Do you care about keeping up with other gamers?

Look, I get how big online gaming is. I'm not an online gamer myself, and I'll tell you why. To me gaming is an escape from having to deal with real people. I do that every day. They drive me nuts. I don't want to do it in a game. I want to deal with pre-programmed NPC's that behave, well, logically.
So that means I don't care much about what my gamer friends are up to in a given minute. Sure, I want to know what they're playing, what they think about it, etc., but I don't have to know what achievements or trophies they've won today.
But a lot of people do. If you do, there's an app for that. It's called Raptr and you can learn about it here. And that's great and all, just don't expect me to be on it.

MYST, the movie?

Long time pc gamers will remember MYST, one of the original point and click adventure games with fairly good graphics and voice acting. If you've never played it, you can learn all about it at Mystworlds. Basically you're you, stuck in the world of Myst and trying to figure out what's going on by collecting pages to one of two books you find that have two brothers trapped in them. One of them is obviously nuts, and the other one, not so obviously, but clearly something's afoot. To find the pages you have to solve a series of interesting puzzles you find by travelling to different "ages", the different levels of the game. Aside from the two brothers trapped in their books, you don't see a soul. And yet someone thinks they can make this into a movie.
To be fair, the two independent filmmakers who are working on this say they're making a movie based on a novel based on the game, which they say has a deep rich narrative. I haven't read it, so I can't say.
I wish them luck. It was a good game and if they can pull it off it'll be beautiful on screen. What I find unfortunate is that a lot of society, maybe most of it, only thinks a story is valid if it's a book or a movie. Why can't a story be interactive? In a game you, as the player, write part of the story. A lot of it, in some games. How is this not as legitimate an art form as anything else we watch, read or listen to?
Think of your favorite games. Recently we've had some good ones. Red Dead Redemption is the best western since Unforgiven. Any Resident Evil game beats the pants off of any RE movie. And anyone who's played the game and seen the prequels knows that Knights of the Old Republic is a better Star Wars movie than anything put on film since Return of the Jedi.
So what do you think? As someone who is a long time gamer, have games finally gotten the respect they deserve? Or are they still having to wait for someone in Hollywood to validate them? Leave your comments.

Minecraft, the latest way to waste time on your pc. And it's really cool.

Minecraft is a kind of a throwback to the 8 bit first person adventure genre that was so prominent during PC gaming's early days. In Minecraft you're stranded on an island and have to construct everything you need. There's a story, sort of, but it's really about building things with blocks that look like they should be in Mario land. You can build most anything, including the starship Enterprise.
If graphics are your thing, this isn't for you. It's straight up fun gameplay, a huge open ended sandbox where you can basically do what you want. If what you want to do is dig, craft and build. Check it out at www.minecraft.net.

Great deal on a new Xbox 4GB slim

I love my 250GB slim Elite. But I will admit, I could probably get by just about as well with just the 4GB "arcade" version. If you could too, here's your chance. Dell Home has a great deal on the new console on the block, $179.99 with free shipping. So if your old 360 RRODed or you're a PS3 gamer who wants to expand on the cheap, here's your chance. Check it out here.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West trailer looks awesome, demo out on Live

I know this came out a while ago, for E3, but part of what we do here at Gen X Gamers is catch you up with things you might have missed because you have a life outside of gaming. And since the demo for this game came out on PSN this week and Xbox live today, I thought you might want to check it out.
The gameplay looks fun, the environment is beautifully rendered, voice acting sounds great, and the whole thing could have been a movie. Almost was. Sorta. The game comes out on October 5th.

Easter eggs: love 'em or just meh? Halo:Reach warthog race

There's a little known (for now anyway) Easter egg in Halo:Reach that enables you to have a warthog race. (If you want to know how, click here). Which brings up the question, what do you think of Easter eggs?

Games are full of them. You can get Master Chief armor and a plasma sword in Fable 2, teddy bears in Modern Warfare 2, Yoshi's cameo at the end of Super Mario 64, and of course you can chase all over Grand Theft Auto games to find actual eggs. So that brings up the question, do you like eegs?

I think a good little in joke occasionally is ok, one of the fun little things about gaming that makes it possible, in  a good game, to have more depth than you can get in say a movie. Anything more than that, to me, just runs the risk of taking me out of the game experience. I've worked hard emotionally to get involved in most of the games I play, and I want to be as immersed in that world as possible. So exploring a cave in Morrowind and running across the corpse of a character named Peke Utchoo (it's there) doesn't add to the game for me. 

But I might be the exception. What do you think about Easter eggs, good or bad? And what are your favorites?

Heavy Rain at amazon for $39.99

Check out amazon.com for a deal on Heavy Rain, the noir mystery game for PS3. If you have a PS3 you already know there aren't a lot of good exclusives, although some of them
are very good. This is one of those. If you like thriller, mystery or CSI type movies you'll enjoy this game. And if anyone finds it cheaper elsewhere, let us know.