Those who have a use for tablets know the benefits of having one: a portable, focused, and personal. It’s a passive entertainment and communication device that you can take anywhere you want to do the simple things that most people care about: e-mail, browsing, reading, and perhaps watching some TV and movies.

But when we decide to get off of our asses and do something productive with our lives, writing that resume or great American novel on a touch screen is a ridiculous prospect. While a laptop is the most ideal solution, having the option to purchase a cheaper add-on keyboard–whether it be the Transformer dock or a portable bluetooth add-on–is great.

Being able to type on a device this portable and speedy, with a classic and compact clamshell design, is great.

In the Transformer’s particular case, though, having an actual dock that lets you close the two devices in a clamshell form factor–while barely adding any weight–is more portable in a certain respect. You don’t have two disconnected pieces hanging out sad and alone in their own corners. Closing the thing and picking it up is less clumsy than dealing with those disparate pieces, and the extra battery and storage is such an added value.

My experience has been great, but if there’s one thing that I regret about it, it’s that this whole affair has reminded me of just how much I yearn for the convertible gaming laptop-tablet hybrid to become a reality, and it’s shown me just how far away these tablet-first devices are from that.

A little history: When the iPad was first shown, I scoffed. What I wanted was a touch-screen device that could do everything that I would want a laptop for. The old Windows touchscreen tablets were a joke, and while the iPad had Apple’s mastery of design behind it, it still wasn’t what I wanted. I fell into the tablet landscape almost completely by accident when I decided that reading Kindle books on the small screen provided by my phone wasn’t such a fun experience. Why not just go the whole way and get something that could browse the web and display YouTube clips too, while I was at it? (A self-imposed $300-or-less spend on this market eliminated any Apple products or super high-end Android products–hence my old 7″ Iconia A100 tablet, now sold, and currently the TF300T.)

Now a tablet user of 16 months, have my views changed? Not so much. I do like what these types of devices offer from an accessibility standpoint, where prior to this I didn’t have much of a desire for it. Yet, it’s still not exactly what I want it to be–a device I can travel with that allows me to: edit the same Photoshop document I was working on at home; pick up a Steam game from where I last left it from my room; continue editing an episode of the podcast that I started from my desk; and yet still do all the things that we love tablets for.

In the Transformer’s case, its dock has bridged a large part of the gap in that at least I can work on documents mouse-and-keyboard style, and some of the games that interest me are coming out on the Android ecosystem (namely, Swords & Sorcery EP and other novel indie titles). But I recently tried spending a night with it as my only device and I almost went through multitasking withdrawal, pining for the ability to keep Audacity, Netflix and Gmail windows open at the same time, and unhappy with the fact that I could not open Photoshop to progress on a poster I’ve been working on. And forget, for a second, that I am so well-equipped with games that I am never at a loss for something to play–at the moment, I’m working on Torchlight II as the game of the moment. Last time I checked, I couldn’t open Steam on my tablet to boot that up. Bummer.

Tablets are great for what they’re focused on doing, but I still need a good laptop in my life. It’s why I still bothered buying my current Lenovo, whose GeForce GTX600M is fantastic at playing the same games I enjoy on my PC, and why I tote both devices with me when I’m on the road for work. (After all, a tablet and Pocket articles combine for a powerful bedtime story tool. Sidenote: Before my first tablet, I tried reading a Kindle book in bed with my laptop resting on my stomach. Not a comfortable experience.)

I still want, and need, a multi-tasking, multi-Window, portable computing solution.

Products like HP’s Envy X2 are along the lines of what I’m after. It’s equipped with a full version of Windows 8 (not the crippled RT iteration) and it still splits off from its base to satisfy the tablet/e-reader form factor. Razer’s just-announced Edge product almost amazes me, too–it’s perhaps the most powerful convertible on the market, sporting discrete graphics and undoubtedly the closest to exactly what I want. And out of sheer curiosity, I’m itching to see what Microsoft’s Surface Pro has to offer.

But now that we’re so close to my portable dream machine, there are the little details that we have to worry about–and ALL of the checkboxes must be marked. Is overall performance a priority, as opposed to being sacrificed for ultra-portability? Can it play intense PC games at its screen’s native resolution without requiring me to strip off all of the high quality effects? Does it have enough high-bandwidth ports like USB 3.0 to satisfy any external drives I might want (I still watch Blu-Ray video on the road)? Can I connect it to my television via some form of HDMI, without paying an arm and a leg for a dock or converter? (That last one is the one thing that irks me about the Edge.)

