About CS

This blog effectively serves to help me coax out and form my own thoughts and ideas about the video games I play, as well as allows me to practice my writing. Corrupted Save as a title came about from an experience I had playing Phantasy Star Online Episodes I & II on my Gamecube when the compression used by the official 256MB (or was it 512?) memory card corrupted my save file. It was probably more emotional and dramatic than such a thing should have been, but that memory and the anger and frustration I felt have stuck with me through the years, which says much about how profoundly gaming can impact a person's life.

For now I imagine that I will be focusing mostly on reviews, but who knows where this all can go from here? In theory I will write about games that I have played to a decent extent, meaning having played through to completion at least once or while in the process of completing a play-through. As a gamer who occasionally reads reviews, quick little reviews that gloss over the actual game are a substantial pet peeve of mine. A recent example is how little commentary there was about the technical issues plaguing Borderlands, which is a great game, but not good enough to let things like missing item stats and requiring the player to manually edit config files slide by without commentary. Digital Rights Management concerns are also something that seem to be gleaned over as a reviewer hastens the reader to the score at the bottom of page 3 that I like to explore.

Speaking of which, I don't envision that I will award games scores. If I do a competent enough of a job explaining my experience with a game at the very least it should let you know if it would be good for you. Hopefully I can spark some good discussion or debate too though. I also don't take the position that games should be reviewed in a vacuum, and I'll frequently go back to past titles to try and make a point or show an evolution (or devolution) when applicable.  I will also make an effort to include details about the settings I played the game with, specifically in regards to PC titles, so that the mileage I get with a specific game can be put into some kind of a useful context.  Similarly, my DxDiag file can be found here.