6 classic video games… that I never played

There’s always this weird miasma of assumption that floats about in pop culture — that everyone’s seen Star Wars, everyone’s read Harry Potter, everyone’s played Super Mario Bros., and so on. But it’s not true, is it? Each one of us harbors the deep, dark secret of shame over the fact that we haven’t consumed some form of wildly popular media that many others have. And we get very weird looks and gasps of disbelief when we admit it.

So here are my admissions: Six classic video games that I never played.

1. Halo (any of them)

My interest in first-person shooters lived for a period of time that started with Wolfenstein 3D and ended somewhere late in the 90s. After that, I couldn’t be bothered with most of them (although I picked up the occasional title from time to time). I never really played console FPS titles either past the N64. So for me, at least, it isn’t a shocker that I missed out on the whole Halo phenom.

That’s fine. It’s not a series that held any interest to me, for its story or gameplay. I guess I can relate to those who hold it up for its multiplayer fun in the way that I used to for GoldenEye and Doom, but I don’t see why it’s had this cultural hold over fratboys and the mainstream. It’s a generic space armor marine fighting endless waves of bad guys.

2. Pokémon (any of them)

Age had a lot to do with this entry. By the time that Pokémon entered the scene in the mid/late 90s, I was already too old for the game’s tone and mechanics. It’s weird to look back and see that we’ve seen two decades of endless sequels and entire generations that have grown up firmly entrenched in the thought that these are masterpieces and pop culture staples. The future of nostalgia is going to be weird.

3. Asheron’s Call

Wanted to get at least one MMO on this list. It was actually hard to point to one big-name title that I haven’t at least loaded up and logged into once in my career (such as my very, very few sessions with EverQuest and Ultima Online). But no, I have never seen what Asheron’s Call is like from the inside. I should probably get on that before it’s too late.

4. Final Fantasy VI

Gasp! Yes! The horror! One of the best Final Fantasy titles (or THE best depending on how you sit on that argument) totally escaped me. Blame Chrono Trigger in part for consuming my SNES RPG years, but also my ignorance that this existed. I thought about getting the mobile version (and still might) but saw that they did weird things to the graphics and decided against it.

5. Minecraft

Now I’ve watched people play this and I’m pretty familiar with it, but something about the whole Minecraft saga eluded me. I think if I was a kid I would have been captivated by this, but now that I have MMOs? I don’t want to fart around with blocky sheep and creepers.

6. Super Mario 64

I did have a Nintendo 64 for a while, but it was mostly for Perfect Dark and GoldenEye. I wasn’t really sold on the whole 3D element of the system, which I felt took the beautiful, sharp sprites of the SNES and turned into ugly polygon city. So I never jumped into Mario 64, which seems like a title just about everyone I’ve talked to has played and raves about. I like my Mario jumping in 2D, thank you very much.

RIFT: Instant adventures in babysitting

I’m still settling into my new RIFT mage, bit by bit. With Fae Yule coming up this week, I’m making sure to stock up on minion currency for the anticipated minion missions (in this, I can thank my old self for having dutifully socked away a ton of extra currency in the event of such a promotion).

Baby was magnanimous enough to allow me to run a few instant adventures last evening as well. While IAs can be frantic — run run to the next area, try to tag mobs and items before everyone else does, rinse and repeat — they’re also a weird sort of relaxing. Just chained together missions that offer up variety and a sight-seeing tour of different zones.

I think that’s perhaps what I like best about IAs: They keep the scenery changing and interesting. I’m revisiting old favorite zones and getting to sample a few high-level ones without feeling as though I’m overstaying my welcome.

There’s apparently a higher level of IA difficulty that was added since I played last. I haven’t worked up the courage to try it yet — my gear and levels need to improve somewhat before I’ll feel comfortable taking on a higher challenge. But still, it’s pretty cool that it’s there to keep things interesting.

I did whack out a few levels, going from 13 to 16, all while killing werewolves, torching houses, putting down beefy constructs, and defending a wardstone. The necromancer build is really simple, so I spend battles slapping DoTs on anything near while letting my skeleton rogue run wild.

I am transferring servers to go back to Faeblight. That way I can consolidate my wealth and perhaps check out what guilds are active on that shard these days. The guild finder is nice and all, but sometimes I wish it had more information to help you decide which guilds are worth applying to.

