Yinz Come Back Now, Hear?

I'm officially a Yinzer. You may have noticed my rather lengthy absence from blogging and would be forgiven for thinking I had met my prediction of falling off the face of the interwebs after a scant few months (just two, really? had you no faith at all?). But, in fact, my life has been a whirlwind of change the past few months - physically, spiritually, and emotionally - which has resulted in my transformation from southerner to northerner. Or midwesterner. Or eastnorwester. Whatever it is you call Pittsburghers (apparently western PA is it's own classification).

No doubt some of the details of this transformation will leak out over the course of future blog posts (any tips for thematically linking life-changes to gaming are appreciated!). For now I'll try to slowly get back into the swing of things and catch up on all of the great blog conversations I've only skimmed. Fortunately I've got a grip (is that appropriate slang up here?) of half-finished posts I began over the past months to kick start my return to PEEGing.

That said I'm not letting you get out of this post without some post-emo-existential gaming ranting.

Michael Abbot once wrote about the clarity of focus that comes from travel when you are limited to your portable devices. This isn't travel per se (though I have logged many hours into Patapon 2) but a major move and while I do have my PS3 available it is hooked up to a gloriously low-def television at my girlfriend's place. In fact, due to packing the wrong set of cables for a time I had to use component cables on a composite connection which - while doable - results in a PS3 output in old-school black & white! There's something to be said for getting down to just the bare essentials in SFIV - and not spending 20 seconds narcissistically deciding what color outfit to pwn your opponent with. Moving from my rather respectably sized, widescreen, HD, epilepsy inducing purveyor of next-gen eye candy to a modest, boxy CRT in no way diminished the joy of SFIV (the same can't be said for my atrophied skills after a two-week hiatus). That's a great testament to the primacy of game mechanics. I wonder if I would have just as much fun playing online with hitboxes alone.

I can't think of a single other PS3 game I own that would hold up well under similar graphical degradation. LittleBigPlanet relies on the tactile look of it's scrapbook objects to draw you into its world. Flower is just depressing without the element of color (as emphasized in the second dream). Word on the street is that you shouldn't even bother with PixelJunk Eden unless you have an HD screen to pick out those pixel-sized particles of pollen.

But SFIV reigns o'er all with it's wonderful online play and poke, prod, and decieve game mechanics (it's certainly not the compelling narrative that keeps me coming back!). I'll take it monochrome on a green, scan-lined background if need be. Any other current-gen games you can say the same for?