parker’s desk

I’m not a par­tic­u­larly huge gamer.  I mean I cer­tainly play games, but it isn’t often that I’ll go buy one…I bought Star­craft 2 which just came out, and before that it was Final Fan­tasy XIV.  Before that, uhmmm…Mass Effect 2 prob­a­bly.  Though there was once a day I played Star Wars Galax­ies online reli­giously and even did a few stints in World of War­craft (never did actu­ally hit a sin­gle level cap), the last MMO I played was a trial for Cham­pi­ons Online before real­iz­ing what a crap game it was…seeing that it’s Cryp­tic and my low­er­ing opin­ion of their abil­ity to make games I dared not even touch the Star Trek MMO.  Maybe when it’s free.

I do have my list though, as any self-respecting gamer should have, of those mem­o­rable moments that I’ve come across and cer­tainly hope that maybe…just maybe…I can bring to some­one play­ing a game I work on some day.  Some­thing to make them put down on a list of their own.  And so, in no par­tic­u­lar order I bring you…

THE LIST

–Ninja Gaiden – The orig­i­nal from way back in the NES days, the cin­e­mas blew me away and were so damn reward­ing for the work you were doing in the game.  Learned the word “intu­ition” from that too, heh heh.  Had to ask my Mom what it meant, think I was 8?

–Super Metroid – While that whole game was amaz­ing, the bit that stuck out the most to me was when the lit­tle metroid fella gets shot try­ing to save you from Mother Brain’s attack at the end.  I can still remem­ber grow­ing furi­ous and fight­ing her while grit­ting my teeth and prob­a­bly say­ing some really stu­pid shit talk to the TV.

–Unreal – It’s anti­quated and silly now, but man when that game came out at first the graphic engine was amaz­ing.  Much of that stands out, like mov­ing through that first air duct with the steam and lights and halos from galre, but the mem­o­rable moment goes to the first time I had the shit scared out of me in a game…you’re in a hall­way and all the sud­den the lights start turn­ing off, one-by-one com­ing towards you.  Next thing you know the level is pitch black, and then a strobe light kicks on and you see some big huge dude com­ing after you.  Screamed my head off.

–Final Fan­tasy VII – This has two awards, the ol’ clas­sic.  The first was tak­ing Ariel out on a date…games focus on so much com­bat and bad-assery that expe­ri­enc­ing this rela­tion­ship grow­ing between two char­ac­ters was just amaz­ing.  Which feeds into num­ber two…Ariel get­ting killed by Sephi­roth.  Not unlike that metroid sav­ing Samus, I was freak­ing pissed fight­ing that fight after she’d been killed.

–RLH (Run Like Hell) – This was a sleeper title on the orig­i­nal XBOX, wasn’t par­tic­u­larly great but the mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence comes from the very begin­ning of the game.  The sec­ond the game starts as you famil­iar­ize your­self with the hangar of the derelict space sta­tion, the floor rips open and a mas­sive beast comes rac­ing after you.  And so — as in the name — you must run like hell to live.  It was such a neat & sur­pris­ing “GET OUT OF HERE” moment.  Shame the rest of the game wasn’t as good.

–Ninja Gaiden II (on the XBOX 360)…near the end half of the game, there is a part where you must climb a very long, very steep set of stone stairs lead­ing to the entrance of this tem­ple and a FLOOD of ene­mies are wash­ing down upon you the entire way up.  Lit­er­ally, you must kill hun­dreds of them as you cut your way up, and the expe­ri­ence was bril­liantly designed to just be plain awe­some — I don’t recall it being very dif­fi­cult, I just remem­ber how bad-ass and epic it felt pulling off such a feat like that.  Truly amaz­ing experience.

–Bat­man: Arkham Asy­lum – The com­bat.  Never have I had more fun and wanted to get bet­ter much more than this game, it was cin­e­matic and beau­ti­ful and fun — con­sis­tently chal­leng­ing in the best way pos­si­ble.  I wish to god that I could con­vince LucasArts to make a lightsaber com­bat game directly riffinf off of this fight­ing sys­tem because the per­fectly chore­o­graphed ani­ma­tions would offer play­ers the best look­ing saber fights they’ve ever seen.  Shame it’ll never happen.

–Star­craft II – The newest addi­tion to my list here, while I’m not happy with the mul­ti­player aspect (I think they took the easy way out) sin­gle player was really enhanced and made so much more fun to play.  Most mem­o­rable is play­ing the mis­sion “Out­break” on the hard dif­fi­culty set­ting (not nearly as scary on normal)…during the game’s day­light cycle you must run out­side of your base and destroy infested build­ings har­bor­ing zom­bies, basi­cally.  Then when the sun goes down, and you SEE it going down, you have to race your ass back to base and bunker down to sur­vive through the night as the crea­tures assault you.  That feel­ing of dread when I would see the sun­light leav­ing, and the relief as it rose again will for­ever stay with me.

I’m sure there are plenty more I’ll add later, but that’s it for now!  G’night.

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