My friend has challenged me to another Tumblr blog thing. I responded the way I do with any challenge, by flailing my arms wildly and pulling a funny face. Of course, the challenge was made via text message so he didn’t see, but god damn it I’m sure he felt it. Felt it in his bones.
This challenge is of the gaming variety, so I’ll probably write lots and lots and lots and lots. Yes, I know I’m still in the middle of my other challenge, but I figure why not do both and just post each on alternating days? Sounds like a good idea? I thought so.
After a few minutes of thought, I have to say Star Wars: Jedi Academy was the game that initially got me hooked. The game was played third person with aspects of first person, and had a decent single player storyline. However, it wasn’t the single player campaign that I was interested in, though it was really well done.
The shininess appealed to me as well.
I became an active player in the multiplayer aspect of the game. I was a regular on one of the more populated servers (It was so popular you couldn’t get on most of the time), and would invest hours each day in lightsaber battles or just chatting and having fun with the other people there. I got to know many people in the game and really enjoyed the sense of community. The lightsaber duel system was exceptionally fun, and given the combination of lightsaber choices1 and the different styles of fighting that each person had, all battles were interesting and challenging. I had so much fun that I ended up applying to be a member of the clan that ran the server I frequented, and soon after became a member. I’d discuss being in the clan but it was filled with drama and well, no one cares.
I played the game for what felt like forever before moving onto Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and eventually Team Fortress 2, and now the game is but a piece of history for me. Now and again I visit that clan’s website and server to see if anything is happening, but it seems as time has gone on everyone else is slowly moving on too. Sad.
Single lightsaber, dual lightsabers, and the Darth Maul style staff lightsaber. To further the choice, each choice had further styles to enable other moves and techniques.
Well that would have to be Wolfenstein 3D. This game has been in my life for the better part of around twelve or thirteen years. Can’t be too sure. Either way, this game had not just a major impact on my idea of gaming, but on gaming itself, leading the way for other first person shooters to follow over two decades following it’s release.
I stole this image from some website because I was too lazy to take my own screenshot.
The game itself is a simple first person shooter, if not the simplest in what you do. Walk through, shoot, maybe find a key to unlock a door, move on. You could literally do nothing else. Levers were 64×64 block mazes, and graphics were basic sprites. Despite this, it has active players even today, shooting Nazis and saying Aardwolf.
It also lead me to the first real online community I became an active part in; the Wolfenstein 3D modding community. In fact, I’m still a part of that community (Though to a very minor degree; I occasionally write an article or two on Wolfing Time when I’m in the mood.), and it’s still alive today. Hundreds if not thousands of mods are available on a website called the Wolfenstein 3D Dome, all made by various members of the community over the years. The community has done amazing things within the confines of such a primitive engine, and have even pushed it beyond it’s limits and released a completely rewritten engine to make the game playable on modern operating systems like Windows 7, on which DOS is non-existent.
Mods by members in the community continue to push the engine in amazing directions.
Wolfenstein 3D is an amazing game and although I’m not as obsessed with it as I was 6 years ago, it is still an all time favourite of mine, and probably always will be.
I’m going to assume that this means the sort of game I have to go out and put in a gold coin to play a single life.
If that’s the case, my choice for favourite game and coincidently the one I must of put at least fifty dollars into would be the arcade version of Silent Hill. Unlike the traditional Silent Hill games, the arcade version is a first person shooter. I’m not sure if it’s actually a light gun, but you utilize a gun peripheral and the game leads you through the level. Level designs are sampled from various games from the series and is really fun to play with someone else.
I have only ever finished the game once, and that was with an obvious person. I don’t really know what I can say about it; it’s a fun game as far as arcade games are concerned, and if it were ever released as a shitty console port for Wii or something I reckon I’d buy it in a snap, because why the fuck not.
Well that one should be obvious for anyone who knows me at all, or even just reads this here blog. I mean, I blog about it often, talk about it, now I’m uploading videos about it, I’ve even taken time off work just so I could be there for a major content update.
Team Fortress 2 is a class based first person shooter. It is multiplayer only and boasts an active community. The game works with traditional game types like Capture The Flag, but also has a variety of others including Control Point, Attack/Defend, Arena, and Territorial Control. Each game mode is completely different to the other and requires different play styles in order to win. There are a variety of weapons for each class, increasing the number of strategies and play styles beyond a simple rock paper scissors scheme of play and creating a more dynamic changing game.
