The original Command & Conquer. It was my brothers' game and they would sometimes have a go at me for always playing it, but it was incredible! I think a good year and a half of my life was given up to playing my way through this game several times and some missions I'd play over and over just for the sheer joy of building a base and training my own little armies.
What was so wonderful about C&C was it's simplicity, the lack of restrictions and the character of the forces. I loved playing as the Global Defence Initiative trying to rid the world of NOD forces. Brilliant! I remember, at the time even, thinking that the only thing the game needed to be perfect was a skirmish mode. I never had a chance to play it multiplayer, but I bet that was truly great!
After C&C my brothers and I moved onto C&C: Red Alert. That was fantastic and I played it for much longer, but it all began with the original C&C, so I won't go into it. Oh, and Red Alert DID have a skirmish mode, so they learnt from their mistakes.
My next big adiction, which relates back to my post on where my love for gaming comes from, is Baldurs Gate. This was, for me, the original Dungeons and Dragons master piece! I loved creating different characters and exploring the world, different dungeons and following the dark story over and over again. It had a replayability that I've not seen in games since.
From Baldurs Gate I then went on to play and love Baldurs Gate 2 and it's expansion, Throne of Baal, and even the more open game Icewind Dale, which was really designed for co-op multiplayer.
So C&C was my first addiction, Baldurs Gate was the first game to indulge my deep love for fantasy adventuring, but the first first-person-shooter that got me hooked was Unreal Tournament - the original and still the best! I never got into it's later incarnations. My friends and I must have player UT for 3 years or more, it was so brilliant! Some of the mods that came out for it were fantastic, but just the core game was simple and wonderfully designed, a true pleasure for violent gunnishment.
Other notable games I've been hooked on have been:
Need for Speed: Underground - the drag racing was brilliant, modding cars and racing between traffic was exhilirating and it had me and a mate of mine hooked for many years, if you include it's sequel.
C&C: Generals - IMO this was the original action/strategy game. A fantastic mix of the class C&C base building and resource gathering, with the fast pace, brutally tactical, micromanagement of characterful and vastly different armed forces.
Ultima Online - The original open world, sand box MMO (massively multiplayer online) game. So wonderful. Some of the guilds in the game were enormous, with hundreds of players combining to rule vast tracts of land in the wonderfully constructed, dark world of Ultima. This was 4 years of friendships and adventure that I miss. But it was dangerously addictive and I won't get sucked into a game like this ever again!
Fable 2 - The original Fable was excellent, but didn't quite have the ease of play that Fable 2 had. Fable 3 had the open areas to explore like Fable 2, but lacked the depth of emotion and character which you felt and was just too easy. I have completed Fable 2 twice now and am playing it a third time! I've also played with friends. Such a magical and wonderfully gripping game, which you can play in different ways for different out comes.
Doom 3 - This game was ID Software's finest moment as far as I'm concerned. I loved it and have played it again and again over the years just to get a fix of this perfect example of an FPS.
Red Dead Redemption - The story was emotional, deep and interesting and I achieved 100%. I loved the wild west theme and the multiplayer was innovative and brilliant. I played hours and hours with friends online roaming the wild west fighting bandits and rival player possees. What it lacked in replayability in single player it more than made up for in it's epic multiplayer.
Sunday, 26 February 2012
Friday, 24 February 2012
Where it all began...
I have loved playing games all my life. It has been a central focus for as long as I can remember. Although I should say it's not always the playing of the game that is central, it's the interaction with people I am playing with that really gives the buzz of excitment.
I think my deep passion for gaming really started when I was about 6-7 when my brothers and I used to play with a couple of kids who'd visit with their family during the holidays. They owned a holiday home near to where we lived and we'd play much the same games any children 10 and under played. The eldest of the two, however, was also interested in Fighting Fantasy game books and a couple of times he took me, my brothers and his brother on adventures using the Advanced Fighting Fantasy rulebooks, and that was it for me! I was absolutely captivated!
For years I would then try to recreate these adventures with my own friends at school, to some success. When I was about 8 I'd take a few fellow classmates at school on random adventures into dungeons using pieces of paper and a couple of dice. We were all absorbed in it, but it never had the same feel for me.
