MichaelandChrissy.com

My first video game memories were of the Atari 2600.  I first saw one when I was five, and the controls were easy enough for me to play “Combat” against anyone.  I still think that “Adventure” is the best game ever (”You were a DOT, man, and you LIKED IT THAT WAY!”).  I eventually got one of my own around 1981, and played it non-stop on a tiny 12-inch black and white TV in my room.  “River Raid”, “Pitfall”, and “Yars Revenge” were some of my favorite games.

I heard a rumor of the first Nintendo gaming system at an arcade.  Some kids playing “Super Mario Brothers” were talking about a new Atari that could play games just like the arcade games.  I didn’t believe it, not after the debacle that was Atari’s “Pac-Man”.  But the NES did come out, from Nintendo (not Atari, which was synonymous with gaming until then), and I got one for Christmas in 1985.  I even got a small color TV by then.  I remember the hype before the first Zelda game came out, and was amazed that you could play it TWICE.

“Castlevania” and “Metroid” were a couple of my favorite games for the NES.  My friends and I rented video games from Blockbuster Video every weekend.  We would play “Punch-Out” all night, yet never beat Mike Tyson, and then switched to “Metal Gear” (back before Snake went all 3D).  I didn’t play sports in high school, so video games took up a lot of my time then.  Although I had upgraded to the Super Nintendo by ‘91, I didn’t play games much while in college, except for “Warcraft” and “Diablo” on the PC.

It wasn’t until I got my first place, and my first roommate, Carl, that I started playing video games again.  My roomie introduced me to “Resident Evil 2″ on the Playstation, and we would play “Final Fantasy VII” into the wee hours of the night.  “Symphony of the Night” was the best Castlevania game ever, and we explored every room of both castles and maxed out the levels on every familiar before we were happy.  We played more Playstation than we watched TV (mostly Star Trek and Farscape).

Carl got hooked on racing games, and he switched to “Gran Tourismo”.  I never like racing games, so I moved back to PC games instead.  “Baldur’s Gate” started my great love of RPG games.  I’ve followed the D&D game franchise ever since.  “Starcraft” was another big one, but I didn’t play it online.  I would play “Diablo 2″ across the internet all night, however, to an almost unhealthy amount.  But I stuck with PC gaming, since computer games looked better and were more fun than console games (depending on your hardware, of course).

I’ve focused more on RPG games in the last few years, which are usually much better on the PC than on the console systems.  I played “Elder Scrolls: Morrowind” for nine months straight, along with the two expansion packs.  Based on my Morrowind addiction, I was first in line when “Elder Scrolls: Oblivion” came out in 2006.  All told, I probably played Oblivion for about six months, and that was before the “Shivering Isles” expansion pack came out.  I’ve had a lot of fun with computer games this year as well, most recently with “Gears of War”, “Crysis” and “Titan Quest”.

It’s looking like consoles are finally starting to overpower computers today though.  Some games, like “Star Wars: Force Unleashed”, won’t even be available for the PC, since the developers know that you would need a Power Rig to run it.  I’m not quite ready to trade in my PC games for XBOX games though.  But that didn’t stop me from getting a Wii last June!  I do like the casual gaming style and the fitness aspects of the Wii.  I barely even consider the Wii as gaming, but I enjoy the shooting games and the Wii Fit balance games.

I think that my next batch of fond memories will revolve around family gaming.  I can’t wait for Aiden to be old enough to play video games with me.  Not the NC-17 games that I’m used to playing, surely, but he’ll want age-appropriate games.  I’ll make certain that he spends time doing real-life activities (sports, music, karate, etc.) as well, but I think that we’ll bond most over video games.  Who knows what gaming will be like by the time Gavin is ready to pick up his first controller?  It should be interesting to find out!

