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Today at Fry’s, the wife and I decided to pick up the Diablo II Battle Chest. I had been talking about the game forever and I she wanted to try it. I promised I would play with her, so we bought two copies and headed home.

We quickly installed the game on our main desktops and started playing around. Dawn was of course quickly smitten with the game and we played for awhile. I decided on a whim to try something funny. Patch the game to not require a CD, pop the files on my thumb drive, copy them over, and run Diablo II on our Windows 7 powered netbooks. Thankfully Blizzard has a habit of not cramming your registry with junk, so after a quick re-run of the video card detection program, Diablo II was running just dandy on our little netbooks.

The game plays quite well actually, as we speak I am running the server for Dawn’s game in the background in windowed mode while I write up this little blog. It’s hard to believe these little buggers can play this game! It’s also quite cute to see our little MSI Wind laptops out while we are laying in bed watching TV playing some Diablo II. If you can’t tell, I have some serious nostalgia for this game.

Enjoy!

If you are in the early 30s like me, you have quite a bit of gaming history to draw from. I wasn’t kicking pong, but I did get my start on the good ole’ Atari 2600. From then to now I have covered the 2600, Commodore 64/128, Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Dreamcast, Super Nintendo & Nintendo 64, Sony Playstation 1, 2 & 3, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, PC, Sega Game Gear, Nintendo Gameboy, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Since I began gaming I have owned a whopping 19 different game systems. That’s incredible if you think about it.

I truly love some of the current gen games. I was captivated by the Rainbow 6 series, loved Fallout 3, Lost Planet was great, Uncharted was awesome, you have recently read what I loved about F.E.A.R, but why is it that when I think back to the early days of gaming, I have such fond memories of older games. Not only did I love them, but I feel like the experience of those games is long since lost and not rightfully so.

If I had to think of an ad-hoc list of my top 10 favorite games of all time, I could probably quickly reel off 10 without listing a game made in the last 10 years. Let’s see:

1. Final Fantasy 1 – NES
2. Super Mario Brothers – NES
3. Shadowgate – NES
4. King’s Quest – PC
5. Quest for Glory – PC
6. Conquest of Camelot – PC
7. Dragon Warrior – PC
8. The Legend of Zelda II – NES
9. Eye of the Beholder – PC
10. The 7th Guest – PC

Of those 10 games, other than being lumped together on two systems, have three specific things that I think are missing from today’s games. First, simple game play. No insane button combinations, no ridiculously deep and complex menu systems, just simple control schemes that stay out of the way. Second, Puzzle solving. I don’t mean backtracking through a level to find a key to open some door, I mean pay attention to story, get clues, collect items and solve complex problems. Lastly, quality story.

I am not saying that no new games have these qualities these days. I am just saying that it seems these days the style of game play defines the game more than the game itself. Think about recent trends. Halo, F.E.A.R, Rainbow 6 Vegas 2, Killzone 2, Resistance: Fall of Man..besides some different scenery and story elements, they are all very similar. Not it’s too the point that the developers loosely wrap some story around it and don’t bother to make it complete and coherent. It’s become more common to create a fun multiplayer experience and create just enough story to claim you have a single player mode on the box.

So outside of a compelling story, what else do I find wrong with many games today? They are overly complex. Don’t get me wrong, when I was playing F.E.A.R. 2 last week, I loved the quick access to weapons, grenades, etc. On the other hand, playing Killzone 2 this weekend, the control scheme complexity kept me from getting in, feeling some success and enjoying the game. I love the strategy of making the controls get more complex over time. You start playing and the game adds difficulty as you learn more techniques, win.

I saved my biggest complaint for last. Why are there no good puzzle solving games anymore? The thing that made the Sierra “Quest” games so compelling is that you had to pay attention to the story. You had to gather as much information as possible, and you had an inventory of items you had to figure out how to assemble or use to solve your way through the game. These days puzzle solving is “find x and bring it to me.” I remember a puzzle in Eye of the Beholder where there was a matrix of 9 stone buttons on the floor. You had to collect stones throughout the dungeon and place them on the right buttons to hold them down to get the door to open. A real puzzle to solve!

I am not sure where they went, but I for one miss them. I don’t want them remade as FPS games or adapted to 3D environments, I want the enjoyment to survive into new games.

