The astute among you who follow my gaming posts (which, yes, I’m aware constitute an overwhelming majority of these entries — I am a passionate gaming enthusiast and an occasionally-professional games writer, after all) will be well aware of the fact that over the last few years, I’ve been drifting further and further away from the “mainstream” in terms of the titles I’ve been playing. This initially wasn’t a particularly conscious decision, but rather a reaction to the fact that I just wasn’t enjoying myself with the supposedly “big” titles of the day. I haven’t made it through any Halo games except the original and Reach, for example, and my few forays into Call of Duty have left me feeling by turns underwhelmed and insulted. Similarly, I’ve given up all hope of ever making it through the Assassin’s Creed series since it seems as soon as I think about playing through the older titles, Ubisoft goes and announces another one. You know, like they did today. Bastards.

I can’t quite pin down exactly when this shift in attitudes happened, but I do know that I’ve come across some truly remarkable games in the process. One of the most memorable of these is Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale, which I picked up as part of one of Steam’s characteristically generous Indie packs during one of the service’s many sales, and promptly played all the way through for 40 hours. This was something of a difference from my expectation, which was that the game would be a shallow, social game-style experience with little depth and no long-term appeal. How pleasantly surprised I was when it turned out to be quite the opposite — deep, fun, well-written (kudos to Carpe Fulgur’s wonderful translation efforts — we’re talking PS1-era Working Designs-quality work here) and immensely satisfying to play. And not an Achievement in sight, either.

The attitude that I’ve decided to take as a result of discovering brilliant titles like Recettear and numerous others like it a little way off the “beaten path” is to simply say “fuck it” to the mainstream, and explore the things that I’m interested in, rather than the titles which the media makes it seem you’re “supposed” to be interested in. It’s been a very long time since I consulted a review prior to purchasing a new game, instead relying on a combination of word-of-mouth, intuition and simple, immediate, visceral reactions to screenshots, descriptions and other media.

This philosophy has also been born from the original ideals of the Squadron of Shame way back in the 1up days. Our original remit as a group was as follows, and I quote directly from the original 1up club page, which still stands today:

Games of Shame. You know you have them. They sit in your closet, collecting dust: Little jewels that you always tell yourself you are going to play, but never get around to. Well, that’s about to change, soldier. You’ve been drafted to join the Squadron of Shame. Here we, the elite members of the 1UP Radio boards, paratroop into the bargain bins and rescue the unappreciated games that deserve to be saved. From there we battle through the trenches as a squad. At the end of the day, we take a moment to break down what made the whole experience worth fighting for by sharing war stories, reflections, and cigars. But the fight isn’t just on the front of retro games: Any game deemed “fit for duty” by command can be put on the pile. At the end of the day, the reason we fight isn’t just to discover new experiences, it’s to answer that simple and fundamental question: “Why do we play?” Now suit up. The pile awaits.

I’ve pretty much stuck by those ideals as the years have gone by, always preferring to check out things that are outside of the mainstream, far from the things that everyone is talking about. I can’t help but feel you can have too much of a good thing in terms of game coverage, and this is a problem which is only compounded by the explosive growth social media has enjoyed over the last few years. By the time a big-name game comes out, there are very few surprises left due to the constant PR trickle of new screens, exclusive reveals, teaser trailers, live-action videos, behind-the-scenes developer diary videos, blog posts, interviews, features, podcasts, multiplayer betas and all manner of other things besides. And when the game does come out, everyone is talking about it on Twitter and Facebook, putting you at serious risk of spoilers — or at the very least, of a feeling of “saturation”.

So rather than bitch and moan about the state of the mainstream, the iron-fist rule of unscrupulous PR agencies and publishers destroying interesting, outlet-unique coverage and games that I have little interest in playing, I’m simply going to ignore stuff that doesn’t interest me and focus on things which sound intriguing. (I’m aware that this post may well constitute bitching and moaning about the state of the &c &c but… but… FUCK YOU, that’s what. WAIT I DIDN’T MEAN IT, COME BACK, I STILL LOVE Y—)

And, subsequently, I’ll cover them myself, right here. I may be late to the party on some titles, but in many cases, things don’t stop being relevant just because of their age, particularly with the number of HD remasters, portable remakes and backward-compatible devices we’ve seen recently. Providing these games with a little exposure here — “little” being the operative word, since I’m well aware of the relatively miniscule amount of traffic this blog generates, and am perfectly happy with that fact — will make me feel better, because then I then know that there’s someone out there (me) appreciating and giving some much-needed attention to titles which maybe don’t have a massive marketing budget or an omnipotent PR organisation managing and coordinating all their coverage. And, as small as my audience here is, if I write something, then there will be people reading about these titles, too. And if just a few of those people think “hmm, that does sound interesting” then I can feel like I’ve done a good job somewhere along the line.

So if I blog about something which sounds interesting and you decide to check it out for yourself, be sure to let me know. I’d love to hear your reactions to titles such as Katawa Shoujo, To The Moon, Recettear, Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and numerous others. Over the course of the next few days/weeks/months, I’m intending to catch up on a variety of PSP titles, starting with Corpse Party and following with the portable Persona remakes. So watch out for those entries soon, and be sure to let me know your thoughts on those games if you’ve also sampled their charms.

And if you’re excited for Mass Effect 3, Assassin’s Creed III or, God forbid, the rumoured Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, then don’t let me stop you being excited — I’d actually love to hear about those games, from you, too. Just be aware I probably won’t be joining you in playing them!