From then on I started to find different games to play, experienced other peoples opinions on how games should work and I started to make up my own rules and inflict them on my friends!
As we got older they moved onto other things and I started playing in a band so everything sort of died away, but my passion for games never really did. As a 10 year old I remember being asked what I wanted to be when I was older and I said a Games Designers, my teacher didn't know anything about that so he didn't say anymore and I was never asked again! I hope to one day fulfill that dream.
I think my deep passion for gaming really started when I was about 6-7 when my brothers and I used to play with a couple of kids who'd visit with their family during the holidays. They owned a holiday home near to where we lived and we'd play much the same games any children 10 and under played. The eldest of the two, however, was also interested in Fighting Fantasy game books and a couple of times he took me, my brothers and his brother on adventures using the Advanced Fighting Fantasy rulebooks, and that was it for me! I was absolutely captivated!
For years I would then try to recreate these adventures with my own friends at school, to some success. When I was about 8 I'd take a few fellow classmates at school on random adventures into dungeons using pieces of paper and a couple of dice. We were all absorbed in it, but it never had the same feel for me.
From then on I started to find different games to play, experienced other peoples opinions on how games should work and I started to make up my own rules and inflict them on my friends!
As we got older they moved onto other things and I started playing in a band so everything sort of died away, but my passion for games never really did. As a 10 year old I remember being asked what I wanted to be when I was older and I said a Games Designers, my teacher didn't know anything about that so he didn't say anymore and I was never asked again! I hope to one day fulfill that dream.
More Rage!
Played a good chunk of Rage now and still loving it! The story is nothing amazing, but it seems perfect for getting the most out of all the different aspects of the game and gives good justification for your various actions and getting you to speak with various people.
Last night I played the first three co-op missions with a friend on xbox live and they were so much better than I thought they would be! I had expected the one aspected that would let the game down would be the multiplayer, but the missions are well designed, challenging and a great laugh. Me and my mate had no problem redoing the same over and over to try and get a better score or acquire specific achievements.
I'm seriously considering actually buying the game! Especially considering it is so cheap now. My mate bought it a few weeks back for £15, which is a bargain for such a well constructed game. Although, I have heard that the campaign is annoyingly short and considering I'm about 9 hours in I'm really hoping it won't end in the next couple of hours - that could potentially kill my opinion of the game and would definitely put me off purchasing my own copy.
My fingers are crossed there's a good chunk of campaign to get stuck into!
Last night I played the first three co-op missions with a friend on xbox live and they were so much better than I thought they would be! I had expected the one aspected that would let the game down would be the multiplayer, but the missions are well designed, challenging and a great laugh. Me and my mate had no problem redoing the same over and over to try and get a better score or acquire specific achievements.
I'm seriously considering actually buying the game! Especially considering it is so cheap now. My mate bought it a few weeks back for £15, which is a bargain for such a well constructed game. Although, I have heard that the campaign is annoyingly short and considering I'm about 9 hours in I'm really hoping it won't end in the next couple of hours - that could potentially kill my opinion of the game and would definitely put me off purchasing my own copy.
My fingers are crossed there's a good chunk of campaign to get stuck into!
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Rage!
Rage, the latest game from ID software, came through the post yesterday and I've had a good go on it already and my first impressions are that it's still got that distinctive ID software feel to the movement - it's fluid, yet sharp and feels brilliant!
As you can probably tell already I am a big fan of ID software. Doom, Doom 2 and Doom 3 are 3 of my favourite game ever. I can still play them now and enjoy them thoroughly!
ID software aren't wholly responsible for Rage's production, they worked along side Bethesda and if I was to describe my first impressions of Rage I would say, it is Fallout for people with ADD. You have the post apocalyptic landscape, dotted with towns and settlements, between which there are bandits and mutants and many places to explore.
I feel that the top developers for this game must be keep petrol-heads who played too much Necromunda or even Rogue Trader back in the 90s, and possibly still do!
The game sees you going between settlements in custom built buggies or 4x4s with big V8s, completing missions for the residents, playing games in the bars and/or participating in violent races across the dusty wastelands for extra rewards.
