I’m sitting here in my office at home, downloading a game called Ostrich Island on my iMac. Eventually, I’ll play through it and write a review for GGS. I already played through 3 levels of a demo version the other night, while waiting for a You Like the Worst Stuff podcast taping to begin, anyway.
Here’s a bit of Inside Baseball for you: The GGS Gamer staff has a shared Review List spreadsheet, in which we keep track of what we’re reviewing, what games still need to be reviewed and how long we’ve been holding on to whatever titles we’re supposed to be playing and writing up. It’s a neat place to be.
Anyway, I’ve just updated the sheet, letting everyone know I’ve redeemed the review code for my copy of Ostrich Island I’ve added today’s date, and even updated another outstanding review because the code fell through and I’m going to be taking on a different game instead. “Staked” on the list are Nintendo Land and New Super Mario Bros. U, two Wii U launch titles I’ll be bringing home along with my spakin’ new console on November 18. We can “stake” games we hope to review. Not a guarantee, but…still, you put it out there that you might like to write up a game you’re excited about trying, and you may end up getting the chance.
All told, I have 4 outstanding reviews to write for games I’ve either just finished or am now supposed to play, and 2 games staked for next month’s Wii U launch. Ostrich Island is now open, running, but hidden in my dock. Because GGS Boss Vikki Blake requested the code, now my name has changed to hers from my own, as it was in the demo version. Funny. I’ll be Vikki, that’s cool.
Why am I rambling on about all this?
Because just last night, my wife and I were camped out in the living room, riding out the mega storm they call Hurricane Sandy. It was still raging, not half a day ago, winds whipping all through the night. I just came in from chopping up some massive branches that fell from the tall trees surrounding our blue, suburban home.
I picked up shingles that had blown off a bad patch of our roof last night, due to the 80+ MPH winds.
Half of a fence in our backyard had blown down, crushing a rose bush.
Trees are uprooted or broken all over the neighborhood, and many are without power in my town. In fact, though my street was spared that huge inconvenience, my neighbor behind me has no electricity. We ran an extension cord over his fence, so he could plug his refrigerator in. No idea when power will be restored to a large portion of our own neighborhood.
The reality is, my little township on the outskirts of Philadelphia was spared. The mess and downed trees and power outages we’re experiencing here? Nothing. People died. The New Jersey shore – where I vacation with my family – was obliterated.
A friend of mine, who is a cop in southern Jersey, tells me he’s horrified by the devastation he’s seen so far; he doesn’t anticipate people will even be allowed to return to their flooded, tattered homes for another day or two. Another friend noted that federal helicopters were buzzing overhead in the Garden State (that’s NJ, non-America readers) a few hours ago.
States of Emergency have been declared in multiple states.
New York City is dealing with flooding and wind damage unlike anything seen in recent memory.
Millions were affected. Homes were damaged or destroyed. Lives were damaged or destroyed. This massive storm stretched from Florida to Connecticut.
It will obviously take a long time to rebuild and clean up.
Right across the street from my house, an entire tree was uprooted. That’s my neighbor, whose son my son plays with sometimes, diagonally across the street.
My next door neighbor has a similar tree that split in half; that half is now laying across his backyard.
We have a tree just like that, which now seems to be leaning a bit.
If it comes down, which is possible due to the extremely wet soil, it won’t reach our house; still, I’d rather not have a tree fall down in the back corner of our yard, landing feet from our home.
I watched the live news coverage of Hurricane Sandy all day and all night. In real life, I work in television. I can’t help watching; I’m a TV nerd. As much as I bitch and moan about how bad the media are, I can’t quit TV news. In times like this, you see the absolute best and absolute worst of televised news at the same time. It’s a shared experience, covering the one, all-consuming thing affecting millions and millions of people…and it’s also a bit of a grotesque spectacle, which feeds on your undivided attention to sell you things during commercial breaks and show off the ugliest and worst of what’s happening, for all to see. It’s addictive, seductive, bloated, awful and wonderful. I even second-screened it, tweeting along merrily, fiddling as Rome burned.
I. Could. Not. Stop.
My family’s fine. My kids are playing with grandmom and grandpop right now, and my wife is working from home. I stayed home because A) the trains aren’t running yet, and B) I wanted to clean up at least some of the mess.
