Popular Post Dragon-Archon Posted January 20, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted January 20, 2019 (edited) Alright PSNP, the first member interview of 2019 is here. @DrBloodmoney also broke the record of the amount of time that passed between closing the question thread and finishing the interview. He actually finished it yesterday, but I had some things to do and wasn't able to post it. Have fun reading through the interview it's nicely detailed. Stock Questions How did you come up with your PSN name? It’s the character from a book I loved - DrBloodmoney, Or How We All Got Along After the Bomb by Philip K Dick. The fact that it also has Hitman connotations is purely coincidental - though remarkably fortuitous, since I love Hitman too. I used that name years ago, originally as my handle for online Poker tournaments I think, but I stuck with it because it sounds kinda cool, has meaning to me, and is usually available on things without having to add num63r5, xXsilly_symbøłš#Xx or AnY@oThEr<Dümb>$tūff-1983– What games convinced you get your PlayStation 3, Playstation Vita, and PlayStation 4? It wasn’t really games, it was the hobby itself - and latent obsessive tendencies mixed with alcoholism. I’ve played games for most of my life, though I had kind of dropped off playing towards the end of the PS2 generation in my final years of university. Afterwards, work took me to a new city, and I was commuting between locations - weeks in one and weekends in another, and unfortunately, during that time I began drinking pretty heavily and it kinda got away from me. Eventually I decided to get sober, and I needed something to do that would keep my fingers - and more importantly my mind - active and keep me from wanting to slip back into old habits. I got the new console (a PS3) and began playing again. When trophies came along, one of my friends became infatuated with trophy hunting, and we started having a bit of friendly competition seeing who could level up most, and that was that. I’ve been back on the gaming train ever since. I didn’t need any specific games to convince me to get the Vita or the PS4 - I was deep into the gaming by then, and I got my consoles for the sake of the console - I always trust that the games I will love will come... and they did. I will say, the first games I loved for each console, and that made me really feel like my purchase was a good one: PS3: Uncharted: Drakes Fortune PSVita: Lumines Electronic Symphony PS4: infamous: Second Son What are your top 5 game series and why? Soulsborne I realise ‘Soulsborne’ isn’t exactly a series - if I had to, I would narrow this to ‘Dark Souls’ - but there are so many interweaving connections with Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne, that I really think they need to be considered as a single series. (In fact, I would almost throw Salt and Sanctuary in there too, and The Surge, as they are also great, and I get a lot of the same feelings from playing them, but lets not get carried away!) It is strange that there is an entire genre called ‘Survival Horror’, which the Souls games are very much not a part of, and yet none of them can come close to the feeling of ‘Horror about your Survival’ that you get from a Souls game when in a new, unfamiliar area with a ton of souls, no estus flasks, no bonfire in sight and you hear a strange noise from around the corner. Maybe there were games in this genre before Demon’s Souls - I’m sure there were, but I never played any - but once I did (when a friend who knows I like to 100% games bought me a copy of “this weird, super-hard japanese rpg” he had heard about as a sort of half-antagonistic, half-smirking gift, I was hooked. The art style is always astounding, the controls are peculiar and obtuse, the items and world very thinly explained without delving into the texts, but the games are amazing, and have their own unique sense of horror and fear they can instil, and victory when a tough boss goes down. Assassin’s Creed I probably have more Assassin’s Creed games platinumed than any other franchise. Not hard I’ll grant you, as there are so many of them, and none are particularly difficult to complete, but I always enjoy a new entry in the series. There are some better than others, and they style of game has had quite a few changes over the course of the series, but the different historical settings have made for some really interesting differences, and the story, while often baffling, is always fun and silly. At worst, they are middling, but at best, they can be great. I’ve personally never understood why people complain about the Ubisoft open-world formula. It’s one that works, that’s why it keeps popping back up. I like the loop of take over tower - see icons - slowly work through them. It’s simple, but satisfying. I know the series is popular, but I do sometimes wonder if I like the series for different reasons than most other fans - my favourite entries are often among the least loved generally. My personal favourites are Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Assassin’s Creed Unity and Assassin’s Creed Liberation, which seem to top no one else’s lists of the best ones. For me, the setting is key to the experience, and I found tremendous fun in Constantinople with it’s eclectic mix of architecture, The Bayou Swamps of Liberation, and I thought the rendering of Paris in Unity was such a blast to see - Paris is my favourite city in the world, and running across those rooftops was a highlight of the series, despite the relative dullness of Arno as a protagonist. I’m personally not overly fond of the new direction of Origins and most recently Odyssey - they are good games (well, I can only speak to Origins, as I haven’t delved into Odyssey yet) but the setting still hooks me, even if the gameplay has gotten away from the single-city core I loved, and I really miss the competitive multiplayer that has been missing post-Black Flag, but I still go back each time, as there is enough for me to like for me to overlook the stuff I’m indifferent to. Hitman I never played Hitman: Agent 47, but I remember getting Hitman 2 for PS2, and being blown away by how different it was from most of the games I was playing at the time. The slow pace that it forced, coupled with the way it rewarded out-of-the-box thinking was - by modern standards - pretty rudimentary, but at the time it was a breath of fresh air. I was hooked from that point. Hitman Contracts was pretty good - not having played the first game meant a lot of the remade contracts were new to me - but Hitman: Blood Money took the idea and refined it to a new level. I can probably pinpoint my trophy-hunting tendencies to that game - even without a shiny medal to earn, I still spent hours and hours trying to get perfect, silent assassinations on every contract. I liked Hitman: Absolution too, for what it was. A lot of the complaints about it are valid - it doesn’t have many truly open levels, and the disguises became far less fun and useful, but I still enjoyed the game and what open levels it had were good. The contracts mode was a really innovative multiplayer invention, and kept me playing it long after the story was done - but I’m very glad it’s reception was mixed, because that feedback led directly to the rebooted Hitman and Hitman 2 - which I consider to be among the very best games ever made. It’s a series that has been on a long evolution of honing a style, and I feel like every previous entry has been good in it’s own ways, but has also been paving the way to it’s current form: the best, smartest, funniest, most challenging murder-sandbox ever crafted. Dishonored This one was going to be Bioshock - I love Bioshock and what it (and System Shock before it) did for advancing the immersive sim cannot be understated, but I realised while writing that I was often referencing how it led to other games I loved - like Dishonored. Dishonored has a lot of Bioshock DNA, but it’s spliced with Hitman, Thief and Deus Ex (all good franchises to varying degrees.) Arkane managed to make a series that has amazing world-building, first-class environmental storytelling and a set of powers that makes every new play-through feel like a different game, yet totally viable as the ‘primary’ method of play. Just look at any forum about these games - you will see multiple different people claiming that their specific set of powers are the ‘best’ way to play - and the secret is: they are all correct, and all wrong! That’s one of the most appealing things to me, in any game. If you offer multiple ways to play, and they all feel good, that’s a great thing, and a lot of games have done that, some successfully, some less so. But if you offer a rule-set that allows fo so much variation of play-style that you actually feel like you are coming up with your own unique way of playing? That is exceptional, and much rarer and harder to do. It’s why I love Prey, it’s why I love Soulsborne games, it’s why I love Hitman, It’s why I love Rogue Legacy and Dead Cells and it’s why I love Dishonored! Arkane are some of the best the industry has ever seen for this type of immersive sim, and I’ll but anything they make, sight-unseen at this point - there aren’t many studios I can say that about, but they have more than earned it! Final Fantasy Final Fantasy as a franchise has it’s ups and downs - I wasn’t a big fan of V, or XV, and I never even tried any of the online ones (XI & XIV), but Final Fantasy has more hits than misses, and when it hits, it hits big. I started on IV, and liked it a lot, went back to the early ones and liked them to varying degrees, but it was VI that really cemented it for me. Final Fantasy is why I’m a Sony and not a Nintendo guy first and foremost. I - like a lot of Playstation adopters - followed the Squaresoft trail to Playstation for FF-VII, and for a long time, my Playstation 1 might as well have been called my Mako Reactor. I know it has detractors, and the early 3D makes it a difficult one to go back to, but boy did I love that game. There is so much of my formative gaming years wrapped around Final Fantasy that I couldn’t possibly not have it on this list. Every time I counted it out, it came back again - whether it was FFXII after I didn’t much care for X-2, or IX after I didn’t love VIII, or the criminally underrated XIII-2 after the rather more overrated XIII, I can never count Final Fantasy out. Which... now that I think about it... might mean I secretly want... Final Fantasy XV-2...? ...why does that make me feel so dirty?... What are your top 5 games and why? Well, like most people of my age-group, my top 5 of all time is heavily weighted towards the SNES 16-bit generation. (I think that the games that have the biggest impact on you are almost always the ones you played on your first console) but, this being PSNP, I’ll do a non-Playstation top 5 and a PS3/PS4 top 5. Non-PS top 5: Chronotrigger There’s not much I can say about this game that hasn’t already been said - It’s funny, well-written, smart, has what was at the time a unique, well crafted battle system and - for a JRPG - it has remarkably little filler material and no excessive grinding required. I’ve played through it many times, and it still holds up as well today as back then. There was a single official sequel- Chrono Cross - which was okay but nothing special, and a fan-made sequel called Crimson Echoes which was actually very, very good, though it uses all existing assets so is pretty limited, but really, Chronotrigger stands alone as the pinnacle of 16-bit gaming for me. