrase "open world" actually construed the game in it's entirety. You were quite literally on you own from the moment you logged in to the server through to your inevitable demise. And it was tense as a lone wolf. The fact that you had this 225km² map with only a handful of players meant you were constantly on edge, not knowing if the next building you (try to) enter is housing someone better geared or better skilled than you who clocked that you were in the area minutes earlier and were laying in wait. That was what made me love that mod. I actually made 2 series over 12 months, one called "DayZ'd & Confused" which chronicled my ups and downs as a casual DayZ player, (with the boring bit sped up) and "3 Lives In..." where I would look at the other maps which housed the DayZ mod and, (surprisingly enough) try to view as much of the map as possible along with loot spawns and on certain maps a lot of player interaction! Suffice to say playing as a lone wolf was never the easiest option, especially if I was unlucky enough to pick a clan server to play on but for both good or ill I never had a dull moment.

And then it happened... on the 16th of December 2012 the DayZ standalone game was released!!!!!

And it was a fucking mess.

Now before I go on, and once again referring to my opening paragraph about tribal mentality when it comes to gaming in general I'd like to throw a word in to the mix which is seldom used on the internet and one which I think needs to be more universally applied to both this article and, (if I may be so bold) life in general. That word is REASONABLE. But we'll come back to this a little further on down...

So, DayZ launches and it appears this standalone version of the mod that everybody fell in love with is released (albeit in ALPHA... they love to stress that) in a worse condition than what the mod housed in an older engine was in. Now I understand that technically this was in the "Arma 2.5" engine, (also affectionately known as a slightly re-worked version of the Take On Helicopters engine) and so there were certain aspects of the mod which would have to be re-jigged, re-written and in some aspects re-thought but I think this was where the developers made their first fatal mistake... they released it too soon. (I say fatal... the game sold over a million copies before the end of 2012!) The hype for the game was so unbelievably fierce when the main developer of the mod Dean Hall announced in August of 2012 that there would be a full blown version of his beloved game that there was bound to be creatively cheaper knockoffs released as soon as possible to catch some of that liquid gold that DayZ had produced, and one of the more "successful" adaptions of this style of game was The WarZ. Now I'm not going to go in to the history of that game which in itself is VERY shady, more so because of the developers involved and past underhanded methods they had used to dupe unsuspecting gamers out of their hard earned cash rather than the actual game itself, but as this was released in October 2012 (again, in ALPHA!) one has to wonder on whether Dean and Bohemia Interactive, the owners of the engine that DayZ was to be built upon got a little ancy in this rival which had been released before their cash cow and in turn might have made them spring their interpretation of an open world zombie survival earlier than they ideally wanted to. But with the insatiable appetite of the impatient gaming public to adhere to surely it would be better to release something rather than putting the game back another few months and let this bunch of cowboy developers steal their sales in the meantime?! In retrospect, probably not. At the time though we were happy to have DayZ along with all the promises and expectations every early access title released through Steam has attached to them and we, (and by "we" I mean the over 1,000,000 people who had bought in to the game) were happy to sit back and play what was given to us as well as having the privilege of helping to mould the game in to what would hopefully be the ultimate zombie survival experience.

So we've established that I think the game was released far too early in order to cash in on it's own hype and also to make sure the monopoly of this emerging "survival simulator" genre was not something they would have to relinquish their large piece of the pie from for the sake of artistic integrity, but ultimately there was a bare bones game there to be worked upon... and that leads me to my second irk with it's development process: Dean Hall announcing he was leaving the DayZ project. I understand that he was half way across the world from where he originated from, (New Zealand I believe) and he had been working with Bohemia Interactive for just over 2 years on the project, (in the Czech Republic) but to me it came across as a rat leaving a sinking ship. And let's face it, 9 months before he eventually left the company as an "adviser" in December 2014 he was giving interviews to gaming journalists saying that the very concept of DayZ as a multiplayer experience was flawed, and that he was a "grenade" which ultimately would do more harm than good if he outstayed his welcome. What the fuck does that even mean? As far as I was concerned DayZ was his baby, his concept. And to see him so easily walk away from this once in a lifetime phenomenon sent alarm bells ringing in my head. Now I'm not one to judge anyone for their actions as no-one can truly understand why somebody chooses to do one thing or another but from an outsider's perspective it looks pretty bad when the father of the immersive zombie survival sim walks out on his child even before it hits puberty... or "Beta" if you prefer. This action alone in my opinion displays an arrogant contempt towards the community who supported and believed in his image of what DayZ could/would be. I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel like this either as Dean's new company Rocketwerkz hasn't been able to capitalise on the celebrity of it's founder and reach the lofty heights of the Steam charts with it's debut games and I genuinely believe this is from a large portion of the DayZ player base feeling cheated from the lack of commitment from the original designer... I mean, if he can't see one project through to a more conceivable ending then what's going to stop him from giving up on another just as easily? It's a fair point I like to think.

