|
I pick up the can opener and immediately head for the warehouse storing canned worms.
Let's see, where to begin?
I guess this will be an essay question, since I'm going to start from the beginning of my computer game experience back in the mid-late 1980s. And hope not to bore the readers too much.......
My first serious games were the Sierra game series:
King's Quest.
Space Quest.
Police Quest.
Laura Bow.
Sadly, I missed out on the Gabriel Knight series and, so far, I have not managed to obtain the three games in this series.
I was also playing Silpheed and Thexder at this time.
A couple of years after this, I was fond of an educational game called Dinosaur Discovery.
When computer games started to take off, I explored some of the games that were becoming available. I looked at Duke Nukem 3D and was playing Deep Space Nine: Harbinger. However, I soon grew tired of looking at games, because they were all first person and I didn't like this format. I prefer to see the character as opposed just an arm on screen.
Around the early-mid 90s I started playing Tomb Raider. Although the games have gone up and down in quality like a yoyo, I'm still a dedicated fan.
Shortly after this, I started playing Drakan. Although this series never went to more then two games, it is a very good game. The games in the series were Order of the Flame (PC) and Ancients' Gates (PS2).
And now we come to the (relatively) modern era of my gaming.
Two games I enjoyed particularly were X-Men Legends II and Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
I also played Deep Space Nine: The Fallen a lot.
After obtaining a PS2, I also became quite fond of the Kingdom Hearts series, although, except for The Little Mermaid, Mulan and The Nightmare Before Christmas (can someone please explain how that movie counts as a Disney property?), I can't be counted as a serious Disney fan.
However, I did enjoy very much the characters who were not Disney based. I think they come from the Final Fantasy series as a crossover, but not having played Final Fantasy, I don't know for certain.
The story was also quite compelling and well thought out.
And here commences my most recent games:
When I heard the news that Stargate was getting a multiplayer online game, I began researching mmos to find a similar game to practice on in preparation.
The game I finally chose was Tabula Rasa.
This game was quite interesting in terms of story and gameplay. It was easy to learn and the bugs in the game often made you laugh because unpredictable things kept happening.
Also, it was one of the few mmos that was sci-fi based and did not revolve solely around grinding. Although you did actually have to go hunting for drops and xp (if you were so inclined), the game was so fun to play it never felt like grinding.
When D15 and D16 (version numbers) were publicly released, the game was really taking off. Endgame instances were added to challenge max level players and work on the enhanced AFS Mechs was partially completed.
Sadly, this game was doomed from the very start.
Against the wishes of the players, the game was cancelled. And I should point out Tabula Rasa players were unusually dedicated to their game, they played it because they wanted to, not because they were addicted as is common with most other mmos.
Then, shortly after the game was closed down, the skeletons emerged from the closets of NCSoft.
The major crime was that a situation was engineered to discredit the creator of the game, so they would have grounds to fire him and take over the game directly. I actually witnessed this moment ingame, when they were falsifying his appearance ingame (he had an exclusive character), recognizing in 5 seconds it was not the real creator. They were also falsifying documents stating he was choosing to retire and was on a civil relationship with the company.
And then I learned the second most horrible crime of all:
Tabula Rasa was never intended to be a success at all.
The first fact supporting this is that is was only created to get players (primarly American and European mmo players) interested in the company. These players did not particularly like NCSoft's products, except for Tabula Rasa. And they all quit after Tabula Rasa shut down.
The second fact is that Tabula Rasa was specifically intended to lure players to a future game called Aion. As so called "compensation" for the end of Tabula Rasa, players who were active during the end were given free access keys for this game. And from personal experiences of mine and a friend, when we pointed out most emphatically to the company that we were not interested in Aion and to stop harrassing us, the company became abusive at that point. NCSoft has developed the mentality of telling the customers what they must do and they don't like to be challenged. I even changed my email address in an attempt to stop the unauthorized emails and it didn't work! Eventually, I had to block all NCSoft emails from reaching my email address.
And since I've gotten up on this soapbox, I'll discuss Aion.
Although I haven't activated my beta key (because of the feud with NCSoft), I was quizzing players on what it was like. The short answer is, it's a terrible game. And they're lying about the supposedly innovative new features. All of the promotional material mentions things that no other game has, but when you actually attempt to use them in the game, you get about 40 seconds maximum of use and then it's just like any other game.
I played Guild Wars for a while. This is also an NCSoft product. But after beating the 4 games , I rapidly became bored and eventually abandoned the game. Basically, there is no endgame content, very few social activities, nothing to do except go grinding for loot drops. And since there are minimal returns for loot drops, this means you practically have to live in the game 24/7 to find them.
I also experimented with a couple of other mmos:
Cities of Heroes/Villians was quite boring, I tossed that out. Engage Sarcasm Mode. Another winning product from NCSoft.
I also tried Champions Online. It had potential, even despite the major drawback of being created by the same company as CoH/V. Sadly, it never managed to overcome it's other limitations, mainly, a bad game engine and an unimaginative storyline. In the short time I did play it, every story detail and hero or villian was stolen from Marvel comics. For example, the main villian Doctor Destroyer is a very obvious ripoff of Doctor Doom. One particular hero they didn't even bother to change the name or physical appearance from the Marvel character he's a copy of. Also, considering the number of ingame references to the comic and pen&paper RPG, it looks like this game is designed solely as an advertising tool for the franchise and not a serious game in itself. Also, the superpowers which are the cornerstone are barely usable, the more levels you obtain, the less powerful you become. Basically, you have to fight with the starter powers and only get a few seconds out of the advanced powers.
And here commences the 2009 era:
I recently acquired the Mass Effect game and started playing it. It is a very fun game and well thought out. It has many new sci-fi concepts that are unique to this game. This game is the first of a trilogy. And starting with ME2, the game is designed to have a "persistent world". This means that ME3, if you keep the main character alive until the end of the game (it is possible to kill him), it will continue on from there. And the main story points from ME1 will give you a custom story for ME2. There were certain points where you could influence the events and these will transfer into ME2. I currently have the Collectors Edition of ME2 on preorder.
I'm still waiting for Stargate Worlds. A release date has not been specified and the game has run into several problems. However, it seems the best game to take over from Tabula Rasa.
Although I have not decided on whether to commit to this game, Star Trek Online is commencing live play on the 2nd of Febuary. I'm looking forward to trying it and I especially want the Collectors Edition, which comes with Deep Space Nine uniforms. That fact alone is exciting to me, because DS9 is my favorite game. Although, I will actually have to personally play the game before I decide whether or not to continue playing it.
I also play Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (PS3) from time to time.
Are you still with me?
This concludes my essay.
If you actually read all of it, congratulations and here's 10 gold stars.
Feel free to respond now......
|
Login
FAQ
Search
Simcity was also good. Had a city on an island, that made money with taxes at 6% Ancient Art of War in the Skies was very good. It took me awhile to find the game. Had trouble getting it to work with my WinXP. I have the game, but I dont think my computer will run it anymore. Games Im looking forward to playing is Silent Hunter IV, as well as WOW. 