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Since I never followed on with Nintendo consoles, for me, this is Zelda. I never played Ocarina, or any Zelda game past this one, so it’s a pretty remarkable testimony to this game that I still think of Zelda when I think of great franchises, based solely on the strength of this one game. It’s another one - like Chronotrigger - where the 16-bit art was so well done and had such a distinct flavour to it, that even now, 20-odd years later, I still see games made now and think “oh, that’s like a Zelda tree” or “This is like Kakariko Village” Earthbound Earthbound was never released in the UK, and I wasn’t a particularly informed kid about importing games, but my local videogame store had a few ‘special’ items on show on the top shelf, and one that caught my eye was a large box with “Earthbound” written on it. It was a special edition which came with a big Art Book and the game. I don’t know what it was exactly that drew me to it, but it must have had a hell of a pull, because I remember spending all my birthday money together in one shot, buying it, along with the weird convertor thing you had to use to play NTSC games on a PAL SNES, which won’t have been cheap, and this was pre-internet in my household. Anyways, no one else in my school had even heard of this game, but they sure as shit did once I got into it. That copy got played to death in my house, then lent around to about every kid in my class. The game was incredible. Unlike the others on this list, I haven’t gone back to it since the SNES days - I don’t know why exactly, maybe I’m scared it will lose the special place it has in my mind and heart, but there are very few games of that scope and style that really felt like I was the one to discover it, and everything in it. There was no-one in school to discuss what I was finding when I played it the first time, and like I said - no internet. Even the Nintendo hotline was a no-go, as the UK version did not cover import games, so every secret was my own discovery, and made me feel like a boss! Super Mario World Um… yeah. Real original pick, I know. Look, it’s the best, okay? I love platform games, and Super Mario World is just… the best one. People making platform games now must fucking hate Super Mario Brothers. I mean, no matter what they do, they won’t beat it. It’s the king. I still play it through about once a year, and still love it every single time. Final Fantasy VI As I said, I’m not the FF fiend I once was anymore, but over the course of my gaming life, I would be hard pressed to find a series that has given me more joy than Final Fantasy, and so I couldn’t make this list without including one, and in my opinion FFVI is the best of the bunch. The openness of the game, coupled with the great cast of characters, the battle system, the optional nature of parts of the story, and that amazing Opera Scene just make me happy. Terra is a great character, Kefka is a wonderfully evil bad guy, and the story is a perfect mix of whimsy, melancholy, dramatic and funny. PS3/PS4 Top 5: Hitman 2 Every level in the latest incarnation of Hitman is massive and intricate, and the breadth of scope for experimentation and variety is unparalleled. I can spend an entire evening just setting myself a challenge and trying to beat it - and the amount of content in Hitman 2, between Contracts mode, Story mode, Escalations, Elusive Targets, Sniper Assassin, Ghost Mode (which is still in Beta and a little messy, but ultimately very rewarding if played with someone you know who isn’t going to just quit if they are losing) and hundreds and hundreds of individual challenges and unlocks, plus all the Hitman 1 content being accessible in the same game, makes it not just one of the best playing games on the console, but also one of the most content-rich games out there. I already have 100% of the trophies in the game, but find myself checking the release schedules each month for the new content being added - new Featured Contracts, new Elusive Targets, New Escalations, and there are new maps coming sometime too - as if it needed any more! Hitman 2 is a game that is so broad and open, and allows so much experimentation and variety of play style and challenge, that you really get out as much as you put in - but I cannot imagine that anyone could look at all those different modes and levels and not find at least something in it that they love. Luckily, I love every single part of it! If you can’t find fun to be had in playing this game, then you should probably get out of the game-playing business! - and check your pulse... you might be a robot... Prey I’ve written a lot on these forums about why I love Prey so much, so I’m stealing my own write up here: There is something so well designed about Prey. During my first play-through I was certainly a big fan of it, but I think it was a few hours into my second playthrough (where I was doing a different set of powers) that I came to fully appreciate just how well designed the game is. There are so many different ways to deal with traversing the space station, and working out the different ways to achieve your goals based on the powers you have chosen is immensely satisfying. Can’t hack that door? Okay. Did someone email themselves the password? No? Have you tried finding a vent? No way to get there? How about creating a path with your glue gun? No glue? How about shooting a nerf gun through the security window at the emergency open switch? No nerf gun? Why not mimic a coffee cup and blast yourself through the cracked window? No mimicry? Why not get your space suit on and float around to the other side of the door? That’s fun in and of itself, and other games have done similar stuff, but I’ve never seen it done in a way that has so many options, but does it in a way that never sacrifices the integrity of the constructed world. Every option available still makes sense within the context of world you inhabit - I never feel like “oh, okay, I get it, but why would this be here?” The ventilation system makes sense. Access hatches are where they would be. That thing might be a convenient way to climb to that ledge, but it also makes sense that there would be an abstract art piece in this lobby, based on the aesthetic and the background story of the place. Symbiosis between game mechanics and story integrity is rare in games. The Bioshock franchise has always had an incredible sense of place and world, but the actual variety of choices in terms of traversal were pretty limited - most of the multi-choice stuff was in relation to combat. Actually getting from one area to the next never really had more than one or two options. On the flip-side, the Deus Ex series always has a lot of variety in the choices of both combat and traversal, but to achieve that, the devs sacrificed the integrity of the world - I constantly was asking “really? A massive air vent here? Why?” “Why are these guards just hanging out in this abandoned elevator shaft? What do they think they are guarding?” In Prey it all just... makes sense, and that means that you as the player stop thinking about the problems you face in terms of “what does the game designer want me to do?” and instead go “what would I do?” That may seem like a small distinction, but it makes the game so much more immersive. It really feels like there is multiple ways to do everything, and the devs have accounted for every single little way that I tried to do. Every time I tried something a little odd, or out-of-the-box, it was not only possible, but often worked so well that I have to assume they had considered it (or, at least, made the mechanics work so well that they could cope with anything I threw at it.) I even tried breaking the game scripting by killing characters that seemed essential to certain missions, or doing stuff ahead of when I was supposed to, or out of logical order, but the scripting kept up - it adjusted to fit what I was doing without forcing me back to what the expected path would be. The controls are great, the guns feel good, and there are a plethora of interesting powers and mechanics to play with, which is great, but that is a small thing in comparison to: The world just feels real. Every inhabitant of the space station can be found (corpse or otherwise) and accounted for, and by reading the emails and diaries, post-it notes, video diaries, security footage etc. you can follow each and every one’s story, which have been worked out flawlessly. This person is an Engineer, but the locator shows them not in the engineering bay? You can bet there is an email on some computer somewhere explaining that they had to go somewhere else right before the outbreak, or a timetable showing they were off duty that day, or a schedule showing they were off-shift. It’s stuff like that that makes it all feel way more plausible - I get the sense that if I asked the game writers anything about the background of the game or any little tertiary character, they would be able to tell me any details I want about them. They have put in the work to make mydetective work feel valid. Each