Garrett Blacknova
Codex Troopers
1849
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Posted - 2012.07.19 01:38:00 -
[32] - Quote
Lewis Shinypants wrote:Lucius Gabnar wrote:Currently an inactive account on EVE but I did play for about five years.
I used to be an Xbox gamer but when CCP through their lot in with Sony, I picked up a PS3 for dust.
My only regret is that no one on playstation owns a headset... and there is no Party chat. You've got to turn it on. : P it's silly but. It's true
This. Voice comms is in the options menu, and the default setting is "off" for no good reason I can think of.
Having the option is good. Turning it off by default is incredibly short-sighted.
But back on-topic....
I started out with Arcade machines - Street Fighter and Pac-Man machines at a local dairy (corner store, for those NOT in New Zealand). I soon moved onto PC gaming, but it took a LONG time to talk my parents into owning a PC of their own, so I had to play when visiting family or friends. The first game I played on PC was Civilisation. It was AMAZING, and I was terrible at it. As I grew up, several friends got Amiga systems, and we played games like Populous, and Turrican 2, and Sim City, and many, MANY others. It was in those days I first played Grand Prix Unlimited (that game was AWFUL, but hilarious) and Lotus Turbo Challenge II (best opening theme EVER), and realised that I'm truly and incurably horrible at racing games (I had learned to be competent at Civilisation by this stage, so I no long felt like it was an insurmountable flaw). I also got into a larger variety of PC games, like One Must Fall: 2097, Frontier: Elite II, Sid Meier's Pirates! (I originally played Pirates! Gold) and the Star Control series, all of which I still play now in some form (the PSP remake of Pirates! is amazing. If you own a PSP, it's totally worth getting). I also still play Civilisation (well... Revolution on PS3... so it's not a REAL Civ game)
Even now, I still enjoy games that capture the spirit of those classics. Those games that offer fast-paced action (whether it's hands-on or not), resource management, political intrigue (whether scripted or dynamic), all rolled into a single package - and all of which influence events in the game. I love having games that I can pick up and play for a few minutes of mindless chaos, OR switch to long-term mode and settle down for HOURS of complex and involved planning and strategy. I played Star Wars: Battlefront 2 at a friend's house, and I still hope for BF3, but in the meantime, Elite Squadron on PSP has some surpisingly good expansions on the idea which actually remind me a lot of the interplay with EVE and DUST (the "Conquest" mode has planetary combat, space combat, and the ability to attack the ground map from on board a spaceship or to attack the spaceships with ground-based weapons).
As the years went by, I stopped relying on my parents, and their rapidly-dating PC (although they did occasionally update it). I was working in a burger place though, and didn't have much in the way of disposable income to throw on keeping a gaming rig up do date. As well as having this limitation, I had something many people refer to as a "social life" - in my case, it involved several layers. Gaming was one part of my social life, where I met people in BBS games and later in actual online play (wow, a whole INTERNET full of people!). But I also had LARP (Live Action RolePlay, for those who don't know) - a notoriously expensive hobby. On top of both of those, I sometimes went out drinking with friends, some of whom I knew through my other hobbies, others I met through work. As I did this, I got to know more people, and ended up spending more and more of my money on things that AREN'T gaming. Given the obvious impracticality of keeping a PC up-to-date while doing such expensive things on a Burger King budget, I instead opted for a console. The PS2 was the new thing at this stage, and that's what I got.
I've since moved on, and now also own a PSP, and a PS3. I technically have two PCs, but one was hopelessly obsolete even before I bought it, and the other one was also obsolete, but not as obviously so. My girlfriend, who is also my flatmate, owns a PSP as well, and a DS and a Macbook pro (which I use more often than my own PCs, because it makes them look bad). She also uses both of my consoles, the PS2 for Kingdom Hearts and KH2, and the PS3 for Assassin's Creed and Mini Ninjas.
I've been into gaming for so long, and in so many forms, that I can't actually sum it up in a TL;DR version. I'm not quite 30 yet, but my gaming experience goes back further than I do.
TL;DR version - The reason I got interested in DUST dates back further than I do. It's related to ALL the games I've enjoyed, particularly those with a good blend of fast-paced combat AND complex strategy and planning. It seems like, if CCP do it well, this could be the summation of everything I ever enjoyed in gaming. |