A Gamer's Return
During my time in Phoenix I have started playing video games somewhat regularly, which is something that I haven't done in about 4 years (because I didn't have time to). My brother has Windows XP on his computer, so I occasionally borrow it for a bit to play some of the games he has installed on his computer. I also brought my Playstation 2 along with a stack of 4-5 unfinished RPG games I have bought, but I haven't been playing them too much. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the games that I have played over my break.
Half-Life 2
This is a truly amazing games in all aspects. Graphics, physics (which are amazing to me), gameplay, and even (thank god!) the story were superb. It is so much fun to play, but a little disappointing that there is not a multiplayer online mode like there was in the original Half-Life (yes, I know there's Counter-Strike: Source but I'll get to that). The only other irritation is the hellacious long load times between levels. I could go to the kitchen, grab myself a snack, and come back to the computer and it would *still* not be ready. My brother has pretty decent hardware on his machine too, so I'm a little shocked at how long the loading time of these games have become. They are long enough that they can really disrupt the atmosphere of the game, which is very unfortunate in my opinion.
I actually played this game last year too, but near the end of the game I came upon a part of it that I could not pass. No, I mean I literally could not pass it; There was a bug in the game that caused it to freeze up and crash whenever I got to that point. It seems that Valve has fixed the bug in a patch, because I was able to successfully get past that point and complete the game without any problems this time. I was a little disappointed with the ending to the game though.
Counter-Strike: Source
I played the original Counter-Strike quite a lot during my first three years as an undergraduate. This version seems to play very similar to the original (for better or worse), with the addition of highly upgraded graphics and physics, two new guns, some changes to the buy system, and...not much else. Its still a great game like the original, it was just a bit surprising to me that it is just an upgrade over the original rather than a new game. Also, it took me some time to get to the point where I didn't suck. :) (I used to be quite good at the original CS).
One thing that bothered me very much with the game was the people I played with. Many of them were immature idiots. Some of them were in their early teens, which made me feel a bit awkward being 10+ years older than them. Some of them had very offensive images in their "spray-paints", mostly of pornographic nature. If conservative parents thought the "hot coffee" secret in Grand Theft Auto was bad, I can't imagine how berserk they'd be if they caught what was happening in CS games. There's voice-chat in the game of course, and in one game a person on my team would continually play a very loud, annoying tone which was broadcast to the rest of us and pissed the entire team off. We couldn't kick or ban the guy, nor could we kill him. Anyway, the point is: it sucks playing with assholes.
Battlefield 2042
I only played this game very briefly, but for the most part was not too impressed. There were tons, and I mean *tons* of bugs with this game. Enough that for certain patches, my brother said that the game was virtually unplayable for him. I didn't have very much time to understand the game, but I found the game hard to pick up (and I've played many FPS games before).
Star Craft
What, Star Craft? Didn't that game come out in 1998 or something? You're damn right it did, and its still an awesome game. I played many online SC games on Battle.net (which I haven't done since 2000 I think) and it was a lot of fun, even though I got my ass stomped a lot. Once I started getting semi-decent though, it almost became addicting. I played 10 hours straight the other night and I had a blast doing it. There are some annoyances with playing online though. The servers are mass populated with Koreans, which aren't the most fluent English speakers in the world. It makes it rather difficult when you're partnered with a Korean or two since you have virtually no way of communicating with each other. There were a lot of idiot jerks playing this game as well. Sometimes they would incessantly make immature sexual comments, racist comments, berate homosexuals, etc. When it got very bad, I would politely ask that they cease insulting whatever demographic they were, telling them that I did not care to hear those types of things and that we should just play the game. Luckly, that usually seemed to shut them up.
One thing that I didn't like then and still don't like now about SC online is that just about everyone plays only one of two maps: "Big Game Hunters" or "Fastest Map Possible", which are resource intensive maps. I wish that people would embrace playing more of the official game maps as those, IMO, are much more fun since there's more strategy required.