The good news for me is that I’m no longer so adverse to being a three-tier consumer, thanks to more affordable Android products showing me the brighter side of the tablet form factor (and Apple’s great refurbished-products program for lower prices makes the iPad slightly more appealing to me), and the keyboard dock works great for typing something in a pinch. But when the day comes that a full-featured laptop with gaming performance and an optical drive–the kind that I prefer–also allows me to pop off its screen for some good ol’ Kindle reading, I’ll be more than happy to ditch the  third device tier entirely

Since then, many have hailed the death of PC gaming, with multi-platform games receiving poor treatment when it came to their PC ports. But in recent years, the quality of the ports–at least anecdotally speaking–saw a vast improvement. We’ve reached a point where PC gaming is just fine again. What’s more, such “rules” as those I used in that old article have become less necessary, thanks to improving price-to-performance ratios and the shrinking price gap between consoles and able-bodied computers. There have been, and continue to be, scores of articles in PC magazines and online tech sites dedicated to building a “cheap ass rig” that perform at the same level as a console, at a comparable price. With Valve’s Steam platform for PC’s and its so-called “Steam Box” looming, we seem to be entering a world where a PC-based platform becomes a mainstream alternative for playing triple-A, cross-platform videogames.

But are we really?

It’s true that Steam’s Big Picture Mode goes a long way in standardizing a user interface for PC games that play nicely with a controller, not just from the perspective of Steam’s user interface itself but also in terms of getting developers to buy into the concept that people want to be able to play their games in their living room. If it’s multiplatform gaming you’re talking about, then with the power of Big Picture Mode, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to play the same cross-platform games which already exist on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 with a controller and without having to fumble for a mouse and keyboard to click on dialogue boxes.

Yet there are still issues–some of which are misconceptions, some of which are very real–that a huge portion of the gaming populace see as complete hindrances to making the leap to what can–from a hardware perspective–be a potentially more powerful and flexible videogames platform.

It should be noted that as we don’t have any confirmations on what Steam Box actually will be, we can’t say for sure that it’s just a “PC in a smaller box.” Gabe Newell of Valve implied that they may go with Linux as the base operating system, and create a tightly-controlled environment. So it may not be that Steam Box introduces the wide world of PC gaming to the living room, but the important thing that it could do is unite people who are both in the living room and at their desk or on their laptop. The emphasis of this post is on PC gaming at large, as opposed to the Steam Box itself.

I mined my friends’ thoughts–those who don’t currently play many PC games–for some of their perceived issues with PC gaming, why they didn’t take advantage of the platform. I’ve tried to parse what I feel are still true today, and what are kind of misconceptions. Here’s what they said.

TRUTHS

(1) “Consoles are cheaper than computers.”

This goes without saying and, unfortunately, is still very true. From the hardware end. We’ll get to the variables below… in the Misconceptions section.

Yes, today you can build a complete box that costs $450, with performance that exceeds anything that the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii U can put out, and very likely compare to the the first few years of the next generation of consoles. Take one look at how Far Cry 3 performs on the consoles versus a $450 box, and you’ll see the difference immediately.

But unless math has changed, $450 is still more than the $399 Xbox 360 with Kinect and a 250GB hard drive. (Strip away the Kinect, which I imagine a lot of people reading this would do, and it becomes cheaper.) The next step down is a $350 Wii U Deluxe set. $450 > $399 > $350, and that will never change. Plus, there’s another issue…

(2) “Hardware and software you buy isn’t always going to work with what you have. I just want to purchase a game and know it will work with minimal to no effort.” and “…crazy hoops to jump through in terms of random crashes, GPU driver updates…”

This is still a very real–and perhaps the biggest, from a tech perspective–hurdle with PC’s. Things are much, much better than they were over three years ago, but with specific regards to the pricing issue, the only practical way to guarantee great performance at a $450 clip is by… *drumroll* …building that machine yourself. And you have to make sure you’re building it properly so that everything works nicely. Reportedly, there was a Windows 8 issue where The Walking Dead wouldn’t load if you tried to use the Xbox 360 controller. I have not heard of a fix yet, other than, “Uninstall Windows 8 and reinstall Windows 8, lulz…”

Hmm. On one hand: Open the box. Take out the console. Connect it to the TV. Done.

On the other hand: Open up multiple boxes. Ikea the contents of multiple boxes together. Cut your hand on the case trying to insert a piece of hardware before realizing you were trying it the wrong way. Install your existing copy of Windows, or Windows 8 ($40) which is the cheapest option if you need a new copy. Update the drivers. Gnash your teeth a little for good measure. Connect it to the TV. Done. Unless you did something wrong and a driver crashes. Then update to the latest driver which came out a few minutes ago and try again.

Which one sounds more appealing?

Sidenote: In addition to my home PC, I’m toting a Lenovo laptop which came preconfigured (obviously) and plays all multiplatform games better than my consoles ever could hope for, and has a full-size HDMI port which connects to any HDMI TV. No need to build it. But see item (1). How much did it cost? $1000. $1000 > $400. And it always will.