The graphics are beautiful, but then the game does consist of 3 DVDs worth of data?!?! 3! I installed each one of them before starting the game up so I have the best performance. The guns are well designed and feel nice. Everything has a nice, well thought out appearance and seems just right considering the setting.
An aspect of the game I've not explored greatly yet is the engineering. As you wander the wilderness you can pick up bits and pieces which, when you've found a "recipe" you can forge into an extra bit of kit to help you along the way, this could be a more effective healing balm or a sentry gun. They all require different items to be forged and they add a nice extra bit of depth to the combat.
The bad guys I've faced so far are split into bandits and mutants. The bandits are just malicious people trying to take whatever they can from whoever they can, and the mutants, I think, are products of the apocalyptic disaster that struck the earth 100 years before, they're everywhere and wild and crazy people!
Anyway, I'll let you know more when I've played some more, but I already feel like it's going to be a fantastic game and can't wait to get into the meat of the story.
As you can probably tell already I am a big fan of ID software. Doom, Doom 2 and Doom 3 are 3 of my favourite game ever. I can still play them now and enjoy them thoroughly!
ID software aren't wholly responsible for Rage's production, they worked along side Bethesda and if I was to describe my first impressions of Rage I would say, it is Fallout for people with ADD. You have the post apocalyptic landscape, dotted with towns and settlements, between which there are bandits and mutants and many places to explore.
I feel that the top developers for this game must be keep petrol-heads who played too much Necromunda or even Rogue Trader back in the 90s, and possibly still do!
The game sees you going between settlements in custom built buggies or 4x4s with big V8s, completing missions for the residents, playing games in the bars and/or participating in violent races across the dusty wastelands for extra rewards.
The graphics are beautiful, but then the game does consist of 3 DVDs worth of data?!?! 3! I installed each one of them before starting the game up so I have the best performance. The guns are well designed and feel nice. Everything has a nice, well thought out appearance and seems just right considering the setting.
An aspect of the game I've not explored greatly yet is the engineering. As you wander the wilderness you can pick up bits and pieces which, when you've found a "recipe" you can forge into an extra bit of kit to help you along the way, this could be a more effective healing balm or a sentry gun. They all require different items to be forged and they add a nice extra bit of depth to the combat.
The bad guys I've faced so far are split into bandits and mutants. The bandits are just malicious people trying to take whatever they can from whoever they can, and the mutants, I think, are products of the apocalyptic disaster that struck the earth 100 years before, they're everywhere and wild and crazy people!
Anyway, I'll let you know more when I've played some more, but I already feel like it's going to be a fantastic game and can't wait to get into the meat of the story.
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Dead Island, dead disappointing
I recently rented Dead Island through LoveFilm and was very much looking forward to it. From looking at previews of the game last year my impression had been that it was an open world zombie survival game where the goal was to find one of a multitude of ways off the island.
When I started playing I was very impressed with the melee system, the graphics were excellent and every venture out into onto the island was nerve racking and felt like a huge risk. After several hours of play, once the novelty wore off, I did get a bit bored of it but as the story developed and I moved around and acquired new items I found myself gripped enough to keep going.
Now, I should point out that one thing I hated from the start, and which I knew about before playing, was the fact it is a "level based" game. My that I mean your character gains levels as he/she gains experience. I HATE level based character development - it's crude and old fashioned and unimaginative. What makes this worse, as seen in Dead Island, is that you can't use certain items until you reach a certain level. This is a terrible system! For example, my character was using a crowbar for quite a while, which I enjoyed using as it was very effective, when I then found another, better crowbar I found I couldn't use it because I wasn't a high enough level?! How ridiculous is that?
Another ridiculous aspect to levelling up is that all the monsters levelled up too, so at the beginning of the game you can kill a zombie with a normal, salvaged iron pipe, but once you level up a few times that same iron pipe is utterly useless!
I played through about two thirds of the story before I finally told myself that this really isn't gripping anymore, I'm just playing because I want to find a quick way off the island. So I stopped and looked on the interweb for a walk through and discovered to my dismay that there was only one way off the island and all the other potential routes all funnel into one conclusion! Once I read that I packed the game up and posted it back to LoveFilm, giving it a 2 star rating (out of 5).
