Press Start

Despite the title, I won't be talking much about Zork. Although I enjoy not being eaten by Grues, this blog is more concerned with slightly more modern games of varying genres. Let me give you a quick background on me as a gamer, so you'll know where I'm coming from and where I'll be going:

I started out as a PC gamer growing up in '90s. I'm talking about amazing games like Unreal Tournament, Quake III Arena, Descent II, Starcraft, Sam and Max, and so on. Now, I don't claim to be very good at any particular game (except Star Wars: Jedi Outcast), nor did I even play many games online at all. So I started out as a single-player PC gamer. I also must admit to not having played a lot of big-name games back then, such as Half-Life or Deus Ex or even Monkey Island. I'm trying to rectify that now, and I'll be posting reviews of any that I get to play. Besides PC games, I also had a Super Nintendo as my first console. I had hardly any games on there, besides Mario All-Stars and MarioKart, but my family loved to play those games together. I still hold that Super Mario Kart is better than Mario Kart 64 because of how much more responsive the turns are. Following the SNES, I got a Playstation because all my friends at school had one. I had some great fun with that thing but I wish I had an N64 as well because I missed out on some great games. Following the PS, I got a Playstation 2, which I was very satisfied with. It turned out to be the best console last generation, even though the gamecube had some great games which I'm now enjoying on the Wii. If you haven't spotted the trend yet, I only get a single console each generation. This gen it's the Wii. I'll go into more detail in future posts.

My favorite genres have always been first-person shooters, real-time strategy, fighters, adventures, and shoot-em-ups. I'm not particularly good at any of them, but I enjoy them and that's what matters. Nowadays, I'm playing a lot of FPSes and RTSes like Half-Life 2, Counterstrike:Source, Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4, and Supreme Commander. I'm also playing lots of shmups, such as Ikaruga and Dodonpachi. Just last week a friend of mine kindly let me have a free GameTap account, because apparently GameTap isn't interested in making money and would rather give out a dozen free accounts to anyone who pays money for one. I'm not going to complain because it's a great service which I would seriously consider paying for. I'll be posting a lot of reviews of some classic games on GameTap that I'll be trying out for the first time, like Operation Flashpoint, Delta Force, or Deus Ex. We'll see how these games stand to the test of time!

Aside from reviews, I plan to write a number of rants on subjects ranging from why some games are most definitely art, why Ocarina of Time is nowhere near the best Zelda game ever, and certainly not the best game ever (a spot reserved for Half-Life 2), why shmups deserve a lot more recognition among the mainstream press, and why gaming is headed into a general decline from the glorious days of old. Look for those on an ongoing basis.