Sidenote II: I refuse to note productivity as an advantage that PC’s (like my laptop) have any longer. A $300 non-gaming laptop (handles Office and email just fine) + a $400 console = $700. See item (1): $1000 > $700. And it always will.

Sidenote III: “…know it will work with minimal to no effort” is also a problem with Kinect. ZING!

(3) “If you care about playing online with your friends (and a lot of people do), you’re not only limited by YOUR PC’s specs, but also by theirs. [With a console] You know that the exact same machine will play games released on day 1 up until the next generation takes over. You also know that (aside from home theater hardware differences), you and every other person will be getting the same basic experience.”

There’s no way around this truth. Ever.  This is somewhat of a chicken-and-egg situation, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Yes, as long as you meet some baseline minimum, you’re going to be able to play every game with every person who owns a PC with that baseline minimum. But not enough people meet that baseline minimum because they don’t game on PC’s. And the reason why they don’t game on PC’s is… well… item (3), which is this one. Not to mention the fact that such a baseline minimum is not documented anywhere. With the benefits of the PC being an open platform come the pitfalls of there being few, if any, documented standards (such as the “ultrabook” standard… perhaps we need a “gaming pc” standard).

(4) “I’m hooked on the achievement/trophy system, which isn’t implemented as consistently on PC.”

The Steam platform has achievements built-in. But does every multiplatform PC game? That’s the big question mark. The Assassin’s Creed II “trilogy” has uPlay points… but I haven’t seen any Steam achievements. Part of the appeal of a platform’s achievements system is that it’s universal. You look at someone’s Gamertag or PSN ID, and you see the achievements and trophies for all of that respective console’s games. But you can’t see my achievements for Assassin’s Creed: Revelations unless you look at my Ubisoft profile. Come on. Not even I care to look at my Ubisoft profile.

(5) “Draconian DRM.”

Steam takes care of all DRM, just like a Playstation 3 and an Xbox 360 have DRM by design (that’s what it means to have a closed platform). But here’s the difference: Console DRM is putting in the disc, or staying logged into your account. PC DRM is still a bit weird. When I launch Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, it’s done from Steam. But then Ubisoft’s uPlay application opens, and asks me to log into that. Once I’ve logged into that, I then have to seperately choose to play Assassin’s Creed: Revelations from the uPlay interface. Wait. Didn’t I already do that?

The days of rootkits that wreak havoc on your system are (supposedly) over, but inconveniences brought on by different publishers’ methods still exist. This truth, however, is becoming less and less problematic.

(6) “I think the bigger challenge that they need to overcome is moving it seamlessly to the living room. Networking is the answer, but people need an easier mass market plug-and-play networking solution from a brand they trust.”

You can play PC games in the living room much of the time. But not the same way with every PC, and not always seamlessly. Some people have their PC’s too far away for a long HDMI cable, for example. With a laptop, it’s generally seamless, but you run into physical hurdles elsewhere. I fit that “what, a long HDMI cable? get the hell outta here” use case. When I’m at home, I game on my PC. But in order to do so in the living room, I’d need to snake an extra-long HDMI cable from my bedroom to the TV. I could use my laptop, but then I’m not taking advantage of the extra horsepower my PC offers. (Yeah, I’m spoiled. Games look great on my laptop, but they look even better on my PC. Sue me.)

There are adapters that work like Wi-Di does: Plug it into your TV, set it up with your PC, and you have wireless display streaming–like the Wii U does for its Gamepad controller–from your computer to your big screen. But that’s an added cost, and it’s not console-simple. “Seamlessly” is the key word here.

(7) “More of my friends play on consoles.”

It’s also undeniable that any one person’s cadre of friends won’t magically appear on a different platform overnight. But I don’t consider it a fair criticism against one particular platform (the PC in this case) as much as it is a problem of market fragmentation as a whole, which is why I listed it under Misconceptions as well.

(8) “I can rent games for consoles but not PCs.”

Undeniable. Not until a successful subscription game service comes out for PC’s will this ever be turned around. (OnLive? Yeah, not doing so hot.)

(9) “I have a Mac.”

That’s your fault, buddy. #lulz

MISCONCEPTIONS

A note before I go into this: These are misconceptions, but they’re not the fault of the person as much as it is the fault of the platform not having its champions effectively dispel them. Computers are still seen as mythical beasts, and the fact that they really aren’t anymore isn’t necessarily effectively communicated. The point of the following list is not to call my friends stupid and ignorant, because they’re not, but to emphasize what the platform’s champions need to set the record straight on to show people that PC gaming isn’t nearly as much work as it once was. And maybe it’ll help some folks learn a little.

(1) “When I look at the system requirements for the latest game and how fast they change between games it’s intimidating.”

Fortunately, this is no longer the case given the rise in popularity of cross-platform ports that make the leap from consoles to computers. These days, if you go into obtaining a computer (either by building or purchasing) with the mindset that you’re going to want to play Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 on it, you’ll most likely have the minimal hardware required to play all of those other lovely cross-platform games. In a way, I feel that the Xbox 360 had a lot to do with that, by establishing a development environment similar enough to Windows that developers can feel comfortable enough in porting games cross-platform.

