Day 60 - My most hated game: Lula 3D

It serves me right, I suppose. When I played the original Lula: The Sexy Empire I was like 13 or something. The novelty of an "erotic" gamed couple with what seemed to me at the time like decent management mechanics got me to remember it somewhat fondly. So when I saw Lula 3D, my inner horny teenager wanted to give it a twirl and see how it fared. And oh, god, it didn't fare well at all. It had become an "adventure" game, with one-dimensional characters, crappy story, hair-pullingly bad gameplay, not sexy but crass, not funny but vulgar. I'm not a prude; far from it. But this game is so offensive it's not even funny, or rather, it's so unfunny it's offensive. The "novelty" wears off on the intro screen, and I wouldn't replay this if you shoved live coals down my throat. Avoid it like the goddamn plague.

Day 59 - A game I thought I'd like but hated: Myst

Dear Myst,
I get it. You were beautiful at the time. You were smart. Better than smart, you were intelligent. But you weren't clever. If you were, you'd know I couldn't possibly care about 
you, what with you being so detached, so cold, so uninteresting. I wanted to like you, I really did. But you were just pretentious, and it had to end. You called yourself an adventure game. You weren't. You were just a disguised puzzle game. You fooled others, you sold more than a million copies, a major achievement at the time. You got me to take you out for a spin. But you couldn't keep me, you couldn't fool me forever. Dear Myst...to me, you sucked.

Day 58 - Most Annoying Voicover: Gabriel Knight 3 - Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned

I love you, Gabriel Knight. But shut up. Your hillbilly southern-drawl needs to stop raping my ears.

Day 57 - Most Absurd Plot: Red Alert 2

Gamers are used to absurd plots that more often than not don't make sense, we really are. Just look at the majority of Japanese games. But Red Alert 2's time-travelling, Hitler-assassinating, reality-altering parallel dimension takes the cookie. Thankfully, the game is fun, and definitely within the top 5 of best strategy games ever, but still, the plot 
was absolute bonkers.

Day 56 - Most annoying enemy: Murlocs

"Marghghghglllyglglglgllglglglglglgl!"

God, this sound makes me want to commit genocide. It's bad enough murlocks from World of Warcraft come in all variations, with their freaky animation, almost always worthless loot and tendency to pop up everywhere, from vanilla WoW to Cata content, but do they also. Need. To spam. This. Battlecry?

Day 55 - Best shooter: Half-Life 2

Up until the original Half-Life, shooters were an entirely different kind of animal. Linear endeavours, requiring skills but not much thinking, apart from the odd puzzle here and 

there. Characters? What characters? The ones which tried to introduce characters failed to bring forth a properly fleshed-out narrative so much that speaking of "characters" was, in 

fact, a joke. They relied on level design, weapons, enemies, gimmicks. And, don't get me wrong, for the time, it worked.

Then Half-Life came out, with its mute protagonist and their lonely, immense yet claustrophobic environments. With the narrative slowly unfolding, so subtly you might not even notice if you didn't want to. With its plot twists, with its fiendish puzzles. Half-Life was a gem. No shooter after it was not influenced by it. And then, Half-Life 2.

It introduced a narrative much more involving than any shooter before it. It was every inch the shooter we dreamed of, and then some. Stellar level design, actual characters, a great story, adrenaline-packed segments, horrific segments, humour, devilishly clever enemy AI, some of the most satisfying weapons and the gravity gun. All scripted, of course: there was no flexible approach to its gameplay or, in lieu of a better term, cutscenes. It was probably one of the most on-rails, linear shooters of the last decade, but, by god, it was also the best.

Day 54 - Best tactical game: Hidden & Dangerous

The history of gaming is peppered with tactical games, be they good, considered good, or bad. And while I enjoy the good and get co(s)mically frustrated by the bad, the ones considered good are the ones that stick to mind the most. Confession time: I hate Commandos. But Hidden & Dangerous? That one was "legen"- wait for it...