I didn’t get as much gaming time as I’d like because I was running a benchmark on my system to try to nail down why it seems that MMOs are actually running slower on this machine than my old one. I’ve noticed that for a while now and it’s frustrating — my frame rate is way down in most games despite having a somewhat decent graphics card and the latest drivers. I have a suspicion I didn’t quite put this all together the right way but I don’t know how to track down what I did wrong. The benchmark test looked fine in most respects, although the CPU was a little below par. I am hoping for a new graphics card for Christmas, so that might help out somewhat.

SNES Monday VGM jam

I barely have anything to talk about for MMOs because most of my weekend was spent in a sleep deprivation-induced haze. Did you know that there’s a 4 am and that newborns are completely indifferent to any form of bribery at that hour? I do now.

So instead of sharing some grand adventure or somesuch, I’m going to lay out some sweet SNES jams for your Monday. Love this system — and love the music!

 

Thief: The Dark Project: I am the worst thief ever

(This is part of my journey going checking out Thief: The Dark Project. You can follow the entire series on the Retro Gaming page.)

With the scepter in hand, Garrett tries to go sell it — and finds out that his trusty fence has been put in prison by the Hammerites (one of the key factions of this game). Well, our thief ain’t having any of that, so he immediately creates a plan to bust his fence out of jail by tunneling up through the mines in the mountain below it.

Also, he mentions that the mines are supposedly haunted. Dude, game, don’t be pulling any System Shock 2 scares on me, OK?

Our journey into the mines starts with a refreshing swim through stale water, emerging into the spooky-ooky abandoned mines. Well, not so abandoned, as I soon find out.

From the zombie outbreak and the weird telsa-style equipment here, I guess I’m to infer that someone’s been conducting experiments on the dead? Or something? It’s never explained here — just a lot of zombies and one weird skeleton sitting criss-cross applesauce that throws its skull at me.

The zombies are no joke — one or two hits and I’m toast. To get them back, I dip my water arrows in holy water and am able to make them explode (!) with two shots. The downside of this is that the holy water only lasts for 30 seconds on my arrows, meaning that I either need to keep running back to the room or just forge ahead and trust to luck.

Despite this mission having four levels (mines, factory, prison, barracks), it’s actually really straight-forward and takes me about 20 minutes. I give up on trying to sap the Hammerites from behind — they’re really tricky to sneak up on and keep patrolling like no one’s business. So instead I take to swordplay and learn how to dash in, thwack them on the head, then run back while they swing those ridiculous hammers like croquet mallets. Three hits on the head and they’re down.

Of course, this makes me the Worst Thief Ever. I wince to think of someone watching me play this level, because I snuck through pretty much none of it and the guards had these loud blaring alarms going on all over the place.

I find my fence but wouldn’t you know it, he’s dying. He has time for one last mission objective speech before collapsing, telling me to find some plans in the safe up on the barracks floor.

My strategy here was to run like crazy and hope that no one saw me. I think I only had to contend with one guard on the barracks level, finding the safe within seconds. Inside were the plans to another job, this one to find a horn on the Quintas Estate. It’s like the deadliest scavenger hunt ever!

Thief: The Dark Project: Blackjack! Blackjack!

(This is part of my journey going checking out Thief: The Dark Project. You can follow the entire series on the Retro Gaming page.)

Each of us have types of gameplay that are personal anathema. Jumping puzzles and platforming — while enjoyable in my childhood — are sore points with me now. Another mechanic that I’ve often whined about is stealthing. I’ve just never been into sneaking slowly, avoiding confrontation, and being super-weak. Having a mechanic that’s punishing and resets progress on one mistake ends up sending me over the red line.

So hey, let’s play a stealth game, why not?

I put Thief up as one of four games for readers to vote on for a retro playthrough, not because I was eager to get all stealthy, but because it has a strong reputation and is definitely something different. I have absolutely no history with this game and only played the third title for its first level. But the trilogy has been sitting in my GOG library since I picked them up on sale a year ago, and I hate to have games go to waste. Let’s check it out!

Since I’m really new to this series, I elected to go through the training scenario before starting the game proper. I guess I assumed that this would have been a much more primitive-looking game, so the graphics are a bit of a nice surprise. I mean, not 2015-worthy by any means, but not terrible for 1998. Thief uses shadows a lot, so it’s good that they’re easy to identify here.

The tutorial was pretty easy and fast, all things considered. The stealth mechanics are straight-forward: stay in the dark, don’t run over loud surfaces, try to get behind people if at all possible. Got it.

With that out of the way, it’s time to start on my first mission! I’m Garrett, a former Keeper who somehow became a thief along the way. He lives in a weird steampunk city (named — get ready for it! — The City), a marvelous place full of cutting-edge polygons and Minecraft-esque level design.