new area you go to feels different from the previous ones, but also fits with the overall aesthetic, and feels correct for the station as a whole - Talos 1 is neither too big (so it feels impossible that it exists or is architecturally impossible) nor too small (so it feels too limited to explore for a long game.) There are also a lot of very small things that make stuff that usually feels like superficial ‘busywork’ in lesser games make sense and feel worthwhile. For example, the ‘break down items to component elements/ 3D print new items from those elements’ mechanic means that every little item is of value. No shotgun this play-through? Those shotgun shells are not useless - break them down into component elements and use those to make yourself a med kit or some crossbow bolts. Need a new power quickly? Break that useless stuff don and make yourself something to gain a new skill! It’s never that Resident Evil thing of “I have to use this gun, because that’s what ammo I have” - you can unmake and remake the world to suit how you want to do things! The game is not perfect, If it has a weakness, it’s that the combat can be a little flat, especially in a Human Powers Only / No Powers play-through, so I would recommend playing on no higher than ‘Normal’, unless you enjoy stealth games, as you will need to hide a lot above that (the stealth is good if you do like it - these guys made Dishonored, so they know how to do 1st person stealth well) but if that isn’t your bag, then keep it on Normal. (i’ll also briefly mention those load time, which are too long. Not a massive problem early on, but later, when you are going between multiple areas more often, they are a drag. There’s no two ways about it, you definitely feel the length of them.) Obviously game opinions are all subjective - not every game is everyone’s cup of tea - but if there is one game I always feel good about recommending to people, it’s this one, because I think that no matter how you chose to approach it, the game will reward you for thinking like that. Most games are crafted in such a way that if you try something different, they say “No, sorry, that’s not the solution.” Prey says “Sure, why not?” Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin I’ve spoken above about the Souls series in general and I love them all, but chief among them for me is Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. There isn’t any single, big thing that makes me like DS2 more than the other games in the series, and it’s a fairly close race between them, just a matter of taste really. DS1 has a more interconnected world, whereas DS2 is more sprawling and varied. DS3 has superior technical visuals, but DS2 has, I think, more variety of amazing art design. The enemies are my favourite set, the locations are grand and beautiful, the weapons were my favourite bunch (what the hell happened to my twin-blade, DS3?) I guess it all just come down to the fact that I find the loop of the game a little more satisfying in DS2, and to my mind, it had the best DLC add-ons of any of the three. I’d generally recommend the DLCs for Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 to people if they are going to play them, but for Dark Souls 2? I’d tell them they need to get them, as there are some great sections there. Portal 2 I was pretty skeptical about the idea that Valve could make Portal - a very smart, but short game relying on a single story twist (well, I guess the twist being that there was a story at all) into a full length game. I figured it would feel too long for the mechanics, or that there would be barely any story, or that they would have to lose the purity of the game aesthetics or mechanics from the first game to stretch it out, but I was completely wrong. Portal 2 is perfectly paced, incredibly inventive, very well written, remarkably funny, and keeps the simple inputs of the puzzle mechanics, while constantly coming up with new ways to challenge you. The puzzles are super well designed, not so hard that you are ever stuck for long, but hard enough that you always feel like you are smart to have beaten it, and the ending is amazing. The Coop stuff was also something I was really skeptical about, and - again - ended up being great, and a very cool addition to the game. (I know, I know, I never should have doubted Valve. Now, if only they could learn what number comes after ‘2’!) The Witness Speaking of feeling smart when you complete puzzles... The Witness is almost the opposite type of puzzler to Portal 2 - but that doesn’t make it any less awesome. It has basically no story, aside from a little environmental stuff, but what it lacks in explicit narrative it more than makes up for in mystery, wonder and the shear audaciousness of having 20-odd different puzzle rules, yet never having a single piece of text to explain anything! I loved exploring the island of The Witness - once began with it I played that game like a man possessed. There are so many layers of puzzle that have been wrung out of that one, single ‘draw a line’ puzzle mechanic, and the feeling of cracking an area and activating a laser is one of pure triumph. Plus, not to give anything away for anyone who hasn’t experience it yet, but the moment that you realise the thing... you know, the thing that you realise... about the island? it’s magical. You suddenly are looking around at a familiar landscape, and realising you are looking at it like it is all brand new again. That really doesn’t happen in any medium other than games, and even then, it barely happens at all. The Witnessdoes it with aplomb. Do you have any other hobbies outside of gaming? Well, I’m a dad to a 4-year old son who has Autism - a lovely little man with a penchant for Go-Jetters, Sesame Street and Lego, so... there’s a lot of that going on in my household! I like movies, TV, comic books, actual books - all the usual stuff. I also write - most short story type stuff, though I have two full length novels published now - both available on Amazon (kindle and paperback) and a third on the way to round out the trilogy: http://bit.ly/DivineRevolution They are genre-straddling, but best described as an Urban-Fantasy-Horror trilogy, about a female assassin and a band of misfits, hired in the afterlife by rogue Archangels to assassinate God. Check them out if you’re interested - I guarantee* you’ll love them! *not a guarantee (but they are good, I promise!) Top 5 TV shows, Movies, and/or anime, why, and would you recommend them to people? Movies: Bladerunner Bladerunner is not just the visuals, or the world, or the story. It’s the whole package. I’m a Philip K dick fan, and have read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and to be honest, I thought it was one of his weaker books, but what Ridley Scott did with it is unparalleled. The story is darker, more nuanced, and way more atmospheric, and spawned an entire new way for sci-fi to be portrayed on film. No movie afterwards, until maybe The Matrix made such an impact on sci-fi portrayal I don’t think, and even then, The Matrix has a lot of Bladerunnerinfluence in it. The question of what exactly Deckert is is still debated to this day, and it is a testament to the skills of the writers and movie makers that both possibilities make sense, without it becoming hokey either way. Plus, despite all odds, the sequel (Bladerunner 2049) was excellent, and managed, again, to keep the Deckert question going, without tipping the scales one way or the other. The Shining There’s a reason why there is an entire documentary about all the weird and wacky theories about the meaning behind The Shining (Room 237) - it’s so perfectly made that it can support a level of scrutiny that most other films can’t. It’s scary, mysterious and beautiful to look at, and every time I think I’ve come to fully understand all it’s subtleties, a new layer peels back and I see something new in it. Nicholson and Duval are both perfect, and the Hotel is pretty much a character to itself - watching the ways that Kubrick makes sure the architecture of the place doesn’t quite make sense (like how the room that Jack is interviewed in is completely internal, yet has a window to the outside, or how Danny rides his tricycle around without going up any incline, yet you can see him pass over a balcony he rode under moments before) yet never calls explicit attention to it, creating a sense of unexplainable unease is awesome. The ending is creepy, and the subject of hundreds of theories and musings, all of which are made interesting and plausible due to the perfectly constructed film. The Fisher King I think this is Jeff Bridges best performance, one of Robin William’s best and Terry Gilliam’s best film too. It’s not really dated - aside from the music - because it’s really a fairytale, but it blends really dark stuff with great humour, and is all wrapped in one gloriously bizarre plot involving mental illness, hope, despair, the responsibility of public personalities, loneliness, fame, disassociation from regular society, homelessness, romance, heroism and Video Rentals. If you haven’t seen it, you should! Glengarry Glen Ross The whole movie is just dialogue - in terms of cinematography, music, sets etc. it’s never great, and in some spots actually kinda sub-par, but that script, and that cast? Wow. Pacino, Spacey, Pryce, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Alec Baldwin, Jack Lemmon? All at the top of their game? It’s a sight to see. I can watch it over and over again, and it never gets old. Rocky Rocky shouldn’t really work. It’s a boxing movie with very little boxing in it. It has no real ‘bad-guy’ - Apollo Creed is actually a fairly nice and likeable guy, whose only fault is (quite well founded) arrogance. You know Rocky isn’t going to win from the start. It had a bunch of fairly poor sequels. (Except Balboa and Creed/ Creed II which are great) And yet... It’s message is great, acting is great, story is moving, pace is perfect, music is outstanding and the love story works. Plus - as a bonus - the movie also doubles as a very smart Turing Test: If the subject watches the moment when Rocky stands back up in the 14th round while Mickey is yelling to stay down, sees the look on Apollo’s face and their eyes don’t well up? They are an android, and need to be ‘retired.’ TV Shows: Mad Men Mad Men achieves what shout be an impossible task - it’s a show that ran a full 7 seasons, and never had a bad episode. Some shows have great story arcs in individual episodes, some have great arcs across their seasons, and -very occasionally- a show manages to have a perfect arc across its entire run. Mad Men has all 3. It is, for me, the perfect television show. The characters are all interesting, it manages to be extremely exciting, without even needing violence or horror to do so, it’s a perfect historical timeline (the newspapers are all the exact ones from the date in question, the movies being shown in the theatres are shown on the correct days they came out etc etc) and it manages to never have a anyone behave out-of-character, yet still do surprising storylines. The acting is uniformly flawless, the subject matter interesting and the drama real. John Hamm is the perfect actor for Don Draper - a guy so charismatic that you can never really despise Don, despite his many awful traits. The whole show is perfect. The West Wing I like pretty much everything Aaron Sorkin has written - Sports Night, The News Room, even Studio 60 had it’s moments - but The West Wing is still his best stuff to date in my opinion. I like most tv shows about politics - The Thick of It and VEEP were also high on my potential candidates for this list, but those are snarky and biting satire. That’s hard to get right, of course, and both do it well, but it’s even harder to make a show about politics that is earnest and not mean-spirited - that actually makes you feel good. the dialogue is sharp and fast, and some episodes are like a mini Frank Capra film in their messages, which I’m a sucker for. Deadwood Deadwood has all the same good points going for it that Mad Men does - in fact, if it hadn’t been cruelly cancelled at the end of the third season it might have been the no.1. The whole cast is great, the sets superb and the story, blending real life characters and history with dramatised stuff - is compelling, funny, dark, witty and at times grotesque. It’s only flaw is that it just ends, no resolution, no grand finale, due to the cancellation. It’s a tragedy that the show couldn’t pull in more viewers, and a sad inditement of the tastes of the general public that a show this rich and well written and wonderful stumbles on to a 3rd season before getting unceremoniously dropped, yet so much complete dross runs for years and years. The Twilight Zone Look past some dodgy special effects, and pretend you don’t see that string, and you realise that The Twilight Zone had some of the best sci-fi tales ever told. I like shows like the X-Files, but with ongoing characters, there is only so much the writers can do - you know Mulder and Scully have to survive the episode. With an anthology show, on he other hand, anything is possible. There is something special about a show where the world could literally explode at the end of the story - everything is possible, and no one is safe! The only downside to being a big fan of The Twilight Zone is that, once you have seen every episode, you have basically seen he story of every sci-fi movie you are ever going to see. Almost all sci-fi films borrow so much from the show that you can guess the big twist to every movie you see. As it turns out, there are only really 3 possible sci-fi twists: “The True Monster is Man!” “It was Earth All Along” & “IT’S A COOKBOOK!” :-P The Simpsons At this point, there is probably more Simpsons I’ve not seen than Simpson’s I’ve seen, but even at it’s worst it is merely watchable. At it’s best (seasons 3-12ish) it was a powerhouse, and is responsible for more of my sense of humour developing than any other show. Top 5 favorite music bands/group/artist? The Smashing Pumpkins Yeah, The Smashing Pumpkins have a long list of mediocre output post-Machina, but it really doesn’t matter, as they were at their peak during my formative years, and their first 5 albums have more play time in my teenage years than any other band, by a country mile. Not to mention, they took on the hardest thing to do successfully in rock music - the double album - and managed to make probably the best, most cohesive, least filler-including, most relentlessly listenable one of all time in Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. A lot of music I loved in my teens still makes me smile when I hear it, but there isn’t much I still actively put on and even less that I regularly listen to. In an age of shuffle-play and easy playlists, I rarely listen to full albums, all the way through, in order - but there are a few that are so good I still do that. The Smashing Pumpkins have at least 3 of those. Arab Strap They are from my country, and they actually sing like it. While most Scottish singers do a strange, pseudo-American affectation with thier singing voices, Aiden Moffat sounds undeniably, and unapologetically Scottish. Lyrically, I think Arab Strap stand alone - who else whole have the lyrics: “I wish it was someone else's blood on the johnnie. It's in my mouth and under my nails.” Or “It was the biggest c*ck you'd ever seen, But you've no idea where that c*ck has been.” As a band, they have a peculiar sound - folksy at times, harsh and forlorn at others - and really don’t sound like any other bands. You know it’s Arab Strap the second you hear one note, and they and have the weird ability to be quite subdued on their albums, but loud and raucous live, with the exact same songs. I won’t add anymore, except to say you should check them out, and I’ll leave you with the final lines of their song ‘Piglet’: “The words that you used to think turned me on just made me laugh. Do you want to suck my c*nt? in real life just sounds naff. And when we were with all your friends I might as well have been no one. And you can't get over your dead dog - well it takes one to know one.” The Silversun Pickups You know how I said The Smashing Pumpkins faded, and didn’t have much good stuff post-Machina? Well the Silversun Pickups kind of picked up (I know, I heard it) where they left off. I imagine they know that too - henfe the marginal homage in the ‘SP’ initials. They sound like a modern Smashing Pumpkins, though at this point, they have almost as much good material out there, and if they keep it up for another couple of albums, they will probably end up with more. The Wu-Tang Clan I listen to a lot of Hip Hop, and could easily have populated this list entirely with it, but in picking one artist/band to represent the genre, it has to be Wu-Tang. Endlessly listenable, and if you include all the solo stuff (GZA and Ghostface’s solo material are particular favorites), offshoots, semi-members like Redman etc. you end up with like 60-odd albums worth of material. Sure, there’s some weak stuff here and there, but there’s way more that’s great, and some that is truly exceptional. The RZA is a genius. Placebo Another one from my school days, but where many other bands got slowly worse, Placebo continued putting out good material long after most others fell off, and I still find a lot of their old stuff to hold up now. Plus, I guess inside this rugged, manly, father-figure-esque exterior beats the heart of an angsty, emo, teenager :-P Your favourite platinum? I’m taking this to mean not just the game I had the most fun playing that had a Platinum trophy - because then it’d just be ‘best game’ and I’d be listing games I already said - so I assume this is more “What game which was most improved by a good trophy list?” In that case, I think I’d probably say Nier: Automata. Nier: Automata was okay in the first play-through - I certainly didn’t dislike it, but I probably wouldn’t have stuck with it through to the ‘real’ endings if not for the trophy list. That would have been a big mistake, ad the game’s story only really gets going around Endings C&D. In that case, the trophy list encourages the player to stick with the game long enough to get to the real meat of it, and then - once Ending E has been done and they have seen all it has to offer, it goes the extra step of allowing the player to either mop up legit, or buy the remainder of the trophies from the weird item seller (who only becomes available after Ending E.) That might seem like a silly move, or encouraging ‘cheating’, but I don’t think it is. In my opinion, it’s actually incredibly smart, because it uses the pursuit of trophies to push the player to see the best content, but - once they have seen that stuff - also provides an ‘escape-hatch’ from a long, post-game grind, ensuring that what trophy hunting types remember about the game after they are done with it is all the good stuff, and not a bunch of grinding they had to do. While that does mean the trophies become less rare (for people who care about such things - I’m not personally one of them), it ensures the parts of the game that the player enjoyed most is what sticks in their heads. If they loved the combat and the side-quests and wanted to do all that stuff legit, they will do the post-game mop up and will remember that. If they, like me, were most invested in the main story and message, they will exit at that point, by buying the few remaining trophies, and the story will be what they remember best. The flip-side of this idea would be something like Final Fantasy XIII. Now, I liked the story in FF-XIII. Not the strongest entry for sure, but I liked the characters, liked the story for the most part, and loved the battle system, and the story in that game takes a good 30-odd hours. However, whenever I think back to getting the platinum for that game, the first thing I think of isn’t the stuff I liked. It’s the hours and hours and hours of mindlessly fighting one enemy type to get the one, super-rare material I had to get to craft... whatever the hell it was I had to craft. I can’t even remember what the thing was now. Or what the enemy was. Or what the in-game justification for why I had to make it was. A huge, expensive, well polished game, and all I can recall is an irritating, painfully long, tediously dull grind. That’s a real shame. Your least favourite platinum? I almost convinced myself to make this Final Fantasy XIII based on what I just said above :-P Again, I could just list games I didn’t like, but my compulsion to platinum them kept me trudging through (and there are definitely some