Thursday, 28 April 2011

My overall gaming experience.

I presume I am not the only person here who, despite being alive for quarter-century, has only gotten into gaming in the last 10 years. I cannot claim to be the original Fallout or Starcraft god. But the more I've gotten into video gaming the more I've enjoyed it. Like a young child floundering in the water in his first swimming attempt, I too started as a pathetic blob of misgiven hopes and dreams attempting to be the next [RED]NaDa. But as my daily quota of gaming increased from minutes to hours and my reflexes improved, those dreams have turned into pseudo realities: sure, I would never even dream of challenging those Koreans, but in my own right I have achieved what I always wanted to: to sit down in front of any TV, put a controller in my hands, and with only a short tutorial to prepare me, be able to annihilate my friends.

My first true gaming experience would have to have been the original GTA. My cousin thought it would be cool to lend me a few of his old games back in the summer of '01 and of course, being a rebellious teen nightmare, I thought the best game to play would be GTA. Boy was I right. A normal weekend back then consisted of spending time at a mate's playing footy, going to parties, or going to town. But this weekend in particular involved me spending my entire weekend running around an urban metropolis stealing cars, shooting hookers and escaping from cops. This quickly progressed to the one and only Mafia: City of Lost Heaven. And by god that was a good game. I can't be the only one who remembers restarting that goddamn race atleast a dozen times before realising that setting it to easy had no penalty other than to your self-satisfaction. The next logical choice in my major gaming selection was GTA: Vice City. However, due to a large amount of study I never got to complete the storyline. As I started to branch out I soon discovered the joys of this newfangled online thingy they called runescape. Sure enough I got addicted. It didn't take me long to realise, however, that my choice of name pretending to be a girl had no effect on the teen nerds as they were all too interested in getting +1 strength.


My favourite games of today are GTA: San Andreas, Crysis, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Mafia II. Is it not obvious the influence of my early gaming days? I think of it as an evolution, if you will. Although the logical step from runescape would've been World of Warcraft instead of Oblivion, but I promised myself never to get involved in such an addictive adventure. Crysis came along simply because my jaw dropped whenever a tree was felled to a couple of rifle rounds. Overall, however, I have stuck with my guns in the GTA and MAFIA franchise.


P.S. Special mentions must go to these games:

  • The Movies
  • Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 & 3
  • Need for Speed (all, excl. Shift, Shift 2 and Prostreet)

Which, although they were fun as hell, they weren't really influential.

47 comments:

  1. you have the same taste in games as me, we should hangout sometime ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. i'm a fan of the entire GTA series. Haven't played 4, though...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gotta tell you that that it is a good selection of games. I love WoW and oblivion.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hm.. Hope you're stoked for SKyrim then. That's supposed to be hella amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  5. You might wanna try playing Saints Row 2. Very much like GTA with a lot of San Andreas themes

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am definitely looking forward to Skyrim. I think it'll be the first game I ever preorder.

    And I've been meaning to immerse myself in the Saints Row series for a while now. Zero Punctuation has a lot of influence on me too :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. You seem to like the same sort of games I like :D
    I don't really find WoW that addicting though, it's just fun at times.

    ReplyDelete
  8. You have good taste in games, my friend. Also, I was just playing Starcraft a couple of hours ago.

    ReplyDelete
  9. How did you go from GTA to GTA vice city... I mean what happened to GTA3.

    ReplyDelete
  10. the entire GTA series is an absolute masterpiece, imo. :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. It is an evolution of kinds huh?

    The Elder Scrolls has taken me all the way from Daggerfall right up to now with Skyrim around the corner.

    I'm a casual gamer, evolved from a diehard, but the whole Skyrim thing is still making my hair stand on end hahaha

    Thanks for sharing mate - I sympathise with a lot of your thoughts actually.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Cool to know you're a kiwi also!

    ReplyDelete
  13. I wish i could get the gaming platforms needed for those games. my pc's shitty as hell =.=

    ReplyDelete
  14. "I too started as a pathetic blob of misgiven hopes and dreams"

    ha, i dont think i ever outgrew that phase

    ReplyDelete
  15. I remember playing Grand Theft Auto. It was a game my mom got for my stepdad, but he couldn't get the hang of it so I picked it up.

    I just ran around beating the shit out of people with my fists until the police caught. Then I stole a car, ran people over until my car blew up, which was something that just blew my mind...and killed me.

    ReplyDelete
  16. My favorite experience with GTA that I can remember was, (other than blowing everything up) by request from someone from in my group, picking up a 'call girl' and acciedently running her over.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Sweet post, love the games you play :)

    ReplyDelete
  18. Very cool movie thanks for sharing!



    Please follow my blog!!

    katofinance.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  19. Nice post! Keep up the good blogging!

    ReplyDelete
  20. haha we playing a lot of similar games!

    ReplyDelete
  21. sounds like a good gaming experience, glad to have you along here

    ReplyDelete
  22. I've been playing GTA alot recently. Personally I think it's the best series ever.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Good thing you dodged the WoW bullet or you'd be hooked.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Seems your blog is doing really well. Congrats.

    ReplyDelete
  25. roller coaster tycoon 2. that was my childhood.

    ReplyDelete
  26. best game ever san andreas!

    ReplyDelete
  27. gta is awesome. vice city, san andreas, good times.

    ReplyDelete
  28. San Andreas is probably the best game ever - though I still don't get why you get more police attention for crashing into a cop car than you do for crashing a plane into a building. Go figure...

    ReplyDelete
  29. GTASA i should start playing that again

    ReplyDelete
  30. yup same here. get me a game and i'll be able to beat any casual player

    ReplyDelete
  31. Spent so many hours playing Vice City. Still the only GTA I've ever cared enough to finish.

    ReplyDelete
  32. San Andreas FTWWW!

    I still play MTA.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Play very little games these days, but Elder Scrolls coming out this year excites me very much

    ReplyDelete
  34. I used to be able to beat anyone, but I just don't have the kind of time I used to.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Roller Coaster Tycoon is the best!

    ReplyDelete
  36. Roller Coaster Tycoon was a staple of my teenage years! Nothing was more satisfying than flinging people off of a defective roller coaster... now that I think back it may not have been the healthiest of habits...

    ReplyDelete
  37. need for speed? mafia 2? seriously?

    ReplyDelete