There are things about being a gamer that makes me inwardly cringe.  I think about some of our community members that love gaming so much that they play everything and anything.  One of our admins, Labfiend, has one of the largest Steam catalogs I think that is out there.  It is amazing.  He has probably played more games than I ever will.  And he hasn't stopped yet.

Think about that.  No matter how long I play or how many games I buy, I will never catch up.  Then I think about my games, what I have played, what I have enjoyed, and I have to hang my head in shame.  What's my dirty secret?

I am a total game snob.  "Horrifically snobbish" would fit.  I only play a very small selection of games good enough for me.  I am full of disdain for everything else.  Imagine if a self-proclaimed "Movie Geek" claimed he only watched movies from Paramount.  He obviously is not a geek if he isn't watching everything.  Right?  So I guess I am not a gaming geek if I don't play everything, right?

Does the logic follow on this?

I have never played a Playstation 2 or 3 or PSP.  I have never touched an XBOX, ever.  I touched a VirtualBoy once, and I felt very dirty afterwards.  I never played Diablo, any of them.  I never touched any of the Sims games.  I have never played many of those games that you all consider necessary to have experienced to be called a Gamer.  I find that I fall into one game at a time and play until the next best one comes along.  I have my single player queue and my multiplayer queue.  That's it.  Two games at a time.

What do you think?  Is a Gamer defined by their game catalog?  Or are they defined by their way of life?  Meaning is it action that defines them or the love of games that defines them?  Discuss.

Come to my world... No not that one.  That snowy world was nice and all, but I died.  A lot.  So I deleted that world.  Come to this one over here.  Yeah that one.  Ahhhh, welcome to cactus paradise.  Except for the damn Zombies, this place is pretty nice.

Welcome to Minecraft.  Notch, the developer of Minecraft, has had his neat little app spread across the internet a couple times.  A viral release here or there, and people come to build big things, and then move on to other games.  Admittedly, I am one of those people. I played months and months ago, then as boredom sat in, I moved on.  Then again, a month or two ago, having multiplayer brought me back in to build with fellow community players.  But then boredom set in.  And again, I moved on.

Last week, I bought the game for about 13 bucks US (the game is foreign, so it's priced on the Euro).  Wait, you are asking yourself, what did he just say?  You bought a boring game?  The answer is yes, I did.  Because it is not the same game, and it is definitely not boring.  Notch, the man with the plan, designer extraordinaire, has been putting a lot of work into his baby, and it shows.  The version that I knew has been shelved as "Classic", a new "Alpha" version has been released.

Its no longer easy.  And it is no longer boring.  It's tough.  And I refuse to change the difficultly setting.   Because that makes you a wimp.  And I already feel like a wimp after my third death down in the depths of some endless cavern, so changing the difficultly would just make me feel like a huge sack of wimpy wet mice.  I can't give up.

And I respawn.  Annnnnd I can't find my home base again.  So I really have to start over.  *Sigh*

But trust me... its fun.  Its a great game.  Give it another try.  I dare ya.

I freaked when I first read it but I was dissapointed to read on to see that it was ony going to be for Xbox LIVE.

"With an anticipated launch in early September, Plants vs. Zombies on XBLA will deliver more game content than any previous iteration of the franchise, boasting seven game modes, including two all-new multiplayer modes, 12 unique achievements and 21 mini-games. Upon its release, Plants vs. Zombies for XBLA will be available for 1200 Microsoft Points (US$15.00)."

They have also added a goofy new way to track and share progress online, where players create their own custom house and cruise down the street to see their friends' cribs! It would also be wicked to witness the highest resolution of any Plants vs. Zombies adaptation to date at 1920 x 1080.

Later this year, PopCap will also release a retail boxed edition of Plants vs. Zombies (including Zuma and Peggle as well) for the Xbox 360, and a new "Game of The Year" boxed edition of the PC/Mac original.

With the release of Starcraft II imminent, I thought it would be good to pick up some original Starcraft to help hone some of my skills while the beta was closed.  What I didn't realize was the stark difference in how I played the game from when it came out in 1998 to today.

I did get Starcraft when it first came out and the same with Brood War.  I played through the single player for months before venturing out into the scary online world.  It was the FIRST online game I had successfully played.   (Enter WC2 and its horrible battle.net)  I quickly learned that normal matches weren't for me and I played nr20 (no rush for 20 minutes) maps where you build up your armies for massive fights.  With the hidden unit counter, you had to rush because the map could only hold so many objects.  That was fun but it got boring and than Half Life came out.

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