Old Friends

I woke up this morning and went down to breakfast.  The potatoes had already been fried and the question of “who wants eggs?” was floating around.  I passed, got some potatoes and orange juice, and quickly went on my way.  I turned on my computer, not knowing what I intended to do, so I started by downloading the newest version of FireFox that has been accosting me for the past two days.

I then had the sudden urge to play Dungeon Siege–a game that I have never made it through and typically uninstalled from my computer after a weekend jaunt with it.  I immediately began looking for it in the typical places; a box here full of old games, a draw their.  Through my searches, I found games like Black and White, Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, Rollercoaster Tycoon and several others.  I felt my heart reach out to them, longing to play them once again, because here’s the deal.  Recently, and I mean in the past four or five years, I haven’t found a game that is really worth playing.  Sure I have invested several hundred hours into Counter Strike Source, but that doesn’t have the plot line that Black and White had.  When you are done with CS:S, you can just walk away feeling satisfied for the moment.  In some games you itch until you can build the next city, destroy the next wizard or achieve the next level.

I have found nothing in recent years that has held my attention as long as some of the older games.  Maybe this is because games are becoming more sophisticated, but less at the same time.  Instead of the user having to be smart, games like Guild Wars guide you through it with a group of people.  The combined intelligence greatly overpowers the game’s simple track of play.  Games like CS:S you point, click, and shoot.  Sure you have to work on a team, but there really is no challenge to the game play.  Atleast in B&W and NWN you had puzzles, challenges, AI that was intelligent, replay value because their were multiple different paths that you could take.  It was a lot better.

So I beg the video game producers to come out with a game that you didn’t just slap together, something that isn’t a rip off of a former title like the first release of NWN2.  Something that we don’t have to pay for monthly like WoW.  Basically make Guild Wars with NWN interface, gameplay, and leveling styles, or better yet; give NWN a really nice face lift and better multiplayer server capabilities.  Bring back my old friends or create new ones.  Here’s hoping that Lineage 3 doesn’t suck and that I will finally be over some of the better games by 2011 to be suckered in.  Hell, I might even pay to play.