...and then it would crash. See, it was buggy as all hell. Set in WW2, this 3D four-person squad tactical/disguise/stealth shooter was a wonderful game, hard as nails, captivating, involving, thoughtful, but so buggy it wasn't even funny. But, maybe that's why it remains, to this day, the definitive tactical game in my mind.

Day 53 - Best strategy game: Starcraft

Arguably, this spot should by rights belong to one of the Total War games, or a Supreme Commander game, or a C&C game. But not for me. When you make your own list, you can give this spot whenever you damn well please. But for me, Starcraft's completely different but perfectly balanced Terrans, Protoss and Zerg deserve this more than anyone else. Nevermind the captivating lore and story, nevermind the then beautiful visuals, nevermind the awesome sequel which took everything Starcraft was and knocked it up by several notches. The gameplay was...is...just...so...sigh. I don't know how to put it into words. I have not spent more time on a game in my life. Wasted more time, yes. Spent? No. I gave my life for Aiur, and got nothing but satisfaction back. En taro Adun, Starcraft!

Day 52 - Most WTF moment: Prey

That moment in Prey. I mean, seriously?

Day 51 - Best puzzles: Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time

Puzzles are a weird thing, in games. They'll either be piss-poor and extremely easy, or fiendishly hard but unrelated to the rest of the game or the guidelines of common sense. Very few games manage to find the right balance between the two, and usually they're either adventure games or puzzle games, without any false pretense of being something else. Many an adventure game are in reality a disguised abstract puzzle game. One of the few games that does strike the aforementioned balance, though, is Sands of Time. Ignore the bad film conversion of it: This is a great story, with some of the finest puzzles ever. Not because they're hard: they're really not. But you'll never stop yourself, mid-solving, and ask "Why am I doing this?". You know why you're climbing this ledge, you know why you're pulling a lever, you know why you're turning a dial. The solution is always visible and in context and makes sense: it's just out of reach.

Day 50 - Sexiest character: Jeanette from VtM: Bloodlines

Let's make this quite clear: Vampires are sexy. Also, goth/emo girls have more than their fair share of capacity for being sexy. And schoolgirl outfits? Hot damn! So it's no wonder than Jeanette, the bi-sexual vampire from 
Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines, despite her secrets/plot twist/issues, is effortlessly the sexiest videogame character ever. "I can tell you and I are gonna get along just like fire hoses", she says after a couple of exchanges when you first meet her. If you ask her what she means, she K.O.es you with a disarmingly seductive "When we get turned on, there's bound to be flames". Bi-sexual? More like bi-winning. 

Day 49 - Favourite Unrealistic Sim Game: Crimson Skies

This spot was to belong to Wing Commander or possibly 
X-Wing Alliance, as you can probably tell from the previous entrance in this blog. Again, on a whim, I decided on Crimson Skies, Microsoft's chronicle of Nathan Zachary and his Fortune Hunters in a 1930es dieselpunk America. Imagine the setting of early aviation, mixed with Caribbean piracy and you got what Crimson Skies is. Now mix up intense dogfights, tricky flying and loads more, and you got one hell of a game.

Day 48 - Favourite Realistic Sim Game: Descent Freespace 2

I could go for any of F1 1999-2002, Commanche 3, ATF, F-22 Lightning 2, Eurofighter 2000, Falcon 4.0 or AF-22 Raptor, I really could. And probably should, coming to think of it. But I never was that big a fan of realistic sims, not since Wing Commander came in my life. Flying has nothing on dogfights in the void of space. And since Freespace 2, I haven't loved again. An epic campaign, a gameplay as realistic as it possibly could be considering the premise of the game, a distinguished tour of duty worthy grinding for the medals of service, an intensity that will make you grind your teeth. Freespace 2 was never surpassed, and in a way killed the genre: no one dared to try and top it. But on the plus side, there's tons of standalone mods for it, from Battlestar Galactica themes to an unofficial Wing Commander total conversion , aptly named Wing Commander Saga.

