Tag: Far Cry

Quick Slants – 2 Apr 2010 Edition

Today’s quick slants:

  • I recently restarted playing Madden NFL 10 on the PS3 at my parents’ house.  It had been many months since the last time I played.  I had forgotten just how fun it is to play video game pro football, and how it is to think as a football coach.
  • That reminds me:  I also need to advance my “Dynasty” on NCAA Football 2010 (I play Stanford) when I return to the PS3.
  • At my apartment, gaming lately consists of FPSes, with Battlefield:  Bad Company 2 being the current favorite.  Hitherto I’d been playing quite a bit of Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare 2.  Same genre of video game, but very different from each other in terms of gameplay and design priorities.  (I’m speaking purely of the single-player campaign, by the way.  I’ve not gone to war online with either game yet, as I think the experience more or less requires you be part of a dedicated team of players.  I don’t have such a team with me, nor do I belong to one, so…)
  • I think CoD:MW2 has a better story (though BF:BC2’s tale is compelling in its own way), but BC2 has the edge when it comes to how using/manipulating the various weapons are concerned.  The simulation of recoil in BC2’s various weaponry is particularly impressive.
  • Speaking of FPSes, here is a list of the ones I’ve played to some appreciable degree:  Far Cry (still one of my favorites); Half Life 2 (someday I want to finish this game; I’ve only really scratched the surface of this classic); Team Fortress 2 (I’m usually everyone’s favorite target, yikes!); Battlefield 2 (like Far Cry, an oldy-but-goody title, albeit not one endowed with a real narrative); Battlefield 2142 (virtually identical to BF2 in terms of not really having a story, but more focused on action on the battlefield); Doom 3; and those venerable classics, the original Doom and Wolfenstein 3-D.

For all my declarations that the racing sim is my favorite video game genre, it appears that FPSes aren’t too far down the depth chart.  Until I had put that list together (I feel that I’ve actually left out a title or two from that list, and I didn’t even add the list of FPSes that I own but haven’t played yet), I didn’t actually realize how many examples of the genre I’ve actually sampled!

No matter what else, though, if a game is fun, and if you get more out of it than thrills and excitement (not from simulated killing, explosions, and destruction, mind you, but in avoiding all that), then it’s worth the investment of your free time.  Believe it or not, thanks to FPSes, I’ve learned quite a bit about combat with firearms, and the things I’ve learned I’ve sometimes incorporated into the fiction I write.

And they said video games are a complete waste of time.