What I enjoyed about the game was the environment, the exploration (although there is a negative here too), the intense fights for survival and limited resources.
What I didn't like was the level-based nature of character development, the exploration - the fact that the exact same items would respawn in the exact same position 15 minutes later - and the single track story.
In conclusion I feel they missed the point of a zombie survival, open world game. I liked developing skills on my character as I progressed, but you can do this far more elegantly than by using a levelling up system. Also, instead of the story funnelling into one final conclusion I would have liked to see several potential paths off the island, as I'm sure was originally promised.
I think what enticed them into designing the game this way was the modern gamer. Most big grossing games have cinematic cut scenes, levelling systems and silly names for even basic weapons and stories revolving around "interesting" character relationships. All of which they have tried to do.
I would have liked to have seen them cut out most of the cutscenes, sacrifice the top shelf graphics and see them build an entirely free roam island, with several outposts of survivors, hard to reach areas where precious resources can be gathered and multiple story lines, which lead off into different endings.
When I started playing I was very impressed with the melee system, the graphics were excellent and every venture out into onto the island was nerve racking and felt like a huge risk. After several hours of play, once the novelty wore off, I did get a bit bored of it but as the story developed and I moved around and acquired new items I found myself gripped enough to keep going.
Now, I should point out that one thing I hated from the start, and which I knew about before playing, was the fact it is a "level based" game. My that I mean your character gains levels as he/she gains experience. I HATE level based character development - it's crude and old fashioned and unimaginative. What makes this worse, as seen in Dead Island, is that you can't use certain items until you reach a certain level. This is a terrible system! For example, my character was using a crowbar for quite a while, which I enjoyed using as it was very effective, when I then found another, better crowbar I found I couldn't use it because I wasn't a high enough level?! How ridiculous is that?
Another ridiculous aspect to levelling up is that all the monsters levelled up too, so at the beginning of the game you can kill a zombie with a normal, salvaged iron pipe, but once you level up a few times that same iron pipe is utterly useless!
I played through about two thirds of the story before I finally told myself that this really isn't gripping anymore, I'm just playing because I want to find a quick way off the island. So I stopped and looked on the interweb for a walk through and discovered to my dismay that there was only one way off the island and all the other potential routes all funnel into one conclusion! Once I read that I packed the game up and posted it back to LoveFilm, giving it a 2 star rating (out of 5).
What I enjoyed about the game was the environment, the exploration (although there is a negative here too), the intense fights for survival and limited resources.
What I didn't like was the level-based nature of character development, the exploration - the fact that the exact same items would respawn in the exact same position 15 minutes later - and the single track story.
In conclusion I feel they missed the point of a zombie survival, open world game. I liked developing skills on my character as I progressed, but you can do this far more elegantly than by using a levelling up system. Also, instead of the story funnelling into one final conclusion I would have liked to see several potential paths off the island, as I'm sure was originally promised.
I think what enticed them into designing the game this way was the modern gamer. Most big grossing games have cinematic cut scenes, levelling systems and silly names for even basic weapons and stories revolving around "interesting" character relationships. All of which they have tried to do.
I would have liked to have seen them cut out most of the cutscenes, sacrifice the top shelf graphics and see them build an entirely free roam island, with several outposts of survivors, hard to reach areas where precious resources can be gathered and multiple story lines, which lead off into different endings.
Friday, 17 February 2012
Hello
I've never written a blog before and had never considered it until my girlfriend suggested I should.
I intend to use this blog as a vent for my thoughts on various games I've been playing and ideas I have myself on improvements for existing games or my own, original games.
Another reason for writing a blog is so I can keep track of my thoughts on various games as I am considering a career move and currently looking into programming courses with the hope that one day I might become a Games Designer. Whether that ends up being for computer games or boardgames, I don't actually mind either way.
I intend to use this blog as a vent for my thoughts on various games I've been playing and ideas I have myself on improvements for existing games or my own, original games.
Another reason for writing a blog is so I can keep track of my thoughts on various games as I am considering a career move and currently looking into programming courses with the hope that one day I might become a Games Designer. Whether that ends up being for computer games or boardgames, I don't actually mind either way.
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