falling in love again
Aug. 18th, 2007 01:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaidenC's parents bought him a PlayStation for Christmas the year that Sam's was selling a box set with some stupid football game, a memory card, and two controllers. probably 1997. i was displeased. i never encountered a game console that didn't turn its owner into a zombie slave. (gee, C's parents, thanks for the heroin!)
i did have pleasant memories of C's old roommate playing Tomb Raider. it was a joy to watch him. (and watching other people play video games is generally on a par with watching paint dry. if your SO isn't there because they are waiting for their turn with the controller, they are very likely humoring you.) so in the interest of household harmony, we borrowed a copy and i tried to embrace the zombie slave experience.
it worked damn well. it took me a comparatively long time to get the control coordination, since consoles were forbidden in my parents' house and i did other things with my friends who owned them. well, i had some atari skills, but the rocker switch was alien. C started to set the timer on the stove to limit how long i played each night.
what happened? the concept was compelling. female Indiana Jones? i'm there. it was mostly about the exploration and problem-solving. being vicariously graceful and strong didn't hurt. it took me a little longer to get into the violence part, but it sure is fun to shoot a T Rex with a shotgun while doing a backflip. i never got over the crunching noise if Lara fell to her death, or the thrashing limbs of running out of air underwater. (C's old roommate used to intentionally kill her if it was time for dinner or something. gah.)
i played the game to the end, and then replayed. i played through all of the second one, but less joyfully because there was a lot more killing of humans, urban settings, and the introduction of driving. (i'm such a girl. driving sims and remote control vehicles are painfully beyond me.) the third one didn't grab me at all. tried again later with Angel of Darkness. also meh.
while i play other video games, i don't play them to completion. as C pointed out, Tomb Raider is the only thing that's really caught my attention that wasn't a casual game. (once again, i am such a girl. most casual game players are women, 30-50.) nothing else has had quite the same alchemy.
so now they've done this brilliant thing: a tenth anniversary reissue. my favorite game, on a better console, with similar-but-not-the-same levels retouched with a new engine and abilities. i don't like the idea on principle, but it feels so damn good. it's like falling in love again.*
but Lara doesn't do backflips anymore. wallwalking does not make up for it.
i did have pleasant memories of C's old roommate playing Tomb Raider. it was a joy to watch him. (and watching other people play video games is generally on a par with watching paint dry. if your SO isn't there because they are waiting for their turn with the controller, they are very likely humoring you.) so in the interest of household harmony, we borrowed a copy and i tried to embrace the zombie slave experience.
it worked damn well. it took me a comparatively long time to get the control coordination, since consoles were forbidden in my parents' house and i did other things with my friends who owned them. well, i had some atari skills, but the rocker switch was alien. C started to set the timer on the stove to limit how long i played each night.
what happened? the concept was compelling. female Indiana Jones? i'm there. it was mostly about the exploration and problem-solving. being vicariously graceful and strong didn't hurt. it took me a little longer to get into the violence part, but it sure is fun to shoot a T Rex with a shotgun while doing a backflip. i never got over the crunching noise if Lara fell to her death, or the thrashing limbs of running out of air underwater. (C's old roommate used to intentionally kill her if it was time for dinner or something. gah.)
i played the game to the end, and then replayed. i played through all of the second one, but less joyfully because there was a lot more killing of humans, urban settings, and the introduction of driving. (i'm such a girl. driving sims and remote control vehicles are painfully beyond me.) the third one didn't grab me at all. tried again later with Angel of Darkness. also meh.
while i play other video games, i don't play them to completion. as C pointed out, Tomb Raider is the only thing that's really caught my attention that wasn't a casual game. (once again, i am such a girl. most casual game players are women, 30-50.) nothing else has had quite the same alchemy.
so now they've done this brilliant thing: a tenth anniversary reissue. my favorite game, on a better console, with similar-but-not-the-same levels retouched with a new engine and abilities. i don't like the idea on principle, but it feels so damn good. it's like falling in love again.*
but Lara doesn't do backflips anymore. wallwalking does not make up for it.
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Console Zombies!
Date: 2007-08-18 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-18 07:16 pm (UTC)FPSs have never really done anything for me. RTSs and RTAs work, too (I've had some very fun tournaments playing Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, etc.) as do puzzle and arcade-style games. Killing for killing's sake--as is the goal of most FPSs--doesn't really impress me. I need a healthy storyline and something to do other than hunt.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-18 08:03 pm (UTC)That depends on the video game and the player. Someone who knows how to bring out the good stuff in a game that has the right sort of good stuff can make it worth watching. But then I've worked on games, so there's a lot of admiration of craft to make it interesting. It's like an architect walking through a construction site for someone else's building, or so I imagine. For me, looking at the technology in a video game is usually more fun than actually playing it.
As for the sorts of games I like to play, it's definitely not 3-D action games, even if they're most interesting in terms of technology admiration. The one that's sucked me in the most is a free, online-only game called Hollywood Stock Exchange (http://www.hsx.com). The object is to predict movies' opening weekends and their first few weeks of total revenue, through mechanics that sort-of resemble a stock market. I've played it for 22/3 years, and it's still fairly fun. In the past, I've enjoyed strategy and real-time strategy games like Alpha Centauri and Age of Empires, played bridge online for a while, and liked some of the arcade games back in the Atari era.