Garrett is out to steal a scepter from a poncy lord, and since the front entrance is far too well guarded, he’s got to find a different way in.

The control scheme includes the option to lean and peek around a corner, which is pretty helpful when you don’t want your whole torso package hanging out for guards’ swords to puncture.

I contemplate a Leeroy Jenkins-style attack. I wonder if it’s even possible in this game for someone to fend off three guards at once. Maybe that wold break the first level? I don’t try it.

Instead, I journey down into the sewers, come up behind the guard at the well house, and knock him out with my blackjack. Then comes the fun sub-game of Thief called “corpse and unconscious body removal.” See, you don’t want to just leave people lying around — it’s not as if they’ll just magically disappear and grant you loot. What, you think this is a video game or something?

Another underground jaunt, this one through the well pipes and up into the manor. I then stalk a pair of guards around the hallway, thwacking them into dreamland. Gonna be a run on advil in the morning!

It’s kind of fun to slow down and listen to what the guards are saying. The front set of guards were discussing how bear fights these days are kind of lame, since the mangy beasts have to wear harnesses to make up for the fact that they’re lacking real claws. Even better is Garrett’s constant sarcastic commentary.

Lord Bafford’s manor is a LOT bigger than I expected for a level 1 mission. I ended up backtracking a lot, trying to find new areas while picking up all of the valuable loot I could find. Oh, and taking out every guard in the place. My mind kept shouting, “BLACKJACK!” when I came up behind them and judo-chopped them down to the ground.

I did die once to a trio of guards, but I also got revenge by taking out two archers in a stairwell with a sword and then slicing through a guard as he frantically banged on a gong for help. Little did he know that he was the very last one there…

There was one servant in the kitchen who freaked the heck out when I appeared. No option to negotiate, so it was a blackjack to the face for him.

While the graphics are very… EverQuest 1, shall we say, I have to admit that the sound design is spot-on. There’s this creepy noise that permeates the entirety of the castle which helped to set me on edge. Sneaking about to that had me wound up, jumping at shadows.

Finally, after a half-hour of searching, jackpot — the scepter (which was in the Lord’s “throne” room). Can’t lie, that was a heady rush of accomplishment.

Path of Exile: Clicking in the dark

On my “to try” pile for a while has been Path of Exile. Oddly enough, it was a Guild Wars 2 subreddit thread that convinced me to give it a go. The thread was talking about developer communication and a bunch of folks were extolling the efforts of Grinding Gear Games. In my mind, if a dev team is so good at fostering strong community relations that the players testify about it in foreign lands, then it’s worth checking out.

Path of Exile is a free-to-play MMO/ARPG that took Diablo and said, “Hey, let’s make it a little darker!” And I don’t just mean the actual brightness (although this game isn’t really bursting with color and gamma), but the gore and tone. You start out as an exile that was kicked off a prison ship en route and have to make your way in a hostile land.

I fiddled around with two classes last night — the magic-using Witch and the nimble Ranger. I was speccing the Ranger to be heavy on evasion and to use melee weapons, which was oddly satisfying. But I’ll probably go back to the Witch and work on a summoner build if I can.

Of course, there’s this — Path of Exile’s notorious passive skill tree. If this thing doesn’t make your brain stutter the first time you pull it up, then you’re a better gamer than I. Considering that full respecs don’t exist in this game (or so I heard), choosing a path to pursue can almost be paralyzing.

I briefly browsed through beginner guides, enough to know that this is a fairly deep game with a lot to learn. It’s not exactly in lockstep with Diablo — for instance, there’s no gold, so the only currency I see is trading in gear for consumables. But I did rather enjoy my couple of hours in it. The flask system is pretty neat; you have five flask slots (health, mana, speed were the ones I found) and those flasks fill up as you kill monsters. It makes using health potions less of an issue — I don’t need to horde them, since I can refill them in the next fight anyway. And skills apparently come from gems, which means that any class can equip any gem if you have gear and the prerequisites to socket it.

The one down point was that global chat was less than helpful in doling out advice when I asked. Perhaps they’re sick of newbies asking after several years of operation, but hey, I’m not going to be afraid to put out questions. The inventory is also extremely, extremely limited in size — probably one of the smallest I’ve seen in a Diablo-esque game.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting back in! Going to need to read a few guides first, however.

12 Days of Geekmas #3: Charmed

I’m really surprised that Charmed is on the Geekmas list instead of, say, Buffy. Buffy I could talk about for hours. Charmed, well, I only have a single anecdote and it isn’t really that good.

