As a wide-eyed youngster of the age of 9, I had already had a fair bit of experience with video games.

My dad purchased his first PC the year i was born in 1988, as he constantly found himself with time to spare, as at the time he was a draftsman who worked on contract, he bought some games.

The first of which was a adventure game I'm sure you have all heard of, Space Quest III. This was my first experience with a game, at the age of around 4. I tried to play it, but being heavily based in words, it seemed my 4 year old vocabulary, which I'm sure mainly consisted of mummy, daddy and feed me, was simply not up to the task to write such complex phrases as 'place ladder near gap' or 'push hook'. So i often found myself fiddling on paint instead.



The very first game i ever received was called Crystal Caves, it was a 3 part platformer, where the main objective was the get all the crystals. It had a couple of puzzles but nothing too challenging.



And so the years went on, and i continued to dabble in games. So this brings us back to me at the age of 9. In 1997 when I was in year 4 i found two games that would cement my love for gaming.

On some completely unspectacular day in the winter of 1997, I went shopping with my mum. We went into Grace Bros (what Myer used to be called OR a department store, for anyone who has no idea what I'm referring to :D.). Upon reaching the electronics/games section, I set to work looking for something interesting. I found it.



A Sierra game pack, consisting of Lighthouse, Police Quest: Open Season, and the title that really caught my attention, Space Quest VI: The Spinal Frontier. It was EPIC.

Unfortunately I wouldn't get Space Quest working until a year and a half later, the new computer my dad bought was fickle, and took allot of fiddling to get a game to work correctly. I'm not even sure how I eventually got it to work, I just did.

So it was not Space Quest that got me into gaming, it was the combination of one of the aforementioned games Lighthouse and another semi-famous game Broken-Sword: and the shadow of the Templars.

Lighthouse came first, It took my Father and I at least 2-3 months to complete, after many, many sick-days from school and afternoons with my father, sitting in front of the computer screen for hours, trying to figure out how to get the submarine to work properly, or how to acquire a certain part, we finally finished it.



My one regret was that I beat in the afternoon just before my dad got home, but of course I was more than happy to reload from a save point we had made the night before and finish it with him there.

The second game was Broken-Sword, this came only a month after completing Lighthouse (Police Quest was just way too hard back then.). Upon visiting my friends place i found him playing the game, and I was immediately enthralled.



He was stuck on a point in the game, and after 10 or 15 minutes of trying to get my bearings in the game we figured it out. And this began the 'Two heads is better than one' idea. We would share the game for a week at a time, and try to beat the game in parts. Eventually after many weeks of sharing and many phone calls to one another during the week when we were stuck we eventually beat it.

It was a great game, and I still adore the series, The Sleeping Dragon was a bit meh, but The Angel of Death redeemed it.

So these games made me fall in love with gaming, of course many more adventure games ensued. Titles such as Monkey Island, Myst, eventually beating Space Quest and the Police Quest games, S.P.Q.R, and later on the Runaway series.



I still adore Adventure games, and I wish more were made. I'm yet to play Zack and Wiki yet, but thats definitely on my list.

So without my dad i would probably never have gotten involved in games, and dreamt of becoming a games designer. I probably would have ended up as a engineer or something boring (sorry dad :D).

So thank god for my dad and thank god for adventure games!

Today i haven't been able to find anything amazingly interesting to post so i thought i would share my thoughts on the Penny Arcade game.

Now if you have read any of my previous posts you will know that I'm a little slow to get some games. Put simply I "NEED MOAR MONIES!" as ANGELSDONTBURN aptly put it. That said i still like to give my thoughts on a game, especially when I like them, or in this case when I don't!

I kid, I kid, I adore this game, I just felt the intro needed more drama.

I love the art in this game, the comic strip oriented cut-scenes not only remind me of the comic itself, but it also brought back fond memories of Max Payne, they cut-scenes in that game where superb.



The game-play in On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1, is nothing spectacularly different from other games, it merges the interactions of a adventure game/rpg with a rpg battle system. So nothing special here, but it's enjoyable, they haven't tried to re-invent the wheel, they found a good way to approach it and stuck with it, and it works.

I'm a big fan of Penny Arcade and the game uses allot of the same type of humor the comic does, as well as elements from their podcast. In other words, if you don't like their comic, you wont like this.



Obviously this wasn't a huge budget game, and that isn't a huge problem, however there is one aspect that makes the game seem droll and bland.

The lack of music in the cut-scenes is very annoying, especially in the longer ones. I'm not sure why there isn't any music, there is plenty of music in the rest of the game, you can even collect the music in the game so you can listen to it when your at the agency HQ.