My actual, non-GGS place of employment is open for business as of 12:30 EST today; some “essential” coworkers and the newsies were all there yesterday, keeping things going and covering the storm for our TV, radio and online audiences.
This is what I want to talk about today. It’s not really game-related, but it’s my life at the moment. It’s the life of countless Americans, right now, and it will be for some time. Next week, we either reelect Barack Obama or elect Mitt Romney as our next President. Big, big things are happening right now.
It’s not that I don’t want to visit Ostrich Island. It’s not like I’ve been ignoring my GGS staff mail. It’s not like I hate video games forever, and I’m devoting my life to writing about weather and emergency relief organizations.
While I do care about things like Disney buying Lucasfilm, how nice it is that more people will be able to experience Okami in HD, GTA V, The Denpa Men 2 getting a US release, the next few Nintendo Land mini-games and how much fun my son and I had toying with a Wii U at a Game Stop demo kiosk over the weekend…
Rayman Legends is incredible, BTW
…I didn’t think about video games once last night. I didn’t play my fully-charged 3DS or any of the games on my iPhone, awaiting review. I didn’t take the time to write up Cubic World, an iOS game I finished playing several days ago.
Truth be told, I’m forcing myself to think about video games at all today, because I needed to relax and settle down to some semblance of normalcy after the insanity that was the past 48 hours. I can’t watch the TV anymore. I watched too much…sensory overload.
Last night, there was adrenaline. Today, there’s reality. It’s heartbreaking. There’s just destruction everywhere.
Tomorrow is Halloween, though I don’t know how up to it anyone’s going to be. Will there even be power? My wife and I made my son a red Angry Bird costume.
The chicken is my daughter.
He’s worn it a few times already, and it’s really cute. He loves that game. When he comes home, he’ll ask to see my 3DS, curious whether or not I have any new StreetPasses. Sadly, I haven’t really gone anywhere, so…no. I won’t. I get most of them on the train to and from work, and, as I said, those still aren’t running due to storm damage and flooding.
But he’ll snap back into the routine. Tomorrow, I’ll head back in to work…hopefully, the trains will be running. I’ll get back to being pumped for Wii U. I’ll snap back into the routine, too.
We all will.
Everyone will, eventually, find what traces of their routines they can and snap right back into them again. To those who were hurt most by the storm, they’ll start over and establish new routines…and new “normals.”
We move on. We’ll fix what’s broken, recover from the shock, find our smiles and once again start looking for fun and frivolity – out of boredom or habit or sheer desire. We’ll game. I’ll game. You can’t dwell on it forever; especially because it could have been so, so much worse for my loved ones and me. We’re lucky.
Finally, I want to thank my GGS family for checking in on us east coasters (GGS writer and longtime personal friend of mine Joe Fourhman is another) before, during and after the storm. Thanks to Vikki for making me laugh by calling me a “tart” and a stupid boy for apologizing that I probably wouldn’t be able to pick up writing much for the site for a few more days. She’s right, of course. The storm and the safety of my family and friends are the only things that really mattered; still, I was searching for a distraction. As I told her, “I’d rather be writing than hiding.”
We’re done hiding. The storm’s over. Hurricane Sandy wasn’t as bad as it could have been, as bad as it was. If you’re reading this and were affected by Sandy, I hope you and yours are well.
Next Tuesday is Election Day. Also, Halo 4 is released.
Ooooh, yeah!
Ah, our worlds are about to collide again, naturally! Hurricane first. Vote second. Halo third. Or if, like me, you’re not really a Halo person, maybe take a run around Ostrich Island?
[REVIEW FORTHCOMING]
(Satellite, NJ & NYC hurricane images borrowed from: slate.com, thefloridanewsjournal.com & businessinsider.com)
All About Tony Sadowski ...
Tony is a Philadelphia-based writer and producer with a taste for the quirky and comical. A lifelong gamer and pop culture addict, he is also 1/3 of the team behind the You Like the Worst Stuff podcast. Connect with him using the links below, especially on Twitter @TweetsByTheTony. Or send your thoughts to tony@ggsgamer.com!
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on Oct 31st 2012 8:30PM
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