My Stint With Quake

The following is a story, a recollection of my memories and how I ended up playing FPS games, most notably Quake. This will be the first of many posts I hope to make; ones that involve perhaps a personal history with videogames in some way or a post going over to some kind retro game of sorts. But anyway, on the with the good stuff!

It all really started with the game called Doom. You know that one where you fight off hordes of demons on the moons of Mars? That was my first introduction to the FPS genre, and was really the first FPS of its kind to do anything significant. Full 3-D movement, vast environments. It also set the tone for what most FPS games do now: Blood, gore, guts, and lots of action.

My parents let me play Doom in the summer of 1993, and I loved it. id Software some how managed to create a holy grail in gaming. They knew it was bloody, scary, and well down right blasphemous. I mean you play as a lone space marine; you are all that stands in the way of the demons of hell and them getting to earth. It was something that I couldn't really explain. Maybe it was the way the game presented its action. Maybe it was the fast paced action. Mouse and keyboard controls were second nature to me, left clicks with a shotgun, blowing away the pink demons. I didn't really play many other PC games for two years.

Then in the summer of 1996, the gaming magazines, and the beginnings of the internet were rumbling about some new engine and game that id was creating. A game called Quake. The first time I laid eyes upon that game was when I set out to get at demo disc at the local PC store. It cost me $9.99 + tax. Probably the best ten dollars I ever spent. After I installed that game on my 486 DOS 6.2 PC, the graphics were unlike anything I had ever seen. The difference from this game and Doom was quite simply amazing. Full polygonal environments, and you could now look around with the mouse! And the gameplay was just as fast as Doom. Quake brought something to the table that Doom had introduced, but made it better; Multiplayer.

There was many a night of me and my friends hooking up over the internet with our 56k modems and playing games of Quake. Blood, rockets, nailguns, and giblets were all common place. I got to a point in that game where I would usually win every match we played. Give me a rocket launcher in that game, and kiss yourself goodbye. Those were the days...sitting back and drinking Mountain Dew will electrocuting your friends with the lightning gun.

Some time after Quake was released, id quietly began work on the engine that would eventually power Quake II. If I remember correctly, Quake II was not originally going to be called 'Quake II.” The press called it that, as id themselves had not revealed the name of the game. It became so popular that eventually id just decided to go with that, as it was a name and title everyone new at that point.The multiplayer in Quake II was fast and furious. I couldn't believe how awesome it was. The rail gun was my preferred weapon against people on the internet and my friends. I eventually got good enough that I played in several tournaments. Unfortunately I was not nearly as good as the some other players out there, like Thresh. He infamously won John Carmack's Ferrari in a game of Quake.

Quake II introduced some awesome customization options, one of the most prominent was a feature that allowed the use of custom player models. My preferred player model was one based around the comic Calvin and Hobbes; Calvin's alter ego Spaceman Spiff. Eventually though, time moved forward, with the introduction of Quake III Arena.

In December 1999, Quake III was released to the PCS. The game had no single player component, as its focus was multiplayer. I loved that game...still do, but it was also the last version of Quake that I seriously spent time playing. Combat was fast and intense, moving much faster than an previous version of Quake. Again the rail gun was a personal favorite, but I also enjoyed using the lighting gun. Shocking opponents to giblets was fun and entertaining.

For years after that, I played Quake III exclusively. More and more FPS games followed and I played Quake III until I simply couldn't play it anymore. My tastes evolved a little more as Halo and Killzone 1 came out. Quake simply fell off the radar for me. There is still a thriving hardcore community out there, but chances are if I went back to any one of the Quake games, my head would be blown off the second I spawned.

I love FPS games...and I would love to go and play some more Quake again; get back into that groove. In the mean time, I have an RPG called Final Fantasy XIII. Expect something on that soon.

Mass Effect 2: A review

Having just completed a play through of the above mentioned game, I thought I would share my thoughts and reflections of the game with the readers that have stopped by and read my blog thus far. The game clocks in around 40hrs if you have gone to do all the side missions available and the trust missions of the characters. I got about 43hours out of it with the launch DLC quests and character (Zaeed). Also I should note that I will attempt to make this review as spoiler free as possible, just going over the mechanics, gameplay, and graphics of the game.

Mass Effect 2 continues the story of Commander Sheperd and his quest to stop the Reapers. The events of the game take place some 2 years after the first game, and the galaxy seemingly at peace. However, not all is well as a new threat has emerged that Sheperd must stop. This new threat is a race of alien beings called the “Collectors.” Commander Sheperd must find a way to stop them before they wipe out all life in the known galaxy.

To start, the game is much improved over the first game in many areas, and some areas they streamlined several of the systems. Gone is the inventory management of the first game, replaced with a weapons load out before the start of each mission. You can also edit the load out of each character at any point as long as you are back on the Normandy. Throughout missions and exploration of hub areas you will find upgrades that are necessary to not only improving your equipment, but also Sheperd and his fellow crew members.

Exploration of other planets was a major portion of the first Mass Effect. Though many of the environments in the first game were repetitious and somewhat annoying as you had to drive some long distances in a vehicle just to get to some warehouse or enemy base that looked like every other environment that you had been on in some other planet. Mass Effect 2 does away with this by replacing the exploration with a planet scanner, helping you collect resources to improved your upgrades and finding places to land and complete side quests.