Team Fortress 2 has to be one of the best games I have ever played. There is just not enough I can say to express my love for the game. The cartoonish art style, the fucking hilarious jokes and overall light-hearted tone of the game, and just the balanced gameplay are enough. However, Valve see fit to constantly update the game, which is what has lead to it having a solid and growing community for the past three years. While games like Call of Duty release a new game almost yearly, and paid for DLC to add new features to the game, Team Fortress 2 has survived purely on FREE content updates and community mods. Every so often, Valve implement new “official” maps and items, as well as completely new features (The replay feature that was just implemented, for example). This is probably the biggest reason the game has survived where so many others stop getting played; because there is always fresh exciting new things being added.
I could go on and on but I don’t think I would get much of a point across in anymore random ramblings. Just know that Team Fortress 2 is my favourite PC game, and if it weren’t for Wolfenstein 3D, it would be my favourite game ever in the history of the world. To finish up, here’s a video of me killing my mate Derek.
Crash Team Racing was the inevitable racing spin off of the Crash Bandicoot series of platformers. The game plays pretty much the same as another inferior cart racing game for another console which shall remain nameless, but with all Crash Bandicoot themes. The humour is perfect for the game (A childish sort of humour, without being annoy), and the graphics for the time period (Playstation = POLYGONS EVERYWHERE) are nice. The controls are solid and very intuitive, and everything just felt right. The game came together perfectly, and I still play it now and again, albeit with a Playstation emulator instead of an actual Playstation. Thinking about it, I reckon I’ve completed the game completely (All gems, tokens, trophies) at least three times1.
The game is amazing and talking about it makes me want to run through it all again, which I might actually do.
I want to say that I do not include the Time Trials. I’m counting only the Adventure Mode. I’ve done enough of the Time Trials to unlock the secret character associated with them, but I was never quite fast enough to get gold stars on all the levels.
My favourite fighting game isn’t actually a game as such. It’s actually a mission come mini-game available in Spyro: Year Of The Dragon1, in which the character Bentley boxes with a Yeti.
Got to love pixels. While at first the Yeti is AI controlled, after the initial mission has been won, there’s an interesting thing I guess you could call an easter egg. If you plug in a second controller, the Yeti becomes controllable by a second person, making this the only two player part of the entire game. Why this is the case is odd, but it’s amazing.
I have memories of spending hours playing this particular mission with my brother over and over again. It was great to be able to play such an excellent platformer with a second person, even if it only was a fighting mini game.
All this talk of Spyro and Crash Team Racing has me wanting to reinstall a Playstation emulator. Might do that today.
I’m starting to see a pattern in the theme of this blog challenge, and it’s quite disappointing given just how good a gaming challenge could of been. Oh well.
On topic, my favourite third person game would have to be Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I consider it the epitome of the game series. The storyline was easy to follow, and immersing. The sandbox style world that Grand Theft Auto originally made famous is amazing without being too complicated, allowing the player to explore every nook and cranny. There was countless things to explore, and side objectives to complete by doing so1, meaning once you finished the “main game” the game still isn’t over, giving you hours upon hours to complete things just for the ability to say you did.
Many people consider the next in the series, Grand Theft Auto IV, to be the better game. While I agree that Rockstar came a long way in the way they tell story, it just didn’t feel right. Maybe it was the less cartoony atmosphere, the realism, or the way they rewrote the way you drive cars. Whatever it was, I just couldn’t get into it as much as San Andreas, which is why it remains my favourite of the series. If you have a PS2, I suggest finding a copy.
One such example was that you had to spray paint your gang’s tags over opposing gang’s.
Well that’s a one; because are we just taking into account just this generation, or all generations of gaming console. I’m going to assume all generations, because for me that is an easy one to answer; the motherfucking Playstation. Not the PS2 or PS3, but the original. It had all the best games including the first Crash Bandicoot games (Including Crash Team Racing), the first 3 Spyro games, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Medieval. There were hundreds of games and so many were and still are classics and great to play. The memories I have of having a Playstation (It was chipped as well so we could play pirated games. Shhhh) are numorous. I remember playing games before I had a memory card to save games with, and having to dedicate a solid patch of time to finish a game; If I stopped playing I lost everything and had to start from the very start again. It’s amazing how things that were frustrating as a kid are now attached to a sense of nostalgia. Not to mention, this start up screen whenever the system was booted up makes me feel completely at ease with the world.
Well that’s a one; because are we just taking into account just this generation, or all generations of gaming console. I’m going to assume all generations, because for me that is an easy one to answer; the motherfucking Playstation. Not the PS2 or PS3, but the original. 