that fit the bill, though I try not to do that much anymore.) Legends of Wrestlemania was a particularly miserable slog, as was HtOlNiQ: The Firefly Something-or-Other, Jak II and Sly II - all demonstrably horrible games that I could sit and write smack about until the cows come home, but really, I think the spirit of the question is “What game was most hurt by a bad trophy list?” In that spirit, as much as it pains me to say, it’s probably Ni No Kuni. I liked Ni No Kuni a lot. The story was fun, the animated sections were ace, the look and feel of everything in it was top notch, and I found parts to be genuinely affecting, and funny in all the right places. However, my abiding memory of that game is just having to trail around for hours and hours and hours after all the story was done, mopping up stuff for completionist-type trophies, and that isn’t a good memory to be left with. Even now, I haven’t bought the sequel, even though I probably would like it at first, because of the sour taste the post-game mop up of the first one put in my mouth. For a game that was that good during the main story, that’s a real pity, and shows what a bad trophy list can do to the memory of an otherwise great game. Have you ever been tempted to switch over to the Xbox/Nintendo/PC gaming ecosystems? It’s funny, I’ve always hated the whole ‘console wars’ nonsense - and it’s nothing today compared to the rampant school-yard nonsense of the SNES/Megadrive (or SNES/Genesis for Americans) rivalry from when I was growing up, that shit was straight-up stupid, since most folks engaging in it didn’t chose their console, their parents did - but having said that, I have stuck rigidly to Sony consoles since following the Final Fantasy franchise to PS1 and abandoning Nintendo then. (I did get a Wii, but that hardly counts. I mean, everyone bought a Wii. It was basically the law, and other than some Mario throwback stuff and Smash Brothers Brawl, I didn’t play it much, and ended up giving it away after a few dusty years.) I don’t have any bad words about Xbox consoles, - in fact, until the PS4, I would have argued they had the better controllers, (I used an Xbox 360 controller for PC gaming) - but I just never felt the need to get those consoles. The exclusives that appeal most to me are generally on Sony consoles, and - being from the UK - so are all my friends. Over here, Playstation is the norm, and Xbox is less common. Generally folks have either Playstation only or both - I don’t know many folks with just an Xbox in my circle of friends. If you could have one game from any gaming generation be remade or re-released what would it be? Probably Shadow of Memories. (Shadow of Destiny in US I think?) It wasn’t the most groundbreaking game in the world, but I loved the shit out of it. It was one of the earlier 3D games to be entirely story based, and I loved the time travel mechanics, seeing the same weird little town across all the different timelines. Truly some of the most Tommy Wiseau dialogue and delivery, and the game is too short, the character too tall, and the story bottom-heavy, but I would love a remaster - or better yet, a sequel. Hopefully Konami will continue to make fine games like this... ... oh wait. Damn. How far are you willing to go for a platinum? Not as far as a lot of folks, and not as far as I used to be. There was a time I would participate, on occasion, in boosting or in continuing to hammer against a game incessantly, whether or not I was having any fun, just to get that shiny platinum trophy, but those days have mostly faded, for a few reasons. Mostly, I’m a dad to a 4-year-old, and so I have had less time to game for the past, well, 4 years(!), as well as now splitting my free time between gaming and writing. (A good book -once you factor in editing and layout - takes somewhere between 1,000 & 3,000 hours, give or take,) so you need to be disciplined! I already only sleep around 5 hours a night, so I don’t have spare time to waste on unenjoyable stuff. Also, having some unfinishable games on my profile means I will never have a perfect completion percentage, so really, letting one or two more games go unfinished is no biggie anymore. They are only adding to a small, (but growing,) pile! What feature (besides backwards compatibility) do you think the next console generation should have? Well, I absolutely do not think it should have backwards compatibility - hampering the progress and the technology of your new system by tethering it to a requirement to run the old software is not a good idea in my opinion. If it can work without holding things back, then fine, but I hope they don’t consider it a priority. I have a PS4 to play PS4 games. I want a PS5 to play PS5 games! Other than that... I don’t really know. The biggest bonus that the PS4 brought to me was the rest-mode - my PS4 is literally never turned fully off now, and I love the pick-up-and-play nature it brings to my gaming life - but if you had asked me back in the PS3 days I never would have said I wanted that. I had to have them actually implement it for me to see the benefits! So I guess what I want most is for them to keep making little changes like that: ones I don’t know I want, but once they are there, I can’t live without! What is your favorite thing about PSNP? Sometimes - alas, a little more often recently, though it might be me that has changed and not the site - I see thread responses or bickering and sniping and roll my eyes, thinking the site rhetoric is going to the dogs. But whenever I look at other sites and see some of the hateful, misogynistic, racist, nasty bullsh*t that is all over those other threads, it reminds me that this site has a far, far more civil and accommodating tone than most of it’s peers. Whenever some new member comes in, people here are usually very nice and pleasant - which I like a lot - but even better, is whenever some new member comes in who is one of those obnoxious, nasty people better suited to those other sites, the tend to last a week, before the general good mood her fouls up their trolling and they get tired of the short-shrift they are given. I’ve had me occasional complaints about over-sensitive moderation here, but when I see the alternative, I realise that the mods here actually do a pretty bang up job of keeping the place somewhere I’m happy to keep on returning to. What is your least favorite thing about PSNP? I think probably the ‘All-or-Nothing’ nature that the Gaming Sessions feature creates with regards to finding people to play with. The few times I’ve set up sessions, many people have joined, blocking up the slots, then just don’t show up, and it is all a waste of time. I realise that a lot of the site users like a very prescriptive and regimented way of finding boosting/coop partners, but as someone with a family, I can’t always guarantee a time slot the way the gaming sessions is designed for. I think it would be good if - in addition to the current method - there was a single pool for each game, where people can simply add their name to a big list, saying “I’m playing this, add me.” Whether that was a single boosting thread per game, or an add-on to the gaming sessions doesn’t really matter (and I know some games like LBP2 have a version made in the current Gaming Sessions style, butt it feels like a bit of a workaround at the moment) that is basically saying “up for coop/ boosting, but can’t be specific about times”. That way, you could simply add all the people from that list to your friends list, and hit them up if I see them online at the time I have available. Is there anyone in the PSNP Community you would like to give a shout out too and if so why? As much as I am, at this point, one of the more long-term users of the site, the forums are pretty much the only place I dwell - I’ve never used the Live Chat stuff, and I rarely boost or use Gaming Sessions- so for the most part the users I ‘know’ best are the forum folks. There are certain folks who - while I might not always agree with them (or in one case almost always disagree with!) I’m always interested in what they have to say. A few that spring to mind are: @StrickenBiged @Dr_Mayus @soultaker655 @damon8r351 @BlindMango @madbuk @starcrunch061 @A-Brawl3r @Beyondthegrave07 @Phil @TheLastSurvivorD @Elvick_ @Bullstomp @effdeegee @SnowxSakura @Super-Fly Spider-Guy @Cassiopria @Feral @fastflowdaman And probably a ton of others I forgot about, but will remember the next time I see them post! Community Questions I've noticed you've been on the site since June of 2013. What keeps you coming back to the site? Civil discourse, and a well laid out site - that, and the fact that I’m a creature of habit. The site is also well set up for use on phones - I spend most on my time on this site on my phone (I’m on a cigarette break at work as I type this!). Also, what is your favorite South park episode and why? Lots of good ones, but my favourites are usually the ones where Randy is interacting with the boys - trying to be cool and down-with-the-kids, but not quite getting it. So, the Guitar Hero episode, the Blizzard one about World of Warcraft, the one about music sounding like shit across generations, and the Game of thrones episodes about the PS4 / Xbox launch are all highlights for me. Actually - that’s weird - I’m only now realising that a lot of the Randy episodes are gaming related- that’s just a coincidence, but apropos given the site I’m on! What's your proudest platinum? There are a few I have that were a lot of work, and quite a few early ones that were very grind-heavy, but the ones that stand out to me are the ones that were difficult but I still enjoyed the game, even as I had to dig deep to complete. Nex Machina, Rogue Legacy, Chime Sharp and Trine 2: The Complete Story, come to mind, but probably my proudest is 3D Dot Game Heroes. That game is great, and the trophy list is very tough - made even tougher by the fact that I,m in the UK, so have the EU version, which never got the patch that the US version got to make it easier. What would be the best single nugget of advice that you can offer a n00b trophy hunter? Your stats are meant to offer insight into your gaming habits - they aren’t meant to inform them. There is a wealth of interesting info you can see on this sight: Global Rank, County Rank, Average Rarity, Completion