Video Games on the Brain

I love playing video games, always have--since the first NES system came out. I never had much exposure to earlier systems, but my Uncle (only 13-14 years my senior) bought the NES system and the Super Mario Bros. game system. It lived at my grandmother's house during my elementary school years, and my brother and I would play whenever we got to visit. We begged my parents for one, and eventually they caved, and thus began my addiction. I won't go into the long and boring history of what games I played, liked, or my favorite systems growing up. I will say that as I've gotten older there are certain types of games that appeal to me more than others: I like RPGs and strategy games. I like games that require less hand-eye coordination. I prefer games with fantasy themes over modern or sci-fi.

The game that kicked off this blog topic was Heroes of Might and Magic V. I was playing on the internet last night, and I saw an ad for one of the many browser based strategy/war games. Suddenly I really wanted to play a game like that. However, I learned after a couple of rounds of Travian that browser games are bad for me, so my solution was to pull out the giant CD case of old PC games. I wanted to play one of the Heroes games--we have the first 5; I'm pretty sure there's a 6 out, but it was released during the Dark Ages of my gaming life (i.e., husband was in grad school which does not pay enough to support a gaming habit). I randomly pulled out 5 (i.e., it was the first one I found), stuck it in and spent most of last night playing it--instead of sleeping, which I am now regretting. XD It was fun though; I started a new profile and campaign--ran through the first couple of missions for the side that gets angels, griffons, and your standard medieval European selection. Doing this opened up a whole can of worms though; flipping through our PC game collection reminded me of all the fun awesome games we have that I either haven't played or haven't finished but would really like to look back on.

One game in particular that I saw last night was Baldur's Gate. I remember this being a really excellent game. I never finished it (do we see a theme here?). This is one of those instances where life and other distractions happened until I forgot I was even playing this game. Maybe I'll pick Baldur's Gate up again at some point and give it another try. I'm already trying to play through 3 games right now, 4 if I want to include a run through the Heroes 5 campaign settings, so I should probably try to put a stop to the "I didn't finish it" trend before starting any other new ones. It is fun to dig up old games again, even if just for the sake of nostalgia.