Cezanne-Mont Sainte-Victoire
One of my earliest memories is potentially my first gaming
experience. The setting is a mates house who I remember was allot older than
me, a rustic French seemingly dilapidated farm house, waffles (my only
experience of homemade waffles) and an early computer game. I remember watching
him play this game very briefly. In the game you played a survivor of a plane
crash into what appeared to be a Himalayan style, dense tropical forest. You
having survived the crash fined that you’re being hunted by a Gorilla with a
taste for human flesh.
What struck me most about gaming was the sense that you felt
the emotions of your character in game. In this scenario it was fear, being
lost and being in constant peril never knowing when the Gorilla was going to
emerge again as you made your way through the world.
The strangest thing about this memory is that I have never
been able to identify the game, whilst righting this I spent some time trying
to find and name the game. I’m beginning to think that this is actually a
memory of a dream.
At least I know for certain that around this time I was
introduced to Duke Nukem 3D by my cousin Sam. Duke Nukem 3D came out in 1996,
which would make me four years old, I’m thinking I was a little older simply in
order to remember this.
A little later Yves and his daughter Gladys from the Farm we
lived on got a Nintendo as did my cousins Sophie and Laura. But here there is a
theme my house hold never had a games console. I had to go round people’s
houses to have a go. The only Nintendo Games we had were Donkey Kong and a
Super Mario Bros game. We did have a
Macintosh, but this doesn’t enter my memory until many years later.
We out grew the cottage and moved to a larger house down the
same road, with this move appeared a PlayStations. The Macintosh also found
some games during this time we had Command and Conquer Red Alert and also a
version of Maze War, Maze Wars is argued by some to be the first FPS. The first
alliteration of Maze Wars came out in 1974.
With the PlayStations came many new worlds for me to
disappear into, Crock, Spyro, Gran Turismo 2, Medal of Honour 1&2, Tomb
Raider, Apocalypse, MediEvil, Duke Nukem: Time to Kill, Tony Hawks Po Skater 2
and many many more games.
All these games are extremely nostalgic to look back at.
During this year I have returned to some of these to try and re-ignite my
passion for gaming. I finished Apocalypse in its entirety; this is the game
that has probably influenced my life the most. Though this game a world and its
people are brought to life. Apocalypse is set in a dark, twisted, quite cheesy,
Rock and Roll future, yes it’s very nineties and doesn’t actually make any
sense, but when you’re shooting down helicopters to System of a Down in a
Gotham style City, or Entering a Club via a cemetery to yet more New Metal the
games going to be awesome. To be honest Apocalypse isn’t a very good game, it’s
mess, but it is probably the coolest game ever made.
Then one Christmas morning I woke up to find an Xbox. Within
a single gen we had gone from
(Apocalypse)
To this
This was mind boggling, I remember spending hours just
walking around scoping into everything, in amazement, YOU COULD SEA INDIVIDUL
BLADES OF GRASS!!!
When Halo 1 and 2 happened I could not get enough of these
games, I daren’t say how many hours I put into these. The vast endless
landscapes, amazing art, vast world w
ith its own history and Mythology, a rich
engaging, deep plot, it was a true golden moment in gaming. Halo is also
successful enough to be vastly despised by the “gaming” community who will
often see it as a simple FPS that was clunky and unchallenging which is actually
true of the game. But I personally regard how much a game challenges me very
low on my list of priorities. 
Another Game I hold in high regard is Need for Speed
Underground. I’m obsessed with cars but fined racing games to be extremely
boring. I loved Gran Turismo 2 but I was a kid back then I found it easy to
project myself into the game and create my own plot and character. Playing
Forza 5 recently, I felt I was simply a machine mindlessly unlocking stuff and
gaining achievements, I didn’t care. Especially with the plague of racing games
the option to have a racing line available, this negates all aspects of it
being a racing game, now you’re not really aware of the car you’re in or your
environment in game, you’re simply trying to keep a line central in your
screen, and reacting to the colours.
