A Bit of Screams: Silent Hill 2

Most people know what Silent Hill is now because of the movie rendition that came out in 2006. While I love that movie just as much as the next person, and while I love the first game as well, Silent Hill 2 (for a number of platforms) was one of the scarier games that I have ever played. Even now with all of the FEAR games, and nail-biters like the Last of Us, the Silent Hill series stands up to the test of time, and will always have a place in my heart. Because of that, I thought it deserved a blog post.

A Bit of Ice, Ice Baby: Kickle Cubicle

First, I would like to take the time to express how sorry I am that I haven't been keeping up with posts. While I know this is, by no means, everyone's favorite blog to read, I was doing a pretty good job there at getting regular content out the door at least every other day. Because my PAX East cosplay hit a lot of hinges (my fabric getting stolen by my neighbors, UPS marking my address as not a real address, FedEx losing packages, and so on), I have had to spend a lot of time working on getting that ready. Hopefully, after this weekend when I finish it, I will be back up and running and writing about all those good old games you know and love.

So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce or remind all of you of a little game called Kickle Cubicle for NES. While there isn't much of a plot to this game, the premise is that there is an evil ice king, and that he has taken over Kickle's home planet, the Fantasy Kingdom. The major driver of the game is to collect red "dream bags" in which the Wicked Wizard King has imprisoned all of the citizens of the planet. The dream bags look kind of like Santa's sack, and are strewn haphazardly around each of the many, many levels.

A Bit of Coming to Terms: When You've Lost That Loving Feeling.

Recently, I decided that I was going to purchase and replay The Secret of Monkey Island. Along with it being the first blog post I wrote for this here humble establishment, it was also, ostensibly, one of my favorite games for years. It worked especially well because, for those of you that have been following along, the PC that I have been trying to stream on handles...well, almost nothing. So, The Secret of Monkey Island was just graphically unintense enough for me to play for the world to see.

A Bit of Love: Appreciating my online (and now offline) friends

Every once in a while I, like many similar to me (I assume), go through a period of wondering whether there are things in my life that I could be doing better. Maybe I could go out more, or try more actively to make friends, maybe I should try cooking more at home and eating less Dominos, or being a better lover. This happens usually about once a month and tosses me into a guilty spiral of feeling like I am not a real adult, or am not living as much of a life as people that I know who are in the Peace Corps or doing capitalized Big Things. But, inevitably, I come out of it with the help of some of my friends — my internet friends, that is — and realize that life is great whether it is filled with capitalized or lowercased things.

A Bit of Admiration: How I Came to Terms with being Nerdy

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and we didn't necessarily celebrate it in the way that we usually do. Typically, my father, stepmother, husband and I celebrate this wonderful, gluttonous holiday on our own in my parents' house in Connecticut. This year, given the unfortunate stroke of a close friend, we decided to go and spend Thanksgiving with him and his family instead. Having never met his family, and given my propensity towards awkward social situations, I was nervous. The first few uncomfortable handshakes had confirmed what I felt positive about: this was going to be awkward, I was going to be the weird one that no one would talk to, etc.

Luckily for me, I was wrong.

A Bit of Raptors: Primal Rage

HOW MANY BITS, MERCER? 5/8 BITS!

The other evening while my husband, Jerry, and I were watching The X Files, we came upon the episode about the kid who got struck by lighting and was then endowed with the ability to call down lightning whenever he wants. It had Jack Black in it. It was awesome. That doesn't have much to do with it, but in the background of the Arcade that Jack Black works in, I saw it. I saw Primal Rage, and dreamt about it that night—specifically beating one of my coworkers over and over again.

Gaming FOMO

I was recently introduced to the notion of FOMO by my wonderful coworkers at Wistia. FOMO, if you are not familiar and need to be told (like I was) means Fear of Missing Out. It's something that most people are familiar with, but is a phrase bandied about at Wistia more often than probably anywhere else (mind you, I'm biased because I first heard it there and have only heard it there since). Given that it was a new acronym that I could relate to, I swiftly adopted it and made it my own—hence I have begun thinking about and defining my gaming "FOMO."

A Bit of a List: 5 Reasons Why I Love League of Legends

HOW MANY BITS, MERCER? 8/8 BITS.

League of Legends is awesome. You probably knew I was gonna say that just from the title of this post, but seriously. It is. There are many reasons why I love this game, even though when it was first recommended to me I thought I would hate here. Here are a few of those reasons:

A Bit of Garbage: Borderlands 2's Console Controls

HOW MANY BITS, MERCER? 0/8 BITS

This post has been a long time coming and, until I finish Pokemon X (which should be sometime in the next day or so), I do not have anything else really to write about that isn't old news (GTA V, Last of Us), so instead I'm going to write about just how much I hate the Xbox controls of Borderlands 2.

A Little Bit of Neglect: Animal Crossing

HOW MANY BITS, MERCER? 3/8 BITS

When I purchased my 3DS originally, it was so that I could buy and play Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I'm not sure what I expected, really, or if I thought that it would be able to hold my attention any longer than the other Animal Crossing games, but now I find myself playing it mostly out of guilt. I know, that sounds crazy, but guilt is a very real motivator for me—even when things are supposed to be fun and, well, games.

