Most of What You Ought to Know About Daniel

Hello, I'm Daniel Vucurevich.

Known on PSN, Steam, and XBL as HerrDanielJames

The Bio:

The first console in my household was an NES, but it was not mine. Despite being a relatively spoiled only-child at the time, my parents didn't buy that beautiful grey-on-grey block of circuits for my benefit; no, they bought it so that they could compete with one another. My eventual love of gaming was an unintended side effect of their playful desire to destroy each other in the digital world.

In the early days I was usually watching games instead of playing them, and as a spectator I noticed that whether my folks were vying for the better score in Millipede or physically blocking each other’s shots in Duck Hunt, gaming was always for the sake of fun and never for the sake of the game itself. My parents wouldn’t continue to play a game after it had ceased to be enjoyable for both of them merely for the top score or to see if they could “break” a game’s mechanics. Games were entertainment, and were approached accordingly. If they were not having fun, they reasoned, what was the point of playing?

I bring up this past because it has heavily influenced my own perception of video games. I certainly take them more seriously than my parents ever did, what with my trophy-whoring, my endless cycle of Mass Effect playthroughs, and my dutiful purchase of each new Grasshopper Manufacture release. Sometimes high scores are the driving force behind my play, and sometimes I do just want to screw around in the game world to see what I can get away with. At no point, though, I have been the kind of player who beat Ghostsn' Goblins without a Game Genie, or who spent countless hours and quarters attempting to battle my way to the number one score on a Street Fighter II cabinet.

Simply put, I am not a gaming masochist. There is a fine line between challenging and maddening for me, and when I am consistently no longer having fun with a game, I will walk away and direct my attention towards one of the countless other titles out there that are worthy of my time. Unsurprisingly, the things that really draw me into a game are narrative, style, and the sense of wonder it creates. Certainly I enjoy a challenge, and even a game with a tremendous story might be too tedious to tolerate if its mechanics are fundamentally broken. By and large though, I will forgive a lot gameplay-wise if a title tells me a compelling story.

I therefore present myself as something of a counterpoint to Ashton, my collaborator. Want someone to break down the finer points of an action game’s combo system while cross-referencing it with the specific inputs of similar titles from 5 years ago? Ashton is your man. If, however, you want to look at the wider experience of a game, to explore the culmination of narrative, gameplay, and art design, I humbly suggest that I have some interesting things to say. I am not the hardest of the hardcore, and I am certainly not a casual gamer; I am simply passionate about the medium and the experiences it can offer us. Let’s explore those experiences together.

The Favorites:

Blaster Master, Borderlands, Catherine, Civilization Revolution, Eternal Darkness, Fallout 3, Ico, Jackel, Katamari Forever, Knights of the Old Republic, L.A. Noire, Majora’s Mask, the Mass Effect series, Mirror’s Edge, No More Heroes, Ocarina of Time, Pilotwings 64, Resident Evil 4, Ridge Racer (PSP), Shadow of the Colossus, Shadows of the Empire, Skyrim, Sunset Riders, Twilight Princess, the Uncharted series, U.N. Squadron, Vigilante 8, Wipeout 2048.