Final Fantasy XII
I bought this game shortly before I left Austin. There are some very good things about it, and also some very bad things. What I found most disappointing of all, and what is preventing me from feeling any desire to play this game, is that the story is a piece of shit. Not the story itself really, but the manner in which it is told. Dialogue scenes between characters are completely disjointed. There is virtually no character development and I don't even understand why 4 out of 6 of the main characters are even there. The only two characters that have motivation to take this quest are Ashe (princess who wants to restore her fallen kingdom to glory) and Basch (sworn knight who wishes to fight to get his kingdom back). The other four characters seem to be doing nothing more than "tagging along for the ride", and I hate that. This game has helped me to understand that the real reason I enjoy role-playing games, the real reward that I seek in them, is the telling of the story. I play the game to find out what happens next, but in FFXII I don't care what happens next because it either makes no sense, or its just completely random "oh, we need to go to the Feywood now".
I've put in about 50 hours into this game and I just continually feel no enjoyment out of playing it. I also feel that the game is much too complicated for its own good, which has made me realize another important fact about game design: "simple is good". I've taken this lesson to heart with some of the features I've proposed putting into Allacrost lately.
-----
I fly back to Austin in just four more days. Its hard to believe I've been here a month: I still don't "feel the correct passage of time". Its hard to explain what I mean, but essentially I don't feel time moving forward, and I don't feel days passing (it has been this way for me even before I graduated in December). But when I get back, I think I'm going to install Windows XP on a backup hard drive that I have laying around unused so I can play games again. I just don't want to deal with the headaches associated with playing games on Linux through wine or cedega or whatever, especially when I'm sure I have one or two Windows CDs laying around somewhere. I'm also making fantastic progress on Allacrost lately, but I'll save that for another post since this one is already quite verbose (hah, that rhymed).
Half-Life 2
This is a truly amazing games in all aspects. Graphics, physics (which are amazing to me), gameplay, and even (thank god!) the story were superb. It is so much fun to play, but a little disappointing that there is not a multiplayer online mode like there was in the original Half-Life (yes, I know there's Counter-Strike: Source but I'll get to that). The only other irritation is the hellacious long load times between levels. I could go to the kitchen, grab myself a snack, and come back to the computer and it would *still* not be ready. My brother has pretty decent hardware on his machine too, so I'm a little shocked at how long the loading time of these games have become. They are long enough that they can really disrupt the atmosphere of the game, which is very unfortunate in my opinion.
I actually played this game last year too, but near the end of the game I came upon a part of it that I could not pass. No, I mean I literally could not pass it; There was a bug in the game that caused it to freeze up and crash whenever I got to that point. It seems that Valve has fixed the bug in a patch, because I was able to successfully get past that point and complete the game without any problems this time. I was a little disappointed with the ending to the game though.
Counter-Strike: Source
I played the original Counter-Strike quite a lot during my first three years as an undergraduate. This version seems to play very similar to the original (for better or worse), with the addition of highly upgraded graphics and physics, two new guns, some changes to the buy system, and...not much else. Its still a great game like the original, it was just a bit surprising to me that it is just an upgrade over the original rather than a new game. Also, it took me some time to get to the point where I didn't suck. :) (I used to be quite good at the original CS).
One thing that bothered me very much with the game was the people I played with. Many of them were immature idiots. Some of them were in their early teens, which made me feel a bit awkward being 10+ years older than them. Some of them had very offensive images in their "spray-paints", mostly of pornographic nature. If conservative parents thought the "hot coffee" secret in Grand Theft Auto was bad, I can't imagine how berserk they'd be if they caught what was happening in CS games. There's voice-chat in the game of course, and in one game a person on my team would continually play a very loud, annoying tone which was broadcast to the rest of us and pissed the entire team off. We couldn't kick or ban the guy, nor could we kill him. Anyway, the point is: it sucks playing with assholes.
Battlefield 2042
I only played this game very briefly, but for the most part was not too impressed. There were tons, and I mean *tons* of bugs with this game. Enough that for certain patches, my brother said that the game was virtually unplayable for him. I didn't have very much time to understand the game, but I found the game hard to pick up (and I've played many FPS games before).