A Little Bit of a Mess (and a LOT of nerdiness): PAX East

HOW MANY BITS, MERCER? 0/8 or 7/8 depending on my mood.

The time is upon us, children, the time of year when little nerdlings all along the east cost get uppity and antsy and angry because PAX East is 167 days away, and tickets are almost already completely sold out. If you didn't get tickets yet, hurry quick, because only Friday and Sunday passes are currently still available and even their availability is low.

The reason I say hurry is for one simple fact: PAX East was the best experience of my whole past year (other than getting married).



Yes, people complain about the availability of PAX East passes (which I will also do here a little bit), and boycott it (for valid reasons, for the most part)—but truly there is not another gaming convention that can beat it. Most arguing and volatile parties agree—PAX East is a great way to draw commonalities between people that otherwise would be more likely to flame a stranger than shake hands and play Cards Against Humanity with them. Maybe I'm stereotyping a little bit, but I speak from a place of experience. When I went to my first PAX East with my friend Walt and soon-to-be-husband Jerry last year I had no idea what to expect—I was nervous about the hordes of people, anxious about lines, and worried that I wouldn't be "legit" enough for Walt's tabletop friends to like me. Man, I was so wrong.

PAX, despite being a totally garbage user experience for buying tickets is AWESOME. Not only did I get to hang out with all the people in the world that I love most, I also got to meet new friends, play new games that hadn't been released yet and run a Light Weight RPG campaign with people that I never thought I'd get around a tabletop all together. PAX was (and will be this year) a safe haven for all nerding types—whether they be fully-closeted or out cosplaying as a Brony, a Little Sister, or Grim Fandango. Everyone was friendly, talkative and generally accepting, which also seems to be a far cry from what I've experienced from my fellow gamers in the past. I mean, who doesn't want to live in a society with rules like these, even if it's only for three days:

Long and short of it is—PAX is awesome, and worth every red cent you spend to go. Do it at least once in your life if you care about video games, yourself, freedom, or FUN. It is just that good. I mean, heck, look at the sweet haul of goodies I got for tabletop just on my first day:

Now, on to the bad—you did see that I mentioned 0/8 bits up there, right? Buying tickets for PAX is a total mess. Not only are there scalpers up the wazoo who buy tons of tickets at a time and resell them for prices 5+ times more than they purchased them for, but Penny Arcade's servers for the site go down almost immediately every time, apparently. I experienced it first hand this year when trying to purchase tickets for Jerry and I (and for Walt later, which I forgot originally because I am a huge jerk). Penny Arcade announced that tickets would go on sale at midday the next day, and I (like thousands of others) logged on to the site at 11:55 to make sure I got the treasured three-day passes. Unfortunately, due to traffic I assume, the PAX East Registration site went down and neglected to inform me (when I was able to refresh) that tickets were on sale at another site. I checked Twitter and realized the error and immediately jumped into queue on ShowClix, the service PAX used to sell tickets this year. After sitting in queue for about 30 minutes for the three-day passes that I had selected at the start of the process, I was kicked out and informed they were all sold out. While I understand that maintaining a server is difficult, I felt that there was more that could have been done to tell people on the actual PAX East site proper that there were ticket sales happening elsewhere—the fact that it wasn't updated until around 12:30 after three-day passes sold out was a bit of a farce and a disservice to loving fans.

Whatever, I got the tickets in the long run and myself, my biff Walt and my hubby Jerry are all going for yet another round of awesome game-filled fun this year. And I can. not. wait. <3 p="">

A Bit of Balance: Adult Gaming

HOW MANY BITS, MERCER? 0/8 BITS!

Ugh, adulthood. Goodbye to the days of "Which game am I going to play first?" and a resounding hello to "Do I really have time for that right now?" Every day I find myself questioning how best to schedule out my plethora of hobbies: Alright, I'll read for an hour, hula hoop and watch Doctor Who for an hour, then I'll play Pokemon while Jerry showers and maybe get a chance to schedule in an ARAM with Walt. 

No one wants to live like that, but it is how many of us overstimulated adult gamers choose to do it. It's tiring and, for me at least, the provider of a just the right amount of guilt to reconsider if my lifestyle really is worth the effort. It's a far cry from when I spent hours in my basement playing World of Warcraft with whatever boyfriend I had at the time but, ostensibly, it is better.

A Bit of Handheld: 3DS vs 2DS

HOW MANY BITS, MERCER? 6/8 BITS




So, some of you may not know this but I am a walking contradiction. In one of my older posts (several, actually) I mention that playing a DS is not "really" gaming. Let it be said: when I was younger, I was an asshole. I still maintain that console and PC gaming is a more immersive and complex experience, but I have been spending more time on my 3DS as of late given the recent release of Pokemon X & Y and the less recent Animal Crossing: New Leaf.