No thanks, mom. I couldn’t take another bite of that “sun” thing you were talking about.

I know since school let out you haven’t been keeping up with the dates, so I’ll remind you that today is June 24. Your summer has only began, and for those of you grown up enough for summer to become meaningless, I laugh at you. For those of us whose folks legally have to let us live with them, we finally have time to relax thanks to school letting out. Sure, I’m using some of this free time to do stuff like learn to code and get myself in shape, but what I was really looking forward to was the chance to finish my games. At the beginning of the year I made a schedule to complete all my unfinished video games. Six months later, and I’ve beaten a grand total of… 1 game. It was Uncharted. I think we should all take the summer as an opportunity to give our favorite hobby some much given attention. The last week I’ve been very happy to be piling on hours for Infamous 2 and .hack//Outbreak.

.hack is very fulfilling.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like leaving games unfinished. I know the characters are just programs, but I just hate leaving them hanging in some dungeon or swamp while I play something else. What games are you looking to finish this summer?

I can’t have been older than six years old the first time I played Tony Hawk. It was Pro Skater 4 on the PS2 at my grandma’s house. I would spend hours with my cousin getting my ass kicked at Trick Attack. Then one Christmas there was a brand new Playstation 2 and a copy of Tony Hawk’s Underground under the tree. Just like any other kid my age, I stayed away from Career mode because I couldn’t get past the second level. I spent most of the time in multiplayer. Then a few years later I got an Xbox, along with THUG 2. Now that I was a bit older I had the coordination to not get frustrated at every other mission. Eventually I had beaten the game a dozen times over.

THUG 2 was the best Tony Hawk game ever in my opinion. The Create-a-Skater/Park/Move modes were the broadest that they ever were in the franchise. You could literally have a blue-skinned robot skeleton with a parrot on its shoulder. Next to the zombies, aborigines on go-karts and Bigfoot on a chainsaw-engine skateboard, this wasn’t out of place at all. If you didn’t like the story mode, you could ignore it and go to Classic mode, which plays just like a Pro Skater game, essentially making THUG 2 two games in one. But every game after that was a decline from this. After the dreaded Tony Hawk Ride and Shred, we thought that all hope was lost for the Birdman. But in an interview Tony Hawk revealed that despite what Activision said, there was still a future for the franchise.

I think that getting back to its roots was the best thing for the game. This summer, you will be able to play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD. THPSHD brings the best of the first two games rebuilt from the ground up. I am definitely going to get this. It’s been a long time since I’ve played some good Tony Hawk. I’ve been able to satisfy myself a little with the Pro Skater 3 disc I just happened to have, but it can only do so much. Man, I wish I still had that THUG 2. Well needless to say, I hope that this game does good and they start making full titles again. Hopefully a THUG 3. But besides this, It would really do good for the skater culture. When I was little I was very much into skateboarding thanks to these games (and also Rocket Power). The first documentary I watched of my own accord was one on skateboarding produced by Mike Vallely. This could inspire a new generation of kids to do one of the most incredible sports in the world.

By the way, I did eventually make it to a skate park once in my life. The back pain that lasted two days caused by falling on my ass made me realize that maybe I should just leave the skateboarding to my thumbs. But who knows, maybe I’ll pick it up again one day.

Well another E3 has come and gone, and I have to be honest: I didn’t really care. The majority of the news flooding my Google Reader were about sequels that we either knew were coming by tradition (“Durr, they’re making another Call of Duty game? I had no idea!) or more sequels that have been getting exposure for years (the Tomb Raider reboot, Halo 4, Batman Arkham City). This is the first time since learning about E3 that I’m really disappointed in it. I could go on about the state of creativity in AAA game development, but that’s not what this article is about. I’m sure that next year will have better games, so I want to talk about the future: getting a bigger piece of the E3 experience at home.

Let me give you a quick rundown on what E3 is. It is a huge, three day video game convention where publishers and developers unveil their upcoming products and projects. It is open to the public as well as the media, but seeing as it’s always held in California and the staggering amount of basement dwellers who play video games, a lot of people miss out. Sure, you can watch the press conferences and gameplay previews online, but it’s so far away from actually being there. You’re not interacting, you’re being communicated to. I think that people will get a lot more excited about E3 if they could feel like they’re at the convention from the comfort of their own homes. What if all the major consoles, plus PC, could see conferences live? What if we could get to play some of the demos that only the media and some lucky conventioneers get to play? Think of panels with an exclusively online audience. All of this with chat rooms dedicated to discussing this live.

It’s a beautiful thought. I wonder if other people are having the same idea right now. Nah, they’re probably busy stewing over the Wii U. I know I am.

I wrote a guest post for Make Me Noise about why I think Blackberry is relevant in the smartphone game.

“It’s a Blackberry; you’ve probably never heard of it. It’s all the rage overseas”. Sometimes I hate how similar I am to a hipster. I know it’s tempting to make fun of RIM, what with them having trouble moving a billion dollars’ worth of unsold products, having repeatedly unimpressive handset lines, and their own customers switching to iPhones or Androids.  But even with the competition, RIM is still relevant. The last time I upgraded my phone, I had the choice between the Blackberry Curve and a Samsung Android phone. Two years later I don’t at all regret my decision to stay with the good ol’ crackberry. Read the whole article.

Oh you sure are, ladies. Yes you are.

Earlier this week, Square Enix released the above E3 teaser photo, hinting at some kind of multiplayer mode in their upcoming game, Hitman: Absolution. Disappointingly it was later revealed to be a teaser for a new trailer in which Agent 47 is attacked by assassins disguised as nuns. But this got me thinking: isn’t it about time Hitman had a multiplayer mode? Yes. Yes it is.

The multiplayer mode will have two players compete against each other to carry out an assignment. Each player will have the same target(s) in each round, plus the other player as an optional target. For every target you eliminate you get points, your opponent being worth double. You have to be extra careful about being conspicuous, as to not reveal your identity to the other player (each player will appear as a random NPC to the other). The player who escapes with the most points wins. Killing the other player before all other targets are eliminated results in no points earned. It makes it even more risky to engage the other person because hostile NPCs will come to take down both of you. Which ones that are sent depends on the seriousness of the fight. Just a knife fight may result in a couple of security guards, whereas a firefight with automatic assault rifles will bring in a SWAT team clad in body armor and riot shields. Let me remind you, in order to win, you must escape alive.

There could be different modes to give it some variety. One could be a race to massacre every NPC on the board. Another could be who could complete the round with the least shots fired. There are over a dozen different kinds of games that could be made from this. It’s even possible that we get something similar to Left 4 Dead 2′s “Mutation” mode, where an experimental game mode is given to the community every week or so.

Now I will watch this trailer over and over while I await my job offer from IO Interactive.