Need for Speed underground had a plot and was in a
convincing world. The plot is extremely simply as you would expect but it keeps
you playing through the game. You get attached to your character and want him
to succeed. Now using the visual upgrades and your choice of car you can
project yourself into the game and personalise it.
Need for Speed at this point hadn’t quite lost touch with
reality, the customisations and the choice of cars was realistic for the environment
they were portraying, as was the racing. Because of this it was very easy to
believe it was you in the driving seat, with real physics.
Tony Haws Underground was another huge success for the same
reasons. Although it was allot further down the path to madness that games
developers feel they need to follow to keep their audience interested. This was
easily the last playable Tony Hawks Game. It’s hard to project yourself onto a
character that’s doing million degree flips whilst leaving the atmosphere and
spawning props to add to the spectacle.
A game that breaks this rule to some extent is Need for
Speed Most Wanted, because it was just so much fun. Most Wanted reintroduced
cop chases also so it didn’t feel like part of the Underground universe so you
didn’t feel like it was sullying the world they had already created.
Need for Speed Underground 2 was good, but quite boring, I
don’t know why as it did a lot of good things. The open world was good, being
able to Race with cars you bumped into on your travels was also good, as was
the introduction of raceway tournaments with obviously no traffic.
But the game did have one truly cataclysmic floor, which
always puts me off returning to it. In the first Underground one of the best
features was you had magazine covers taken of your car if you passed certain events.
You could then view these covers at any point. In Underground Two these magazine
shoots still existed and were much improved, you could now change camera
angles, open doors, move hydraulics, show off your ICE (Interior Car
Electronics), eject plumes of coloured gas and drive around to find a nice back
drop. But after all this the magazine
cover you had painstakingly choreographed would never be seen again. So you
could never look back at your journey through the game and re-visit previous
designs and cars like you could in the first so easily.
After a long hiatus from gaming I returned with Fall Out 3, Halo
3 and Halo ODST. I found Halo ODST to have truly amazing game play, but with
very little or lack of any real plot. Halo 3 in my opinion is a mess; I found
the environments and general tone of the game not compatible with enjoyment.
Fall out 3 I found to have a huge amount of potential, but
never paid out on it. At huge moments during your characters development
through the game, there is no development, and you don’t care about the huge
plot points as they occur. When you find you dad your interaction don’t inspire
any emotion, similar when he dies, and when you return to your home Vault. Not
only don’t you care but the characters in game don’t care that you’ve returned.
But the plot could have been good, and
the environments are beautiful, truly the best thing you can do in a Bethesda
game is walk about and explore. But what you fined is normally a bit naff, and doesn’t
actually make any sense.
The same can be said for Skyrim, but the environments here
are so beautiful you almost didn’t care as long as you could explore the world
via the plot. The plot though is lacking so you soon get bored and start just walking
about, which in Skyrim is actually great. This though does make your character
now a kind of deserter, Dragons are terrorising the region and you are Skyrims
only saviour, and yet you’re doing nothing. So now you don’t like the character
you’re playing, which is a problem, you are no longer a Hero.
This has become a very lengthy Personal game history blog. There
are still a few a few games to go but I feel I should leave them for another time.
This is a list of games which I felt I had something to say about, it is not
every game I have ever played by any means. Although I have put down some
negative points about many of these games, I own them and I continue to play
them. This is just something which I do, I tare everything apart and try and
fined every fault, I wonder what I would have done differently. I try not to
let this ruin the great game that I started with. For example Skyrim is a game
I’m very critical of although it’s probably the game I have put the largest
amount of hours into, currently about 120.
Halo is another franchise I’m heavily critical of here this probably
stems from the fact that I’m borderline obsessed with the universe that they
have created, so I really want to love the games that reside within it.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh7YwvCST14ucCorOLaUQlcigyxHsKkEnELuS2lD68ti5VxH_sq00BATqEWACpLkaaav7NXRXd-i0pRJunceSUZupxOrUngzj0l2GNiYT-_HmYbNiW438_yHoSisbpqBLyQATjntSq5TI/s1600/Barbas.bmp
No comments:
Post a Comment