(2) “…you have to install games and tweak graphics settings and whatnot on the PC.”

This isn’t really true anymore unless you are fiercely loyal to buying your PC games on a disc. With Steam and today’s other digital distribution services (Electronic Arts’ Origin service, to name another), the games pretty much install themselves once they’re fully downloaded.

Furthermore, today’s cross-platform games will automatically detect your computer’s hardware and tweak the settings for you. PC-only titles will also do this. (Unfortunately it’s more or less a recent trend–not as many PC games from the previous generation, if you’re counting in console years, do this.)

The best part about Steam’s platform is that any updates and patches are automatically updated when they’re ready. In the console world, because of each platform’s closed nature, it’s not uncommon for a fix to a debilitating game issue to wait in a certification queue before it actually gets implemented. Publishers and developers have some more control in the PC space, and as a result, you stand to benefit.

(3) “I’d rather sit on my couch and play games on a 42″+ screen than at computer monitor.”

Truth (6) applies here if you’re not equipped with a port that outputs to TV. But any hardware worth its gaming salt today–and in the past few years, even–comes equipped with a full-size HDMI port, or at least a DisplayPort. In the same way that you’d be a fool to buy that “new” Wii Mini, which doesn’t even allow for component cables, you wouldn’t want to shop for or build a PC that couldn’t output to HDMI. With Steam’s Big Picture mode, you have a gaming platform on your computer that is navigable completely with a controller, from your couch. The challenge is making TV output a standard, something that chipset makers need to buy into. It’s very, very widespread and you’re 95% likely to get a machine that can output to TV–but Intel and AMD need to make it a documented standard to guarantee it 100%.

(4) “More of my friends play on consoles.”

It’s true, and it’s listed up above as such, but this is also highly personalized. Here’s where the truth becomes a problem when it’s leveled as a criticism of the PC as a gaming platform directly. If you own an Xbox 360, you can’t play with your PS3 friends OR your PC friends, and vice versa, and vice versa. So you go to where most of your friends are… and again: That really depends on your own group.

It also is meaningful to ask: What are you playing? If you’re not huge into Halo or Call of Duty multiplayer, but live, breathe and eat something like, say, World of Warcraft, Mount And Blade or Minecraft, how worried are you about the tens of millions of people on the console versions of Call of Duty?

So this one counts as both a truth and misconception, in a way. For those in a group of friends that won’t touch PC games, it will always be a truth. For someone like me, who dislikes most multiplayer gaming in the first place, it will always be a non-issue.

Sidenote: Let’s not avoid the fact, though, that Xbox Live is exceedingly successful and well-populated in general. No matter how many PC games have healthy player counts, XBL is a popular choice.

(5) “Do we use a mouse-like device, or a controller? I just never converted to mouse and keyboard controls to appreciate it.”

The controller issue has long since been resolved in multi-platform games, but has only been recently been resolved from an operating system perspective. Windows, MacOS and Linux, obviously, stand in the way. Steam’s Big Picture mode gets the nod here again for fixing the issue, since you can navigate around the entire environment, and launch and buy games, via controller. It’s even got a marker that denotes whether a game is fully compatible, partially compatible, or not compatible with a controller.

That there are partially compatible games is the big annoyance here. The “partial” comes from certain things–like pre-game startup windows–requiring mouse-and-keyboard input. This is rarely an issue with cross-platform games, but if a PC-only game is controller compatible, then it should go the whole way and not pester the user with these dialog boxes. Take care of that stuff in the game environment, or at least make these boxes controller-compatible.

The “not compatible” part is less worrisome. If you’re purchasing a game that’s not controller-compatible, it’s likely because the genre is tailored towards more than a controller can handle, and at that point you know what you’re getting into. After all, nobody will buy a World of Warcraft expansion pack expecting it to work with a controller.

…at least, I hope not.

(6) “Consoles are cheaper than computers.”

If we’re going by the same philosophy that says a $199 Galaxy SIII on Verizon is cheaper than a $299 Nexus 4, then yes, in every situation a games-capable PC is more expensive than a console, and will probably continue to be. That’s why it’s still listed as a truth.

But think about the phone contract you’re tied to and you realize that the hardware is NOT the only thing you pay for. If we talk about a phone, we have to think about the contract; with a car, the gas mileage; with a shaving razor, the additional blades. In that “added costs” vein (and ONLY in that vein), so it goes for gaming: The hardware is NOT the only thing you pay for when you buy into a platform. To really get an accurate picture, you’d have to tally up how much you spent on every game in your console library, plus Xbox Live or Playstation Plus costs, plus how much you spent on your console, and compare it against the same things on your PC (hardware, upgrades, per-game costs, MMO subscriptions). Quite often, you can find games on PC for less than their console ports. You aren’t 100% guaranteed to find a situation where if you stay with one platform or another, you will definitely make out having saved more money, but that’s exactly why this is partly a misconception.