My sole experience watching this show was back when I first met my wife. At the time she was living with two roommates in California, and one of them was hugely into Charmed. So while we were talking, this roommate came into the living room, plopped down, and put on this weirdly cheesy show.

I told you it wasn’t that good. Sorry.

RIFT: My dream team

Last night saw my grand return to RIFT after many months of absence. It’s been in the works for a while, too, as I’ve had this desire to set up a new character that would only run instant adventures and dungeons as a more casual alternative to questing.

So with the little baby finally — finally — going to sleep (respect game time, son!), I logged on and created Crickety, a quirky mage who’s as much into necromancy as she is into hideous fashion. The wardrobe looks like it got another upgrade since I saw it last, and I really appreciated how it had all of my previous purchases and acquisitions sitting there in the window.

Of course, before I could enjoy running around and showing off my ugly sweater and oven mitts to the world, I had to contend with the avalanche of starter gifts that I’ve somehow accumulated on this account. I don’t know what made RIFT this special, but it is by far the biggest MMO in terms of flooding me with stuff when I roll a new character. I think I had 27 packages in the store and about 20 mail items on top of that — pets, costumes, housing items, boosts, mounts, and the like. I also had my minions to tend to. All in all, it took about a half-hour to get fully set up so I could get going.

I wasn’t anticipating being hit with such a huge dose of the feels when I started playing, but there I was, feel-dosing like crazy. I guess RIFT has become one of those MMOs that’s graduated to the most important games I’ve played. I’d also forgotten how really pretty this game could be.

I built Crickety as a straight-forward summoner who enjoys a DoT or two. Main Necromancy soul with Warlock on the side for another DoT and Elementalist for more pet buffs. With a skeletal knight and my trusty Ducklar at my side, I felt like the dream team had come home to dominate.

My main goal of the night was to get her to level 10 and refamiliarize myself with the game and combat system. Very smooth all around, and by the end of the evening I had made my way to Sanctum to set up shop for my upcoming adventures. I even joined up with a guild for a bit of socialization and started planning my new dimension. Really excited to be back and to play the game a bit of a different way than before. Excelsior!

Battle Bards Episode 63: Warlords of Draenor

With a new World of Warcraft expansion on the horizon, the Battle Bards turn their attention to Warlords of Draenor to see how it stacks up to the rest of the series. The answer? For at least one of the bards, it’s the best WoW soundtrack ever. Crank up the volume and get your Orc on, for it’s time to go on the musical warpath!

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• Episode 63 show page

Episode 63 show notes

• Intro (featuring “Malach” and “Shadowmoon Valley”)
• “Wolf at the Gates”
• “Chieftans Gather”
• “Family”
• “Last Light (A Hero’s Sacrifice)”
• “Man Down”
• “T’s Have It”
• “A Light in the Darkness”
• Which one did we like best?
• Jukebox (featuring “Abadis Forest” from Dust: An Elysian Tail, “Main Theme” from Fallout 4, “EverLand” from Ragnarok Online 2)
• Outro

Listen to episode 63 now!

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• Special thanks to Tesh for the Battle Bards logo!
• Battle Bards is part of The Gaming and Entertainment Network of podcasts

12 Days of Geekmas #2: Mario

It’s hard to deny that Mario was a major background player in my childhood. From the first time that I saw Super Mario Bros. at my friend’s house in 1985, I was hooked on this snappy little platformer (and its power-ups — something that wasn’t exactly standard fare back then). Mario 2 gets a lot of flak these days, but hey, we all played it back in the day and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Princess Peach was the bomb, yo, because of her floaty power.

Mario 3 was not just the centerpiece of the greatest movie of all time (The Wizard) but the game that every one of us wanted to be playing back in 1989. I could still beat the Koopa kids in my sleep, I’m sure. Super Mario Bros. The Movie couldn’t compare in grandeur.

When our family finally got the SNES, Super Mario World became the default title we played by virtue that (a) it was a pretty terrific game and (b) it was packaged in with the console and we didn’t have money for anything else right then. Even today I have a copy of this on my Wii and my retro game console, and it still gets a lot of play. Mario Kart, too, was a total blast and a great party game.

Probably the last Mario title that I played seriously was Super Mario RPG, a surprisingly good mash-up of the Mario universe and Japanese-style RPGs. After that, I drifted away from both Nintendo and Mario — I didn’t play the N64 version that everyone seems to have embedded in their own childhoods and after college the whole Mario thing seemed rather kiddy.

So here’s to the plumber who made for an unlikely hero and a tentpole of Nintendo’s empire. Its-a you, Mario!