Artemis' Bog - rant

An Ode to the fun episode

2024-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

I've been rewatching Stargate: SG1 (that will be abbreviated as Stargate from now on) lately. It's a show that, despite its many problems, accidentally offered an amazing accidental metaphor for the Iraq war. But on top of that metaphor I will not mention again in this article, it's also a very fun show. Even if substance is often lacking, it succeeded in many very important ways, entertainment-wise:

In defense of scope

2024-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

Today (bear with me, I know it's pretty much the dark and stormy nights of essays), I felt like writing. As I begin writing this article, my very own country once again stands on the edge of the abyss. As a result, I decided to come back to the familiarity of my video game rants.

I do not hope to convince, only to express yet another yearning within me. As I have been experimenting with many formats, and touched a bit about this on my Why I write article, I open a window into myself, and wish that this piece is a seed from which more may grow.

What I crave, what I desire, what I long for is better scoped games.

Structure is a lie. Linearity is for weaklings. So I will say the big bad phrase and then immediately proceed to ignore it: I have never once in my life played an open world game that was good because it was an open world game, only in spite of it.

Why I write

2024-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

I love writing. That's not the only thing I love in life. I also love my wife, our cats, or pizza. Writing is not the only activity. I love playing video games, I write about that quite a lot. I love having interesting conversation with nice people. I love complaining too, which brings me back to writing. I wanted to be an author when I was a child, amongst other dreams, some realized, some in progress, and others lost.

Running in the nineties

2024-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

On a whim, I decided to give a rewatch a show I sporadically watched on the TV when I was young, Dark Angel. It is not a transcendental show that will deeply alter your life, watch DS9 for that. And you might tell me that it's not a 90's show. Well, you should note that being released in 2000, it is according to the archaic calendar we use, it's indeed a 90's show, and that makes that unrelated reference of a title valid. If you weep at this absurdity, please know that we tried but we can't have nice things, as any passing interest in history can prove.

On Inventory Mistakes

2023-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

The first real article that I wrote on that blag was about game saves in video games. A piece of information that you don't have if you discovered this article in 2023 is that each and every one of my articles has tags, for when one day, I decide to implement a meaningful tag system on my blag. The two tags of that 2013 article were the following: "videogames", and "rant". The latter of which should be indicative of the content that is to come in this article.

And get ready because ranting is what I do best.

On game saves

2013-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

The option to save in video games is an important feature to gamers everywhere. Without it, your progression in a game is limited within your gaming session. When you play Super Mario Bros or Prince of Persia, you have to beat the game in one sitting. There's nothing else you can do ! You have to finish this game or to fail. But nowadays, games are longer. Unless you're playing Call of Duty Ghostly Modern Ops 27, you can't beat a modern game in one sitting.

But before I begin to explain the implications of every saving method that I can think of and which one is the best, I shall warn you that I am a PC gamer and that my opinion will be focused on that aspect even though, I'll try to think about good console implementations.