As with with the friends thing, this really depends on your use case: when it is that you feel the need to buy games, and what it is you’re playing. But there are examples of great savings on the PC that I don’t see on consoles quite as frequently. I bought Mass Effect 2 the same year it came out on a Steam Sale for $10. It still currently retails on Xbox 360 for $20. Skyrim for the Xbox 360 costs $53 today on Amazon. It costs $31 for the PC copy, and it was frequently featured in Steam deals for that same price–including one sale close to when it launched. (Right now, Steam has it for $60; chances are that Valve’s waiting for its winter sale to drop it by 66%.)

A small sample of some multiplatform games I got over the last three years, on PC, for…

• $5 or less: Rainbow Six Vegas 2; GRAW 2; Alpha Protocol; F.E.A.R. 3; Hitman Blood Money; Command and Conquer – Red Alert 3; Assassin’s Creed; Trine 2 ($6.24)
• $10 or less: Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Warhammer 40k: Space Marines; Oblivion; Crysis 2; Alan Wake; Alice: Madness Returns; Bioshock 2; Blur; Bulletstorm; Dead Space; Dead Space II; F.E.A.R. 2; Far Cry 2; Red Faction: Guerilla; Fallout 3 GOTY; Need for Speed Hot Pursuit; Resident Evil 5; Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition; RAGE
• $15 or less: Batman: Arkham Asylum; Batman: Arkham City; Dragon Age: Origins; Metro 2033; Assassin’s Creed 2
• $17 or less: Darksiders; Darksiders II; Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

Again, it’s not a 100% guarantee one way or another, but even after spending money on hardware upgrades, it’s very feasible to–over a five year period–spend the same total amount of cash on a PC and games as you would on a console and games, or perhaps even less. Anecdotally, and bear in mind that I’m a sale whore and frequently check up on prices for the games that I want on Amazon, I’ve had a much easier time finding games discounted for a significant chunk (50% or more) for the PC version as opposed to the console versions–and on PC, Steam makes it very easy to see the discounts when they happen.

(7)  ”I was raised on my father’s work PC, so I grew up with the idea that ‘PC’s are for work, this Nintendo is for gaming.’” “Comfort. Laying on the couch feels more relaxing. Computers feels like work.”

This one is exactly the kind of thing we’re trying to analyze and dispel here. But how can you argue against the emotional ties to a culture in which you were raised? Back in the day, I, too, used my PC mainly for WordPerfect, my Commodore 64 having long been sent to the closet and Super Mario World being the hero of the day. I suppose I’m different, though, in that I got PC ports of Golden Axe and Altered Beast (yeah, they existed) from my computer-loving uncle. Games never, ever left my computer, even if there were periods during which they waned. Everyone knows (or should know) that there were games on computers before they were on what we recognize as consoles today, but its public perception as an appliance is still, today, a hard one to shake off.

***

I’m hoping that with Steam’s large presence in the PC space, Valve finds some way to address both the truths and misconceptions. Steam is in the position to set a standard, going forward, that every game must also align to Steam’s own achievements system in addition to the publisher’s. I hope they do this. It’ll also need to ensure that publishers include an “auto-detect” mode in every forthcoming game that appears on Steam. At some point, it will need for all “partially controller compatible” games to become “fully controller compatible.” And while it’s never going to be able to magically bring Xbox Live gamers over to its ecosystem, one would hope that Valve can negotiate with Microsoft and/or Sony to enable some kind of cross-platform multiplayer. We can already link Playstation Network accounts and Steam accounts with each other. Let’s keep moving forward.

Looking at the variety of games, recent build quality of said games and the trend towards user-friendliness, right now PC’s are a viable enough gaming platform for those who choose to stay on it. PC gaming is no longer “dead”–for the time being. With consoles being based more directly on off-the-shelf PC architecture, I’m confident that the “arms race” trend of “needing” to upgrade your video card every two years will mellow out, relative to years past. But I still feel that there’s value in dispelling the myths, and more importantly removing the obstacles. Because we’re better as consumers when we’re more properly informed. Because things can and always should get better. Because PC gaming shouldn’t be at risk of dying again in the future. Because PC gaming shouldn’t seem as intimidating as it once was, for those who have wanted to delve but were too afraid. Because if newcomers want to put a gaming PC in the living room, they should know that it can be done easily, but the experience should also continue to become easier for them. Because Steam is a great platform with frequently great pricing, and everyone should be able to benefit. And one day, in some starry Utopia, maybe Steam will make more headway into an effort that Games for Windows Live failed at: creating a world where people on multiple platforms can play together.