Maybe a programmer fucked up.

Maybe they wanted the cut-scenes to be like you were reading one of their comics.

Either way, the game would be better with more music.

With all that said, I enjoy the game immensely, and i recommend it to any fans of the comic!

So today i found two rather salacious little tidbits on the interwebs.

The first.

Now today i decided that i wanted one of the new crimson red and black DS's. I would have bought it too, had my pay-cheque cleared. So the DS dropped back onto the "Bah, whenever i have copious amounts of money floating around, ill buy this" list, which is more or less the equivalent of never, because I'm perpetually poor.

However a discovery today has put it back on the "Holy shit I'd sacrifice my left nut for one of those" list (please no one call me on that!).

A remake of DragonQuest IV called 'DragonQuest: Chapters of the Chosen' is being released via Ubisoft to Australia. This game coupled with the new Square Enix game, that i have forgotten the title of (must watch that episode of Good Game again), I think it was along the lines of "An emo, fashion conscious kid joins forces with anime character to fight teh monstorz", Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (and the rest of the DS classics (Mario Kart, Phoenix Wright etc.) have definitely pushed the DS to number one on the list.

The Second.

Sony has announced that the "Buy a Bravia get a PS3" deal is back on in Australia.

For someone who wants a new TV/Monitor, this could work very well.

Simply put, I want a PS3, I want MGS4, I want a new TV/Monitor. The question is can i justify spending the extra $1300 for the Bravia, thats 16" bigger than the DELL 24" i was considering, and includes a PS3.

I think i can, however i just don't think i will have the money. As this is only available for July.

I think i need a better job.

These figures may be the explanation for my previous blog.


From [Palgn]

These are the sales figures for Australia.

They clearly reveal that Australians have some pretty poor choices in games.

I'm glad to see MGS4 at number 1 on the sales charts overall and on PS3.

However how can Assassins Creed STILL be at number 5?!?! AND OUTSELLING CoD4?
And the PC market is just a Sims2 fest.

Actually this isn't a explanation for no Spore: Creature Creator, this is proof we deserve it!

Come on EA, clearly we are giving you enough of our money! Not to mention our souls!

So the spore creature creator is out. I've played the demo and i liked it, even though i have had very minimal interest in spore.

The creature creator reminded me of Star Wars: Droid Factory (that may not have been the title actually, but it involved building droids), which i enjoyed IMMENSELY as a child.

So perhaps my liking of the creature creator has more to do with a memory then the game itself, that said however, i still want the full version of the creature creator.

And this brings us to the end of the road fellow Australians, for EA, in there ultimate wisdom have decided that, for some ungodly reason, that Australians do not need the creature creator. Nay, it seems that EA has once again, left us in the dark.

This is where a feeling of De Ja Vu creeps into our subconscious, and flashes of Rock Band come before our eyes.

EA must have a strong distaste for Australia for them to do this do us twice!

Their 'Worldwide Release' was a lie, just like the cake (is it a sin to have a little levity in the face of sheer stupidity?). This is not just a EA store screwup, i cant even get the creature creator from direct2drive, any credit cards based in Australia are declined, and anyone whose profile says they live in Australia is also denied. I'm considering getting it via torrent, and i fucking HATE piracy!

Oh why EA do you vex us so? Is it because we don't play your shitty madden games?

Well Done EA, well done.

After hearing that Assassins creed would be delayed SIX DAYS! in Australia due to shipping issues, putting it one day before Mass Effects scheduled release, it seemed that my end of university year plans where, well, rightly screwed!

After finding solace in the fact that i had not yet beaten DOA4 (a fact that i was keen to remedy!) I received a call, at approximately 10am (i was still sleeping). My good friend Mitchell decided it was prudent to inform me that Mass Effect, despite its November 22nd release date, was being released early by Microsoft Australia/EBGames Australia, as a reparation to their assassins creed delay.

I was at the Store in 5 minutes.

After waiting for approximately 4.5 hours for my local EBGames courier to arrive and deliver the holy-grail of all RPG's. I had it, a brand new highly anticipated copy of what could well be the greatest RPG ever created.

So after hours of playing this amazing game, i have deduced that it has lived up to its hype.
The game is gorgeous. The look, the feel, the smell (joking.), the experience, everything has lived up to how i was hoping this game would turn out.

The game is amazing, the cutscenes feel like a movie, the gameplay is perfect, you have control over every aspect of you squad, in a way only a RPG could deliver. And best of all i got it 6 days early :D.

If you don't already have this game/have it ordered please do so. This is truly an amazing experience and could also be one of the last TRUE BioWare games, thanks to the EA takeover.

Go Buy It!!