The Roots of All (My) Gaming, Part 1

I've been thinking a lot recently about where I came from, in a gaming sense.  Talking to my nephews (I inherited about seven of them thanks to marriage) about what I played when I was a kid is fascinating for all involved.  It's amazing to think that the new generation just going in to secondary school mostly have no idea what a SNES is.  My eldest nephew's first console was a Playstation 2!  It's mind boggling, the difference in the landscape of the gaming world between me and them.  They didn't know that games haven't always been 3D.  It's that much of a given to them.  Never heard of Virtua Fighter, never even seen a Mega Drive to this day.

I intend to educate them in the ways of the gaming world.  My plan has been to collect games consoles for a long time, and it is still my plan, but now I know what I can then DO with them.  I can teach the younger generation of future gamers the VALUE of what came before, and they will further appreciate what they have now!

When I was three or four years old I made a friend called Robert Vogan, who's big brother had a Master System with Alex the Kidd loaded onto it.  We played that game for hours upon hours when his bro was out.  I only really have vague memories of the game now, but I remember a castle with spiked chandeliers that come down to squish/stab you and the rage that came after.  I don't think we ever played any other Master System games, but a year or so later my dearest Mother bought me a Mega Drive with Sonic the Hedgehog and Aladdin.  It was incredible!  I played for as long as I was allowed (and probably a little longer), this was the hobby for me most definitely!  During those years I had all sorts of games that I played through.  Streets of Rage (all 3), the whole Sonic series, and lots more that I can't remember right now.  Intermittently I would borrow my mate's SNES and play Street Fighter on it (and ONLY Street Fighter).  I missed out on a lot of great games, though, mostly due to being so young.

For my 10th birthday my darling Mother bought me a Nintendo 64, only 3 months after release and I was incredibly happy.  I had tried out the demos in Comet of the Playstation, the Saturn and the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo was my favourite of them.  I got it with Shadows of the Empire - a Star Wars third person shooter that I still own and occasionally play (that's value for money kids).  The next day I went out with my birthday money and bought Super Mario 64, and thus was born a new era in my gaming life.  The 3D years!

Eventually I completed Shadows of the Empire, even on Hard.  I finished GoldenEye and Lylat Wars, I completed Jet Force Gemini and I defeated Perfect Dark, but Super Mario 64 eluded me.  For all those years I was stuck at around 90 stars.  I had all but given up and moved on.  I dedicated about a year maybe to finally smacking down the beast (I didn't have many friends) and eventually I emerged victorious with my beautiful set of 120 stars.

I still have my Nintendo 64, actually, alongside almost all the games I ever had on it.  I lost track of Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time along the way but I recently bought them again.

More to follow...

Six Digited Freaks

I have weird shaped hands.  You see, I was born with 2 extra thumbs, one on each hand.  They were removed when I was about 6 months old, but they still have affected the growth of my hands.  My thumbs face a different direction than most people’s thumbs do and sometimes I think it has a negative effect on my dexterity.  I’m not about to say that the only reason I ever lose at games is because my hands are a weird shape, but sometimes I just feel I don’t have the spot-on execution that I could have.

My hand is on the left.  My thumb is more of a finger.

It’s a bother when playing guitar, too.  If you watch a guitarist with normal thumbs you can see the difference next to mine.  It gets sore and that’s a damn shame because I could play guitar for hours.

My point though is that Street Fighter is hard when you’re using a controller that is designed for a certain type of thumb that you don’t have.  Perhaps I should buy an arcade stick and it would sort out my troubles.

I haven’t given up and I still am a dangerous opponent in Street Fighter.  I’ll kick your arse (probably) but I just can’t help feeling that I could be better.  Maybe there are many with this type of problem.  Ever feel your hands mashing the controller when the signals you have sent were very clear?  Ever tell Ryu to Shoryuken and find him firing off his ultra, or super combo?  This sounds similar to the troubles I sometimes have, do not dispair brothers and sisters, for we shall become the change we wish to see in this world.

Gamers Just (Don't) Wanna Have Fun.

There's a plague on my beloved online gaming.  The fetid stench of exploitation is in my nostrils and I feel a bile-permeated vomit-spray coming on.

When did we forget about fun?  When did online gaming become about stat padding?  When did winning become more important than putting up a good sporting fight?  Perhaps it's a little British of me but I can't understand why someone would forego taking part in a fair and balanced game, in order to win through cheap tactics.

Tank?  Cheap?  Rush?  You win the game.

My new found love, Bad Company 2 has become overrun with cheap, slimy scumbags.  I can't play through a single round without at least one person hogging a tank in Rush and shooting the objectives from their/our spawn.  I saw a man literally firing through a wall that covered his whole person (geometry fail).  I played hardcore conquest the other day and 5 out of 7 of the enemy team played recon and sat in their base sniping at us.  We took the win, but it's miserable spending so much of your time dead.