Post script: After posting I noticed a few comments about the particular person not “needing” to go to a PC for gaming. Because this is the same comment levied by many a PC gamer when talking about why s/he feels consoles are inferior, I didn’t think this should have been in either list–though it certainly bears mentioning. At the end of the day, it’s all about what games you care for. Here, I wanted to focus on the perceived and real technical hurdles. I suppose the last “misconception” on the list is just an exclamation point on the “many of these problems are only perception” idea.

In November of 2012, I saw the storyline of Final Fantasy VII from beginning to end for the very first time. That will also assuredly be the very last time I do so.

Despite the inaugural edition of GINPA dealing with Chrono Trigger, and this second edition dealing with perhaps the most revolutionary console RPG (at least in some respects) out there, I don’t hate popular Squaresoft RPG’s–I swear!

I’m finding it difficult to pin down the underlying reasons why I have the feeling that I will never play Final Fantasy VII ever again. Unlike what I experienced with Chrono Trigger, I didn’t 100% this game. I never bred a golden chocobo, I think I only Mastered one or two materia in total (one of them was Fire; the other must have been Restore), and I certainly didn’t come close to scratching any of the Weapons. So it certainly isn’t Final Fantasy VII Fatigue.

Or is it? I know I didn’t 100% the game because *I didn’t want to*. Not because I was in a hurry to finish the game, or because the main story was so gripping that I just _had_ to see what happened next instead of going on a sidequest, or because the rewards didn’t seem worth it (for the most part I know that the rewards are pretty sweet).

The more I think about it, the closer my radar is pointing towards the grind. I know that RPG’s in general are a grind. There’s something about Final Fantasy VII that seems grindier than other RPG’s that I’ve loved and would readily revisit, though. When I found myself at several points in the game too poor to afford new weaponry or materia, I had to grind for gil. When I saw how many AP I’d need just to level up a materia by one star, but felt that I needed the additional spell to proceed past some part of the game, I had to grind for AP. (Oddly enough, I never felt like I had to grind to defeat a particularly powerful boss, but perhaps that was because the gil- and AP-grinding conveniently resulted in EXP-grinding.)

When I found out what it took to breed a golden chocobo? Hoo, boy–I said, “No thank you” to that grinding.

In an odd way, even the mini-games felt like a grind. Probably because I ended up severely disliking them, but I had to sit through them in order to proceed. Learning the button prompts to march in the ceremony at Junon; doing squats; snowboarding; sitting through a chocobo race; taking control of the slap-fest between Tifa and Scarlet (and come on, really?)… these are all things that felt mechanically sub-par, were mandatory, that I had no desire to do, and that completely destroyed any forward momentum I felt from exploring the game world or experiencing the story.

Kind of like grinding, except at least with traditional grinding, you get something out of it. I suppose.

But let’s take this objectively. Is the grinding sensation of Final Fantasy VII really any different from any other game in the series, or RPG’s in general? Probably not. Final Fantasy VI had its own AP grinding. Final Fantasy VIII had the Draw system, which completely redefined what it is to grind. If you wanted to manipulate the Sphere grid the way you wanted to in Final Fantasy X, that could be a grind. Merriam-Webster’s alternate dictionary definition for “Dragon Quest” is “level grind”. (As fate would have it, Dragon Quest IV is most certainly a prime candidate for a GINPA.) And in all fairness to Final Fantasy VII, you could probably beat the main story with no more grinding than it would take to beat any of the other Final Fantasy games–that is to say, more or less a decent amount that never becomes unreasonable.

Perhaps the lack of desire to ever touch, or even smell, Final Fantasy VII again is because while it is a good game, and one I’m glad I finally experienced all the way through (instead of stopping near the end of Disc 2), I waited too long to do so. During the delay, I experienced games which I feel are superior, both within the series and outside of the series; both within the genre and outside of the genre. That the game has aged horribly aesthetically doesn’t particularly help it, but nor does this harm it, so I’m not considering that aspect of it.

But there are other aspects that don’t seem to age well, where older games in the series–and even other games which intentionally bill themselves as “old-school”–hold up just fine. The mishmash of minigames is part of that. They destroy the focus and tightness of the game, but I feel that if they were designed more carefully such that they held up better today, I might not mind them so much. The botched translation is another–it hindered my understanding of certain objectives, or at least, my enjoyment of some of the plot threads. And some of the dungeon design seems uninteresting today–from a structural standpoint, not so much an artistic one.

Meanwhile I find that its direct predecessor, Final Fantasy VI, somehow stays better-playing, better-sounding, better-designed and even better-looking–imagine that. (Some will argue that it’s because VI is one of my favorite games all-time, but I’ll argue that it’s my favorite because of those exact reasons.)And Final Fantasy VIII–for all of its detractors and the heinous nature of the Draw mechanic–still feels like a more tightly-focused, more tactical experience that remains more interesting and forward-thinking. In my eyes, these two titles have aged much better.