Day 47 - Favourite open-world environment: Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas

Right now, there's literally a ton of open-world environment games. Some pretty much empty (the likes of Prototype, Incredible Hulk or Spider-Man games, for example), some full of everything except properly fleshed-out characters (i.e, Bethesda games), MMO worlds (they go without saying, really) and so on and so forth. None more so than the Grand Theft Auto games. And, king among them, is San Andreas. GTA before SA was big, but never quite as big. SA is a huge, sprawling city, complete with suburbs, rural and urban areas, public transportation and chock-full of NPCs, junk food joints, strip clubs, bars, retailers. You literally need hours just to explore the city, nevermind playing the game. There's simply so much to do, you might never get to see it all. GTA IV recognized this much freedom as intimidating and slightly limited it to a smaller, more tightly-packed but more cinematic game. The freedom of SA, though, remains unsurpassed.

Day 46 - Best stealth game: Assassin's Creed

Many games require you to hide. When you're Garret or Sam Fisher, you stay out of sight. When you're Nomad or Alcatraz or even the Predator, you cloak, when you're an Alien you lurk in the shadows, and so on and so forth. When you're 47, you stay disguised. But in Assassin's Creed, you hide in plain sight. You stay out of focus, you mingle with the bystanders, you don't draw attention to yourself. This is, to gaming, a pretty unique way of stealth, and it deserves this spot.

Day 45 - Best game mod: Red Orchestra

Being primarily a PC gamer, I've tried dozens, if not hundreds of mods. I mean, PC gaming, right? Modding is what we do. And while Western Quake 3, The Specialists mod for Half-Life and quite a few others will always hold a special place in my gaming heart of hearts, none has dominated me quite as much as Red Orchestra. An uber-realistic (as far as games go) first person team-based WW2 shooter, Red Orchestra didn't offer crosshairs, medpacks or killing spree bonuses. It only offered death. But, oh, what fun it was. It has since won the "Make Something Unreal" contest and gone commercial, but its best moment, to me, remains the one just before it did.

Day 44 - Scariest game: F.E.A.R.

Many games have succeeded, over the years, to scare the bejeesus out of me. Doom 3, with its shock scares, the Thief series, the Resident Evil games (mostly because of my phobia of the undead), Amnesia, Half-Life 2 and its Ravenholm level...the list is quite long, really. But none scared me more than F.E.A.R. (which stands for First Encounter Assault Recon) and Alma. Contrary to most scary games, the more you play and the more you realize just what Alma is, the more terrified you get. Also: Best. Ending. Ever.

Day 43 - Most hated game based on a comic book: Hellboy-Dogs of the Night/Asylum Seeker

This game, released under two different titles for NA and Europe in 2000, is an example. How do you mess up a character as inherently cool as Hellboy, Cryo? You make a boring adventure game of him that has no adventure in it, and make the character look and sound as repulsive as possible. Best example of how not to do it. Ever.

Day 42 - Favourite game based on a comic book: Marvel Ultimate Alliance

There are, to be fair, quite a few enjoyable games based on comic books, but MUA is, simply, the most fun of the lot. It doesn't have the atmosphere or sense of accomplishment of Batman: Arkham Asylum or the relatively kick-ass freedom of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, but with a story straight out of comic books, beautiful cinematics, a wide choice of unique characters and co-op as the best and recommended way to play it, it is marginally the most fun of the all. Simple, really.

Day 41 - Most hated game based on a film: Ghostbusters 2

Again, this was featured on the piece "Going across mediums" on the parent blog. A "mismatched collection of bad mini-games", as I seem to remember calling it, it doesn't do the film a shred of justice. But it's also mind-numbingly dull and just plain bad.

Day 40 - Favourite game series: Command & Conquer

There are a few series that I really do enjoy, but C&C takes the cookie. With the notable exceptions of Renegade, Generals, C&C4 and maaaaaybe RA3, C&C games are always well-crafted, addictive, hard as nails and instant classics.