Rate etc. and it can be fun to see, but if you start tailoring the games you play to try and focus on ‘improving’ one of those factors at the expense of your own enjoyment, you will take the fun out of a hobby you loved, and will most likely burn out on it. Trophy Hunting - I think - should be a fun addition to what you would do anyways. I was trying to 100% games long before there was a little electronic trophy cabinet to fill out, so for me it is second nature, but if you are the type of gamer who would have played half a game before dropping it for another one before trophies? Then that’s still who you are, and trying to be something you aren’t is only going to turn your enjoyment into work - and that would be a tragedy. If you find yourself avoiding a game you want to play just because it the trophy list seems hard, or is impossible, or playing everything on ‘Alt’ accounts first (ensuring you have completely burned out on the game by the time you have finished it on your ‘Main’ account), or buying up loads of games that are rubbish just to pad out a list... you have a problem. Not only are you turning a hobby into a chore, but you are also devaluing the very trophy collection you are trying to ‘improve’. I’ve done some of that in my day, and it’s a bad scene. If you are slogging away at some game you have lost enjoyment in, or avoiding a good one because the list sounds too long/hard/grindy for you, or boosting your way through a multiplayer mode you detest, there are 3 important questions you should ask yourself: Would I have done this before trophies existed? If the trophy system disappeared with the next console, would I look back on this time as worthwhile? Am I having fun? Then... do what you want to with the answers... I say, game how you like to game, and the trophies will come how they come. I notice you have the platinum for a few grindy RPGs like FFX, Disgaea 5 and Persona 4 Golden that must have taken close to 100 hours. Which game out of all your games was your longest/most painstaking platinum? Probably Disgaea 5. It sticks in my mind because I did it later than most of the others big grind-heavy games I have complete on my profile, and long after I had made a conscious effort not to stick with games I wasn’t loving - I did it as part of a one of the event things on the sight - The Lottery, where other people choose what game you draw to play - and so was somewhat compelled to complete it, even though I really felt like the magic was gone from that series after Disgaea 3. The trophy lists for those games are absurdly back loaded - by the time you have the platinum, you have basically forgotten the entirety of the story of the game, and are just plugging in effort to a numbers machine, in the hope of beating a RNG. I know some people love them, but for me, I played Disgaea 3 to try to understand why they were popular, got my fill and decided they were not really for me (though didn’t mind the grind so much then, as I played on the vita, so could pick up my game in little bursts here and there) and was pretty annoyed that Disgaea 5 was selected for me as part of the event. Playing that game during my ‘real’ gaming time - on the big-boy console - wasn’t a great time, and that experience is as much responsible for my reticence to join other events as anything else. I see both a mix of Western games and Japanese games, is there one that you prefer more and why? Not really - when I was younger I’d have definitely said Japanese games, as I was very into JRPGs and was dismissive of western RPGs, but that all changed when I played Oblivion and Fallout 3. I’m not into anime, so the heavy focus on anime trappings in some Japanese games puts me off at times (in particular some of the borderline paedophilic aspects that sometimes accompanies that style of game), but really, all I look for is a good game - I don’t care where it comes from. How do / Why did you choose which trophies go into your trophy cabinet? Lol - I guess if you miss the point of my trophy cabinet, then it seems like a very odd selection of choices! Read it top to bottom - just the trophy titles. If you could pick one trophy (list) or game that describes your country (Scotland), what would it be and why? That’s kind of a hard question... I wouldn’t know where to start if I looked for a trophy-list that best describes it, but if we are going for a game, then I’d say Dear Esther. Not only is it set in Scotland (up in one of the Hebridean islands I believe), but the tone is quite Scottish too: it’s bleak and harsh, yet poetic, beautiful yet barren in places, cold and unnerving and wild, but it’s story finds hope in the endurance through past hardship. What have been your #1 best and worst boosting experiences? Hmmm. Is it technically ’boosting’ if you are just cooping with a friend? I mean, I enjoyed a lot of my time roaming around in Red Dead Redemption with my buddy - we were playing as intended, but both doing it with an eye towards levelling up to get the trophy, so I guess that could count as soft-boosting. If not, then probably the best was my time with a group getting Bioshock 2’s dlc maps done. They were virtually impossible to get legit, due to the inability to select dlc maps if any of the random joining players hadn’t purchased the dlc, (and even if they had, it just added the maps to a random rotation) but I remember it going remarkably smoothly once we got a full posse together, and the actual matches could just be played like normal for the most part. The worst would be the many, many times after this site introduced ‘Gaming Sessions’ where I created or joined a session, only for the people who took up the finite number of slots never bothered turning up. Or - one other, more specific, time I remember - was in Resident Evil 5 Multiplayer. I joined a boosting session run by someone who already had a mate boosting with him. It became obvious that they were playing it fast and loose with the ‘taking-turns’ aspects (they’d state I had done 10 already when I knew I was at 7 or 8, or that they still had a few kills to go when they were clearly done), and when I said I wanted them to separate- i.e. me and one of them, the other random guy with the other, they got up on their high horse about how it was their session, and I should be grateful they let me play etc etc. On the plus side though - one of them was a user of this site, (not naming anyone here) and I still remember to ensure I don’t join any sessions they are in, years later, so I guess what I lacked in boosting success, I made up for with a well learned lesson! Has there ever been a game you nearly gave up on trying to plat or complete? There are ones I’ve decided early on that I will never get, due to the requirement for a level of commitment I know wouldn’t be fun for me to attempt - Lost Planet 2, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, Magika 2 for example, but if you mean which one that I do have that I almost gave up on, then I’d say probably Singularity. That game had a great single player, but the multiplayer was pretty dull, didn’t have enough maps, and wasn’t well populated - I don’t think I ever boosted (might have done some, but can’t recall every managing to get a session going - it wasn’t an easy game to cheese that way) and so I just remember plugging away at it for hours and hours of fairly middling gameplay. Not a great experience. If you could pick any game to be made based on a film, book or TV series (to be developed by your favourite studio) what would it be? I’d have Arkane make a game set in the world of The City of Lost Children - that would be a good fit, and they have the chops for it. Or maybe IO could make a Hitman crossover with Leon (The Professional) Who is your favourite pokémon and why? Chun-Li. No wait... Blitzen. No... hang on... Sleepy. No... Batman! ...I’ve never played or seen any Pokemon stuff. Who do you think moderates the moderators? I don’t know. Coastguard? Do you like bacon? Sure, but not as much as other people. I like an Eggs Benedict, but I rarely eat bacon on its own. Waffles or pancakes? Pancakes. Good waffles are as good as good pancakes, but bad waffles are way worse than bad pancakes! What was your first console ever? The SNES. I played the NES before that at friends houses, but the SNES was the first console I actually owned. My best friend had a Megadrive (Genesis for my non-UK friends!) so I played a bunch of games on that, but my SNES was the biggest influence on my gaming tastes, and I loved it. Anything coming out this year that has you excited? Not as much as in the last few years, but there are some. Metro Exodus looks pretty awesome, and I’m looking forward to seeing what The Last of Us: Part 2 will be like. I always seem to most enjoy the stuff that comes out that I either hadn’t heard of ahead of time, or didn’t expect to be as good as it was, so I guess I’m most excited for the stuff I don’t know I should be excited for! Are you planing your milestones trophies ahead or are you rolling with whatever trophy you earn at the time? Absolutely not. Like I said before, I think the site milestones etc. should represent your gaming, not influence it. In my opinion, the minute you start adjusting your gameplay to try and massage the statistics, then the statistics are immediately worthless. For me, that would be the trophy equivalent of people who post fake pictures on facebook or instagram and pretend they represent their lives: They might look good at first glance, but they are devoid of meaning, as they serve only as oneupmanship - purely existing to project a false version of a persons gaming habits. Whether that is to try and make them seem more interesting, or more cultured, or more varied, or more representative of gaming prowess, it is all simply to try and seem ‘better’ in some way than other peoples - and crucially - ‘better’ than the hunters real gaming life. I think that kind of behaviour simply perpetuate the grotesque arms race of ‘perfect-profile’ hunting that is slowly sucking the fun out of a hobby that brings me so much joy. My milestones might not be ‘pretty’ but they are real! Are you a doctor? And if so, are you a Ph.D.? MD? Dr. Pepper? Dr. J? Hell no - it’s just from the book (See the first question!) I have an honours degree, but that’s as far as I took my education! If true