Anjin Unleashed: February 2007

Thursday, February 22, 2007

I loved, loved, loved Mercenaries for the Xbox. No, I never finished it, but I never finish most games. Which is a rant for another time.

Anyway when Mercenaries 2 was first announced, I was truly disappointed to learn that it was a Playstation 3 exclusive. The height of stupidity, I thought, since I do not own a PS3. What is the point of making a game I want to play for a system I don't own? Stupid people.

I have learned to live with little disappointments like this. The Legend of Zelda has trained me well in that regard.

But today, this news story brought a little light to my cold, dark heart. I can't wait to blow stuff up again.

Having played Guild Wars for as long as I have must tell you something about me. Several things even, depending on how long you've been grinding levels of geek. Heck, all you have to do is read one preview or review to know what the primary draw for most people seems to be: no subscription fees.

Nonetheless, you can only read about how World of Warcraft is like onto the returning messiah in electronic form everyday for a couple years without wondering what all the fuss is about. I'd grown somewhat disillusioned with Guild Wars, I knew I needed something else to feed the game addiction. Plus, I figured twenty dollars to start up an account wouldn't kill me if I played for a month and cancelled my account.

WoW, like any other MMO, gets under the skin like an itch that only gets worse when you scratch it. I tried out a Guest Pass way back in July of 2005, but escaped only slightly scarred since I was still fiending for GW at the time. Heck, I barely made it past Northshire Abbey before I gave up on my fledgling warrior.

The funny thing is that what actually got me to take a second look at World of Warcraft again was the impending release of the Burning Crusade expansion. There is a feeling that expansions are about keeping the current player base happy while reminding potential or lapsed players that the game still exists. In this case, it worked.

I started my account on New Year's Eve while I was waiting for the big ball to drop. I had just spent several days getting sick of City of Heroes and I wanted to start the year with a game I actually wanted to play.

Now I have a level 39 human paladin and a level 24 blood elf mage and I can't stop myself from playing. Take last night for instance. I knew my pally had a couple of quests I could polish off quickly, so I jumped into the game and had at it. After completing the quests, I had a bag full of ore and the itch to work on my blacksmithing. So I took a quick flight to Theramore, the boat to Menethil Harbor, and the another flight to Ironforge to work the Great Forge. While I was there, I realized that level 39 was a great time to work out my PvP and bulk up my honor. See where I'm going with this? That's right: 2 AM.

Guild Wars: Didn't see this one coming, did you? Never before has a game so completely engulfed my life. My enthusiasm for Guild Wars has waned some in the last couple of months, but a solid year and a half of gameplay is nothing to be sneered at. And yes, I will be preordering the next game when it is announced.

Fallout: Maybe the greatest single player role playing game ever created. Fallout was the first game where I felt that I could do just about anything I wanted and it would be considered a valid option. This is the gold standard against which every non-linear game should be measured. It's too bad that the makers of every single sequel utterly failed to understand what made the first game so great.

Master of Orion: While many will point to the Civilization series as the pinnacle of the 4X strategy genre, this is the game that won me over. Master of Orion was the first game that ever made me lose track of time. I still remember staying up late at night, trying to finish "just one more turn", only for my bleary-eyed father to knock on my bedroom door the next morning to ask if I'd slept at all.

Daggerfall: While it has since been overshadowed by future installments in the Elder Scrolls series, Daggerfall was the first game that compelled me to attempt a user modification. I am emphatically not going to link the mod, though it is still out there, but I am proud that I did by bit for the mod movement. Also, on a personal note, this is the game where my character, Kira, first came to life. Poor girl has so many worlds to save.

Master of Magic: Why, oh why (I lament), did Heroes of Might & Magic get all those sequels and not this masterpiece? So, yeah, it took a few patches to get just right. But it was so very right. *sob*

Yes, I know that the user name shows up as Kira Lanfier. That's the name I used for my first blog, Guild Wars Kira and I can't be bothered to do anything about that. Okay?

I think that bullet points are the single most perfect method of conveying random bits of information in a way that implies a connection without ever making those connections explicit. And since I named the blog Bullet Points, you should just assume that you'll be seeing a lot more of them.

I will be using this space to talk about any old thing. But since I'm most likely to be thinking about games and comics, that is what you are most likely to find here.