Fantasy worlds and what I grew up with

As I grew up there were certain fantasy worlds that connected with me more than others, so I thought I'd list them here and what I loved about them so much.

Fighting Fantasy

I think a lot of people my age can remember the fighting fantasy books where you'd read a paragraph and then it would give you some options and instruct you which page to move to and so on; sometimes having to fight monsters on the route or solve puzzles.

These were the only books I could ever read as an 8 year old. I was a late developer when it came to reading and I'm still not the best reader now, but there were certain books or subject matters that would instantly click and I'd happily read them all day long.

It was when I was introduced to Advanced Fighting Fantasy that my obsession really stuck in. Being taken on those first adventures, with my brothers and 2 friends whose family had a holiday home near our house. The eldest of these two friends would take us on adventures through the grimy streets of Blacksand or into a Warlocks tower. It was all, what I now consider, classic medieval fantasy; wizards, warriors, rogues; magic swords, amulets and healing potions.

The Old World

When my brothers and I first started exploring Games Workshop and it's games we first went towards the futuristic Warhammer 40k. Our first game was Space Crusade and then we went into 2nd edition 40k. At the time I remember enjoying it, but I never really understood it, or rather, it didn't really grab me. I remember really wanting Heroquest, but we went into 40k and my brothers grew up playing that throughout their teenage years.

Once I got a little older and started to become a little more independent my friends and I quickly made the switch to Warhammer Fantasy and it became our lives! We instantly fell in love with the kingdoms of High Elves, The Empire, Bretonnia; each of us finding our own little space on the map to engross ourselves in its armies units, history and feel.

The Warhammer world probably appealed so much because it's development lie in the hands of the people who wrote the Fighting Fantasy books! So the dark, grim fantasy world instantly appealed to us.

Star Wars

In one of the many arguments we had as kids between Star War and Star Trek, I was always a Star Wars fanatic! I watched some Star Trek, because it was on and my brothers enjoyed it. But the Star Wars universe was the first Sci Fi that really gripped me.

I cannot say how many times I've watched the original three films, but it's got to be well over 10 times each (and embarrassingly, probably nearer 20...). I had a Star Wars encyclopaedia and knew almost every planet and variant of the star destroyer there were - even the ones not shown in the films!

Tolkien's Middle Earth

I actually came quite late to this. It was my mum who introduced me properly to it when she lent me a copy of The Hobbit and then I left it sat on a book shelf somewhere for a few years before finally reading it.

The Hobbit, if I remember rightly, was the first proper novel I ever read. I think I was 18, or maybe nearer 20. Either way, it was a break through moment for me. I had never thought I could enjoy a set story so much. Previously, one of my reasons for not wanting, or being able to, read a novel was because I felt I would get frustrated at the lack of interaction and control I had over the outcome. I always wanted to play inside a world, not be led through a story. But The Hobbit showed me how good good literature was.

I now recognised how significant Tolkien was to everything based in medieval fantasy. I've read The Lord of the Rings and have really enjoyed books edited and published latterly, by J.R.R. Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien.

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As always there is a reason I wanted to write this post, I wasn't just being self indulgent chatting about what I loved and grew up with. The reason I wanted to write about it was because I often wonder why my preferences are the way they are.

 

Anyone who might have read anything in my blog before would know that I really hate level based systems and I hated games that thrive off "loot" and crazy magical super power weapons and such. These, I feel, I perpetuations of aspects that were really important in all the stories and worlds that I do enjoy. It was finding a magical sword in Fighting Fantasy that we all craved, but would never happen! When it did it was something amazing and satisfying. In Star Wars, the fact that Luke Skywalker was a Jedi and had amazing powers was very cool, but only because he was essentially an ultra rare freak with a sensitivity to an invisible force. Gandalf was one of only a few wizards in all of Middle Earth.

 

When Star Wars Galaxy gave way to class based "balancing" and was then re-hashed into a new MMO where everyone could be a Jedi, it was no longer a game trying to give people a chance to experience the Star Wars universe. Games where you find magic items in every loot drop have no depth in my opinion. Massive customisation in games without needing to give any regard to the a world's lore is pandering to modern wants. We all have too much and we all want more, and this is something that I feel has a massive negative effect on nearly all fantasy and sci fi RPGs.

Wastelands v2.3

A week ago I finished my latest Wastelands update. After almost 6 months away from it I have loved getting back into designing more stuff for it!

Tried a first play through with mates last Wednesday and all seemed to go really well. The big new addition is the raceway which now dominates the middle of the table; 2 cards x 2 cards in size, with Motor City sitting in the middle of it and surrounded by 8 deadlands.

The new championship racing was exciting and more engrossing, but definitely needs some tweaking. Will hopefully play again this week.

I'm also looking now to push up a couple of expansion ideas, which my friends and chatted about a long time ago!

It's so good having a functioning printer again and time to push this forward!

Gears of War: Judgement - my judgement

For my birthday a mate bought me Gears Judgement and for his, I bought it for him. Usual deal every year, but it means we can properly enjoy some coop gaming together, as a sort of birthday present to each other.