                                              Which leads me to my final big irk when it comes to DayZ standalone: After 5 years it's still in fucking ALPHA.

5 years. 5 YEARS!! Whole games have gone from conception to final product within that time span which are far superior to the progress that DayZ has made in that time, Subnautica being a great example. "But Padge, since the release we've seen a whole host of additional content like cars and hunting and crafting and weapon modification and horticulture and diseases along with entire new towns where every building is enterable and not to mention the new physics engine, reworked zombie pathfinding with a dynamic AI and improved graphics and sounds!" I hear you cry, but here's the thing: I didn't want any of that. All I wanted was a more refined version of the mod I fell in love with. I didn't need to be able to pick berries or skin wildlife. I never asked for clothing modification or vehicle repair to be implicated. All I was looking for was a less buggy variant of the original DayZ I played in Arma 2. And I think this is the main problem with the game as it stands right now:

The developers are so engrossed with the perfect experience (in their eyes) they're too busy focusing on what will be DayZ Version 2.0 before they're even finished Version 1.0.

I'm certain the majority of people would have been happy with a cleaned up version of the mod. Now I'm no developer but I'm sure that would have been easy to establish within the 5 year period we have just passed with the team Bohemia Interactive say they have working on DayZ... yet here we all are, mulling over what could have been and still what might be. But I fear now it will all be too late with most people moving away and on to pastures anew and ironically enough to more concentrated forms of what DayZ set out to be in the first place; with Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, Fortnite Battle Royal and more recently Escape From Tarkov gaining in popularity against DayZ's slow demise. And it's fucking sad, man. To not see DayZ even make it out of the starting trap breaks my heart, but hopefully it's a harsh lesson that both people adopting into the early access system and developers learn from. As a customer services rep one of the first things I was taught and I have stuck vehemently to is the rule to "do what you say and say what you do". Basically don't dick people around and string things out unnecessarily as people remember shit like that. So before we get any fanboys ranting at me I'm going to bring back that word from earlier which isn't used nearly enough on the internet: Reasonable.

Is it not reasonable to expect a game released in 2012, (IN ALPHA!!) to be complete or at the very least nearing completion within 5 years?

Is it not reasonable to think that the original developer of the mod would see his brainchild through to the point of at least being feature complete?

Would it not be reasonable to want the developers to concentrate on creating a stable base game on which to add all of these extras that they seem to be concentrating on as maybe free DLC, or even a enhanced DayZ 2?

If we're going to be reasonable about it all... I don't think any of these questions are asking too much considering the size of the company developing it and the funding supposedly put in to it.

Now you may think after reading close to 3000 words from me on this that I'm angry and bitter about it. I'm not. SERIOUSLY! I'm just disappointed. Disappointed that a game which had so much potential with a massive player base from the off can be so seriously mishandled to the point of killing it before it's even officially begun. And again, you'll get people who will say that DayZ isn't dead, but the fact of the matter is not even 10% of the people who bought the game are still playing it. Obviously people come and go from any game and I'm aware that a lot of the die hard fans are waiting for 0.63 to drop as there are going to be some serious changes to the engine, (again) and I'm sure come version 1.0 dropping there will be upsurge in interest, even if it's just for morbid curiosity but the behemoth that could have been will now never be... and to reiterate again, that just makes me feel sad.

I will be there too when the final full version is released. And I'm sure I'll play the hell out of it... MAYBE even resurrect the DayZ'd & Confused series I did many moons ago, but whatever I end up doing when the game goes live it will always be with a thought to the wasted potential of what this game could have been and where this crazy journey could have ended up going. I live in hope that a game directly influenced by DayZ can extend the concept that originally caught the eye of the masses and one day we will be gifted with the "perfect" open world massively multiplayer zombie survival experience.

And I'll see you in the wasteland... eventually.


Thanks once again for taking the time to read this and hopefully I'll see you next time!

Scott.