I did enjoy my time Final Fantasy VII. I liked enough of the sights, I really enjoyed Midgar, and AP-grinding aside, I did get a kick out of customizing my characters with Materia as a foreshadowing of things to come with VIII’s Junction system. Some part of me really wants to be able to commiserate with my fellow Final Fantasy veterans about the trials and tribulations of beating Emerald and Ruby weapon. Unfortunately, a much bigger part of me doesn’t ever want to do the work that gets me there, nor does it want to re-experience Cloud’s tale ever again.

Back in 1995 I owned Chrono Trigger for the Super NES and played the bejeezus out of it. Unfortunately, I never could get over the hump of beating the final boss, and after I foolishly sold it off along with the rest of my SNES-related items, I figured that hump would stay never surmounted.

Thank goodness for the Nintendo DS port, then.

Not including New Game+, I played through 100% of that port, which is something I rarely do nowadays. I did every sidequest. I got every special item. Unlocked every tech, double tech and triple tech. I even took down all of the bonus content available for the DS and iOS ports. I took down Lavos with vicious aplomb.

Instead of taking a breather, and then evaluating how I wanted to tackle New Game+, I erased my save, put the DS card back in the box, and went to eBay to post a sale auction. Title? “Chrono Trigger Complete, Like New”.

I liked Chrono Trigger when I first owned it, and I liked it just as much the second time around. Perhaps I don’t hold it in as high regard as most fans of videogaming do, but I truly, honestly really liked it.

I have absolutely zero desire to ever play it again.

Chrono Trigger is a game that I’d typically keep in my library. It’s a role-playing game, and even though I got every single piece of one-playthrough content I could have gotten, there’s still the challenge of beating the game under-leveled, or power-leveling to see how much patience you have. There are multiple party configurations with which you can march through and beat the game. Like exploring Marvel vs. Capcom teams, you can find out which “main” is your favorite. And specific to certain games, like Chrono Trigger, New Game+ exists solely for you to explore the game once again but in a different situation (in this case, marching through the game like a god just to see every one of its myriad endings).

I’ve been trying to figure out why I convulse at the thought of ever playing the game again. The one thing that I keep coming to again and again is the fatigue I developed with the game’s bonus content. Not present in the original, the additional quests you can go through comprise a sloppy patchwork of boring, zig-zag level design and irritating thrown-together tilesets of other existing dungeons. There’s no inventiveness to the dungeon layouts, and there’s only one truly interesting fan service reveal in the perhaps five to ten hours I spent doing extracurriculars. There are bonus weapons galore, and boy, are they worth it. But a weapon as a reward for a slog doesn’t make the slog itself any more interesting. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that, by the time I exhausted the extra content, Chrono Trigger had simply worn out its welcome. I just wanted to take the Epoch to Lavos and end it.

There’s a bit of irony to this, no? Extra content, which is supposed to get you to play the game more, has–in this case–made me not ever want to play the game again. Granted, the context is different; I did, in fact, play the game “more” than I would have if I just played through the main story one time. However, I might actually have the desire to play through the main story and even New Game+ more had the grueling experience going through the extra content not made me sick of the game. For the sake of a few extra hours of new stuff, I’ve given up a lifetime of extra hours replaying and enjoying the classic stuff.

Ultimately, this inaugural installment of GINPA is obviously less an indictment on the core game and moreso on the new content that Square Enix saw fit to slap onto the end of the game. It’s also indirectly an indictment of my decision to tenaciously pursue the completion of this content to the bitter end. Perhaps I should have tried some New Game+ gameplay before deciding to dip into the bonus content, so that I could see what I was missing back when I sold the original SNES cart, and experience it how I would have back in the old days before seeing what newfangled dungeons were lying in wait.

But perhaps Square Enix should have made extra content that, you know, wasn’t boring in the first place.

I’m one of these fools. I see something shinier and faster, and if I can’t get it I resign myself to pining hopelessly. So when the Samsung Galaxy SIII came out, normally I would have salivated and wished that my contract was up soon so I could switch.

See, I own a Motorola Droid Bionic, a phone that has been promised an update of its now-ancient Android 2.3 operating system (Gingerbread) to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), but time and time again, Verizon failed to deliver. It was promised at the outset of Q3 2012; it is now the beginning of Q4 2012. Some folks stopped believing it would ever come. The writing, it seems, should be on the wall: with my upgrade eligibility over a year away, I’d throw up my hands and just drop the cash on the shiny, new, and un-subsidized phone.

I like to think, though, that I saved my phone–gave it another full year at least–by doing what many tech-savvy Android phone owners (something I am not) resort to doing: flashing a custom ROM.