Another one of the streamlined areas is the leveling system, and how you gain experience. You can no longer gain experience points by killing enemies. Instead, you gain experience simply by completing missions and side quests that you acquire through the course of the game. At first, I was a little apprehensive with this approach, because it limits the amount of experience and how many levels you can gain. However I found that Bioware did an excellent job balancing the experience you would gain from missions. If you want those extra levels though, I would recommend seeking out as many side quests as you can. Also, when you gain levels, you are given a certain number of points to distribute to different skills and attributes. Again this has been streamlined by the number areas in which you can put the points.

The graphics of the game are much improved over the first Mass Effect. In the first game, it appeared that the graphics engine was not all well optimized for the game, as textures would often pop in, and come into focus in many areas, particularly in the Citadel. Also load times were a bit of an issue, as they masked many of the loading sections of the game with a mandatory elevator ride. In Mass Effect 2, the graphics load in without a hitch. Many of the sections have been replaced with a loading screen of some kind when traveling between areas or when you are on the Normandy.

Where the first Mass Effect had issues with its shooter mechanics, Mass Effect 2 is much better in the handling of everything. I cannot quite explain it, but it seems they took a few cues from Gears of War 2 when improving upon the shooting and fighting in the game.

Final Thoughts:

I was greatly impressed with the game, and was glad to have played it. Everything, and I mean everything that they could have fixed or improved, Bioware did. I don't think I could have asked for a better game.

Should I Play or Not?

PLAY this game.

A fitting first post

Welcome to the first blog post in this blog, which will serve as an introductory post about what I intend this blog to cover and be about, and who I am as a person. It will be a short little blurb (I hope).

So to cover what this blog is all going to be about, videogames. Maybe I will throw some news up here from time to time as well. I want to do some specialized posts to, maybe looking back on history of video games or a review of an older game. I also intend to put up my own reviews, and when I attend a covention, I will attempt to put a blog about what I have been doing there.

And now a little about myself. Where should I start? I guess it would be best to start by saying that I started playing games when I was very young. It must have been in 1988 or so when I started playing video games. I was handed an NES controller over at a cousin's house, and I was immediately captured by what I was presented with on screen. Super Mario Bros. was the first game I ever played. I played just about every major NES game, (To name a few, I played Zelda I & II, Metroid, Tetris) with a few here and there that not many people may have played. Some of those titles included a shmup called Jackal, an overhead RPG called Crystalis (Probably my favorite NES game of all time.)

Sadly I had to part ways with my cousin, and when it was time to get home, I longed to play those videogames that I played when I was over there, and sure enough it was a matter of time before my parents had enough me and my brother's nagging. The funny thing is, the way I had gotten my Nintendo was a little...strange, to say the least. It was, I think a Sunday morning, and I didn't want to eat the bacon that my mother had made for me for breakfast. My dad told me that if I finished my bacon, I would have a Nintendo later that day. My mom took me and brother out shopping and sure enough, when we came back, there sitting on the dining room table in a "Babbage's" (Yeah, remember that store?) bag with a brand spanking new NES in the box waiting to be hooked up to our TV in the living room.

After a few years, in 1991, the Super Nintendo came out, and it was time to upgrade. I remember reading a Nintendo Power with all the pictures and screenshots of what the system looked like, and what the games looked like. I was blown away. Unfortunately the NES we had went by the wayside and we traded in the system. We got the SNES and the rest is history with Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy II, and Final Fantasy III. There were plenty more that I played, but none are coming to mind at the moment.

The whole Genesis and SNES console war thing passed me by. I was a Nintendo fan through thick and thin. I even had every single variation of the Gameboy. I completely skipped what Sega had to offer when it came to their stuff. (Except for the Dreamcast, but that is a different story.) Sometime down the line, I think it was sometime in 1997, me and my brother ended up with a PlayStation (One of those originial grey systems). Final Fantasy VII was quite an amazing game at the time, and for many it still is. Most of the games I played on that system were RPGs, as I had begun to mature and appreciated deeper storylines. Final Fantasy VIII, Star Ocean The Second Story, Thousand Arms, and Grandia were all games I really loved on that system.

For Christmas 2001 one, we managed to get a Playstation 2, and that system was pretty much the first DVD player we also had. There were some many games that I played that naming just one is a bit hard, though I guess that one that sticks out in my mind was Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. The depth of that game was quite awesome, and the amount of content in that game was enough to keep you playing for at least 80+ hours.

Eventually I graduated from highschool and got my own job and I was able to afford my own systems, and I ended up with and Xbox, which was the first system from Microsoft. It was quite the amazing system, having its own hard drive to save games to. Halo was a game that brought many people together and was also the game that gave Microsoft a foothold in the videogame market. There is much else to say here except that I bought Fable, Halo 2, and Panzer Dragoon Orta (probably several other games that I am not mentioning too...)

But anyway the rest is history when it comes to the later generation systems, namely the Xbox 360 and PS3, both of which I currently own, and I am currently updating my personal game library with new games almost every week and month. At the moment I also own several classic systems that I never got around to playing when I was younger. I own a Turbo Grafx-16, Sega Saturn, & Dreamcast. I am looking to get my hands on a PC-FX, a Virtual Boy, and a ZX Spectrum next.

Until next time...