Day 39 - Favourite game based on a film: Blade Runner

As you might have read on the parent blog, I don't feel films usually translate well on games and vice versa, so choosing here was slim pickings, to say the least. However, shining gems do exist, even amongst the muck. Blade Runner is one of them. Set almost parallel to the film, but not on the plot of the film per se, was a stroke of genius. Steeped in atmosphere, the game is a shadowy web of lies, deceit, mysteries and identity, the main question in the game being "Is human a term reserved only for those born human?". Just as Blade Runner should be.

Day 38 - Game with the best humour: Monkey Island 2

While, sadly, this time around there's no wit-based swordfights (a feature so memorable it came back in Monkey Island 3), my nostalgia goggles still hold the second iteration as the funniest Monkey Island game. Um...what's that? You want me to expand on that? Um...Look! A three-headed monkey!

Day 37 - Coolest plot twist: KotOR's twist

There's something almost primal about good plot twists that revs me up. Not all films succeed in this, and certainly not all games. But KotOR...sets the bar higher once more. About two thirds of the game in, you're left thinking Knight of the Old Republic is a great RPG set in the Star Wars universe, having you deal with the lingering tension in a republic torn by the Mandalorian wars, the mistrust being born for the Jedi because of Darth Revan and his apprentice Malak and a galaxy in the brink of war. And then,

*WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD!*

right after your (possibly) favourite companion sacrifices themselves so you might flee, you learn the bitter truth: You are Revan. It was you who's to blame for all of this. It is you that corrupted Malak, who's given Malak the means to destroy the galaxy. The Jedi captured you, erased your mind. Depending on how you see it, they either gave you a chance to make amends or behaved like amoral republic lapdogs. How you choose to deal with it is your choice. But there's no escaping the fact the Big Bad is you. This is where KotOR stops being a great game and climbs to the lofty heights of legendary gaming moments.

Day 36 - Coolest Unit: Chrono Legionnaire

Hell, loads of units could have just as easily gotten this spot: The Protoss Carrier, the Terran Ghost, the Total Annihilation Commander, the Red Alert Tesla Trooper, the C&C Mammoth Tank. But the Chrono Legionnaire takes this spot simply for the absurdity of it: he teleports across the battlefield and he deletes stuff from existence. Seriously. In the first mission you get them, you're facing off a huge Soviet base, getting pelted by constant nuclear missiles. It might just be possible to beat this mission with conventional means, if it wasn't for those pesky missiles annihilating your base. I know I never succeeded.

Or, you train a couple of these guys, 'port them deep in the undefended heart of the Soviet base and erase their nuclear silos and power plants out of existence. You just won. Mental!

Day 35 - Coolest character: Coolest character

Dante, son of Sparda from the Devil May Cry games is the epitome of cool. Messy hair? Check. Trenchcoat? Check. Huge sword? Check. Akimbo pistols? Check. Mad skills? Check. Cracking wise? Check. Dark past? Check. Unapologetic badassery? Check. Of course, this only goes for this Dante, not the emo excuse for pumping up Tameem Antoniades' ego that is the new Dante.

Day 34 - My favourite character gimmick: HK-47's speech

Disclaimer: A character gimmick, as I see it, is any special trait, ability, pet peeve or characteristic a character possesses that sets him or her apart from others within the game world.  Clarification: This. This is the way the Assassin droid HK-47 from KotOR speaks. Sarcasm: Setting the tone of his responses with a word rather than just tone of voice makes him all the more lovable. Afterthought: which makes it all the sweeter, considering he's a sociopath, even by assassin droid standards.

Day 33 - Favourite level: The Craddle

Thief 3's Shalebridge Cradle is the one sole level that springs to mind. Sure, there's other good levels out there, but none more memorable as a singular level as this. An almost living level, the Craddle doesn't want you there almost as much as you don't want to be in there as well. If you've played Thief 3, you know what I mean. If you haven't, you really, really should.

