Gaming Convert

I've never been much of a computer gamer. My most game-filled period was probably around 1993 (aged 7/8) when my brother and I played Ecoquest, Wolfenstein 3D, and some Super Mario Kart ripoff with a squirrel character that we got from a cover disc from one of Dad's magazines. (That one we had to play on our snazzy computer with a CD-ROM drive (ooh!) that Dad had, to no avail, insisted was not to be used for games. Oh well.) Oh, and I played Civilization II a lot about 8 or 9 years ago.

Since then, the only games that have interested me were the three Discworld games (1,2,3), the first two of which were 2D point-and-click puzzle games. Although the dialogue was witty and well-written, and the voice acting was great (with Eric Idle as the protagonist), there was little plot since it was mainly puzzles for the sake of puzzles. And some of them in the first game particularly were incredibly obscure, almost requiring a walkthrough to get through the game. It was mainly the lure of seeing the Discworld characters and locations which captured my interest. At the beginning of this holiday I played the third game, Discworld Noir, which is rather different to the first two and which I had got halfway though three years ago when I should have been revising for A-levels. Ahem. Anyway, I really enjoyed it. Plot. Film noir atmosphere. New characters who both seemed and were 3-dimensional. More great voice acting. Puzzles that contributed to the plot! Matching up clues in your detective's notebook to work out who-dun-what. It all worked really well. And, to my horror, I found that what I wanted was more! More cool adventure games to idle my life away with.

I asked Metafilter for recommendations, and explored Wikipedia to get an idea of what was available. The Longest Journey emerged as a general favourite, so I started with that. (I then got sidetracked by the Blade Runner game when that arrived, but more on that later in the week.) I quite liked it, particularly the enormous variety of landscapes and locations. In retrospect I think I should have turned off the subtitles (instead of reading them and skipping through all the dialogue, very disruptive to immersion in the game) and tried just a little harder before reaching for the walkthrough. In my defence though, endless puzzle-solving isn't really my thing, and I was anxious to move on with the story. However, it didn't stand up nearly as well as the other two games I've since played, in terms of-well, everything really. Script and plot originality and acting and especially graphics. Blade Runner from two years earlier has (IMO) noticeably superior graphics, both in the user-controlled scenes and the cut-scenes. As I said, I liked the wide-reaching plot, but at its base it was a little too "restore the kingdom" for my liking.

Other games I have bought and which are waiting to be played (in chronological order):

• Myst (1993)
• The Dig (1995)
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995)
• Grim Fandango (1998)
• Syberia (2002)
• In Memoriam / Missing (2003)

The best thing about having missed out on games for so long is that all the ones I now want to buy are old (i.e. 1+ year), which makes for cheap purchasing. Dreamfall (The Longest Journey sequel) is on my birthday list and there are at least a dozen more — some of which may even run on XP! — that I am interested in once I've completed the above.

How will I ever pass my degree? ;-)