I used to play Quake 2. No, correction — I used to breathe Quake 2. In case you’re not familiar with Quake 2, it used to be a popular first-person PC game, and playing it online was addictive. It wasn’t uncommon for me to play it around 8 p.m. and suddenly take a break to find out it’s 6 a.m. in the morning. I played it daily for about a year, and I got so good at it, that even my best friends wouldn’t play against me online anymore. They couldn’t even kill me, and they got sick of dying over and over and over again.
This one map I was particularly good on. It was the perfect 1-on-1 map, Q2DM3. I knew all the trick jumps, all the best ways to get from Point A to Point B, and knew exactly where my foe was based on the sounds that I’d hear. In any case, I decided to fire it up tonight and try it out, even though I haven’t played the game in years. I was horrible. I couldn’t perform the trick jumps anymore, I couldn’t use the environment to my advantage, but I did remember what certain sounds meant and could still find out where my foe was at, or what he was about to do. That’s something I won’t forget. It’s just interesting to see how rusty you can get, and how hard it is to regain the skills you once had, even though you remember how to perform those skills.
Ahh, the glory days of gaming. I long to have broadband so I can play online again.
The only game I can pick up and play just as well as I did 4 years ago is Goldeneye 007 for the N64. I *own* at that game. I’m still really good on Super Smash Bros., and pretty good on MarioKart 64, but my Goldeneye skills remain fresh.
I’ve played Goldeneye long ago, but playing a first-person shooter with a gamepad is frustrating. It’s stiff, and very slow-paced. I’m too spoiled using a mouse and a keyboard, which allow much better range of movement and more control. I’m a PC gamer all the way.
I did try Quake 2 but gave up as I couldn’t quite get the co-ordination between mouse and keyboard to work efficiently enough.
Ahh, but once you figure it out, you’ll never want to go back. It’s the best control device for any game ever.
I don’t know about that; the dual-thumbstick controls for Halo on Xbox are superb, and I’ve never had any trouble or frustration with them. Now, one game I *can’t* play on Xbox to my satisfaction is Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Not only is it a kind of betrayal to play that on a console, but mouse and keyboard just work better for that game.
I used to be heavily into Red Alert and was even part of a gaming league. I was the worst one there but I enjoyed every minute of it.
I still reminisce wistfully about my days as king of the land when we would play Marathon for hours after work. After a while, we stopped playing, and then Quake 2 came out. I was slow getting back into it, and WOW did I get walloped. It’s amazing how quickly your mad skillz turn to goop without practice.
Marathon was pretty good, considering it came out for the Mac. Bungie did a great job with it, and now they have Halo which is another masterpiece from them. They’re a great game development studio. I can’t wait for Halo 2.
I still haven’t played Halo – no Xbox, and I haven’t got my hands on the Mac version. I remember being blown away by the clip Bungie showed at Macworld, just before Microsoft bought them out. Amazingly, the actual game play looks like it turned out as good as the demo!
Carmageddon remains as fun now as it was then which is part of the genius of it – easy to play, hard to master, eternally fun. I just wish there was an updated multiplayer version of it that didn’t suck. Sigh.