Day 32 - Favourite gameplay gimmick: Bullet Time

 Max Payne, Max Payne 2, Enter The Matrix, Path of Neo, Stranglehold, Call of Juarez, Gun...Bullet time might just be my favorite gameplay gimmick ever. Not necessarily the diving through the air shooting variety, but the world slowing down, gaining you precious miliseconds of reaction time that can make the difference between failure or success...that's what gaming's for.

Day 31 - Favourite Weapon: Lightsaber

A simple, elegant weapon for a more civilized time. The picture pretty much sums up my feelings about it. Be it in KotOR, Jedi Outcast or Force Unleashed, this weapon is the penultimate badass accessory. Screw gravity guns, shrink rays, shotguns, crowbars, Holy Avengers, katanas, akimbo pistols and the like.

Day 30 - My favourite game of all time: Baldur's Gate 2

I really don't think this is a surprise, considering my previous choices for this list. The reasons can be found in the previous categories, and I really won't repeat them. The ones who've played it already know them, anyway.

Day 29: A game I thought I wouldn't like but ended up loving: Tomb Raider Legend

There's almost literally a ton of games I thought I wouldn't like but ended up loving, and let me tell you, it was a bitch to choose from them. Tron 2.0, Icewind Dale 2, F.E.A.R., AvP, Counter-Strike Source, hell, I even approached Baldur's Gate with a wary disposition back in the day. Legend gets the seat simply for my abysmal hate of the previous Tomb Raiders. Yeah, they sold like a gazillion copies, but I found them to be pretty bad games, all in all. Lara always felt like a placeholder with boobs for some other character. Not, I'm happy to say, in Legend. It was simple things that did it. More fluid movements made her not to feel like a robot, and the constant rapport on the radio and the snide remarks made her actually have a personality. Couple that with great platforming and a story she actually has personal stakes in, and you got one of the only two Tomb Raider games I've liked so far. Underworld followed the same formula, although it didn't do quite as well. The up and coming reboot, simply named Tomb Raider, like the original, promises to use a completely different, yet still interesting formula. Let's see how that will turn out. 

Day 28 - Favourite game developper: Bioware

 Looking Glass Studios. Bullfrog. Valve. Epic. Rockstar. Origins Systems. Blizzard. Black Isle. They were all contenders, and this was probably the hardest question to answer of them all. Bioware won due to the sheer number of memorable moments they managed to deliver to me on their own.

Day 27 - Most epic scene: Alistair's speech

Many epic scenes to choose from...Tassadar's sacrifice, Kerrigan's redemption, the confrontation of Darth Malak, fighting Breen with nothing but a super gravity gun...however, turn towards Lord of the Rings. Remember Theoden's speech at Pelennor Fields. Remember Aragorn's speech at the Gates of Mordor. Alistair's speech is pretty much the same thing: a bittersweet moment of impending death and destruction among friends and brothers for the fate of the world. Back Anora up, make Alistair abandon you, and she'll deliver it instead, but Alistair's version is pitch and tone-perfect, so much so it makes it worth to at least keep a save game handy so you can access it. "For Ferelden! FOR THE GREY WARDEEEEEEEENS!" (Re)Watch it here:  http://www.youtube.com/wat

ch?v=iyMiSsSfVo4&feature=related

Day 26 - Game with the best voice acting: Dragon Age: Origins

While perfectly aware there's games with better voice acting out there, this is the one that hit me the most. Alistair's "bro-ish" remarks, Morrigan's "bitch with a heart", Leliana's "girl with daddy issues", and so on and so forth.

Day 25 - A game I plan on playing: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Gaming has it better than every other hobby when it comes to anticipation. I've yet to hear of a stamp collector spending endless hours reading previews and obsessing over screenshots of stamps to come. Or a butterfly collector. Or anything, really. And as soon as the game you've been expecting comes out, it immediately and automatically gives its spot to something else. Back on the original list, it was Duke Nukem Forever. With it being released a couple of days ago, and finished scant hours ago, Skyrim takes its place for me. This may sound hypocritical to those who know me, because they know I don't hold the Elder Scrolls games in high regard. Make that Bethesda games. The characters always feel fake to me, hollow, the main story uninteresting, the quests just xp-rewarding chores, the game mechanics clunky. This is just one man's opinion, of course. Morrowind excited me, only to disappoint me. Oblivion excited me, only to rape me while shouting "Stop right there you criminal scum!" when I complained it was being too rough. Skyrim has me excited yet again. Let's just hope it's not going to do something even worse to me when it comes out.

