End of an Era

As mentioned in a previous post, I am approaching the end of my time of regularly playing games on PS3. After a bit over six years I am finally nearing the end of an era. It’s not that I’ll stop playing games on PS3, but I’ll finally make the transition to having PS4 and Xbox One as my primary consoles. These six years have been quite a journey. I can still remember going into Target in December of 2008 and buying my PS3. Bringing it back to my home, I slowly opened up the box, took everything out and knew good times were ahead. Though you wouldn’t have been able to tell, I was bubbling over with excitement. Despite this, I held myself back and read through all the instruction manuals before attempting to set up the system. Having paid good money for this PS3, I wasn’t going to screw things up by doing the installation wrong. I then plugged in the PS3, connected it to the TV and slowly went through the first-time setup process. A few minutes later my PS3 was up and running and I was looking at the menu screen. That’s how this journey began.

And what a journey it was. Six years of gaming. Six years of traveling to distant lands, solving puzzles, racing cars, saving the world, jamming with friends, getting lost in epic stories and shooting anything foolish enough to fall into my line of sight. I had the privilege of playing so many great games over those years; Uncharted, Mass Effect, Vanquish, MotorStorm, Battlefield, Assassin’s Creed, Red Dead Redemption, Guitar Hero, Little Big Planet, Infamous, Resistance, Journey, The Last of Us, Call of Duty, Batman, Mirror’s Edge, Transformers, Sleeping Dogs, Price of Persia, Split/Second and many more. The memory of these games will stick with me as the defining entertainment experience of those six years. So on this occasion I raise a metaphorical glass and propose a toast. Here’s to you, PS3. It was fun.

A Good Memory

A few days ago I was talking with some other people and in the course of the conversation something came up that reminded me of an old episode of The Simpsons, a TV show I used to watch. I brought up the episode, but as I talked about it I was struck by just how long it has been since I last watched The Simpsons regularly. Roughly 14 to 15 years? Has it really been that long? I’m not sure exactly when I stopped watching The Simpsons, but I think it was somewhere around season 13. It wasn’t that I no longer enjoyed the show, but at some point I just stopped watching and never came back. My best guess is that after one season ended I didn’t get around to watching the opening episode of the next season and from there I never got back on the bandwagon. Time passed, The Simpsons slipped into memory, and what had been a regular part of my life slowly faded away.

As I’ve thought over my time with The Simpsons, what’s most incredible to me is the fact that the show is still going after all these years. Several times I’ve considered going back and seeing how the show is doing these days, but every time I’ve decided against it. That’s because, for me, The Simpsons now exists as a special memory from my childhood and teenage years and I think if I started watching the show again it would in some way spoil or diminish that memory. If it was ever announced that The Simpsons was finally coming to an end I might watch the final episode, but at this point I don’t think I’m ever going back to watching The Simpsons regularly. Maybe it’s still a good show, but the memory of what The Simpsons was is more valuable to me than whatever it currently has to offer.

“I thought I knew this game”

Final Fantasy 10 holds a special place in my gaming memory. It was the first game in the Final Fantasy series that I played and also the first big JRPG that I played. Over the years of my time on PS2, I played through Final Fantasy 10 four times and one of those times I clocked in about 130 hours playing both the main campaign and the various side quests you can undertake. Suffice to say, I knew the game pretty well. Recently, as I close in on the end of my time of regularly playing games on my PS3, I decided to revisit this personal classic by playing through the HD remastered edition of Final Fantasy 10. Having beaten the game several times over, I knew what would happen and when. I did notice a few differences between the original PS2 version and the HD remastered version, but for the most part the game was what I remember it to be and I cruised down memory lane without any uncertainty about how I would tackle the various challenges the game threw at me. That is, until I got near the finale. Towards the end of Final Fantasy 10, you acquire an airship that allows you to revisit places you have been before and is essential for completing the various sidequests that take you all across the game’s world. While revising one area to acquire a few items I needed for sidequests, I suddenly ran into a boss fight that was not in the original game. Undeterred, I charged headlong into the fight, confident in the strength of my characters and my knowledge of the game’s mechanics. In less than a minute my characters were lying dead on the ground and I was staring down a Game Over screen. “Wait, what?” I reloaded my save file from just before the fight, and returned to the same area to see if it would happen again. Sure enough, the same boss appeared.  This time I approached the fight more thoughtfully and didn’t mess around. It had the same result; my team was again dead on the ground. Looking at that Game Over screen, the only thought in my head was “I thought I knew this game.” Now I had to change my sidequest plans as an area containing a few items I needed was now denied to me until I could figure out how to get past this boss. Revisiting some other areas I ran into other bosses that weren’t in the original version of the game and they also proved problematic for me. As it turns out, the these boss fights that were not in the original version of the game are unique to the international version of Final Fantasy 10, which is what the HD remastered version is based on. With time and effort I overcame these bosses, but this experience was a needed reminder that my gaming knowledge isn’t as good as I pretend it to be. I thought I knew this game. It turns out, I actually didn’t.