I bought an original DS a couple of weeks after they were released here in the UK. At launch, I scored copies of Mario 64 and Warioware: Touched. Like many gamers, I didn't know what to expect from the DS but after Nintendo's triumphant 2004 E3 conference I just had to have a piece of that action. I soon fell in love with the system. The games just have a certain charm about them - kind of old-school, a bit retro but at the same time very new. Ninety percent of the time, the touchscreen succeeds in adding a new depth to games which might otherwise be the same-old same-old. More than that, though, the system provides perfect accessibility for gaming on-the-go. Long battery life, the touchscreen, and the hibernating clamshell design make it perfect for those boring trips on the train.
So yeah, I like the DS. A lot. I think it's possibly the best thing to happen in gaming for a while. I like that Nintendo are trying new things. I like that they're trying old things in new ways. I like New Super Mario Brothers.
Oh yes, my NSMB import finally arrived from Canada. I'm going to come clean right here and say that I never owned a NES or SNES, so never got to experience 2D Mario until much later through emulation. My parents didn't let me have a console, we were very much a computer-owning hey-hey-sixteen-kay family. The closest I came to the Mario experience was a damn cool platformer on the Amiga called "Great Giana Sisters". Of course, these days I realise it was a complete ripoff of SMB.
So yeah, New Super Mario Brothers - perfect on the DS. Looks great, feels great. I think the complaints from hardcore fans about the use of 3D objects instead of 2D sprites are completely unnecessary. I'm not so sure about the item management aspect at the moment - I've been trying to unlock the warp cannon on World 1, but need the mini-Mario mushroom to do so. Had I known this back when I finished World 1, it wouldn't have been a problem. Now I actually need a stored mini-mushroom, I can't get one.
Maybe, if I didn't suck so much at platformers it wouldn't be a problem. I'm stuck on World 3, people. World 3. Come back Giana and Maria, all is forgiven!
This weekend I was bored out of my mind, so I decided to sit down and try to finish some PC games. After the frustration of Mario, I was longing for some FPS action so I booted up Quake 4 and attempted to complete it. After about an hour of quick-save, die, quick-load, die, quick-load and so on, I gave up again. I think I was playing it on hard difficulty when I started and now I'm somewhere near the end It's just damn near impossible.
So I booted up Call of Duty 2. I loved the first Call of Duty, but didn't feel the same immediate excitement about the sequel. I'm pretty certain it's down to the opening Russian scenario. It's just pretty tame. Once I blasted my way through and unlocked the British campaign, things started to get interesting, and I managed to play all the way through to the end of the first US campaign. So I guess I eventually got my moneys worth from CoD2, several months after the investment.
That's all I really ask of a game in the end - a few hour's entertainment.
P.S. Why is the word "Suck" censored in the title? What a ridiculous word to censor. Man, stuff like that makes me internet-angry. Perhaps I'll write about over-the-top censorship in gaming in a future blog.
fatboygw Blog
Gaming A.D.D.
by fatboygw on Comments
Gaming in the UK is interesting. Like a lot of things, we're nearly always last to be graced with the latest and greatest games and hardware. The majority of twenty-somethings still view gaming as a nerdy pastime, dabbling only in the latest incarnation of Grand Theft Auto and laughing through a beer-filled maw with their friends as they pick up a hooker for the twelfth time in an evening.
I'm one of a minority in the UK. I lap up all the gaming information I possibly can, checking a long list of gaming sites every day just for some scrap of news that will make my working day go by just that little bit faster. I post on forums, read blogs, watch interviews, stare at screenshots and hope that maybe this time, just this once a game will turn out to be everything I want.
...Then I get home, watch the latest episode of whatever was on TV in the US last night (downloaded on my eight megabit capped to 50GB/month DSL connection) and stop thinking about games. I have a year-old PC, a Gamecube, an original X-Box, a data projector, a DS and a GBA SP. I've been reading about games on and off all day. But I can't be bothered to pick up one of the dozens of recent games that I haven't finished yet. I have gaming A.D.D.
You see, a large portion of my life is about gaming. My work has nothing to do with games - I'm a business software developer. A code monkey. However, I've been gaming since I was five years old. I've built up a gaming community on the Isle of Wight (my lifetime home) from scratch. We now have 300 odd local members. I think they all have gaming A.D.D. too, judging by the quality of posts in our forums and the poor turnout at our tri-yearly LANs. I've sunk a small fortune into gaming over the years.
But am I really a gamer?
I have trouble finishing games these days. I'm always all over the latest releases, feverishly dropping everything to rip open the shrink-wrap and start playing. Some games may hold my interest for a number of evenings, and on those days I'll get home from work and I'll actually be the gamer that I make myself out to be.
Those are good days.
But they never last long. The last game that held my attention for longer than a week was World of Warcraft. I decided that I'd had enough on the very day that I turned down an evening meal with good friends to go do a guild run, which actually never happened. It was then I realised that maybe gaming A.D.D. is a good thing. I like to plunge into something new and exciting but I know that when the excitement dies, I can just stop. I don't need to finish those games anymore. I sunk fifty hours into Oblivion, and I only have the final part of main quest to finish the game. I doubt I'll ever do it.
And I don't care, because I have gaming A.D.D.
And I love it.
I'm one of a minority in the UK. I lap up all the gaming information I possibly can, checking a long list of gaming sites every day just for some scrap of news that will make my working day go by just that little bit faster. I post on forums, read blogs, watch interviews, stare at screenshots and hope that maybe this time, just this once a game will turn out to be everything I want.
...Then I get home, watch the latest episode of whatever was on TV in the US last night (downloaded on my eight megabit capped to 50GB/month DSL connection) and stop thinking about games. I have a year-old PC, a Gamecube, an original X-Box, a data projector, a DS and a GBA SP. I've been reading about games on and off all day. But I can't be bothered to pick up one of the dozens of recent games that I haven't finished yet. I have gaming A.D.D.
You see, a large portion of my life is about gaming. My work has nothing to do with games - I'm a business software developer. A code monkey. However, I've been gaming since I was five years old. I've built up a gaming community on the Isle of Wight (my lifetime home) from scratch. We now have 300 odd local members. I think they all have gaming A.D.D. too, judging by the quality of posts in our forums and the poor turnout at our tri-yearly LANs. I've sunk a small fortune into gaming over the years.
But am I really a gamer?
I have trouble finishing games these days. I'm always all over the latest releases, feverishly dropping everything to rip open the shrink-wrap and start playing. Some games may hold my interest for a number of evenings, and on those days I'll get home from work and I'll actually be the gamer that I make myself out to be.
Those are good days.
But they never last long. The last game that held my attention for longer than a week was World of Warcraft. I decided that I'd had enough on the very day that I turned down an evening meal with good friends to go do a guild run, which actually never happened. It was then I realised that maybe gaming A.D.D. is a good thing. I like to plunge into something new and exciting but I know that when the excitement dies, I can just stop. I don't need to finish those games anymore. I sunk fifty hours into Oblivion, and I only have the final part of main quest to finish the game. I doubt I'll ever do it.
And I don't care, because I have gaming A.D.D.
And I love it.
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