Day 24 - Favourite classic game: Arkanoid

People love their Tetris, their Galaga and their Space Invaders. Me, I love my Arkanoid. A simple, yet addictive mechanic of a game, coupled with my almost OCD gaming style, makes sure it'll always keep a spot in my heart.

Day 23 - Game I think had the best graphics or art style: Prince of Persia (2009)

 While it pains me to say it, this being an insult to all other Prince of Persia games, the 2009 game did have the best arty cell-chaded graphics this side of the century. Such a shame the gameplay was too irritating to actually enjoy that. Close to that might be the latest, console-only Naruto game, but as I've only seen screenshots/videos of it I can't say for certain.

Day 22 - A game sequel which disappointed me: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords

I recognise how some things that work in a game might just end up working as if by chance, so I very rarely get disappointed by game sequels, cause my expectations are never that high to begin with. But this is now, and it's all because of KotOR 2. 

The saga was done, but instead of somehow following up on it, they chose to go with a completely new storyline. Which would be perfectly ok, if the storyline was good. The characters felt purposefully shady, the dialogue forced, the story ridiculously convoluted just for the sake of it, all of these making the game feel rushed out, trying to cash in what worked in the previous game without backing it up in any real way shape or form. The game mechanics largely remained unaffected, on the other hand, making this a mostly soulless, empty husk of the original. I don't care if there's been all kinds of fan projects to unlock the unfinished content of the game, included in the discs but unavailable because it wasn't ready. It wasn't included in the original release, and it only makes the game feel even more rushed, even in retrospect. 

Day 21 - Game with the best story: The Baldur's Gate Saga

How do you define a great story, really? If it was just the lore, then Forgotten Realms games and Star Wars games should be the no-brainers here, since they have all kinds of books, films, literature and the fanbase to back them up. If it's the validity and resonance of the world, then Dragon Age, with its very real issues of politics and racism should take the crown. If it's realism it should be Fallout, scale it should be the Elder Scrolls games, character depth Torment and so on and so forth. I tried to judge a game by all of these factors combined, and none possess a world more real, more filled with great characters, none touch contemporary moral issues better or have a wondrous quest, full of discovery and twists, truly an epic talke of soul-searching and aventure that affects the world more so than Baldur's Gate. If you haven't played it yet, you're missing out on one of the greatest RPGs in the history of computer gaming, maybe even the greatest.

Day 20 - Favourite genre: Role Playing games

While being the rare breed of gamer who enjoys various genres almost equally (RPGs, Adventure, Strategy and FPS games dominant among them), my heart will always belong to a good singleplayer RPG. And while my original screenshot was from an MMO, it showed my favorite aspect of RPGs as well as this does, an aspect shared by MMOs: the character creation. The MMO won't typically give you the chance to roleplay that character and bring him to life, but the singleplayer RPG will. Baldur's Gate, KotOR , Fable, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Icewind Dale 2, Fallout, Planescape Torment, Ultima, heck, even Elder Scrolls, I salute you.

Day 19 - A game setting I wish I lived in: Freedom Force

 I thought real long and hard (giggity) about this particular one, but to no avail. WoW, with its scenic vistas and flying mounts was the contender up until I decided to take a look at my collection for ideas, and then it hit me. Freedom Force's Silver Age-type comic book world was were I wanted to be (and be a superhero, natch).

