Next Gen Gaming Bonanza at E3

This year's E3 can be described in many words, the ones I choose to use are confusing, drama filled,  and distracting.  We watched as Microsoft put out a barrage of hard hitting titles and other titles that looked good but will probably disappoint (I don't think Ryse will be that good).  They were the masters of ceremony and what they successfully did, at least for a day, was pull the wool over people's heads.  Their rapid fire blast of exclusives hit hard and trumped up a ton of excitement.

I think their smartest move was grabbing up that super polished looking Dead Rising 3 as an exclusive.  Dead Rising as many of you know is a game that I have a mostly hate filled relationship with and one that I am currently analyzing to see why people like it so much.  This new Dead Rising actually got me excited to play with it's overhauled game engine, one that looks very similar to my beloved Resident Evil 6 I might add.  It looks like it might be the systems killer app to me.  Everyone's on a zombie kick and this looks like it'll be in many a household by the time it comes out.

My friends and I were bad mouthing the Xbox One for several days before Microsoft's press event but you wouldn't have known that by the way my friends were talking about Dead Rising and buying a One just for it.  This, along with the rest of the high octane trailers and the excitement on social media sites like Facebook got me thinking.  Did Microsoft just successfully distract people from their horrid gaming model (which from what I'm hearing may not even be that bad but more on that later.)  I certainly wasn't "duped."  I was as salty as ever.  From what I was hearing Sony would adopt a similar strategy for used games and so I felt like I was overall done with console gaming.  This and the Kinect and 24 hour internet check-in debacle on Microsoft's end made me want nothing to do with this "next generation" of gaming.  I felt that they had already started a slippery slope of gamer abuse with our current generation of Downloadable Content in games that weren't finished from the get go and DLC that was already on the disk that you still had to pay for.

I feel that when something gets too big that it never fails to start overreaching and that's what I felt and still feel about console gaming.  To be a console gamer (which I've always solely been) it requires a lot of dedication.  You buy a system that's expensive as hell and you shell out a quarter of your paycheck on new games for it.  Now we all pay an additional $50 or so to join or respective system's online service.  If you have both PS Plus and Xbox Gold yearly memberships then you are shelling out roughly that much for both depending on whatever hookups you may have.  You also pay for your own internet and the additional electricity that these consoles drain.  That's a lot of money.  That's a lot of money to pay for someone else to still have control over what you can do with your product.  I don't believe in that.  I also don't believe that these games that are coming out are worth all this money and effort.  I've been having more fun lately playing my PS2 than I have playing my Xbox 360, that I just got mind you.  I just don't see anything out there on the market that's worth all this hassle and hubbub.  I've preordered the Ouya and am hoping that they do something interesting with that.  The fact that it's so indie friendly and cheap makes me confident that I made the right purchase.

This article has trailed on a bit so I'll write a follow up to this in the coming days.  I need to investigate this whole Xbox debacle anyway but from what I'm hearing the Xbox One's "bad" features are not nearly as bad as we thought, there may even be a way to turn them off but I'll go into that and Sony's funny jabs at the competition and break down their statements.  Like always thanks for the browse!

My plan might actually work.

After spending a day looking at so many maps of Ann Arbor that I feel like I already live there I can honestly day that I am about halfway prepared for my little excursion there in the coming days.  Why am I looking at maps of Ann Arbor you ask?  Well I'm looking to move there soon and it looks like I finally caught a lucky break.  Today I was called up for a job interview there at Briarwood Mall.  Very excited about that and I have been preparing for it all day since its such short notice.

At the start of the year I had planned to move there but couldn't find work or apartments in my price range.  Hopefully it all works out now and I can finally get some alone time to write all these great novels that I've been planning and maybe get to know a few local writers and artists.  Wish me luck!  I think I'll do some fun stuff while I'm there too and write about it.