Check Out My Youtube Channel: www.YouTube.com/PalicoPadge

Let Me Introduce Myself Part 2: Camaraderie Through Consoles!

Now I don't want to sound too self-indulgent when it comes to me writing these blog posts, although committing my thoughts to virtual paper for the masses to read is in itself a self-indulgent act, (irony!) but I figure we'll all get on a lot better if you can at the very minimum see why I come to the conclusions I arrive at if you have at least a familiarity of my background and what makes me tick. This is me trying to be as clear and transparent as I can be in a world where masking one's true intent for fear of offending someone, anyone, has started to become the norm. I mean, no-one wants to be that guy/girl/non-binary do they?! In a world where it is so easy for someone to take offence and in return recompense in a militaristic fashion it pays dividends to keep your cards close to your chest at all times. And with everybody having a virtual presence either from the likes of Facebook or Twitter to even owning a bank account everyone has a vulnerability which can be exposed and taken advantage of for whatever reason... whenever the feeling arises. That is a scary thought! And who can blame anyone for being a lot more secretive when it comes to omitting their own true thoughts and opinions? But I say this; does it not make more sense to be as open as you dare to be in order to quell any suspicions of the contrary? Surely it is better for someone to know where they stand with you, (for ill or good) than to be forever questioning your loyalties and judgement? And in a world where you will always offend someone either by a differing view or from a lack of forethought to a throwaway comment which we are all guilty of from time to time, (It's what you say/type on the internet, never how you say it!) the only person you should be straight up with is yourself. In essence, say what you mean and mean what you say. I quote Elvis Costello, "Don't wear your heart on your sleeve when your remarks are off the cuff." And when you choose to publish anything on the internet, be it a Youtube video or a blog entry your soul is exposed to being poked and prodded by any and all nefarious types which come across it. People who claim to not be bothered on any level by that either don't care enough about their creations in the first place or are full of shit.

 So why do I start the second entry to my blog - which is supposed to be about my gaming history, to allow you to peak in to my mindset and, (hopefully) to help you, dear reader understand how I reach the conclusions I arrive at - with a paragraph detailing how saying what you feel is the truth from your viewpoint could be construed as offensive to others? SIMPLE. Console gaming in my humble opinion is one of the most tribal of technological leisure activities you can affordably be a part of today, and that has been the way since the Atari 2600 burst on to the scene along with it's competitors back in 1977. But why? The answer I think is a relatively simple one; It's because of the hardware and the fact you can't modify or upgrade anything within that base unit you purchased from the store. Everybody has the same set-up, with only the different makes of console to differ you from Willy and Billy down the street. Because of this it's very easy to draw big rivalries between owners of the Super Nintendo and the Sega Megadrive or the Playstation 2 and the original Xbox. Now you could say that that was relatively true for my beloved Commodore 64 when being measured up to the Spectrum ZX and although both very popular at around the same time from a hardware perspective they were an ocean apart in a technological sense. Although these days from a similar viewpoint you have tech-fiends arguing about which company manufactures the best graphics cards, CPU's, motherboards etc. etc, there is such a diverse choice out there that no complete PC can be directly compared to another.

 And they're so damn accessible! Plug and play and you're away! A product for the masses... but still expensive within themselves. Take in to account the fact that buying the base unit is only the start of what is still an expensive hobby if you want to keep up to date with the latest game releases, along with the yearly online subscription you need to purchase to even be allowed to play with your friends regularly means most people still only end up picking one console from the handful available in any given generation. This breeds a playground rivalry from the owner of said chosen console brand to justify their choice; to feel like they have made the wise decision and the owners of the other brands are complete idiots for choosing their complete potato of a machine. And these rivalries can be fucking vicious, man. I remember being at school and hearing about a guy being bullied incessantly because he had a Atari 7800 when all his peers had a NES. Don't get me wrong, I know kids generally can be vicious little shits at the best of times and in that period of your life all you want to do is fit in, but just look how the rivalries of the latest consoles breed as much contempt as past generations of gaming machines yet the average age of your run-of-the-mill gamer is between 18 and 35. That means there are a lot more adults who should know better throwing their tuppence worth in to the shit storm that is the ever evolving console war. We're not completely to blame however, and as long as the behemoths of the video game industry insist on having console exclusives and getting away with blaming "netcode" and other such bollocks for not allowing cross-platform online play from games produced by independent developers, rivalries will continue at the fever pitch it has been at for last 30 years.

