All of this waiting for when Valve is ready is just silly, so I recently decided to take matters into my own hands. I have offered the company that Freeman built something that they can’t possibly refuse, that awesome lamp I made. Now, don’t ask how I did it (after all I wouldn’t want everyone flooding the market with them, and, thus, lowering the value of my offer would I?), just accept the fact that the process lands somewhere between making cookies, and alchemy.

I have approached Valve with an email, and I have to say, I like my chances. Click on to read the email in full.

Being a fan of fighting games, I usually harp on the pre-order and anxiously await the release date following every possible article that comes out about it until the game is finally in my hands. Where some gamers pass over the genre in lieu of the punch, kick, uppercut stigma, I always found myself drawn into the back story of it all.

For me, reading through the character profiles leads me into choosing who I will start the game off with, solely for the fact that I want to see how their part in the game plays out. I think about the good ol’ Street Fighter games and seeing Blanka as this green dude with orange hair and, wait… he has electricity powers?! Come to find out, he was in the plane crash and was subsequently shocked and mutated — oh now it all makes sense.

There are literally hundreds of video games released every year, so it’s impossible for gamers to take part in every new gameplay experience available. Even if you were to focus solely on playing high-quality well-reviewed blockbuster titles, there’s no shot you could find the time to play them all. This topic marks the perfect start to a new feature segment here on Daft Bit, called Confession Booth.

Confession Booth will allow our staff to expose a long-hidden personal confession, one which will likely cause high levels of embarrassment or shame. To kick off the new feature, I’m picking a topic that has shame written all over it, one I am confident that every gamer can relate to: lying to friends that you’ve played a game.

Earlier this week, I booted up the ol’ Xbox 360, as I wanted to play Black Ops one last time before placing it in a dusty box as a result of an inevitable Modern Warfare 3 addiction. First thing I noticed after boot up was a different looking dashboard, where only two rows of content were displayed — I quickly realized it was because I was no longer signed in with my gamertag. No big deal. As expected, I booted up Black Ops and figured I’d just sign-in within the game. That is until I was told my gamertag was invalid. Womp.

I’m not sure if I’ve made it clear before, but I’m a huge Zelda fanatic. One of my earliest childhood memories was playing Zelda II: The Adventures of Link on my yellow and white checkered linoleum floor, in a room in my house my brother and I dubbed the “Playroom.”

I was born in 1985, the birth year of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Before I even knew what a video game was, my parents awesomely purchased an Atari and a NES, effectively starting my gaming obsession, at around age three. Sure, Atari had some great arcade games, but NES gave me the Super Mario franchise and two Zelda classics, games that shaped my imagination, creativity, and taught me the ability to conquer any quest. It was Link, however, who would become my personal hero for the next twenty-something years.

I’m not a huge fan of people. Being around the general population for an extended period of time often leaves me feeling irritable, frustrated, and annoyed. After all, it’s the general population that made Susan Boyle relevant, voted Bush into office twice, and thinks “Global Warming” is an actual threat to our future — it’s not. People are the worst.

And while I love conventions that cater to my inner geek, it seems they often bring out thousands of the aforementioned. Even in a city as progressive as New York, the numbest of numbskulls seemingly flock with delight when the Comic-Con circus rolls into town, raining on my parade. Personally, I attend Comic-Con for the video game exhibits, always eager to play the latest builds of upcoming titles from the publishers themselves. I also love seeing the legions of devoted fans dressed in their very best cosplay garb. But it’s around those confined quarters on the show floor that you truly learn about the general population’s take on the industry. Not press, nor cosplayers, nor enthusiasts. I’m talking everyone else, the “casual” crowd if you will.

Capcom’s always been in favor of re-releasing games, whether straight ports, HD remakes, or Super-Turbo-Hyper installments. I’ve never had a problem with it, often finding each release to have its own valid purpose for existence. That was until playing the latest release of Resident Evil CODE: Veronica X, just re-released in HD by Capcom for Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.

The game follows Claire Redfield, and later her brother Chris Redfield, who’s playable halfway through the title. Claire attempts to rescue her brother from his disappearance by the Umbrella Corporation in Paris, France, but fails in her attempt and is subsequently held prisoner at Rockfort Island.

Throughout the game, you can expect a lot of the traditional elements of the Resident Evil franchise: shooting zombies, collecting items, collecting weaponry, completing puzzles. Instead of the puzzles feeling rewarding, they’re seemingly designed to be nothing more than tedious obstacles holding you up from accomplishing your main objectives. You’re constantly shuffling through inventory, going back and forth between the same locations, and at no time can I say it offered a remotely fun experience.

Resident Evil 4 is a rarity. Titles released within the survival-horror genre seem to have a hard time finding success. Even rarer can one game sustain its popularity through a slew of re-releases across the last 7 years — RE4 was originally released on the GameCube, eventually making its way to PS2, PC, Wii, iPhone… the list goes on. While I live for all things horror, I always avoided the genre in video games, as I never thought games could actually be scary. House of the Dead didn’t scare me. Saw didn’t scare me. Now after playing Resident Evil 4 HD, I’m convinced games can be be downright terrifying.

While the graphics have certainly been cleaned up, RE4 HD features the original animations of the GameCube title, noticeable at times by the last gen look of the on-screen text, menu systems, and the occasional harsh characters or environment textures — nostrils and ears look a bit harsh. Aside from a few flaws, the game looks great, with an overall polished look for a high definition presentation.

The game development process can seem pretty murky at times. Devs spend months, if not years, awarding a title monumental praise — often unwarranted as we come to find out by release time. Understandably, things can go awry during the development process, whether a weak concept, shallow gameplay experience, or the business side of the industry gets in the way of the art. Unfortunately, we’re never really clued into the reality of a project’s fate, as marketing geniuses are paid to make us believe all is well behind the curtain.

Fans were left out in the dark as to why development of Mega Man Legends 3 was canceled in mid-July. Capcom U.S. abruptly decided the game wasn’t worth pursing, while Capcom Europe seemed to blame the fans, releasing the following tweet: “Unfortunately so few fans took part in the creation of the game. It was felt the project was not worthwhile.” The tweet referred to the Devrooms, areas designated for fan input to make MML3 a pure hyrbid of developer and fan ideas.