love is devoid of superficiality but all attraction is based on it, then how do you explain love at first sight? Yikes - going deep now! Well... there’s two flaws with the premise of the question. Firstly, ‘true love’ is not devoid of superficiality - it simply goes beyond it. Just because two people share a bond beyond simple lust doesn’t mean lust and superficial desires plays no part in it. They are part of a tapestry of desires the relationship fulfills. A marriage or long term relationship is unlikely to survive, even if the people share a deep bond, if the sexual and physical desires dry up. Also, the idea of ‘love-at-first-sight’ is a foolish construct. The only time it happens for real is at birth, between parents and their babies (I understand that now!) but I suspect that people who think they experience ‘love-at-first-sight’ between adults do so because of a subconscious desire to find it - probably due to a feeling that they missed out on it as a baby. I don’t believe in love at first sight. Love is complicated, and it has to be worked at. I believe in lust-at-first-sight, and I believe love can bloom out of that - in fact, I believe romantic love pretty much has to bloom out of lust, but the ‘first-sight’ part? That wasn’t the love. That was the desire to bone, the love came later. The person’s mind and memories are simply retrofitting love onto the memory to make their life feel more like the movies. Of course - I could be wrong, (and maybe a total hypocrite, since I asked my wife to marry me after 9 days together!) but that’s what I believe. Love can bloom fast, but not at first glance. For what it's worth: What do you think about video game nudity? Meh, I can do without it. I have no problem with it - i’m not prudish at all, but unless it is justified in a game’s story, I think it’s generally just pretty silly. I mean, graphics are getting better all the time, but I’m still not gonna get turned on by game nudity, and if I want to get my rocks off, well, there’s a more free, easily accessible pornography out there than any human being can shake a stick at now. (Euphemism unintended, but acknowledged ;-) ) Games tend to get real silly, real fast when they try to employ romantic nudity for story reasons (Mass Effect, Heavy Rain etc) and run the risk of feeling pretty sleazy when done for purely cosmetic reasons. What got you into gaming and what platform did you start on 1st? The guy on my street who had an NES with Duck Hunt was what started me, but getting an SNES with Super Mario World was what made it stick! How have your book sales been going and has the reception to them been good? Lol - those are very different questions! The reception is good - both from professional review outlets and from customer reviews, but sales? Well... Let’s just say that if you get into writing for the sales, you will bounce off it real quick! Selling novels is not like marketing a podcast, or a video channel on youtube, or even a movie - those are only asking few minutes or a few hours of a persons time, and it’s easy, passive time. A book takes an active participation from a reader, and takes a long time, so asking them to take a chance on an author they haven’t heard of is a bigger task. The people who have read my books seem to like them a lot, and generally tell their friends, but sales are still low. I don’t get down about it though - I’d be writing anyway, even if no one was reading them, so I take every single sale and nice comment about the books as a personal victory, and a nice byproduct of a hobby that gives me a lot of joy What inspired you to write your first book? I read a lot, but when I was younger I felt like I wasn’t finding the kind of stories I really wanted to read. After hunting for them and still bot really finding them, I realised that if I couldn’t find the kind of stories I wanted to read, I was going to need to write them! I tend to have a story just rattling around me head for a long time before I put anything down on paper - the first one I published was just one that had been niggling at me for years below the surface, that I began when my son was a very young baby. My wife and I were doing shifts for feeding him, and I was on the 10pm to 2am shift, and had a lot of free time to write. I just wrote down the first chapter title (which was kind of a joke with myself - I felt like I never got around to finishing a story, so I called the first chapter ‘The End’ so I at least got to write that down!) and slowly the characters just started to intrigue me and I began to love them, and wanted to find out what happened to them. Do you have any favorite authors/books? If so, what are they? I’m a big fan of Stephen King, Philip K Dick, Ursula le Guin, Theodore Strugeon, Mark Z Danielowski, Tolkien, Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman. My Favorite book is by Theodore Sturgeon, called More Than Human - it’s a wonderful, unusual story, written beautifully. Has there ever been a book you never finished writing that you'd love to return to? Lol, tonnes! I have a bunch that died early - generally if I’m writing and I get to a hundred pages and I haven’t yet been surprised by something that happens in it, then I think it doesn’t have enough of a life of its own to keep me going. There are a few I haven’t starred yet, but the ideas have been rattling around up in my head for a long time, and I will likely get to taking a stab at them once The Divine Revolution finale is wrapped up, but for now, finishing that is my sole writing priority. What's your advice for trophy hunters of all levels? (from the beginners to the veteran hunters) This is meant to be fun! Please, please, please remember - you didn’t start gaming because of a love of trophy hunting, you started trophy hunting because of a love of games! So don’t ruin one because of the other! Have you lived anywhere other than Scotland? My work has taken me to a lot of places, but mostly for short trips. I did do a stint of 9 months or so in Sakhalin Island (an island above Japan, but part of Russia) which was interesting, but not much of a life beyond work, and I did a year living in a hotel down in England, but it was a fairly rural area, not a city, so I didn’t really get much of the cultural life of England. Really, Scotland is my home, and I’m happy to return when I do. If yes, which is your favorite? Scotland is my home. I like Paris very much - every time I visit I daydream about retiring there: I think that’s where I would move if I won the lottery (after the initial confusion of having won, since I don’t play the lottery...), but my family is here, my son lives here, and I’m very Scottish in my attitude and outlook. If no, pros/cons of living in Scotland in your opinion? We are a pretty socially liberal society. All through history, Scotland has been more socially accepting and welcoming than the general trends. We can seem a bit rough sometimes, due do the dry sense of humour and the taste for sarcasm and irony, but we are welcoming, warm and are the first to grab a weapon if we think someone is being unfairly treated, or we see injustice. If you’re in trouble, a Scot will be the first to back you up. They might be a bit confused, and possibly half-cut, but we’ll back your play anyway, and sort out the ‘whys’ later! What would make you abandon a game and leave it unfinished? Aside from unfinishable stuff or unavailable dlc etc, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to get that 100% back when I was deep in it, but nowadays, I am much more willing to walk away if I’m just not getting enjoyment from a game. My nature means I will always try to rise to a challenge if the fun is there - and I will try to find something to enjoy in any task - but if it is driving me to feel like my gaming time is a chore, I stop. Plain and simple! _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ And that's it folks. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Below are the people who submitted questions: Spoiler @Lava_Yuki @Rally-Vincent--- @STARLOVE @Charizarzar @MidnightDragon @jon88_il @ResoluteRock @kidson2004 @Fallen_Chaos_ @Mesopithecus @Avatar_Of_Battle @Parker Could you move this to the Member Interview section? Edited January 20, 2019 by Dragon-Archon 29 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mesopithecus Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 Great interview I love the amount of detail in each answer! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GunfighterHefty Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 Wow, you supplied quite the answers...it's like you're an author or something. Wait. But seriously, this was very entertaining to read. Good on you. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlindMango Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 Wowzers, this is a big one! Congrats on the interview too Thanks for the shoutout 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidson2004 Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 This is an amazing interview. So detailed. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
