Anyway back to the 90’s. Another chance to game for me was always one of my best buddies who lived hundreds of kilometers away from me. But luckily I visited my grandma, who happened to live 5 minutes away from said buddy, every other holiday. So I ended up spending most of grandma holiday time at my buddy’s house playing various, rather cheap and boring games from today’s view, on his dad’s PC. We obviously played various NFS games and I do remember a golf simulation, but the game that stands out the most from that time has to be GTA. Back then GTA was 2D with a bird’s eye view and given our age we spent most of our time just doing random stuff across the city. But it sure was a lot of fun. Age of Empire was also a great experience for me back then.
Next thing you know the century changes and even better just shortly before that happens you start to go to school. Back then it sure was cool to finally attend school, but I remember that spending my time with friends was even color. There are three things, gaming wise, that really marked me and my future view on video games from that time. One thing is that I still remember wanting a N64 badly, you might argue that in the year 2000 a N64 was pretty old, but I had been asking my parents to get me one for a very damn long time. Never worked out, but I ended up getting a PS2 half way through elementary school (only 4 years in Germany btw). 2nd thing was my parents and the fact that we finally got a PC. Luckily for me I learned way faster than my parents, and I ended up understanding the PC way better. I played various Lego games and a lot of NFS (Porsche and Hot Pursuit 2 were sick!) games. I’m fairly sure me playing GTA Vice City also falls in that elementary time, but it could have been later. 3rd thing has to be my buddy and his PS1. I got said PS2 relatively late in my elementary time, so before that we would always play different games on his PS1. Dragonball Z (which we were both huge fans of back then) had quite a few, really well made, PS1 games, one that stood out for me was always Final Bout. We would stay up all night long playing Final Bout again and again. That’s probably why my first PS2 game was Dragonball Z Budokai. What a sick game, the story and the cutscenes were so well done, I played through it way too many times.
Now I could go one about me playing more NFS, more GTA and more PS2 stuff in the first few years of the 21st century, but let’s fast forward to the important stuff, 2003/2004ish. As I said we got that PC, and back then our internet was so fucking slow that the way I picked up games was by saving up my money, went to town and just checked out the games they had in store. I was a huge Star Wars fan, and I and a few friends would rewatch all movies (back then I, IV, V, VI and the newly released Episode II) all the time. So I saw this game called “Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic”. It looked sick, and from what I made up based on the backside it was everything I expected from a Star Wars game. Long story short, I bought it, got home, installed it (no fucking cd key back then, no online registration ;)) and guess what? PC can’t run it. Next thing you know I ended up reading the manual countless times, saving up all my money and a few months later I got myself my first own PC. Powerful enough to run Kotor and every other game I’d like to play. My first play through was magical, I got sucked into this world 4k years before the movies I grew up with, and I spent every single second of free time playing. The second I was done I played through it again, and again and again…
Actually I liked the game so much that I still play through it today, on a yearly base. Funny enough I’m playing through it atm, I might end up posting a review once I’m done. Or atleast a small report about all the trouble I went through to get the damn game running on Windows 7.
Anyway back to gaming. Another series that ended up amazing me so much that I still play it today is Halo. I picked up the first Halo game in 04/05 for the PC after a school friend told me about it. It was available for 10 bucks, and you really can’t go wrong with a 10 euro game. When I started playing it felt like Kotor all over again, I spent most of my free time playing, and played through the campaign multiple times. I was so amazed that I immediately searched for a 2nd game, and hey Halo 2 had just been released for the Xbox. Fortunately I had picked up a Xbox earlier in 04 to play the 2nd Kotor game (had some major PC issues at the time and the xbox had a lot of interesting star wars games) so I ended up buying Halo 2 only a few weeks after I finished my first Legendary Playthrough of Halo 1. Halo 2 would introduce me to Halo’s Multiplayer side. Even though my internet was beyond shitty I would spent hours playing 1 vs 1’s, 2 on 2’s and FFA’s with my local buddies. The concept of MP that I found in Halo amazed me, and when the H2 MP Pack released I picked it up, together with a Xbox Copy of the original halo:
A 2nd copy of H2 can never hurt ;)
I was literally amazed by the new maps, the major balance upgrade that made the game even more awesome and it felt great playing H1 MP. Early in 06 one of my biggest dreams back then would come true when we finally got a decent internet connection. That allowed me to go online with my PC copy of H1 and I was introduced to games like CS 1.6. I wouldn’t be able to play via Xbox Life until Christmas 06 when I got my 360, which allowed me to use XBL without a credit card. So what do you do when you can’t use XBL? Right you download Xbox Connect. So I spent 06 playing H1 PC, CS and H2 via XBC. Great experience and it really shaped my idea of competitive Multiplayer and my love for competing and my drive to become better and better.
When the 360 and XBL rolled around it changed everything. The game got a lot less laggy, I would always find a game that featured something I wanted to play and I meet so many great people via XBL. I spent most of 07 playing H2, rocking the H3 Beta and looking forward to H3. Though H3 never felt like H2 for my, and I never enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed H2, I still had a blast playing, met many amazing people and had a blast. I quit H3 in mid-late 09. Afterwards I played a lot of Shadowrun, H2 and H2 Vista. ODST’s MP Disc revived H3 for a few months, but when 2010 came around I had to say goodbye to my favorite XBL game of all time: Halo 2. It was tough but the last week was literally amazing, I spent every day playing MLG customs and FFAs, played some community gametypes and said goodbye to the game I never stopped playing. 2010 brought Bioshock 2, even more Shadowrun, me missing h2 and a lot of h2 vista. The Halo Reach Beta felt great and again I was looking forward to a new Halo. Got disappointed again, and I barely play Reach atm.
Now this was a really brief view on my gaming history, I could have written 200 pages on any of the mentioned games, and my view on the course of the series, and chances are I might pick some of these games up on further articles. There are obviously other games I played, like FF VII (which I’m currently playing on my new Notebook), the original .hack Series, which I have been playing for a few years now (currently sitting at 60 hours and at the beginning of the 3rd game), multiple Star Wars games and a lot more console games I picked up over the years. Starcraft 2 is a honorable mention, too and as everyone else I tried WoW once. Another important series was the Prince of Persia the sands of time trilogie. Again I might come back to some of these games, but right now I just wanted to give a brief overview.
Thanks for reading, felt great to remember some of the good old days. Next thing is probably a review on the new Notebook I just mentioned.