I got “Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles” for my birthday back in June, but it was hard to play with the WiiMote.  I spent the better part of an hour being repeatedly killed by a giant scorpion!  I wondered if it would be any easier to play with the “gun” attachment.  I picked up the Nintendo’s “Wii Zapper” at Best Buy shortly afterward.  It came with “Link’s Crossbow Training“, which I expected to be a throw-away title, but my first guess was so wrong.

Maybe it was the nostalgia factor, but I warmed up to Crossbow Training upon hearing the old “Legend of Zelda” theme music again.  Many of the old enemies from the vintage NES game made appearances: Stalfos, Zoras, and Tektites.  I haven’t played any of the recent Zelda games, but this made me want to catch up on the series.  There are three modes of play (Target Practice, Defender and Ranger), and each one gets harder with successive levels (up to nine).  I ended up with a sore trigger finger.

The Zapper is very different from the “Light Gun” that I had as a kid.  It has a simple, yet comfortable, design with no electronics of its own.  The two-handed grip accommodates the WiiMote and the Nunchuk nicely.  It’s a little hard to reach the “A” button like this, but you have easy access to the “B” button (trigger) and the Nunchuk controls (joystick to move Link and the trigger to zoom in).  Once I’ve finished off every level of target practice, I’ll give the Zapper a try with Umbrella Chronicles.

I just finished Mass Effect, playing as a “Vanguard” on the “normal” difficulty setting.  I went the “Renegade” route, which means that I chose the “evil” responses in most of the conversation trees.  This would often make the game more difficult, since Renegades tend to end conversations with battles (”Oh yeah! Well take that!”) rather than negotiation (”Maybe we can work this out amicably?”).  I’m not sure how this affected the ending cinematics, but I’m interested in playing it again to see the alternative ending.

You get the other ending if you play as a “Paragon”, a good guy.  I’d like to try again as an “Engineer” and build up my “Charm” skill.  As a renegade, I worked on my “Intimidation” skill instead.  This made it easier to persuade some people, but I definitely came across as a badass.  As an evil character, I made some unsavory decisions that had consequences in the game, such as allowing the Galactic Council members to die rather than assign resources to protect them in the final battle.  I’m sure that the ending would be much different if my team had saved them from the Geth main assault.

I also found out that Bioware has released some downloadable content for free.  ”Bring Down The Sky“ seems to be a short side quest, but it’s nice that Bioware is still supporting the game.  I think that I’ll try this out when I play the second time. I hope they bring out more downloadable content; the game needs more beef since the main storyline was pretty short. However, Mass Effect is only the first in a planned trilogy of games.  I’m looking forward to the sequel, but I hope that they add more planetary exploration (one planet per system doesn’t quite cut it, I’m afraid).

I beat the Titan Quest expansion pack last night.  The big villain of the game, “Hades”, was kicking my butt repeatedly, but I came back fresh and took him out.  I didn’t want to stop playing on Saturday night, since I would have to clear a path back to his throne room again if I did, but it was 2AM and I couldn’t stay up any longer. Besides, I love the loot, and getting there is like strolling a path strewn with Gigantes armor.

Hades has three separate forms, which threw me for a loop because I wasn’t expecting him to upgrade.  Only one other enemy, Charon, had ever upgraded before.  Hades’ first form is like a very tall and scary humanoid, kind of like Dracula.  Once you bring him to about half of his life bar, he turns into what I call his “Resident Evil” form, taller and uglier with a huge tentacled arm.  Once that version is defeated, he turns into a huge blue cloud monster with very powerful attacks.

Once I had 32 skill points in Warfare (fighter skills), I moved about ten points from the “Battle Rage” tree into the “Ancestral Horn” skill.  This allows you to summon three ghostly figures to fight by your side.  It starts off fairly weak, but at tenth level I had five very beefy fighters on my side.  The downside is that they only last for 24 seconds, and there is a pretty long cooldown period. This spell is integral to my patented “Ride the Lightning” technique.