Brings me back to my thoughts of fair play.  All the exploits in the world just take away from the game.  If you want to use broken or ill-executed parts of a game to win then you do realise that you're partially ruining it for your opponents?  The same goes for modders.  Sure you get a ton of kills with your wallhack or your aimbot, but you lose the respect of everyone who encounters you.  In fact you gather distaste.

There should be an elaborate way to name and shame these people.  I have a replay saved to my Super Street Fighter IV of a textbook Ken, just in case anyone looks at my videos and watches it.  They can think alongside me "What a disgraceful display."  Perhaps a system where you can mark people on cheap play?  In games with replay systems only, of course.  You need proof of some sort or there'd be no stopping anyone from marking everyone they met as cheap.

Develop this idea somehow, games makers!

Gaming in motion.

I was really excited about the Wii before its release.  Its potential for shooters and applications as a media device were boggling my mind; I was so excited.  Then I found out it had about the same power as a PS2 stuck to an Xbox with no DVD playback capabilities and my dreams were crushed.  It was to be my console of choice for this generation but I caved.  My friend got one and I tried Red Steel on it, that killed the ideal for me and I lost faith in motion control.

I realised that motion controls are not immersive, not without the visual stimuli of the more powerful consoles, anyway.  Far from feeling like I was sword fighting in Red Steel, I felt like exactly what I was - a young man waving a white remote control around in his mates house, to little effect in-game.

Nintendo have released the motion plus now, of course, but from what I hear that's not revolutionary either.

When Microsoft announced 'Project Natal' I was ashen faced.  All my faith in them was questioned in the face of this attempt to attract the casual gamers.  Now I've no problem with casual gamers, it's great that more people are getting in to this wonderful hobby.  I just see how Nintendo abandoned the core market in its entirety and I feared M$ would do the same.  In truth it's probably my least favourite of the now announced motion sensing devices.  The abandonment of buttons is the abandonment of me.  Vocal cues in games using the mic could be interesting, but I'm not interested in acting out one of my war games.  I like my war games to suck me in, not make it apparent to me that I'm fannying around in my front room as opposed to holding off an enemy army.

It was after thinking this that I realised that the most immersive that games have been is with the combination of high quality visuals and high quality sound.  When I play Battlefield and there's mortars landing all around me, enemy tanks driving up a path towards my position and troops following closely behind it is when I feel truly IN the game.  The pounding explosions, the distant echo of gunfire in my deafened ears and the screams and shouts of my allies and enemies alike.  These draw me in.  The dust kicked up around a tank when it fires, the shattered particles of brick and mortar and the chunks of scrap metal kicked up from a crashing helicopter.  These draw me in!

I recently took a sharp dip in the sea, and it was bone freezingly cold.  My muscles seized up from the sudden chill and my breathing grew sharp.  Bioshock 1 and 2 do a great job of simulating this, the sudden attack of cold water on your person.  The sharp sounds and detailed visual bring similar experiences back and set us on edge.

If the idea of modern gaming is to provide an experience that is akin to what the game is conveying then why are we trying to make people run around a living room while doing it?  Considering the irritating, imprecise and unimmersive experiences I've had with the Wii, in contrast to the bone crushing, shocking, breathtaking and immersive experiences I've had with my XBOX.  I don't think motion control is going anywhere.

I wait eagerly to be proven wrong!

Limited Extremism (ME2 Spoilers)

Playing through Mass Effect 2 again recently, reminded me how much I love that game.  The choices really bring it to life.  I originally played the game through on the PC, but I hadn't completed the original on the PC, I had completed it on the Xbox, so I had to go with all the assumed decisions with a brand new character.  This time, however, I have it on the Xbox and was astounded at how vastly different the universe is in my Xbox playthrough.  The council is alive, Wrex is alive, the woman cloned by the Thorian came and thanked me for saving her and sparing everyone in the colony.  Vastly different.

However those aren't the choices I'm thinking about right now.  This recent playthrough has brought my attention to those interruption moments during conversation in the game.  I'm wondering "Why is there only ever one choice in interruption?"  Perhaps I want to shoot that cheeky Batarian instead of healing him.  Not saying I want to kill sick beings but the choice would be expedient.  Or when stopping Garrus from killing Harkin, the choice is let him kill Harkin, or let Harkin live.  What about a renegade interrupt where Shephard shoots Harkin with a clear head, free of thoughts of vengeance so that Garrus wont be trapped by his own?

A different choice of shades, for example.

Further than that, Fallout 3 gave you the choice to pretty much kill anything or anyone and the game would still continue.  They made allowances for this by foreseeing anything that the player MIGHT do.

For example, the sheriff of Megaton wants you to disarm the bomb, but if he dies his son takes his place as sheriff and will reward you himself when you disarm it.  There have been many characters in Mass Effect 2 that I've wanted to blow away after the first line of conversation.  That Krogan voiced by Worf, for example, could've done with a good shooting.

