Good day Ladies, Gentlemen and all you Noobies out there. (No offense <insert your name here>!)
Today my target is to write 4 pages of small font writing, but I might give up on the second sentence.
Since this is a massive post feel free to quote small bits and reply to them in a orderly fashion to avoid mass confusion.
Today I want to reflect on these past 20 years of gaming, all my own stories and my own experiences, this is not a fiction novel, that's a true story, lets hope they make a movie out of this, with loads of bad sequels...
And just for you know it alls, English teachers out there I don't give a sh*t about some monosyllabic word I spelt wrong, yes I said monosyllabic, got a problem? Moving swiftly onwards...
When I was -10 years old or so, thriving in my fathers testical, my father was a avid Computer Game player, games were expensive back then up to 70 bucks or so, His father, my grandfather, was a bit rich, had some extra cash, and he gave my dad a generous amount of pocket money.
My father bought always every game that interested him, over a long period of time of course, not even bill gates could afford 10 games at one time, at that time. (I like to think so anyway.) The first batch of games he baught over 5 years composed of:
Bio Menace.
Astro Chase.
Indiana Jones and The last Crusade.
Commander Keen.
+ Others such as Space Quest 1, Kings Quest 2, etc...
That's are just a ruff list of the first bunch of games he really played over the years. As you could tell my father wide a wide taste of action & adventure in his games. Later on in his life, he moved on from 15 games to having about 50, all these games didn't have their boxes, there wasent enough room, and my dad was interested in the games not the boxes.
My father hade 3 smallish cases where there were loads of disks, floppies & CDs neatly stacked in. But after his late teens he got a girl friend, a job, and generally life. He stopped playing games besides the odd Leisure Suit Larry craving. HE had almost every sierra adventure game released, some of them are probably quite rare now.
He kept these 3 small boxes in his attic, for many years later, we moved 7 or so times during their lifetime, and these 3 little boxes managed to stay intact. By this time I was born already along with my older sister and older brother.
We settle in the country of Portugal for 8 or so years, I was around 2 years old at this time. I grew up in Portugal, and a few years later I was bored one day, I thought let me go see if there is anything cool in the attic I can play with. At this point I'm about 5 years old.
I rummaged through the attic, found sex toys and loads of uninteresting computer software like a old version of word and other free crap CD's my dad collected from magazines. Then, while digging in a pile of stuff in a drunk, I found 3 black boxes, I could tell there where Disks/CDs/Floppies in there because half the top was transparent plastic.
I took these 3 small boxes, placed 2 on the floor and tried to open one of them, I found out they all have little locks on them to prevent the case from opening and disks flying everywhere. I took the case and smashed the lock bit on the floor and it broke open, I did the same with all 3 cases, and it worked. They could open and close decently, at that time even I know if I smashed the whole thing all the disks would be everywhere.
I literally spend an hour looking through all these disks, I found many titles like all the Police Quest's, Space Quest's, King's Quests, Quest for Glory's, Leisure Suit Larry's,, Sierra Hi-Res games, Willy Beamish, Jones in the Fast Lane... etc.
One day I took the SQ1 disk, and I asked my brother to install it for me. I didn't know how at that age, my brother said where did you get these games? I told him the story and he went to install it for me. I played this game and I was amazed, almost every week I asked him to install a new game I got from the attic.
Later on in life, I was much older, around 15 years old or so, at this point. Kings Quest 8 was coming soon at this point, I only found out through those PC Gamer magazines, we didn't have broadband back then we had dial up and we didn't have the money to surf the net. So I only had about 5 minutes every 2 days to check my emails, and those days I'd just visit the Sierra website and Frans's old version of this website.
My brother and father used to play Quake 2 on line a lot that's the main reason we don't have money to surf the net looking at silly old games when you have the super modern Quake 2. I admit Quake 2 was a great game. The multiplayer was especially very fun, lets hope Quake 4 will be just as good, back on topic...
At this point I've touched almost every game but never completed any besides SQ1 and a few older AGI games due to problems. The main game that got me hooked on adventure games forever was Space Quest 4, it was a masterpiece and it blew my mind away, the technology at the time those graphics were the bomb! I never knew about the SQ1 remake, even if I compare the two, SQ4 is simply the best. I had both CD and floppy versions, I hit a bug that stopped me from playing the CD version and then later on I got my brother to install a very large floppy drive, and the disk version worked perfectly. Later on in like I actually found out about the patches and used them.
Moving on from the VGA games, when I saw Half Life hit the shelves I was totally chocked the game looked so freckling good looking, at this point Video Games were better than television for me. Maybe you hardcore puzzle fanatics don't agree but I can appreciate a good game with different elements. (No offense <don't insert your name here>!)
As soon as the millennium begun, everything went down a soon to-be-ending cliff, titles like:
One Must Fall: Battle Grounds It should be killed for having the name OMF, the original OMF which was released in the mid 90s was a monster hit with addictive game play, uber super amazing music, and cool robots smashing each other up., and this fighting game even had a bunch of dialog.
Doom 3 Want to mindlessly kill a million demons in the dark? I wish this game would stay in the dark and lose its flash light, this game was so mindless and generic.
Halo Another mindless shooter, and I'm a shooter fan and this was disappointing, doing the same thing over and over, at least this isn't as bad as Doom3.
Serious Sam Said to restore humor to PC games, when mutant pigs fly out my arse, where do I start with this? Its mindless start to finish, it holds the record for the highest amount of killing in a game. Need I say more?
These titles made are so sh*t, when I was in a PC store, I took all these titles put them at the back and put more decent titles in front, just horrible games, I don't care what anyone says to be honest, I find that every game should have a certain amount of features and a limit. It should have smooth game play, at least some sort of plot, at least some characters and more than 3 lines of dialog.
I just wanted to say, that you should support games that stand out and are more driven by technology & story alike, not focusing on one. Stop buying those Doom clones because your just making the rich bitches richer.
Another worthy note is Abe Series, I mean this game should be near the top for the best game of all time, it was cute, funny, serious, action packed, adventuress, amazing graphics, great plot, great cut scenes, all the games in the series truly rocked. One of the few games who offer all (good) elements.
1,468 Words, beats all my posts put together.
Remember kids, don't do drugs!
-Robin