This technique involves a “Sky’s Rage” scroll, which summons a huge lightning storm that deals massive amounts of damage for fifteen seconds and, in most cases, paralyzes your enemy.  They’re pricey at 300,000 gold, but well worth it.  Employ the scroll, summon your Ancestral Horn buddies, and commence to whaling on your boss enemy with melee attacks.  I used this method on all of the Machae Generals and Vault Stone Empusas without fail.

I was surprised at how easy Hades’ first two forms were, since his gatekeeper, “Night’s Mistress” (the Empusa with the Soul Stone), was harder to kill than his first and second forms.  I just whaled on those in melee.  His third form was tougher, and that was what I got stuck on last night.  I gave him the old “Ride the Lightning” technique and he went down pretty quickly.  He actually lasted a few seconds longer than the scroll, which was impressive, but I only had a few more hits to kill him.

The credits were pretty cool too.  I watched through two cycles, since the monster models randomly appeared to the left until you cut out.  I didn’t recognize most of them, since I hadn’t been fighting them close up like that.  They’re pretty ugly; the developers did a good job with them.  The “epic” difficulty level was also unlocked.  I might have to pass on that though, since I’ve got other games to get to now.

I recently completed all of the tracks in the 50cc racing circuit on Mario Kart Wii.  The cool thing is that you are treated to some closing credits that include your racer zooming around a custom track.  This track has your Mii character blown up to iconic size as a statue in the middle of the ring.  Other Miis on your machine are also featured throughout the track, mostly on signs and billboards.  Once the credits are over, your Mii is shown (in full racing regalia) with Mario and Princess Peach in front of their castle.  I shall devote the rest of my life to looking more like my Mii character (not that he’s not dead-on already).

The sad thing is that I’m not that good at Mario Kart yet. I always seem to win (when I find time to play), but I think the Wii is dumbing down the other racers for me. During the credits, I saw many of the characters pull off amazing jumping stunts that I didn’t even know were possible. I admit to never reading the manual, but I’m a guy and guys don’t read manuals. So I’ve got to figure out how to do these things before trying out my mad skills online. There are lots of people on Twitter who play Mario Kart online, so I want to get in on the action, just as soon as I feel that I’m good enough to compete. I’ll have to finish the 100cc and 150cc circuits first and see where I’m at then.

Diablo (1997) was the first PC game that I bought for myself. I had played other computer games, but they were either shareware or borrowed from my friend Swavek.  The interface was so intuitive, just point and click to do just about anything.  Although there were only sixteen levels, each one was randomized every time you played, so it never got old.  It was different from anything else that I had ever played before.  It was also the first PC game that I played online (not including Doom’s peer-to-peer cooperative mode). I would join a small team and defeat Diablo at least twice every night.

When Diablo 2 (2000) came out, I bought it on the day of release and played it day and night for months. More character classes, each with a unique skill tree, made gameplay very customizable. And it was BIG: four entire Acts of content that spanned many diverse environments.  And the loot was incredible, even allowing you to piece together rare sets of items for extra bonuses.  Diablo 2 was the only game that I ever bought items for outside of the game. People sold powerful weapons and armor on eBay; you would pay via PayPal and then the seller would give you the items online in a private game.

“Stay a while, and listen!”- Deckard Cain

So when Blizzard announced Diablo 3, my heart stopped.  Well, maybe not stopped, at least not until I actually say the preview site. Then I died.  Seeing Deckard Cain, the narrator for the first two games, again was like being greeted by an old friend. The new Diablo 3 site includes “The Journal of Deckard Cain“, with thirty pages voiced by the same guy who played Cain before.  The journal is illustrated with plenty of concept images from Diablo 3, as well as all of the cinematics from Diablo 2 (they still hold up very well after all these years). It serves as an excellent refresher for the Diablo mythology.

The new content introduced in Diablo 3 looks really good.  There is an excellent gameplay trailer that highlights the new environments, two of the five available character classes (and their abilities) and some of the new monsters that will appear.  The designers include enough of the familiar to make the game slightly nostalgic, but also include enough new stuff to push ahead of the copycat games that have come out before. There was even a “boss” battle at the end of the trailer that left me wanting to play the game right now. I’m pretty excited to see more from Blizzard’s Diablo 3 site.

