My personal Gaming History

From a young age I’ve always had my head glued to a screen, this started when I received my first GameBoy as a Christmas present, which would later be replaced by a GameBoy colour due to a clumsy mistake and it ending up smashed and in a puddle. Mario and Mario 2 were the first games I can remember playing, literally for hours on end. For an incredibly simple game it seemed to have endless replay value. 

I never experienced the NES in all its greatness, my console gaming started with the PlayStation 1. I fell in love with the system after visiting my cousins house where we would all wake up as early as we could before our parents did so we could play as much Tekken and Crash Bandicoot before our parents forced us away from the TV. From here I became a bit of a PlayStation fanboy, games on the system were immense, and my favourite games from this era would have to be Tony Hawks Skateboarding (which imho is now dead and has been replaced by EA’s Skate) destruction Derby and Road Rash (fucking awesome game)

Imo some the best games were released on the PS2. Resident Evil 4 has got to be in my list of top 5 video games (resi 5 was shit!) from start to finish the game is so atmospheric, along the course of the game some of the enemies literally scared me so much, the regenerators give me shudders just thinking about them. However I was disappointed with resi 5 for multiple reasons. My first thought playing the game was that it feels more like an action game compared to the atmosphere of the previous titles. They also removed the backpack, weirdly I loved organising it to fit as much in as possible, moving items around and combining my herbs (the green erb was my favourite)

My PlayStation fanboy days would come to an end… I had discovered PC gaming! So now, apparently, I’m an elitist of the gaming world. well, better than being a console tard. Plus I didn’t wanna spend £425 for the thing! I was convinced into buying Battlefield 2 (One of my first multiplayer games) which was a bad idea as I accidentally spent almost a whole summer playing it. To sum up the game - 64player battles on huge maps, lots of vehicles and massive variety in gameplay. It’s also a good example of games where teamwork is key and I’m a big fan of competitive gaming.

 Another classic from the FPS genre is Counter Strike: Source. Despite the 10 years it’s been out, there are still thousands of populated servers. What’s makes CS:S great is the gameplay, in that it requires skill. But I swear plaything this game stoned is practically wall hacking. Holding down your trigger finger is a sure way to fail. Steam also released an update to bring the game up to modern standards.

http://store.steampowered.com/css

Achievements, ACHEIVMENTS!! Right, im gonna go play some Counter Strike…

And Just for the hell of it, my top 10 games

10 – Medieval 2 Total War
9   - Limbo
8   - Shadow of The Colossus
7   - Fallout 3
6   - Skate
5   - ICO
4   - Resident Evil 4
3   - Battlefield 2
2   - Stuntman
1   - Counter Strike

My Gun (so far)

Thought I’d upload my efforts, and here are some renders of an M1 Garand Rifle I made in 3dsmax. Nothing special compared to other peoples projects on my course, but I like to think it resembles the real thing enough. I don’t have an M1 knocking about my room, but I did manage to find a good website with lots of detailed images which I could use as references.  Obviously though this isn’t finished and there’s still much more that needs doing. I’m well within the poly count limit at the moment so there’s still plenty more detail I can add. However I’m not looking forward to texturing it. I’m not too confident with texturing at the moment, I know how to and I can do it to some extent, but the thing is it always ends up looking shit =?

History of Computer games: Part III 2000

Two Thousand
Sony released their successor to the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2. The console has been extremely successful selling over 146 million units to date. IGN listed  it in the top 3 best consoles of all time. When the console was first released there was little emphasis for online play, however a Network adapter was produced and a new slim line model was announced with online capabilities integrated within the system which was later released in 2004

Two Thousand & One
Nintendo would finally give in to the power of the disk with the release of the GameCube, which compared to their other consoles, didn’t use cartridges. The GameCube was unique as it used mini disks approximately 8cm in diameter, this was to ensure that NGC titles could not be pirated. This did have its disadvantages. Due to their size they could hold a maximum of 1.5 gig, which meant that some games would have to be released on 2 disks.

This year also experienced the release of Microsoft’s Xbox. Available March 2002 in Europe, this was Microsoft’s first venture into the console world. Halo: Combat Evolved, was released with the console as a launch title.Halo revolutionised the way First Person Shooters would be played on consoles. Many FPS titles were difficult to play due to an awkward control system. Halo’s was intuitive using the left stick to strafe and right to look. There are also some gameplay elements such as vehicles and regenerating health that the series introduced, which a lot of games still use today. 

Two Thousand & Two
When the Xbox was launched in 2001, an online service would later be released in summer 2002 which would allow subscribers to download new content, add-ons, updates and play competitively online, assuming you pay the fee for a Gold subscription. It is however the only online gaming service on consoles which charges users a fee to play online. But within 2 months after the launch of Live, over 250,000 people had subscribed, 1 million in July 2004 and over 2 million the following year.

 Two Thousand & Five
The Xbox 360 is Microsoft’s latest console, competing against other current seventh generation machines such as Sony’s PS3 and Nintendo’s Wii. During the 360s launch back in 2005, many technical issues were found with the system, Microsoft experienced many reports concerning the systems reliability and failure rate. Microsoft actually extended the warranty to 3 years to cover hardware issues such as the notorious red ring of death! There were some makeshift ways to temporarily fix this failure, the towel and penny trick are some amusing examples. However in the terms and conditions in the warranty, if an Xbox’s case is removed then it will not be covered, sucks. 

 Two Thousand & Six
The PlayStation 3 is Sony’s third console, first released 11^th November in Japan. The system distinguishes itself apart from the other seventh gen consoles with a wide range of unique features. First off it has a built in blu ray player, and around the time that the first individual players were released, it was actually cheaper to buy a PS3! Compared to Microsoft, Sony offers their online service, PSN for free. Rather than having to pay for a yearly subscription. The system also has vast multimedia capabilities. However compared to the Xbox costing £230, the PS3 was significantly more expensive costing £425 on release. Though having to pay £30 yearly to be able to play online (which imho is a must!) and having to fork out for a wireless adapter can narrow the price gap.  

well im home...

I don't really know why I chose to go home for the weekend but apparently I did. It is however nice to be able to walk on a kitchen floor without your feet sticking to it, make a cup of tea without moving all the dirty cutlery, plates and pans out the way of the tap, or sifting through this dirty washing to find something to clean and eat with. This is the horrendous   state of our kitchen. But don’t worry we do clean it, just weekly before the inspection. 

 Its weird being back in a small town, such a contrast to the massively tall buildings, soundtrack of sirens in the background or mugs driving around in their cars playing music quite redonkulously loud! Sounds like I’m slating Leicester a little bit here. Well im not, this year so far has been amazing. I’m enjoying the course, however in all honesty I am finding the work load difficult to keep up with at times. Trying to balance a social life and a degree is proving hard!