Anyway, we spent a whole afternoon plowing through the Gears Judgement campaign in 2 player coop, which is the best way to enjoy any of the Gears of War campaigns!

I'm not going to go into the nitty-gritty about graphics and fiddly bits, as I'm sure they've been covered many times in proper reviews and I don't really care too much about that stuff. Needless to say they're not much different to other Gears of War games. I read somewhere that they'd made this iteration more colourful, but I didn't really notice much difference.

Game mechanics

Gears Judgement plays totally differently to any of the other Gears games. I feels like they've mixed in a bit of generic shoot-em-up (CoD, Rage etc...) into the classic Gears cover-based shooter to create a faster paced Gears of War experience. It was very strange to not spend most of our time sat in cover. I found myself using cover as I would in Battlefield or any other shooter, without needing to use the actual cover game mechanics.

To go with these changes in game mechanics the developers have also made the weapons more powerful, so you no longer need to empty a whole magazine of ammo into an enemies head to bring him down. I don't want to imply the "classic" Gears mechanics are bad, but I really appreciate this change. My friend and I really appreciated the fact that other weapons seemed to be more functional and attractive to use in different situations. I think in previous Gears games it was pretty clear that the Lancer was the best weapon and everything else was there for when you ran out of Lancer ammo.

Story

The story of the campaign revolves around a court case, where Kilo squad, led by Lt. Baird, are being charged for there previous actions. After each scene of the court case the players go through a retrospective memory sequence, playing through what Kilo squad experienced. This is the whole game basically and has a nice feel to it, but it didn't give me the sense of emersion I normally get from a Gears game. You basically knew what was going to happen from the very beginning.

The whole campaign had a very arcady feel to it, which I think progressed even more from Gears 3. The levels were great self contained experiences and I'm quite keen to replay some of them for the great game play they involved, but as an overall story it didn't really leave me feeling very satisfied.

Multiplayer

I can't really talk about this in any length, but they removed horde mode and replaced it with survival mode, where players work together to defend an objective. It really lacks the sandbox feel which I think horde mode gave players, but it feels suitable considering the faster paced action in this game. I need to play it more and see how it progresses at higher levels.

Overall

As a prequel to the first Gears of War it's ok. It doesn't give too much away and it's nice to learn a little more about the Gears universe, prior to the events of Gears 1. However, the campaign doesn't feel complete, it feels like an expansion.

I don't think I'll be getting rid of Gears of War 2, because of it's great campaign, or Gears of War 3, for the epic horde mode. But I will happily keep Gears Judgement for now, because I like the game mechanics and I look forward to exploring the multiplayer more.

My top 5 xbox 360 games... serious this time!

I'm back! I've been away for a month working hard at finishing my Open Uni modules for this year and then going on holiday to Finland with my Girlfriend. I have several ideas for posts I want to talk about, but I thought I'd start by rectifying my previous indecision.

Ok, so a mate of mine told me to grow a pair and put down my top 5 xbox 360 games properly, without moving away from the point.

So here are my top 5 games:

1. Red Dead Redemption - as stated before. It's just all round awesome.

2. Fable 2 - it's a bit of a toss up between this and RAGE, but overall I think this one had the longest hold on me and I could still play it today and enjoy it! I'm half way through my third play through, and probably my fifth or sixth play through when you factor in playing with friends.

3. RAGE!!! - as stated above, it was a toss up but I think this just comes in behind Fable 2. But as this blog will testify, I love this game. Well worth getting, as long as you invest in all the expansions. Although that doesn't cost very much these days, probably about £15 for everything.

4. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - as per my previous "top 5" post, the reason I didn't write a top 5 was because I just couldn't really think of anything that came close to the feeling of emersion that I got from the top 3 I've put down here. But Bad Company 2 was so enjoyable as an online game, which I played with my brothers and mates for so long, it just has to be put in my top 5. It was so easy to connect with mates and get into stable servers, as a single squad. It didn't have the desperately annoying player owned servers and stupid inability to connect to a game as a squad with friends that Battlefield 3 has. But it should be noted the single player was TOILET! Battlefield single player is always toilet, they should concentrate on multiplayer and stop pissing around with it.

5. Gears of War 2 - this was very difficult to choose because I got a lot of enjoyment out of FIFA games and have played many meaningful and excellently written single player campaigns. But I think this takes my fifth spot because I think it is the best Gears of War campaign. It was made extra special because I played it all the way through for the first time in a 12 hour marathon with a good mate, and at the end of it we both felt so fulfilled by the strength and diversity of the excellent 10 hour long campaign - we still use it as our measuring post for all other single and co-operative campaigns. Add in good horde mode and some reasonable multiplayer and it was a brilliant game.

It feels a bit of a weak top 5 to me. Apart from the top 3, no games on the xbox 360 have left very lasting impressions on me; you might say, "well, what about Gears of War 2?", but there's something inside me that says I shouldn't play through it again, because I'll find out that it wasn't that good.

I'm looking forward more and more to the next generation, but, as I've said in an early blog post, I'm still quite sceptical as to how well the next generation will do and I think good gaming PCs are so reasonably priced these days that I just really want to get back into it!