"We're dead. Bartowski's got a gun."

Whoa, it’s been a while.

Think of all the things that have happened since I last posted: The PS3 slim was released, NASA blew up the moon, some kid got maybe-sorta-I-don’t-know stuck in a weather balloon. And hey! Chuck might end up returning at the end of October.

Sounds like a good thing, but the Save Chuck campaign quieted down rather quickly and NBC hasn’t exactly promoted it or anything. Dropping the show out of nowhere at the end of the month sounds risky. But at least Heroes knows now the terror of the 8PM time-slot (Muahaha…ha).

So what say you, oh wise peoples of the Internet: should Chuck return this month? Or should it be given time to build back momentum and get a little promotion going before its triumphant return to Monday nights?

Now we need a Maniac Mansion: Special Edition and I’ll be all set.

Anyway, I switched the theme on this blog back. Why? Because I’m indecisive. And I don’t like adding a feature image to every single post I write. I’m lazy, too, apparently.

But I plan on getting back into this blogging business in the next week, so if you’re interested in some new, fresh bloggy goodness…well, you might want to check somewhere else.

But I’ll be here, too, if you get really bored.

With the exception of this one and a handful of others, even the majority of “premium” themes (read: mostly same as free themes but you have to pay for them) are absolutely horrible.

Guybrush Threep...wait, his head's gone!

I read a lot of online gaming forums.

Don’t ask me why. I get bored. But there’s one topic that always springs up on those forums and on gaming blogs these days that always bothers me: hardcore vs. casual.

First off, let me start with the outrageous claim that this is the first generation of gaming consoles which has been defined by “hardcore vs. casual.” Previous generations were defined by, well, games. You either played them or you didn’t.

There wasn’t this outreach of support for people who weren’t gamers, and casual (in my eyes) was really just another word for a person who played games, just not that much. And, while the phrase hardcore still existed, it was geared more towards the people who played the hell out their games, maxed everything, got the highest scores, blah blah blah.

And if you weren’t a gamer, well, that just meant you had a different hobby. It didn’t mean you were a casual, or a non-gamer. It just meant you did other things.

Oh, and here’s the kicker: people were hardcore or casual. Games were not.

In other words, the whole “hardcore vs. casual” thing had less to do with the games themselves, and more to do with how they were played and the people who played them.

Nowadays, on these mindless gaming forums, arguments break out regarding the future of video games, which in turn inevitably lead to the “hardcore vs. casual” debate. Has the “casual” Wii taken us toward a path of shovelware-oldpeople-nongaming hell? Will Microsoft and Sony follow suit? Are motion controls going to become the norm? Are games becoming too “casual?”

I mean, it’s true that games have gotten easier compared to the old days. I sometimes wonder, though, if this is simply by design or because the technical limitations (or otherwise the nature of the technology) of earlier generations made them more difficult than they were, perhaps, intended to be. But casual? Hardcore? Let’s think about this for a second.

So what, then?

A game is a game. It might be easy, it might be difficult, but it’s ultimately pointless to label a video game as casual or hardcore.

A casual player, on the other hand, may play a game and perhaps never finish it, but enjoy what he or she can or play for however long they desire. And a hardcore player may pick up a game and beat it in an afternoon of intense playing.

There are variables, of course: length, difficulty, target audience. But the games themselves are neither “hardcore” nor “casual,” and so it’s for the players to decide how they approach them. Find the most “casual” game you can and hand it to a “hardcore” player, or the most “hardcore” game to a “casual” player, and you’ll see their play-styles adapt to whatever it is.

Sure, yeah, it does feel like the industry is sliding towards a more mainstream existence, and with that comes publishers and developers trying to create games that appeal to everyone, but didn’t we kind of ask for it? Weren’t we always waiting for the day when gaming would be accepted by the masses as a legitimate hobby and form of entertainment, on par with books, music, and movies?

Well, that day has come, and here we are. And maybe we’re a little defensive of this thing we’ve been a part of for years and we feel it’s being taken over by “non-gamers” who never gave it a chance in the past, but I’d like to think there’s room for everyone. And the raging “hardcore vs. casual” conflict gets us nowhere, because games are games.

Of course, these are just the ramblings of an old-school gamer who has his own point-of-view and definitions of pointless words.

What say you, oh great Interweb of DOOM™?

This game has made me hate Eskimos. And penguins. And life.

No, seriously, I’m kind of bored right now. Just right this second. Not with life or with the general state of things. Just right now, right here.

Sure, yeah, I could be working on my new website (which is going to be awesome, by the way). Or I could be staring at the website for the new Monkey Island game. Or I could just sit here and ramble mindlessly on my blog. Hey, there’s an idea.

Oh, hey, while we’re on the subject of pure, total boredom: remember back about five years ago when I said I was going to write up a review of the Age of Conan trial? Yeah, forgot all about that.

So, since I’m bored, here’s my short review.

Age of Conan

It was okay. Fun for maybe a week, if that. Gets boring quickly. I like cheese.

So there you have it. In all seriousness, Age of Conan isn’t a bad MMO. It just suffers from a horrible launch and, as is the problem with every other MMO, it’s an MMO. Doomed at birth, basically.

Anyway, /rambling. I’m off to, I don’t know, finish up Chrono Trigger or something.