A quick dumb-down primer for those as dim-witted as me: A custom ROM is what folks commonly call firmware or operating systems which have been modified by development communities from their “official” versions, generally for mobile devices like phones and tablets. (I’ve never heard the term applied to something like a personalized Linux variant for a computer, but I suppose the analogy holds.) The Android operating system, in particular, is left open source by owner Google, who is perfectly happy to let developers and phone OEMs craft their own variants of the OS (within certain standards, depending on the situation… it gets a little complex here and I won’t go into it).

Initially, I just wanted to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich just so that I could be running at what’s supposed to be the current standard of the platform. (Technically, it’s actually supposed to be Version 4.1, Jellybean, but that has not yet seen wide official proliferation–even on new devices.) What I ended up with was a phone that was actually much speedier and had better battery life than before, with zero changes to its physical hardware. (There are quite a few ROMs out there that do this, but the one in particular that runs on my phone comes courtesy of a development group called Team Liquid: Liquid ICS 1.5, Revision 1.)

The road to the ROM wasn’t straightforward–not for regular joes like me, and not for Team Liquid and others who were developing their own ROMs for the Bionic. You can read the history of the ICS update woes here. Some intrepid followers found official builds from Motorola and soon Ice Cream Sandwich updates–each one progressively more stable–were unofficially leaked across the web. Had it not been for this, the development community may not have ever been able to build stable ROMs for the device because all of Motorola’s devices come with locked bootloaders. Thanks to the leaked Motorola builds, the developers at least had some base to work off of that would allow them to boot the phones into Ice Cream Sandwich. The hardest part was done.

A sidenote: To date, we have at least eight iterations of the Ice Cream Sandwich leak for the Bionic. Certain folks on the XDA Developers forum say the scuttlebutt is that Verizon continues to reject each successive release because Motorola has been unable to get Flash working in Ice Cream Sandwich.

It’s not hard to see that it would have been a painful waiting game. At some point, if you wanted just to stay current (Gingerbread just wasn’t cutting it), you’d have to jump if you wanted to avoid buying a whole new phone.

After going through the steps to reset my phone to factory standards and then update to one of the leaked ICS builds, I tried it out. It went well–the phone was smoother both in operation and the user experience. It wasn’t silky smooth like newer phones, but it sufficed, and at least my phone was more current.

But the tutorial I read made a recommendation on the ROM from Team Liquid, who was focused on making their ROMs’ performance “liquid smooth”. It also mentioned that I could use the new Google Now features without needing Jelly Bean (which is in development by the community but doesn’t yet have a build with stable cellular data connectivity).

After following the steps and installing the Liquid ROM, I find that my phone runs very fast compared to what it did on one of the later stable Motorola Ice Cream Sandwich leaks, and Gingerbread feels like a choppy user experience by comparison. Transitions and their animations are faster, and often smoother. App loading and task switching are much brisker. Using pinch-to-zoom on photos and web sites is very smooth, almost (though not quite) as smooth as what I’ve seen Jelly Bean can do.

Is there still a reason to crave Jelly Bean? Sure. There are slight interface and usability improvements that Jelly Bean implements over Ice Cream Sandwich as well as some background tinkering. But for the time being, due to the increased speed I’m experiencing and the addition of Google Now, I almost feel as if I have an entirely new phone–Jelly Bean or not.

To tell you the truth, I feel almost angry that for so long, Bionic owners like me have been holding a decently powerful piece of hardware without an operating system to take advantage of it. No, the Bionic won’t trounce the Galaxy SIII or even its contemporaries in the Droid Razr or Droid Razr Maxx, even with a fast custom ROM, but it’s certainly speedy enough that you most likely won’t care.

(Sidenote: I bought the Bionic after it had been out for a short while, just as Motorola announced the Droid Razr. Despite the faster processing power in the newer phone, it has no removable battery. That’s a key factor for me. I recently bought the extended battery on sale, and even with 4G connectivity my phone can last two days before needing a recharge. Plus it’s easier to kill and reboot the phone with a battery pull if it freezes for whatever reason.)

Potentially voiding your device’s warranty and facing the possibility of rendering it inoperable are surely reasons to be scared of turning to the development commmunity (hint: if you follow directions, you have nothing to worry about). But sometimes when you’re dealing with a device that seems to be going unsupported and, worse, whose potential remains unlocked, it’s worth the risk of going down the underground path–especially when its OEM just had a press conference announcing a new line of phones whose budget $99 model packs better hardware that what you currently have. (In fairness, Motorola said that all 2011 devices would receive Jelly Bean updates… but with the caveat that they won’t update “some” devices and would instead issue a $100 rebate for you to spend on a new device.)

If you’re a Bionic owner, or otherwise own a pretty fast phone that has ceased to receive updates from its OEM and your carrier, you should consider taking the plunge. As long as you know where to look and can follow instructions to the letter, you might squeeze another year or two out of a phone that once made you feel as if you were left behind.