Chrissy got me a “Nintendo Wii” for my birthday, because she’s the best wife in the world. She actually bought it about a month ago, but it’s been in hiding until yesterday. I’ve been keeping busy with “Titan Quest”, so I wasn’t in a hurry to play new games. I should have been, since it turns out that the Wii is terribly cool (I had never tried one before). She got me “Mario Kart” and “Super Mario Galaxy” as well, so we’re set for Wii games for a while.

The Wii has wireless connectivity, so now we can play games with people on the internet. We thought that we would need to get the LAN adapter to plug into our network, but we hooked it up into our home wireless network instead. Out of the box, it taps into news and weather reports online. However, you have to use the “Wiimote” to read the news, which is kind of awkward. At least we don’t have to go through dial-up to get to the Nintendo services. But let’s talk about the games!

Mario Kart is a lot of fun. It’s hard to hold that wheel out in front of you for too long. I could feel it in my quadreceps and chest after about an hour of playing it last night. That didn’t stop me from playing though. We have it installed on our 57″ projection screen television, and the audio goes through the surround sound speakers, so we get the whole experience. I didn’t expect it to be this much fun, but here I am yelling and cheering while I play. Chrissy and I raced against each other for a few circuits, and I foresee a lot of friendly competition between us in the future.

I dug into the “Wii Sports” games that came with the system today. I was surprised to find myself wearing down physically after about a half an hour. I’ve been riding the bike lately (with a little boy tethered behind me), so I’m not completely out of shape, but the tennis and boxing games are using muscles that the bike doesn’t excercise at all. I was a sweaty, worn out mess after an hour, but I plan to go back and play some more “Wii Boxing” later. Put down the game and hit the showers, mister.

Later on, Chrissy and I took turns playing Super Mario Galaxy. The controls are a little strange, in that you move Mario with the little controller in your left hand while you point at the screen with the Wiimote in your right. While Mario explores little planets (”Bonjour, Petit Prince!”), vertigo sets in as you try to point him in the right direction despite the fact that he’s upside down. And my wrist is going to have to acclimate to the “spin attack”, which you execute by shaking the Wiimote back and forth in your hand. Yes, the controls take some getting used to, but that’s part of the fun.

In a completely unexpected move, Swavek got me a Logitech G5 gaming mouse and “Mass Effect” for my birthday. This is some pretty awesome hardware. It’s got a lot of features that my old Logitech mouse didn’t have, such as two thumb buttons and a wheel that tilts to the left and right. Even the cord is unique: it’s roped fabric, like a shoelace, instead of flexible plastic. What makes this a gaming mouse, though, is its more unusual features, like adjustable sensitivity and weight tuning.

Mouse sensitivity came be ramped up or down on the fly by the two buttons below the wheel (a plus and a minus). Crank it down, and you have minute control so that the mouse moves very little in comparison to your wrist. Crank it all the way up, and your cursor will jump across the screen with the slightest hand movement. You can even adjust the sensitivity to three separate levels in the software driver, setting each one to exactly what you want (from 200 dpi to 2000 dpi).

I noticed that this mouse is very light compared to my old mouse. That’s because you can set the weight yourself with a pop-out tuning tray. The mouse came with an assortment of 4.5g and 1.7g weights that you pop into the cartridge in various positions. Once the mouse feels good in your hand, then you pop the tray back into the bottom of the mouse and get going. I set it to feel like my old mouse in heft, but I’ll have to play with it until I get it weighted just right.

I hadn’t really thought of myself as a “gamer” until just recently, probably since Aiden was born. I used to only play Blizzard games and the occasional Elder Scrolls game, but I’ve been playing about six to ten games a year lately. The last few have been first person shooters like “Unreal Tournament 3″ and “FEAR”. So, this mouse’s nine programmable buttons of death will really help me step up my game. Thanks again, Swavek!

