I’ve Made a Huge Mistake -- Steam Arrange

Would it be too untoward of me to admit that, despite making that blatant reference to Arrested Development in the title, I haven’t actually seen that much of the actual show?

It would?  Oh, jeez.  Then I guess that makes the title more appropriate than ever.

For the negative eight of you that follow this blog, you may remember that one time when I talked about Final Fantasy 15 -- and how I bailed super-hard on it, along with (quite possibly) every future FF to follow.  Given recent news (and old stuff I never got around to, but nearly went into a catatonic state upon hearing), FF is a subject I’m planning to revisit at some point.  Maybe soon.  But in terms of content on the record: at the end of the final post -- wherein things got super-raw -- I made the not-too-subtle declaration that I was going to go back and replay FF7.  I don’t need modern-day Squeenix to screw up another project after a decade-long wait.

I’m planning to take that plunge someday, without question.  But at the time, there was a hitch: I knew that if I was going to do it, then I’d have to grab the PC version -- which meant, as far as I know, that I would have to use Steam to download it.  And guess what?  I didn’t have a Steam account.  I had it on my computer, since it was (and still is) a used hand-me-down with the platform already installed.  I was reminded of that every time I turned my computer on, since it would ask me if I wanted to log on at the outset.  So for the longest time, it went ignored.

But those days are over.  And guess which game pushed me over the edge?

I’ll give you a hint…via the least subtle and most direct hint you can imagine.

(That’s a strong-ass theme.)

I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it directly on this blog, but I’m actually a big fan of Danganronpa.  Admittedly I never actually played any of the games for myself; it all started with a mostly-screenshot-based LP of the first game, which got me on board.  Then I graduated to video LPs for Goodbye Despair and Ultra Despair Girls.  So when I saw a 10/10 review on Destructoid, I thought, “Wow, that’s awesome!  It’s a shame I don’t have a Vita, though…oh wait, it’s on PC too.  I can totally do it.  I CAN TOTALLY DO IT!”  So I did…only to discover via the opening that apparently the recent anime ties into the plot.  I think?  I hope not, because I’ve only seen a handful of screenshots.  If so?  Shit.

I’m still WAY early in Danganronpa V3 -- haven’t even hit the first class trial yet -- but there’s some extreme promise here, and so far Kaede is shaping up to be a pretty cool protagonist.  I’m eager to play more, which means I guess I owe my newfangled Steam account a hearty thanks.  Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut I feel like getting on Steam has opened up a Pandora’s Box the size of Michigan.  It’s like I’m risking my life just by tapping the dark specters that lurk within for my own vile purposes.

I feel like I play enough video games already -- probably too much.  So I wonder if the temptation to shirk responsibilities and ambitions alike will become greater than ever thanks to near-instant access to a massive library of titles.  Am I going to start drowning in games?  Am I going to go ape when one of the fabled Summer Sales hits me like a tsunami?  Will I be able to keep pace here on Cross-Up if there’s so much to access?  Have I started on the road to bankruptcy?

Eh, probably not.  I believe in moderation as a virtue, after all (except when I’m writing, but we’re all allowed one vice to indulge in).  More pressingly?  It’s not as if my computer is fresh-off-the-market, top-of-the-line hardware.  It’s getting long in the tooth, which means I should start thinking about trading up sooner rather than later.  Inevitably, that means there’s an automatic limiter on what games I can buy and play; given that I’m running Overwatch with reduced visual quality at 30fps, I shudder to think how fast and furiously a modern-day title would fry my machine.  And beyond that?  It’s not as if there are a ton of games out there on Steam (that I know of) that I’m dying to try.  That might change once I start looking around, but as of this post there’s a very short list of titles I’m eyeing.

Then again, maybe this is for the best.  Not every game out there on Steam, I’d wager, is a big-budget, high-profile, CPU-melting AAA title.  How many smaller or idnie releases have there been?  Tons, probably.  And now I have easy access to them.  I mean, I gave Destiny 2 a brief shot a while back -- and while it’s mechanically good (in the sense that I wasn’t utterly repulsed by it, as I was with the Destiny 1 beta), it still waved a flare that signaled the standard AAA release isn’t going to do it for me anymore.  I need something different.  Something special.  I’m probably not going to get it from Activision, EA, Ubisoft, and the like.  So maybe it’s time to see how the other side lives.

It’ll be a slow process, though.  Steam is a game platform, that much I get -- but even a cursory glance has shown me that there’s much more to it.  You can use it to look at stats and see who’s playing what (somehow).  That’s cool.  There are community functions you can use to converse with others online (somehow).  Nice -- I can use that to promote the blog.  There are…inventory items you unlock while playing games?  Uh, okay?  Wait, what’s in this tab?  What’s in that tab?  What are these options?  What are those options?  What’s going on?  Where is this?  What is this?  Is this what it’s like to be an old man trying to get into what’s hip and fresh?

I guess I’ll figure it out eventually.  In any case, that’s about all I’ve got for now.  If you’ve got suggestions on/experience with Steam, let me know in the comments.  I could use some direction.  As for blog content?  More Marvel: Infinite stuff is on the way, and I’ll scrape up some words for Danganronpa once I make headway into it.  Plus, other stuff.  A bit on Sonic Mania, hopefully, since I’ve been sitting on that for a while.  And after that?  Who knows.  I’ll go wherever my keyboard takes me.

And that’ll do it for now.  Thanks for reading, and I'll see you around.

But before I go: if it seems like I’ve embedded more videos than usual in this post, it’s because my gut instinct is to pull pictures from Danganronpa -- which, inevitably, WILL lead me into spoiler territory even if I look for content from the earlier games.  So screw that noise.  I’m going in clean.

Well, relative to my general status and propensity for casual pandemonium.