 But I digress. Gaming consoles! Console gaming! That's what I said I'd write about and I'll stick to the plan... this time. At 10 years old for Christmas after having my well loved and well used Commodore 64 for five years I was ready for a change. I had grown bored of the wait times for loading games via a cassette, (although in retrospect it was never that long but at that tender age it felt like a eternity) and with myself having just started at middle school the previous September I was very much aware of what other kids were watching/reading/playing and I learnt, very quickly, that console gaming was at the forefront of the playground banter. Friends new and old were pulled in to the exciting world of 16 bit gaming via the Megadrive and SNES becoming more affordable after being on the market for around 18 months and boy! was there a frenzy in that first term at school leading up to Christmas. Obviously you had the cool kids who's rich parents had bought the console within the first 6 months of release and were viewed with starry-eyed wonder due to their veteran status with their chosen machine by their peers but now we, the common folk, could finally enter the gaming clique of our choosing. No longer would we be hovering around the edges of society, (well... the school yard) listening with intrigue about the tall stories of a podgy Italian plumber or a blue hedgehog. Now even I can throw myself headfirst in to the pixel world of whichever gaming mascot I chose to enlist under! The question was though, which one? Both of the popular machines of the time had their merits but it would appear, at least in my friendship circle, that the SNES was the way to go. So on Christmas day in 1993 I awoke to a rather large present which just so happened to be a Super Nintendo Entertainment System complete with a Superscope and Superscope 6 game, (more of a tech demo for the bazooka-shaped light gun but I don't think many developers got the memo on that) F-Zero and Super Mario All-Stars. And that was me set at school; I was welcomed in to the SNES fold as one of their own, a fellow Nintendo enthusiast brought in to the ranks ready to defend the honour of our kind at a drop of a hat. And even today I still think picking that over the Sega Megadrive/Genesis was the way to go... Now was that because of the neater looking graphics? The unique Mode 7 design? The no gore effect in Mortal Kombat? I'd like to say yes, (except for that last one) it was EXACTLY for those reasons, but at 10 years old it boiled down to one key yet shallow reason; it's what all my friends had. A decision made not by good judgement or meticulous research in to the choices I had at the time, but popularity. And although it would seem that at least this time I had chosen the winning side I believe there were no actual losers in this generation, it all just depended on what you found fun. It's true that the Megadrive had the faster paced games and smoother gameplay feel but I was never really in to sports games or action/bullet hell shooters which would take advantage of those aspects on that console. And anyway I had a plethora of interesting adventure games, RPGs, platformers, fighters and racers to occupy my time.

 "For fuck's sake Padge! you've been rabbiting on and you've hardly covered any games yet!!" I hear you cry, and I'm just as shocked as you to be honest. As I type this I never really thought I'd go this deep in to the "why's" of console gaming in my past as opposed to the "what's", but I guess that's because I feel I've matured past the minimalist pleasures that a console offers, and which is always on the back foot from a tech perspective compared to the sophistication that a PC can deliver, but that's for another blog entry. (I know... very PC Master Race right?) SO, the games. I played F-Zero to DEATH. I loved it. It was my go-to game for a very long time duly to the futuristic setting, the breakneck speed you travelled at, (over 400 km/h!) and the fact you could be completely destroyed if you didn't pay the attention needed to the car racing at that velocity because of the hazards on the track like the mines... or the other cars low on energy and about to blow up themselves... or the sides of the track which were deadly to the touch! And I also really digged the the instruction manual which doubled as a scene setting comic book! Compared to the Commodore 64 which in itself had a fair few games that felt like they were pushing boundaries of what an entertainment system could offer this game in particular felt like it was on another level completely. It is a classic in every sense of the word and this is shown time and again by the multiple nods it gets in other games, from the likes of Mariokart, (an obvious one) to Animal Crossing: Wild World. The other cartridge I had that Christmas, the aforementioned Super Mario All-Stars was a culmination of enhanced remakes of the first 3 Super Mario games along with the Japan only version of Super Mario 2 labelled as "The Lost Levels". From a relatively sensible child's perspective who would only be getting 2 games to go with his brand new console, (one from Nan, one from Mumsy) this seemed like a cost effective solution to a very real problem for anyone with limited access to funds; value for money. It was 4 games in 1 cartridge damn it! The maths don't lie!! So technically I had 5 games to last me until my birthday and last me they did, and beyond. Now you've probably noticed I haven't mention the Superscope much and that's because no-one else really did anything with it. A gimmicky light gun which Nintendo hoped more developers would support but sadly did not. I guess they were trying to riff off the back of the original light gun idea after the popularity of Duck Hunt but with the thinking of "bigger is better", (it was shaped like a fucking bazooka after all!) but it seems instead of people embracing this mega peripheral and the scope itself becoming a bulwark of gaming it was seen as a one trick pony with too narrow a field of use to be fully seized upon. Sadly this would seems to be a recurring problem with each new console generation, where towards the end of their natural life our living rooms are filled with plastic inessential controllers to games long forgotten about due to the fact it's too much effort to set up compared to picking up a regular controller... but I guess we're the mugs as we keep buying them and buying in to the "unique game design" of using them in the first place... at least until we have a large group of friends or family come round to your house anyway.