Star Craft
What, Star Craft? Didn't that game come out in 1998 or something? You're damn right it did, and its still an awesome game. I played many online SC games on Battle.net (which I haven't done since 2000 I think) and it was a lot of fun, even though I got my ass stomped a lot. Once I started getting semi-decent though, it almost became addicting. I played 10 hours straight the other night and I had a blast doing it. There are some annoyances with playing online though. The servers are mass populated with Koreans, which aren't the most fluent English speakers in the world. It makes it rather difficult when you're partnered with a Korean or two since you have virtually no way of communicating with each other. There were a lot of idiot jerks playing this game as well. Sometimes they would incessantly make immature sexual comments, racist comments, berate homosexuals, etc. When it got very bad, I would politely ask that they cease insulting whatever demographic they were, telling them that I did not care to hear those types of things and that we should just play the game. Luckly, that usually seemed to shut them up.
One thing that I didn't like then and still don't like now about SC online is that just about everyone plays only one of two maps: "Big Game Hunters" or "Fastest Map Possible", which are resource intensive maps. I wish that people would embrace playing more of the official game maps as those, IMO, are much more fun since there's more strategy required.
Final Fantasy XII
I bought this game shortly before I left Austin. There are some very good things about it, and also some very bad things. What I found most disappointing of all, and what is preventing me from feeling any desire to play this game, is that the story is a piece of shit. Not the story itself really, but the manner in which it is told. Dialogue scenes between characters are completely disjointed. There is virtually no character development and I don't even understand why 4 out of 6 of the main characters are even there. The only two characters that have motivation to take this quest are Ashe (princess who wants to restore her fallen kingdom to glory) and Basch (sworn knight who wishes to fight to get his kingdom back). The other four characters seem to be doing nothing more than "tagging along for the ride", and I hate that. This game has helped me to understand that the real reason I enjoy role-playing games, the real reward that I seek in them, is the telling of the story. I play the game to find out what happens next, but in FFXII I don't care what happens next because it either makes no sense, or its just completely random "oh, we need to go to the Feywood now".
I've put in about 50 hours into this game and I just continually feel no enjoyment out of playing it. I also feel that the game is much too complicated for its own good, which has made me realize another important fact about game design: "simple is good". I've taken this lesson to heart with some of the features I've proposed putting into Allacrost lately.
-----
I fly back to Austin in just four more days. Its hard to believe I've been here a month: I still don't "feel the correct passage of time". Its hard to explain what I mean, but essentially I don't feel time moving forward, and I don't feel days passing (it has been this way for me even before I graduated in December). But when I get back, I think I'm going to install Windows XP on a backup hard drive that I have laying around unused so I can play games again. I just don't want to deal with the headaches associated with playing games on Linux through wine or cedega or whatever, especially when I'm sure I have one or two Windows CDs laying around somewhere. I'm also making fantastic progress on Allacrost lately, but I'll save that for another post since this one is already quite verbose (hah, that rhymed).
Labels: gaming, video games
posted by Tyler Olsen at 1:10 AM
2 Comments:
I got your e-mail. I am really surprised to know that you are playing that many games. Well, as long as it helps your recovery, I think it is good.
I played a lot of games too but honestly, I really regret about it. Why? Because I feel that I could have done things that are more productive. I really feel that I wasted too much time on video games. I don't feel that I wasted that much time when I played role playing games because I am making progress. When I play war or starategic games, I feel that I wasted time the most. It is probably because I am simply doing the same thing over, over, and over.
How is your game coming? You are making it for few years. Are you going to complete it before you stat working?
Yeah, playing games too much does make me feel unproductive. But there have been recent research studies that have shown playing games can actually better one's motor skills and problem solving ability (I guess its not big surprise).
My game is coming along pretty well. Progress is slow, but we're making some great strides. And there's no chance on Earth I'll be able to finish it before I have to start working again. ;)
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