While I'd love to put some sort of disclaimer about possible suckage of this cblog or something about how I've been a long time lurker and gush about my undying love for dtoid its not quite that simple. Plus, frankly, I cant really be arsed to stop and form some coherent disclaimer style precursor for this, so hey-ho.


One of the games I'm naturally good at and enjoy playing is the L4D games.

Imagine this scene if you will. 11pm and I'm swaddled in a blanket laying in the dark on my bed, my head cocooned by my headphones with only the occasional blundering thuds of my brutish house-mate to disturb my unwinding.
Despite trying to calm my brain down enough to allow me to get an early night, seemingly hundreds of thought are flying through my head. Things from my opinions on work today (third day at new job and I wish to hell they'd give me a minute to catch my breath, before they give me new equipment and routines to learn, still job = money = rent) and what kind of shit headed housemate starts playing his rape metal at half 11 at night when he knows my alarm gets me up at 7am (it wont stop until about.. 1 - 1:30 usually, one nigh- morning when it reached 6am even the neighbours joined in banging on the wall) also an errant, fleeting thought is to post on dtoid.
This last thought is one I'll elaborate on.


I had a bloody good time with BF2142 despite the numerous problems and cock-heads on there

Sometime in 2007 I figured I might as well sign up for an account after realising that.. y'know.. my opinion will totally have a profound effect on peoples thinking so I should start leaving comments if only to enrich peoples lives and make gamers that read my stuff better people. This same logic also caused me to launch into writing a couple of blogs, sometime later (and viewing them in the harsh light of day) I promptly found the hide button and they've remained in hiding ever since.
This didn't however stop me from planning articles I'd love to write in my head and inevitably asking my girlfriend what she thought of them and whether she felt I should post my ideas. She almost always suggested I go ahead with my idea and for some reason said blog idea was never heard of again.

Tonight I thought, fuck it, lets do an intro blog and pack in loads of stuff and hope that of the, likely, 10 people who read it, 5 enjoy it. 50%... that's a good cblog enjoyment rate to hope for and hey, maybe ill get a positive comment left!
So here goes:


This a painting my girlfriend did for an art exam, the small size doesn't do it justice by far. I'm the guy in the top part.

My name is Chris and I've been gaming properly since about 8/9 when we got our first pc and it came bundled with 6 or 7 games. Born in the late 80's in a town called Ipswich in England, it took me 3 days to be born but surprisingly I get on well with my mum, who I'd imagine would bear a grudge against me. You could argue I was even born a lazy little git. (for any possible mums reading this; I obviously understand nothing about how painful birth is but I understand 3 days is pretty long!) For my 6th birthday I got a game boy and a star wars game, plus a mega fun Legend of Zelda: links awakening game that I've kept. As I acquired the occasional extra games my tastes leaned towards adventure games and anything that had an rpg or exploratory aspect to it.
When we got a pc I was 8 or 9 and was fast on my way to becoming a solid gamer with my game tastes forming hot on the heels of such mundane things such as morals and self identity.
The pc came with a bunch of games which included Quake 2, M:DK, Pod and Earthworm Jim among others.
From these my love of sci-fi and adventuring while putting my own flare onto the character was cemented in my mind. Quake 2 taught me to love aliens and having a variety of ways to eviscerate them; while M:DK taught me about humour in a game and quirkiness and paired quite nicely with E.W.J. Pod rounded it all off with having the ability to customise cars to your liking and some un-worldly tracks.


These guys were beyond shit scary when you realise that theres no option for your 9 year old self to evade them.

As I grew I'd like to say my tastes matured with me as I found myself drawn to stories which focused on story and the characters; as opposed to the amount of bloody carnage that could be displayed onscreen at one time. Some of my all time favourite games are still: Deus Ex for its narrative and open ended approach to a single player game, Max Payne for a story that tugged at my heart strings (completed the sequel enough times to unlock the graphic novel ending where Mona lived) and Kotor for teaching me than lesbianism is a brilliant story twist near the end of a game. Fallout deserves a special place for all round awesome, though I wasn't as fond of the third one.


Props to whomever drew this fan art, I am soooo eagerly awaiting Deus Ex: Human Revolution

In my late teens I developed a penchant for games that had a strong sand-boxy, shit-dude-just-go-out-and-explore-the-game-world element.
The undeniable leader of these SDJGOAETGW genre was S.T.A.L.K.E.R and to this day I haven't found a game, past or present, that can beat them for a combination of atmospheric horror and survivalist exploration. The flaws with the games are all forgiven by me (apart from the second game but everyone makes mistakes.) and I could spend countless hours roaming the endless wastes with a suitable mod that made the game tougher to play and longer to acquire enough gear to progress. Many a dreary day outside has been spent sitting inside guiding my little Ukranian buddy through the bowels of Chernobyl NPP or some anomalous field or maybe even just tracking a pack of blind dogs to pick them off from a way away to ensure my safe passage coming back from an expedition to get some precious, precious artefact or other.

When at 20 my girlfriend asked if I wanted to move in with her I didn't really need to think about it. There's 4 of us sharing the house, the other 3 are at the same art uni here which left me with an excess of free time unlike anything I've had before apart from summer holidays, so my consumption of games increased dramatically and I found myself trying more and more game types that I'd usually not consider.... but that may be another story for another time as I just glanced at the time and holy shit its 1am, work in 7 hours.
Hopefully the occasional stranger that stumbles across this will enjoy the story of just another person in this big ol' world. If someone notices this intro post and would like to know the rest of the story then I'll post it. If not, I shall fade once more into the ether and this will likely be hidden, left to digitally molder away until nothing but a faint memory is left.