Maybe I'm being picky or entitled but I just wish we'd have more choices.

Stupid lag!

A problem that I've had really bad in the past is lag.  My first foray in to online gaming was over 56k playing Jedi Outcast, and that was just hellish, sometimes.  People these days complain that they were lagged by a millisecond and it got them killed, but in the 56k days you would run for 20 seconds then teleport back to where you started if it was bad enough.  This brings me to my point, lag really can affect games.  That millisecond can easily get you killed.  Just remember to be sure that lag is the problem.

The controversial "No Russian" mission is actually a complex allegory for a laggy server.

Recently I was gaming with some people on Super Street Fighter IV, having a great laugh, when one of them was heavy shoryuken'd out of a focus attack.  This, apparently, was the fault of a laggy connection and not of a stupid decision. Therein lies my point.  Lag is an excuse that is easy to reach for whenever something goes wrong.

I'm not immune to it myself, I often shout things like "I fecking well shot first!" and "This bloody lag is killing me." In these instances more often than not it's because I sprint around like a fool and advertise myself as a target (another reason why I'm rubbish at FFA).  The problem I have is with having it in your brain that the mechanics of a game drastically change when you take it online.  Case in point: a heavy shoryuken will knock you out of a focus attack online or offline.  It's how the game works.  There is no arguing.

LAG!

If you make a stupid mistake it's time to own up to it.  You only end up looking like a moaning idiot to everyone else in the game, and unfortunately no one cares.  Remember that everyone is prone to doing silly things, especially in games where fun is of the utmost importance.  For example: You see a squad of men ahead who don't know you're there, the smart thing would be to tell your mates and wait for back-up, but the fun thing would be to pull the pin out of a grenade and try to get as close as possible.

When someone starts bitching and moaning about how unfair everything is, whatever fun was being had is crushed, and all that is left is "I wish this guy would just shut the hell up."

Do we want that, or do we want honest fun?

Getting in to the jam...

Recently I've been making myself really get in to my games when I'm playing them.  Running head first into an enemy squad holding a live grenade is much more fun when you let loose a bestial roar when you're doing it.  It started a few weeks ago while playing Gears of War 2 with the Ready Up troupe.

I had just spawned, and I could hear a battle raging close by so I ran in its direction.  When I arrived all I found were pieces of mixed body parts, locust and human.  I recognised one of them, and it was still breathing.  It was one of my internet pals, the only survivor of that battle and unfortunately she happened to be my enemy in this instance.  I knew right then what I had to do.  Chainsaw in hand I nonchalantly swaggered up to my prone pal and began carving.  Letting rip the most horrendously devious evil laugh I've ever managed.

RRRRAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It felt good.

Since that moment I've been augmenting my games time with my own personal feelings in grunt/scream/roar form.  I tell you the truth it really adds to the experience, especially when the people you're roaring/screaming/grunting at can hear you doing it.


I like to think it has a negative effect on enemy morale, but it's probably much more likely to have a muting effect on my Xbox Live chat.

Someone to watch over me...

When it comes to games, I'm never one to go it alone. If I'm not surrounded on all sides by 10 of my closest friends (or complete strangers) then I'm a dead man. I don't know what it is about free-for-all play that I just can't do.

I remember the good old days before I knew how to work network settings, when I used to spend hours fighting bots in Unreal Tournament. Working with or on whichever new mods I'd found, I always came out on top. The funny thing is, I always played free-for-all and I ALWAYS won. So what's changed?

HEADSHOT

While it is true that there is no Redeemer in Modern Warfare 2, that's not really an excuse. I used to sit for hours playing against 64 bots on the smallest map (the name of which escapes me) mutated with InstaGib and I'd slaughter my way to victory every time. If you put me in a free-for-all with a measly two people on Modern Warfare 2 generally I spend more time dead than alive. I can't do it. It's a little difficult to concentrate on stealth when all I want to do is push an armed rocket down the throat of my enemy (who is usually my friend) and teabag their corpse.

I'm thinking that maybe I lack the subtlety that is required for free-for-all. I didn't even start using the ninja perk until I was told exactly what it does and why it's helpful. I'm more at home on a changing, back and forth front line. I need green zones and red zones. I need to be able to hear gunfire in the distance that ISN’T directed at me. I need to be part of something bigger than myself! I find hoofing it over terrain towards a raging battle far more exhilarating than creeping round a corner in an urban setting, waiting for some poor sod to make a stupid mistake. It’s not that I’m afraid of dying in a videogame and want others to do it for me. The enemy position is impenetrable? They have heavy machineguns, tanks and Helos? You want me to lead the charge? Alright fine, just let me get my rocket launcher and let’s not forget; I am not going in on my own.

COME OOOONNNN!!!

I want people to work in unison with me!

Give me 11 teammates and 12 enemies, set me up with things to fight over and watch me flourish, or watch me mine roads and wait for tanks to run over them. Either way is good.