"Important games" just means that I am too lazy to actually commit to a Top 10 or Bottom 10 list, so I'd rather just write about games that are important to me in some way, as I think of them.
I have no idea why I'm doing this; some of these entries (like the very first!) will probably come off as overly-emotional or melodramatic, and I'm not trying to turn this into BlogFAQS, but I'd like to practice my writing, and I like video games, and you guys are about the only audience I have that converges on those two points. Hope you enjoy them.
First writeup incoming.
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What is this, some kind of joke?! Go, then. There are other worlds than these.
Obviously, the game was head and shoulders above its predecessor; the shooting is tighter, the level design is incredible, and the banter is cheesier (in the best way). But that wasn’t even the largest factor for me. Days after my Borderlands misadventure, my condition had significantly worsened. I was pushing a 104-degree fever for several days in a row, and was in the emergency room at least once; I would later be told that I most likely had a strain of swine flu. All in all, I missed over two weeks of school; all I remember about that time, besides sleeping and failing to keep food in my stomach, is Uncharted 2. I played through it in what must have been a state of near delirium. When the fever was at its worst, I was legitimately scared for my life, and watching Drake face death so many times made me, for the first time, take some kind of surreal look at my own mortality (I had a 104-degree fever, cut me some slack). By the time Drake reached the mountains, I was freezing and was playing from underneath a pile of blankets. It was the most immersive experience I’ve ever had, and likely ever will have, with a game.
Uncharted 2 is my gaming comfort food. It’s probably not objectively as good as I give it credit for, and I don’t care in the least. Even today, playing it brings to mind the betrayal I felt from my friends (who, for a multitude of reasons, have changed from “my best friends in the world” to “people I know”), but also reminds me that I’ve got other friends, and family, who care about me enough to see me through two weeks of near-death.
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What is this, some kind of joke?! Go, then. There are other worlds than these.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (with special guest Borderlands)
Uncharted 2 is “the best impulse decision I’ve ever made”
The original Uncharted was one of the few games I cared about on the PS3 (although not as much as MGS4), and when I finally got a chance to play it, it turned out to be a pretty big disappointment (although, again, not as much as MGS4). It wasn’t bad, and in retrospect all the pieces were there for something stellar, even if a few of them were misshapen. I didn’t even know there was a sequel planned until E3 2009, and didn’t particularly care even then; of course, the PlayStation fanboys were praising it as the third coming of Jesus (the original was the second, you see), but other people were starting to notice it too, and to me it was like the entire industry was playing some kind of late April Fool’s joke by hyping the sequel to Uncharted, of all things.
Fall 2009 was about the closest to quitting video games that I’ve ever been. It was my senior year of high school and, by the time my schedule was roughly finalized, I was taking honors classes at my high school, dual-enrolling at the local college, acting as captain of the Varsity Cross-Country team, and serving as Vice-President of my graduating class. The point of all this is that I didn’t have enough time to follow the news about video games I actually cared about, much less Uncharted 2. The only game I was anticipating at the time was Borderlands. Three of my friends and I had spotted the game years prior and had been watching it ever since, already planning on buying it at release and leveling together. As the release date loomed, I started finishing my homework and projects early to try and clear a spot in my schedule, and every other video game, released or upcoming, kind of fell off the radar.
Meanwhile, my Cross-Country training was ramping up. Our team wasn’t hardcore by any means and I’m sure several of you have me beat in this area, but I was running about 7-8 miles a day. I wouldn’t realize until much later that my diet was absolutely not up to this regimen; I had originally started the sport as a way to lose weight, but by this point I had no body fat remaining and I hadn’t really increased my caloric intake. Long story short, this combined with my shaky sleep schedule due to my other responsibilities sent my immune system straight to hell. The day Borderlands was released, I came down with a fever and wasn’t up to driving out and picking up the game. I called up my friends to let them know what was going on and promised to get it as soon as I could (we had been planning this for years, remember). The next day I was still too sick for school, but I dragged myself out of bed long enough to drive to Toys R Us for their Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale (I think Borderlands actually came out a week after this sale ended, and I had picked up some filler game during the sale to exchange for Borderlands). When I got home, I installed the game and waited for my friends to get out of school.
As it turned out, they had already gotten to level 30 without me.
We tried to make it work anyway, but the gap was just too huge, and I couldn’t play for long periods of time because of the fever. They finished the game without me; I was too pissed off to touch it, and still too sick to do much of anything else, so I turned to the other two games I had gotten. The first was Metroid Prime Trilogy, more for posterity than anything else, and the second was just an impulse buy I made to fill out the sale. It was Uncharted 2, and it was the best impulse decision I’ve ever made.
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What is this, some kind of joke?! Go, then. There are other worlds than these.