 So what of later games? Over the next few years I managed to add to my collection through birthdays and Christmases with both physical copies for games I'd asked for and games bought through an accumulation of money from said celebrations to what I like to think is a nice selection of electronic distractions. Within my assortment you could find the likes of Super Smash TV, Super Mario Kart, Disney's Aladdin and The Magical Quest starring Mickey Mouse, Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter II and WWF Royal Rumble. Although I had a few of the more popular amusements within my collection I never felt the need to get all the classics due to 2 simple reasons, swapping between friends and video game rental. As I've said before, I was blessed with having a large friendship group which meant there were a lot of Super Nintendo's flying around which lead to a lot of different types of games being bought and, like any kids at our age our attention span could be measured in nano-seconds. So when one of you got bored of playing game X we could walk over to our friends house and swap it for game Y for a few weeks which meant (generally) everyone was a winner. Occasionally you would swap a rubbish game for a better one to a friend or as we all started to grow up some people would stop playing with their SNES, (quitters) but were still open to swapping games so the swap at that point was more like insurance than theft - never borrowed, always swapped! The other is a dead concept in the traditional sense these days and that was going to Choices Video in the UK, (a tackier Blockbuster if you're not aware of the brand) and renting a game over the weekend for a couple of quid. I know these days you can stream certain games for a fee or if you subscribe to certain gaming platforms they allow you to play whatever you want for as long as you're subscribed but these are both long-term contractual services, not something you can afford to do on a whim on some cold rainy Saturday afternoon in March. Admittedly, the second hand market is a lot larger at your local Gamestop or CEX nowadays, but you generally have to spend a lot more on a piece of software which you have no knowledge of how it's actually been treated before you acquired it. That makes me uneasy... and with more and more games these days being download only that isn't even an option for 70% of the time. "Games as subscription" is how I believe the business managers refer to it as, more like a subscription to the games you've already paid outright for... but that rant is for another time.

 So what am I getting at after all the babbling... and why have I only talked about the SNES? Surely I've had more than just the ONE console in my entire life? Well, yes I have. To cover them quickly I have owned at one point or another a Gameboy, (twice... there was a headbutting incident) a Playstation, a PS2, an XBox 360, a PS3, a Nintendo Wii, a Nintedo WiiU, a PS4, (well I guess you know what side my bread has been buttered in the following generations of the console war!) and an Amstrad GX4000. Apart from the Amstrad which my grandparents bought to keep me quiet whenever I visited, (it worked... for a short while) all of the others played second fiddle to the PC we had either as a family computer, (for "homework" - LOL!) or as my own gaming machine. That means that my time with the Super Nintendo if the only "pure" experience I've had with consoles where nothing other than that machine was my main gaming focus. I feel it would be unfair to talk about the rest on how they made me feel as a teenager or young adult as these other consoles haven't defined me as a gamer since I first launched Settlers 2 on my 486 DX2 66. Of course there have been console exclusives which I've delved in to over the years which are usually the reason why I owned those consoles in the first place but since my early to mid teens the PC is where my heart has been.

To conclude, my first and only dedicated foray in to console gaming as a youngster brought me acceptance, camaraderie and a shared wealth of gaming diversity, and I guess when I slip on those rose-tinted glasses I can kind of see why the latest generation of the console wars have soldiers on either side fighting the good fight as intensely as they do... it's for that feeling of kinship and inclusion.

 Thanks once again for taking the time to read this and hopefully I'll see you next time!

Scott.


Check Out My Youtube Channel: www.YouTube.com/PalicoPadge