I installed Titan Quest on Thursday, and I’m glad that I installed the expansion pack along with it.  It’s like Diablo 2, except with Romans.  From the looks of it, all of the features that make it better than Diablo 2 (from a user interface perspective, since I can’t speak to the story yet) come from the expansion pack, “Immortal Throne“.  Stuff like the caravan driver would have been a huge thing in online Diablo.  The caravan driver holds items for you so that you don’t have to keep it in your own inventory. And finally, unlimited arrows!

Unlike Diablo, there are eight different character classes to choose from.  I decided to start with “Warfare” as a skill domain, but you can only choose two skill domains.  You get one to start with, and one more once you hit level 8.  There’s just too many to choose from, and I had a hard time deciding.  So I stuck with “fighter” for the timebeing.  I might enhance it with “Earth” (fire magic) or “Nature” (druid magic) later.  There’s definitely some replay value here, at least, which is better than the first person shooters that I’ve been playing lately. 

The inventory screen is a step up from Diablo as well.  When you move your mouse over an item, the stats for the item are displayed in a box along with the stats of the item that you currently have equipped, so that you can compare the two side-by-side.  When trading with a blacksmith, you have the option to “untrade” before you complete your transaction. I’d really like to be able to carry more, since I love to cart loot back to the villages for cash, and I’ve read that you increase your inventory size periodically in the game.

So far, I’ve gotten to the Spartan camp, cleared out the undead camp just before that, and carried all the loot back to Helos (before I found that there was a blacksmith in the Spartan camp).  There’s no caravan driver there though, so I’ve had to teleport back to Helos to drop off the powerful stuff that I can’t use yet.  Currently, I’m using a spear and a bunch of magic armor.  Not a bad setup for a level 5 guy.  I running around the fields now, trying to find that Centaur boss. We’ll see if this one is as awesome as Diablo 2 was.

Someone sent me a link to Jonathan Coulton’s “Still Alive”, which plays at the end of Portal.  I liked the song so much that I watched the Portal “End Boss” fight on YouTube.  The enemy AI, GLaDOS, had some hilarious lines, so I got a copy of the game to see what it was all about.  I really liked it.  The game has almost no action at all, despite the fact that it plays like a first person shooter, but is instead a brain-teasing puzzle game.  It utilizes warped (but predictable) physics and spatial awareness to create some challenging scenarios.

Although I liked Portal, it could have been longer.  I beat the entire game in less than three hours.  There are only 19 levels (many of them tutorials) and a boss battle with GLaDOS.  Luckily, there was a commentary mode, which included activatable commentary tracks in each level.  I played the whole game again, listening to all of the commentaries, which were very interesting.  I especially like the ones by Ellen McLain, the voice actor who did GLaDOS.  I dig voice actors.

Portal also comes with six advanced levels that you can access from the main menu.  These were the same as some of the regular levels, but Valve made them harder.  For example, turrets (”Hello-o! Are you still there?”) were first used in Level 16, but you could easily deactivate them by knocking them over.  In the advanced version of Level 16, the turrets are encased in cages, making them indestructible.  I really enjoyed these maps, and I think that some of the regular levels should have been this challenging. 

The game seems to make a big deal about the “Weighted Companion Cube”. It was basically a shield against plasma balls and a paperweight to hold down buttons, and only appeared in one level.  I have to say that I felt worse about smashing the gun turrets than I did incinerating the companion cube (you have to dispose of it in order to leave the level).  I don’t see why people were attached to it.  It didn’t cry and say, “I don’t blame you for killing me.”  It doesn’t even talk.

Although I’ve already beaten Portal (twice), I moved on to a very similar game, Half Life 2.  They’re based on the same engine and Portal uses a very similar user interface.  Half Life 2 is proving to be very hard to put down.  However, I just found out that there are downloadable levels for Portal online, made by fans.  I can’t wait to try these out; with any luck, they’ll be decently made and last longer than three hours.