Sean Polvinale: a gamer's progress
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At first glance, Sean Polvinale appears to be like most Ohio University students.
Hunched into a hooded sweater, sporting a Cleveland Browns stocking cap, Polvinale carries an air of studied nonchalance, nodding coolly at fellow students as he passes them by, before taking a seat across the table from me and taking off his Diddybeat headphones.
That studied nonchalance quickly melts into a warm smile as Sean greets me. After a few pleasantries, I waste no time in getting to the heart of the matter: Xbox 360 or PS3?
'Xbox 360', and then he proceeds to wax rhapsodically about the advantages of Microsoft's console offering, focusing on the number of titles the platform has and its online gaming capabilities.
He evinces some scepticism about the Kinect - which allows users to play games on the Xbox 360 using broad, whole body gestures. 'I was going to get one, but I'm waiting because there's only five games.' Boredom, he adds, would quickly ensue.
I next bring up the gamer's unicorn: Duke Nukem Forever. The game, based on the massively popular mid-'90s franchise, has been on the drawing board for the better part of the last fifteen years. It's finally scheduled for release on May 3. I asked Polvinale his for his opinion.
'Oh, Duke Nukem is one of those classics! The amazing thing is that the game was given up for dead. For the longest time, it was the definitive vapourware piece: oft-rumoured, never to arrive. And now it's here? Yeah, I'm definitely getting it, and playing the hell out of it.
'The studio producing it - 2K - is one of the better ones,' Polvinale adds. 'So that gives me confidence that Duke Nukem Forever is going to be a solid, solid game.'
Lest you think that Polvinale's life revolves solely around video games - it doesn't.
Polvinale, who hails from the small Ohio town of Nashport, is an avid sports fan. He assiduously follows every team hailing from Cleveland, and maintains a special place in his heart for the NFL's hard-luck Browns.
Photo by RNYR