John and Mary meet.
What happens next?
If you want a happy ending, try A.A.
John and Mary fall in love and get married. They both have worthwhile and remunerative jobs which they find stimulating and challenging. They buy a charming house. Real estate values go up. Eventually, when they can afford live-in help, they have two children, to whom they are devoted. The children turn out well. John and Mary have a stimulating and challenging sex life and worthwhile friends. They go on fun vacations together. They retire. They both have hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging. Eventually they die. This is the end of the story.
B.
Mary falls in love with John but John doesn’t fall in love with Mary. He merely uses her body for selfish pleasure and ego gratification of a tepid kind. He comes to her apartment twice a week and she cooks him dinner, you’ll notice that he doesn’t even consider her worth the price of a dinner out, and after he’s eaten dinner he fucks her and after that he falls asleep, while she does the dishes so he won’t think she’s untidy, having all those dirty dishes lying around, and puts on fresh
It’s my first-ever freelance piece, and for print, no less! The article is a four-page preview of Assassin’s Creed III; the folks at Future US sent over a PDF of the finished product today, and it looks amazing. I’m ecstatic about this, and I can’t wait for you folks to see it. (In case you were unaware, @GAMER is Best Buy’s in-house gaming magazine.)
The issue hits on April 8th, but subscribers will get it a little earlier. You should all pick it up when it’s out!
My very first Destructoid article, a 570-word piece containing my impressions of the MLB 08 The Show demo, went up on February 22, 2008. It’s actually not as embarrassingly bad as I’d anticipated it would be.
This is a big personal milestone. Not just because of the amount of time involved, but because of what’s transpired in the interim — specifically, how much my life has changed since then, and how different I am today. You do a lot of growing up between the ages of 21 and 25.
Some things haven’t changed, of course; I’m still broke, and I’m still living at home. (OK… I guess, technically, I was dorming at Columbia four years ago.) But I don’t feel like a directionless kid anymore; writing about videogames is the career I want, and I hope I can really make that happen this year. (I better, because once December rolls around, I won’t be able to get health insurance as a dependent anymore!)
(No, seriously, does someone want to hire me and give me a salary + benefits? That’d be great. I write good about them sporty games.)
Last week, at an EA event in New York, I played about half an hour of the second mission of Mass Effect 3. I don’t know much about Mass Effect, but according to BioWare, you don’t need to have played either of the first two games in order to enjoy the third. They insist that they’ve written and designed ME3 to be accessible to newcomers, without sacrificing anything for die-hard series fans.
I wrote up my thoughts on Destructoid. Check out the full preview, won’t you?
On Thursday night, the New York Videogame Critics Circle had a coming-out party of sorts: its first awards show, a classy affair that was the antithesis of the Spike Video Game Awards in just about every way. I attended the show, and was lucky enough to be able to present an award as well. It was a lot of fun! Check out my recap at Destructoid, which includes the full list of winners as well as a video recording of one of the show’s two live performances of songs from the Bastion soundtrack.
I reviewed EA’s revival of Midway’s arcade football classic, NFL Blitz, for Destructoid. Aside from the exclusion of late hits, which is sad but unsurprising, it plays pretty much like the Blitz you know and love. Plus, there’s a lot of content for $15, especially when you dig into the robust online package.
Check out the full review at Destructoid!
Colin Campbell x: 25 Tips for the Young Games Journalist
Last year I became the proud recipient of a Games Media Legend Award. It was also my 25th year since I began working in games journalism. So I felt the weird urge to write 25 tips for the young games journalist, based almost entirely on the mistakes I’ve made over the last two and and a…
I read through this, and my first thought was, “Well, I haven’t necessarily had that experience.”
Then I thought, “Idiot. You’ve been doing this for just under four years. That’s a lot less than 25.”
I’ve always thought of myself as pretty smart, but I’ve also prided myself on having an open mind. (Yes, I’m one of those “you learn something new every day!” people.) I feel like it’s important for anyone who wants to work in media.
I don’t ordinarily promote my writing here, especially non-review stuff, but I liked the way this preview came out. Mostly because I used some flowery language, and I think I pulled it off.
Here’s my full review of EA Sports’ NHL 12. Spoiler: it’s yet another very, very good hockey game from the folks at EA Canada.
Now that I’ve reviewed this and Madden NFL 12, I can finally dive into Deus Ex: Human Revolution!
Hey, I have a Tumblr!
I know it’s been forever since I’ve posted on here, and I suppose pimping your own work isn’t the best way to re-introduce yourself, but… deal with it. (Or unfollow me — hell, I’m assuming most of you will after this post, if you haven’t already.)
Because of my day job, I haven’t written much for Destructoid at all lately. But I’m still the main sports guy there, and I handle almost all the big sports reviews. Here’s the biggest one of all, Madden NFL 12.
I’ll be back in a week or so with another link — I’m also reviewing NHL 12.
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I’m Samit Sarkar, an Associate Editor at Destructoid.com. It’s pretty much the greatest job in the world, though the common misconception is that I simply get to play video games all day. It doesn’t quite work that way — but it’s still awesome. (If you want to check out all the posts I’ve written, head here.)
I’m a stickler for proper English — grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. — so if you see any mistakes in my writing, let me know. And if you see mistakes elsewhere, let me know, because I’ll want to point them out here and laugh (à la English Fail Blog). I might even put some on The Grammar Nazi, a Tumblr that I contribute to.
You can contact me at samit [dot] sarkar [at] gmail [dot] com for personal stuff, at samit [at] destructoid [dot] com for Destructoid-related inquiries, or on Twitter (see below). I’m also on Facebook.
Oh, in case you’re wondering, I’m 25 and I live in Long Island. But it’s so much easier to just say New York — I’m only an hour east of Manhattan.
Also, I am a HUGE fan of the 27-time World Champion New York Yankees.
