Shallow Depths

My favourite current-generation RPG so far is The Witcher, and I'm really looking forward to the sequel.

Unfortunately, Geralt's sexual exploits got rather more attention than the rest of the game. It's not really the part I'm most interested in. But I'm getting it out of the way first with this post, since it seems to come up whenever this game is discussed.

Geralt is infertile and immune to disease, but his promiscuity remains potentially quite emotionally reckless. And I will admit it's pretty tacky to reduce sexual intimacy to a series of collectable playing cards. It was widely labelled as yet another game trying to call itself mature, while including sex in a gratuitous, sexist, and immature way. I have a slightly different take on this.

As may be obvious I avoided making an "April Fool's" post here. That probably puts me in the minority among gaming blogs.

I may just be a spoilsport, but I don't really see the attraction in trying to trick people into believing untrue things. Admittedly, the gaming posts tend more towards the ridiculous, and probably create (at least potential) humour without people needing to be taken in. But I'd still be very wary of taking part in that particular tradition.

The colour of a console theoretically shouldn't matter much, but in reality it can. Whether a black Wii is more appealing than the classic white version is open to debate. It's the hand-held consoles where colour choice is more likely to come into play. When there is a choice, I would expect most people to at least give colour some brief consideration.

I am lucky enough to live within easy walking distance of work, and don't travel much. Portable gaming isn't something I have had much need for. That is, until I spent a couple of days sick in bed with my partner's PSP and a copy of Monster Hunter Freedom 2. I was hooked, and had a sudden desire to own a PSP myself.

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is a new post-apocalyptic RPG for Wii. The impression I've gathered is that it's very different, is hauntingly beautiful, and that the story is very engaging. That is enough to make me prick up my ears, though there is also part of me wondering why I keep torturing myself with JRPGs recently.

I don't normally pay a lot of attention to game reviews. They rarely match up well with my tastes, and the ones claiming to be objective in particular make me laugh. Reviews are always subjective and individual. I prefer it when writers make use of their personal perspective rather than trying to hide it behind rigid journalistic style, and that's rarer than I'd like.

As I mentioned previously, I haven't played a Sims game in many years. Things have apparently increased in complexity since I played the original game. The Sims 3 has spawned some interesting ideas, and I've been curious to see how different people describe their experiences with the game.

Alice and Kev is an experiment about homelessness in The Sims 3, courtesy of games design student Robin Burkinshaw. The blog follows the lives of the angry and meanspirited Kev and his insecure daughter Alice.

From the introduction:

I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any of the game's unrealistically easy cash routes.