Viewing entries tagged
fps
I've never really considered myself to be a 'retro gamer', as I rarely go looking for older titles to play when there are modern options available. It's not that I have anything against older games, in fact I fondly remember many classics and hold them in high regard. Perhaps playing those games when they came out means that I'm not left pining for something I never experienced, but whatever the reason, I'm just not into playing old games on outdated engines.
I've been playing video games since I was a kid in the 1980s with a Commodore 64, but it wasn't until a decade later that I really threw myself into gaming. Up to that point I'd played with a NES and of course that C64, but as much as I enjoyed it, nothing had truly gripped me and sucked me into the wide world of video games that I now know and love. It took the release of the original Doom in 1993 to hook me once and for all, and I've been loving life ever since.
Taste is a wonderful thing that separates us all and shows off the kind of diversity that makes human existence so interesting and wonderful. Either that or I'm trying to justify the fact that my own taste often differs from many others' that I come into contact with. Whether it's books, movies, music, or video games, I seem to always find the thing that everyone hated, and enjoy the hell out of it.
I think I might be able to pinpoint the moment when I lost all interest in online multiplayer. Well, maybe not the exact moment, but it would be whenever voice chat became the norm. Back when I played Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and Quake III religiously, voice chat was the exception and text chat was the rule. Turns out hearing strangers yelling into their low-quality microphone didn't add much to the online gaming experience.
It's no secret that I’m a big fan of the big budget open world games we've come to expect from some of the most popular series in gaming. What I love most is the amount of detail and deliberate effort that has gone into creating a world. It's something unique to 'triple A' games in particular, as they have the team and budget to make it happen in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible.
I've been debating whether or not I had anything useful to say about a game that's now been surpassed by its sequel, and ultimately relegated to a terminal wind-down period. It won't be long before we see the Destiny servers shut down in favour of Destiny 2, or even a third by the time it all rolls around. Despite there being an active community of players stuck on the first Destiny, it's no secret that the title is on its way out.
Before we had DLC and digitally distributed patches, there was a wonderful thing called an "expansion pack". These were like dreams come true after you'd sunk countless hours into that game you'd saved up for and gingerly cracked the box to get inside. Loading up an expansion felt like finding a treasure trove of extra gameplay that had somehow always been there, just hidden away and waiting for permission to exist and entertain.
In a time before broadband internet and the proliferation of online video streaming, the only way to see footage of games before they released was to find a web site hosting a file, then wait weeks for it to download over a dial-up connection. This is how it was when Unreal Tournament 2003 was due to be released, and I dutifully sourced a keynote speech from Cliff Bleszinski where he talked about and showed off the latest tech to feature in the game. I think it was only about a forty-five minute video, but seeing those rag-doll effects and new weapon models for the first time really blew my tiny little mind.
What's that saying? Fool me once… fool me twice… blah blah blah… being fooled repeatedly is equal to foolishness. I'll admit, I've been a fool with the Battlefield series, and with EA in general, but I'm consistently amazed at how one series can be so terrible and beautiful at the same time.
Let me tell you a story. You know the one about those games that big studios like to make every now and then as short experiences packed with quality production. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger stands as a tightly paced tale of compelling gun-play and some interesting ideas. These short AAA games are a good example of how it's not the size of a game, it's the way you use it.
