Closet Case

I forgot to post a picture of the closet in my Game Room 3.0 - Yes, it's way smaller than the walk-in closet a.k.a. Game Treasure of the past, which was capable of housing more than half of my physical gaming items I have in my possession. I crammed two dressers into the closet to maximize space and used the shelf at the top portion to stack up some of my original X-Box games on top of whatever I could fit in. I am not too happy that I ended up blocking easy access to those games but I don't use my original X-Box console that often anyway. It's all a matter of putting everything away for now. I can always make the necessary adjustments in the future.

I don't even have the desire to take these Skylanders out of their boxes at this time.

There are X-Box games behind the Maracas Controller and Sega Genesis cases.

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Revealed! New Game Room

Game Room 3.0 Update

Working on this new Game Room has been quite challenging. The number one problem for me is definitely space. The room I'm working with is small and sacrifices had to be made when it comes to visibility and accessibility to all of my gaming items. I have the basic layout done and this is the way the room is going to look during my stay at the current residence. As I have mentioned previously, I had to rely on storing a lot of my gaming goods at other locations inside the house. Though things are looking neat and organized, there are still a lot of work to be done, especially in regards to cables and wires connectivity as well as shuffling items in between spots.  As you can see, I made sure that there is enough space in the middle of the room so that I can still enjoy venturing into the VR realm whenever I please. Things are shaping up nicely, I think.

Now equipped with a 55" 4K display.

This room is unable to contain all of the physical copies of my video games.

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Revealed! New Game Room

Sneak Peek of Game Room Ver. 3.0

Things have been very rough over the past couple of months and for a little while there, with all the uncertainties that life has wrought upon me, I really thought that I would not be able to have a dedicated Game Room over at my future new place, wherever that may be. Now that I have landed at a new residence, I am happy to report that I am successful in reserving an extra room to be transformed into a full-fledged Game Room!

Let's change this into something more magical!

This is going to take a lot of work. The new space for my Game Room is about half the size of the previous incarnation and worser still, the closet space is only 1/4 of my last walk in closet I called my Game Treasury. Thankfully there are places in this house where I could store my non-essential gaming items but this is of course not the most ideal solution. These dispersed spaces are secured enough from the idle hands of potential house guests however so that is a relief at the very least. I will hopefully be regaining my Internet access tomorrow and let me tell you, one week without Internet is truly horrid. Before I moved into this house last week, I had access to a hotel Internet for about 2 months where I was able to at least connect to my Steam account - the only gaming devices I had with me was the Nintendo 3DS, Personal Computer, and PlayStation Vita. Sure, mobile Internet is fine but oh, the things you can do with it is somewhat limited. I will post the final look of my new Game Room once it is completed. Wish me luck!

Returning to Form

It's been a while. Quite a while, in fact. But such is life. Just when you think that everything is going to be okay, things take a sudden, unexpected turn. Two things lead to the lack of activities on this site. The most predominant reason was twitch.tv - I spent too much time creating live video content and it felt productive and immediately rewarding compared to writing though I eventually realized that was not necessary true. Then recently, I found myself being displaced from my home. I lost immediate access to my games. It took me weeks to be able to access my Personal Computer again and it took months before I was able to inch closer to stability.

As you may suspect, I am a creature who breathe and live video games. They are at the center of my existence. Thus, losing control over them hurts. A lot. The scarier thing I have learned over these last couple of months away from almost the entirety of my Game Library however is that humans are flexible little beings. Through the most painful of experiences, the most damning of situations, we grow cold and we adapt. Yes, there were moments when I thought that everything was over, that perhaps I have lived enough to enjoy what I wanted to get out of life. It's never over until it is over they said but I didn't know that the corners of the room would be so dim, so dark. It was almost an automatic process. All it needed was a little bit of optimism. Keep yourself alive long enough and you will find enough distractions to continue on.

There is still a lot of work to be done and I hope to be able to get to where I needed to be soon. I have to take things one step at a time. I plan to be more active here and post more content. I don't have access to good Internet at the moment but once I do, I also would like to continue with my adventures on twitch. It's nice to still feel motivated about life and I'm glad I'm still interested in video games.

Yoshi is definitely doing better than me.

Achievement Whoring Is a Pain

Over the past couple of months, I have been playing a lot of hidden object adventure games on Steam. These games can be quite fun except for the occasional annoying puzzles and they are usually characterized by cheesy voice acting, outlandish but often heartfelt story line, and colorful, exotic sceneries. I feel great that I am finally indulging myself into this sub-genre but I didn't realize that it comes with a price.

Surprising twists abound but the real shocker is how these games affect me indirectly.

Steam achievements popped up hard and fast while playing these games, which made me curious enough to check out their details and that lead to me noticing that by the end of playing them, I would normally be close to accumulating 100% completion rate. As I have mentioned many times before, I am not a fan of achievements, especially when they really don't have anything to do with rewarding natural gameplay decisions a gamer would make while playing a game. There are a good number of achievements for these hidden object games that are counter-productive, like being able to complete a hidden object scene quickly, something that is an impossibility during the first playthrough whenever the objects are very well hidden, or completing a separate set of alternative puzzles that can be solved instead of working on the hidden object scenes themselves. For some reason, I felt compelled to unlock these achievements and you know what? It wasn't fun. It felt like a chore. Yet, I was addicted to the process, like a mindless robot. I found myself replaying these games just for the purpose of unlocking achievements and it felt like a dirty deed and when I was done, the walk of shame was real. Going back to these games also took away the feeling of joy and admiration I had for them in the first place that would have stayed with me if I didn't besmirch the experience by forcing myself to replay them. Achievement hunting is even hurting my first playthrough because these games, especially from the same developer/publisher, have similar achievement setups so there is that added pressure of accomplishing something in a certain way even though doing so conflict with the natural pace of the game.

Looking for the last item on the list may result in permanent damage to your eyesight.

This whole situation has really reinforced my view on "task unlockers" in video games and it serves as a reminder to me that I should remain true to my gaming instinct and steer clear of participating in these things. I still have plenty of hidden object games in my collection and I want to fall in love with them again like I did in the beginning instead of viewing them as achievement boosters for my Steam profile - they are much more meaningful than that.