Day 18 - Favourite Protagonist

Sam Fisher was going to be here. He defeated a dozen armed guards, snuck past a dozen more, hacked 20 doors, beat down and interrogated Shephard, Hawke and the Prince of Persia, wit-dueled Guybrush Treepwood and Manny Calavera, beat Duke in his SATs, and poker-faced the crap out of Max Payne. He performed acrobatics worthy of the world's best trapeze artist to get here. However, he did all that only to be greeted by a crowbar in the face. What makes Gordon great is the fact he's just a smart guy, not a hero, although he's forced to become one by circumstance. But I digress; what makes him great is that the "Free man" is tabula rasa. He doesn't speak. He doesn't emote. Hell, you don't even see him. You are him. You get to fill that head of his with your version of his thoughts, making it so much easier to connect with him.

Day 17 - Favourite Antagonist: Sarevok

‎"I will be the last, and you will go first". This one was a toughie. Many great characters duelled it out for this spot, and when I spoke to someone who shall rename nameless (OK, it was my brother) about the finalists, he suggested Jon Irenicus. However, Sarevok did the old one-two on Irenicus and grabbed the top spot. While Irenicus is a tortured soul, someone good and great turned evil by circumstance, Sarevok is, depending on how you play the game, either your polar opposite or someone exactly or almost exactly like you. What makes this special is that you carry the same burden. No matter how you choose to deal with it, you have to deal with it, so it makes it a bit easier to understand why he is the way he is. He doesn't know any better, or he's not going about it smartly enough. Now matter what you do though, you could be Sarevok. Think about it.

Day 16: Game with the best cuscenes: Wing Commander Prophecy

This spot belonged to Devil May Cry 4 on the original list, which a day or two afterwards I regretted, since WCP had completely slipped my mind at the time. Not only does it feature talent such as Thomas F. Wilson (see picture, better known as Biff from the Back to the Future films), Chris Mulkey, pornstar icon Ginger Lynn and Mark Hamill (also known as Luke Skywalker), but they're also so well written they do actually make the whole game feel like an excellent, cheesy but fun interactive sci-fi series, a la Battlestar Galactica. Oh, and the humour, when it appears, has its golden moments.

Day 15 - Screenshot from a game I'm playing right now: Duke Nukem Forever

Nuff said, methinks.

Day 14 - Current or more recent gaming wallpaper: WoW icon collage logo

Although I don't do gaming wallpapers as often as I used to nowadays, what with my aesthetics changing course and me not being 13 anymore, this is the last gaming wallpaper I had, valid up until a couple of months back.

Day 13 - A game I've played more than five times: Plants Vs Zombies

Clocking in over a dozen playthroughs, I honestly can't say I've gotten bored of this. Simple yet elegant, complex yet intuitive, quirky yet deep, it's one step ahead of being indie and one step short of being a full-fledged classic.

Day 12 - A game everyone should play: One chance

One Chance is a rudimentary adventure game, nevertheless, one that displays everything's that good about gaming. If every anti-gaming person could play it, it would change so much of their false perceptions about gaming. It deals with choices, and it teaches a bit about life to hard-core gamers as well: in real life, you get no multiple save slots, no second chances, no rewinds, no mulligans. You only get one chance. Play it for free at http://www.newgrounds.com/

portal/view/555181

 

And I should point out: You only get one playthrough (unless you clear your browser cache, that is).

Day 11 - Gaming system of choice: PC

Granted, I've only ever systematically gamed on a PC, various versions of Game Boys and old Atari consoles, and only recently on X-box 360. But there's simply no comparison. It might be more complex than, say, chucking a disc at an X-box or PS or slapping a cartridge on a SNES, but PC still rules supreme. Not for the fact you get games you couldn't possibly play on another platform, at least not well. Strategy games and FPS on gamepads, really? Not for the fact HD and internet gaming were PC fields years, in some cases decades before consoles got the hang of it. Not for the modding communities which can add weeks or even months to games you already have. Not for the customization you can get, unlimited saves (which admittedly the consoles finally caught on about in some cases). Simply for the nearly unlimited back catalog of gaming choices. Sure, it's a pain getting old games to run properly on new systems, and new games can sometimes make it ball-achingly hard to play them on older PCs, but the choice is right there. Just a tad more complex. PC - The thinking gamer's choice.