effdeegee Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 Word up for the shout out. #thumbsup 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bullstomp Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 @DrBloodmoney Great interview, much appreciation on the shout out? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beyondthegrave07 Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 (edited) Really nice read (I can tell you put a lot of time and effort into it!) and thanks for the shoutout @DrBloodmoney! I try to at least to put reason behind my posts and avoid attacking others with any post I make (or at least slip in a decent pun) from when I was 19 to now when I'm 26. I know what it feels like to be bullied and betrayed. Spoiler alert: it feels awful. I realize that forums like this are susceptible to bullying and even though it's not face-to-face, the psychological impact can still be the same. Therefore, I refrain from posting anything that can be seen as malicious for the most part. Anyways, I'll just leave my comments here to some of the Q/As. As someone who has given swim lessons a few years ago to someone with Asperger's and I can probably relate a little bit with you. It definitely takes a lot of patience and a certain frame of mind when it comes to autism. It's also... I'm not sure what word to use here... interesting? inspirational? to here how you went from struggling with alcoholism to being a family man. I've never excessively drank before because I've seen what excessive drinking and alcoholism does to people, and I never want to put my loved ones in that position. It's frankly hard to watch and sad which is why I would never do it. I also like your taste in games. I've played some SNES games, but unfortunately, I missed out on Earthbound do to it never really reaching the U.S. shores. I recently started playing Mother 3 which I believe is supposed to be pretty similar, and if that's the case, I would probably love it. Mother 3 and Nier Automata probably have the coolest opening sequences I've ever seen in gaming. Nier Automata more for it's astounding gameplay and Mother 3 for the story-telling and sheer shock factor. Funny how you mentioned both of those games/series. I think your mindset on trophies is identical with mine. It's more or less "if it's fun, then I'll do it." or "if it's not fun, then I'll pass." Trophies should be about having fun, trying new challenges that maybe, without trophies, you'd never think of attempting. Life's too damn short to sit there and play a single game 200+ hours if you are bored out of your mind after the 40th hour. Sometimes, it makes me wonder whether people like playing games or if they just like popping trophies and getting that feeling of accomplishment. Food for thought I guess. I love your definition of love as well (pun not intended) and how "love at first sight" is utter BS. Could not agree more. It's 100% lust at that point. I think real love and relationships take work. The reason two people got together in the first place may have started off as lust, but in the end, I think it's the trusting bonds two people make together that makes for a long, happy marriage. I say this, yet, I'm very particular on what type of women I want to date and have said no to girls in the past because of how they look and did not even try to get to know them better (I had a faint idea, but I wasn't willing to go further). In that sense, I guess I'm a hypocrite too. My favorite episode of SP is where they vote between a turd sandwich and giant douche for their mascot. That episode just hits too straight to home here in the U.S. Anyways, I could probably respond to more, but I think I'll stop here. I don't want a giant post and most people would probably wouldn't read it to its entirety. Edited January 20, 2019 by Beyondthegrave07 Grammar 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zedymieon77 Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 @DrBloodmoney If you can have one person do an audible narration of your books, who would you have do it? That aside, the premise of your books seems interesting so it's something to look at next time I'm Kindle shopping. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBloodmoney Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 5 minutes ago, Zedymieon77 said: @DrBloodmoney If you can have one person do an audible narration of your books, who would you have do it? That aside, the premise of your books seems interesting so it's something to look at next time I'm Kindle shopping. Lol, well, if I could have one person narrate them my first instinct is to say Tom Waits - but then, the phonebook would feel like an amazing narrative if it was narrated by Tom Waits! Thinking about it though, the majority of my main characters are female (both heroes and villains), so I suspect it would be only fitting to have a strong female voice as the narrator. I’d go with Brodie Dalle - her voice is intense! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super-Fly Spider-Guy Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 Thanks for being subtle, and not making it *entirely* obvious I'm the one you always disagree with. Simpsons is worth diving back into for the love of the show, but not really just for genuine amusement / enjoyment. 4 or 5 years ago me, the missus, and a couple mates burned through the entirety of the Simpsons (25/26 seasons at that point) over the two week school holidays, a lot of pizza and Coke was consumed. It was great. Weirdest thing was I did it because I wanted to get back into the show after falling out, I thought there'd be at least 5 or so seasons I'd not seen but then, to my surprise, there was maybe one episode in every twenty or so that I hadn't seen already. Turns out they're just not that memorable at all. Old Simpsons is as gold as ever but new Simpsons is just a different show, not bad so much as different. The writing style is completely different, certain jokes and formulas, they just wouldn't fly on the old version. But anyway, the real reason I'm bothering to respond about The Simpsons is to say that if you yearn for the *style* of writing, characters, and stories, from the gold ol' days as it were, I would STRONGLY recommend you check out a show called Mission Hill. It's by Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, who were show runners on multiple seasons of the Simpsons' hey day, it's a fantastic show that only lasted 1 season unfortunately. I actually watched a bit of it when I was way younger, a few episodes here and there at age 7 or so, and all I remembered was the color palette and hair color of the leads and could never track it down, then one day maybe two years back I was watching a Simpsons retrospective on YouTube and the title card popped up and I was like THIS IS IT AFTER 15 FUCKING YEARS I'VE FINALLY FOUND YOU and I went through the whole season in a couple days and it was just so freaking good, I cannot recommend it enough for a fan of classic Simpsons, here hit it up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Hill_(TV_series) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fallen_Chaos_ Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 What an amazing interview, I love all the detailed answers, you can really feel the passion he feels. I always love learning how people came up with their usernames, and for a second when I saw "Blitzen" under Pokemon I thought he was gonna say Blaziken and I was about to be like YES ANOTHER BLAZIKEN FAN but oh well lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elvick_ Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 Thanks for the shoutout @DrBloodmoney, not sure why but hey I share your views on the gaming sessions, I do not like them. Even joining one you end up just setting it all up through PSN, so it may as well be like .org with threads for it instead. Since it results in the same thing. And you can't even join one if you 'don't own' [have trophies in] the game, which is silly since for a lot of games you could start with the MP first and want to get that out of the way before doing anything else and are just waiting for some people to grind that out before you commit. idk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pahiran Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 No offense but why was he interviewed? His profile is not that impressive. Though I respect him for not having a boatload of insta and 30min platinums like so many trophy whores. But there are people on my friends list who are far more impressive. Is he a celebrity in real life or something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
visighost Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 Love the detailed answers! And to answer the question above, there are no criteria for being an interviewee other than willing to be. Everyone's got an interesting story or two to tell! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charizarzar Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 (edited) 42 minutes ago, pahiran said: No offense but why was he interviewed? His profile is not that impressive. Though I respect him for not having a boatload of insta and 30min platinums like so many trophy whores. But there are people on my friends list who are far more impressive. Is he a celebrity in real life or something? I think you have to volunteer yourself for them. But more to the point, what was the point of being rude? I just had another look at his profile and it did seem impressive to me, quite a few ultra rares etc. And tbh, I’m much more interested in hearing about why people care about the games they like. Edited January 21, 2019 by Charizarzar 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pahiran Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 Ah I see. My mistake. Sorry I didn't mean to be rude I thought there was a specific requirement to be interviewed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon-Archon Posted January 22, 2019 Author Share Posted January 22, 2019 Seems this is still here. @Parker @Stevieboy can one of you move this thread to the Member Inteviews subforum? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted January 23, 2019 Share Posted January 23, 2019 I was the first member who sprang to your mind for a shoutout?! ? Very weird, I can barely get onto this site these days. Nonetheless, it's flattering to know someone remembers me. Thanks for doing the interview, was good to get to know you better! Thanks @Dragon-Archon and @DrBloodmoney! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eramir Posted January 23, 2019 Share Posted January 23, 2019 Nice interview, was fun reading this! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon-Archon Posted January 23, 2019 Author Share Posted January 23, 2019 5 minutes ago, StrickenBiged said: I was the first member who sprang to your mind for a shoutout?! Very weird, I can barely get onto this site these days. Nonetheless, it's flattering to know someone remembers me. Thanks for doing the interview, was good to get to know you better! Thanks @Dragon-Archon and @DrBloodmoney! I was wondering if you stopped logging in. It's been a long time since I've seen you online. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally-Vincent--- Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 Great interview, would read again. But somehow I hoped, just a little, that your username would have something to do with this: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now