The State of ‘My’ Gaming

I’m still crafting a reply to Paul’s questions about the State of Academic Gaming so in the meantime, I’ll examine the state of MY gaming.   The first thing – one needs to play games to be a gamer and I have NOT played any video games in the last two months!  Frightening!  No specific reason other than lots of RL (that’s real life for you noobs) getting in the way.

So what was I playing?  Well, I’m almost through BioShock – and it was everything that Jerremie described it to be.  Rich texture, intriguing story and entertaining game play.  Challenges are pretty good and walk-throughs haven’t been needed which tells me that this is well-designed game.  My major only major gripe is about 3/4 of the way through – WAY too much exposition – completely destroyed the immersion.  Just too long.

I’m also working my way through Neverwinter Nights 2.  This took me some time to get into this since I had finished NWN last year.  The AI is almost too good and for awhile I had troubles adjusting.  Combat flows much more smoothly – not requiring the player to set ALL combat actions for the NPCs after each round.  There were times that I missed this but without it, it really does move the game along.  The story is interesting (big bad evil) but really does provide some interesting choices for the story.  These don’t ultimately affect the outcome but do change how future interactions might occur with the NPCs.   By the 3rd chapter, you get to manage a keep which allows the player to explore different styles of managing.  I’m always curious to know immediately what the future impact will be without waiting.  I have avoided looking through walk-throughs to see how the different paths turn out.  I’ve just started the third chapter so am in the midst of making alliances with a number of NPCs.  My major gripe is that the party is set to 4 (I know – there are cheats to change this) so I can’t always get the NPCs that I want into the party.  Sometimes the dialogue is a little long and in some places pretty lame.  Had a bug on a side quest – annoyed the hell out of me but didn’t really come into play.

I also have been playing Left 4 Dead, which uses Valve’s Source engine – the same one we’re using for Benevolent Blue.  This is a fun game and I love looking at the props and the layouts – very familiar.  Basic premise – kill zombies, and more zombies, and even more zombies.  Oh yeah, and more zombies (this does get tedious).  It mainly designed to be cooperative – four players can take on the roles of the survivors and fight your way out of the city.  You can also play multi-player with one group playing the zombies and the other playing the survivors.  http://l4d.com/

I guess I should mention that I also sojourned back into the land of the MMORPG – most specifically, World of Warcraft.  But I will save that for another post…  ct