I will admit to being a humongous fan of F.E.A.R. when it came out. I had just been given an Xbox 360 by my lovely wife for Christmas and made a hasty trip to Best Buy for a half dozen games. F.E.A.R. quickly jumped out in front and became the game that sold me on the Xbox 360 gaming platform. The F.E.A.R Files solidified that experience and when I realized that F.E.A.R. 2 was coming out I was literally counting down the days.

I made a trip to the store to pick up F.E.A.R. 2 just before we started to move and was not only instantly hooked, but I found myself stopping on purpose to make sure that I get the entire experience instead of blowing through it and feeling like it just didn’t last long enough.

As of now I am about half way through and that is plenty of time to give a rave review and explain why this is hands down the best game I have played in a long time.

Graphics

This game is even creepier than the original. It has top notch textures and particle effects, the baddies are modeled in great detail and the environments are rich and immersive. They aren’t quite as interactive as some, but they are still deep and fun to roam around in. The weapons look incredible and I can’t say enough about the lighting. If any game used lighting to set the mood, this game is the gold standard. From lazily moving hanging lamps to missile fire and burning environments, the lighting adds nearly as much to the creep factor as the spectral visions that have incredible timing when it comes to making you grip the controller tightly and jump.

Gameplay

I am playing it on normal settings and it’s challenging enough without being terribly difficult. I don’t think you could make it though without the ability to slow down time though. Health packs seem to be a little more rare than they were in F.E.A.R. and the weapons are dropped at just enough rate to keep you wondering if you are going to run out when you need them most. They probably could have done away with armor and adjusted the health system to compensate because it’s not very obvious what it does and how long it lasts. The health bar itself is actually a little confusing. I also don’t like that when I am full I can’t grab the health shots for later, only the large health packs are collectible.

Sound

This game must have had a top notch horror sound editor. The sounds of the environment play a large part in the vibe you get walking through the different phases. It’s very well done and a full blown firefight will have your adrenaline pumping like you were actually there.

Summary

Buy this game. Well, rent this game at least. If you aren’t into the online options you could probably finish it in a weekend with little trouble. That being said, it will be one of the most fun, creepy and intense weekends you have ever spent on a game console. I can’t recommend this enough. Three thumbs up. (figure that one out)

World of Warcraft is a beast to install alone, patching it up to the latest version is another story. Many people, me included, will make a backup of the World of Warcraft folder to save time installing it on a new machine. This used to work just dandy, but now you might find yourself presented with an error message that says:

Well fear no more, the fix is easy and takes about two seconds. Go into your World of Warcraft folder and double-click repair.exe. When it opens, select reset only. Re-launch World of Warcraft and your patch should go off without a hitch.

So this weekend I decided I wanted a game to play. Somehow I ended up with four. The regular grocery shopping trip to Fred-Meyer ended with a slick PS3 controller charger and Metal Gear Solid 4. Later that same evening Dawn and I “accidently” went to Best Buy and there were quite a few PS3 titles on price-drop. I picked up NBA 2K9, Legendary and Haze for $29, $29 and $39 respectively. On to the reviews:

Metal Gear Solid 4

This game is drop dead gorgeous. The graphics are unbelievable, the game itself is cinematic to say the least and it’s over all impact is just stunning. That being said, I prefer to play my games and Metal Gear Solid 4 is a whole lot of watching. Sometimes it makes you think you are going to play, only to be tossed into yet another cut scene.

Now to be fair I haven’t played it much, but I did get into it enough to know that the control scheme is a little cludgy and the game inturrupts you quite a bit to give you story. Now I like story, but give me a nice beginning cut scene, one at the beginning and end of each level if you have to, then leave me alone.

NBA 2K9

I didn’t think electronic basketball could be this fun again. I remember the old school days of Jordan vs. Bird. This game is unbelievable. The detail and graphics are top notch. The game play is fast and fluid and the animations and character actions are incredible. The voice over talent is your same TV announcers. I played a game of Cleveland vs. Boston, I lost. I didn’t take the time to learn the controls before hand so I am sure I will get better when I figure out the controls.

I can’t recommend this game enough and after seeing the Xbox 360 game in the store today, it looked even better.

Haze

I am probably going to get beat up for this one, but this game feels a whole lot like Halo for PS3. It’ has the same graphic style and controls. I like it quite a bit so far. I just feel like I have been there before.

Legendary

Don’t. No really, just leave it on the shelf, it’s bad.