My greatest moment in gaming

I've been really busy lately, so I haven't had time to play many games. I'm still training for my half marathon, and I've found that on the long runs my mind quite often wanders to gaming. I got to pondering about games that have actually made me verbalise at the screen while I'm playing, either in anger or joy, and this took me down memory lane to what I would say is my greatest moment in gaming. I'm sure everyone has that one moment that just stands out in their gaming life. I experienced mine while playing EverQuest...

It was around nine or so years ago, and EverQuest was pretty much the only game that I played at the time. It occupied my life for about two years. I think I mentioned in an earlier article just how addicted I was to this game. By the time I experienced my greatest moment, I had been playing the game for about a good seven or eight months. My main character at the time was a High Elf Wizard by the name of Zoidberg Zaius.


That's a screenshot of him above, showing off and casting a spell, and he's also wielding the staff that played a part in my greatest moment. It's called "The Staff Of The Wheel", and the only way to get it is as a result of a quest called Tarton's Wheel. You have to collect ten "rods" from around the world of Norrath. A few of them are relatively easy, some are quite tricky and you need a group to help you get them, and some are really quite hard. I worked on the quest off and on for a few months, getting help where I could from helpful groups and my guildmates ( "The Ancients Of The Realm" ), and when I couldn't get any help I would just try it myself. This led me to venture by myself, naked, into the heart of Lower Guk...

Now, before I go any further I feel I should explain something about old school EverQuest. At the time that I was doing this quest, if you died you would be resurrected without any of your equipment at the nearest town that you bound yourself to, along with losing a hefty chunk of the experience that you had gained ( which would sometimes take many hours to gain back ) and you would then have to go on the dreaded "corpse run" to find your corpse and get all of your gear back All you folks out there who got their introduction to MMORPGs with WOW don't know how easy you have it. EverQuest was hard. It could sometimes be an incredibly punishing and soul destroying game. It pretty much invented "grinding", and yet that addictive grind kept me coming back for more. Okay, back to the story...

So, the reason I had to venture down to Lower Guk - the lair of undead Frogloks and various other nasty creatures - was so I could get the very last rod for this quest. It was located on the floor of a room occupied by this guy:


Yes, "A Reanimated Hand". Note the fancy ring he's wearing, though. At least he's a stylish reanimated hand. As I mentioned earlier, I ventured into Lower Guk without any of my gear just in case things went horribly wrong and I died down there. Doing a corpse run down there by myself would have been impossible, basically. The only other option would have been trying to get someone to drag my corpse to the entrance, but that was always a long shot as to whether or not you could find someone to do it. So, I zoned into Lower Guk, all shivering and frightened, and began sending out zone wide calls for someone to cast Invisibility Versus Undead on me. As a Wizard, I had the standard Invisibility spell, but undead mobs see right through this. As nearly all of the mobs down in Lower Guk were undead, the only thing that could help was IvU. Luckily, a friendly Paladin near the zone entrance kindly cast the spell on me, after which I began to timidly make my way to the Reanimated Hand's lair...

Another thing about old school EverQuest ( I keep saying old school because they eventually did bring in some additional features which made the game ever so slightly more easy, such as your corpse appearing in a celestial graveyard up on the moon of Luclin after it had been left rotting for a week or so which meant you could then recover it from there instead of having to attempt an impossible corpse run ) was that that it didn't have a map. That's right, no handy little map in the upper right corner of the screen that points you in the direction of your next quest item. No, you had to do it the hard way, which for me meant printing out dozens and dozens of maps of all of the zones in Norrath. I had printed out a Lower Guk map before attempting this kamikaze mission to get the rod, so I had a pretty good idea of where I was going. Although it was such a long time ago that I did this, I can still clearly remember every little moment. My heart was pounding the entire time. Every time I came across a mob, I would hold my breath just in case it was one of rare ones who weren't undead down there and would see through my IvU spell. There was also the fear of the Invisibility vs Undead spell just dropping for no reason. This actually happened with some spells, they had a maximum time they could last but sometimes they would just drop off early. Luckily, I made to the base of the Hand's lair without being noticed.

To get up to the Hand, you had to jump into the base of a waterfall and then swim up it to get to the top where the Hand is waiting. Weird, I know, but that's how it was. I dove in and successfully swam to the top. I emerged into his domain, and my Invisibility vs Undead spell promptly disappeared. Honestly, I totally began shitting myself. The hand started hammering away at me, along with a Dar Knight who hangs around in the room also. I had buffed myself up as much as possible before starting the adventure, and the friendly Paladin had also cast some buffs on me along with the Invis spell, but my hit points were rapidly disappearing. I was frantically searching the floor for the rod, but it was almost the same colour as the floor so it was really hard to see. Finally I located it, quickly clicked on it to pick it up, and then cast my Gate spell to take me back to my bind point in the town of Freeport. I didn't have much hope that it would work, because with both of the mobs hitting me there was a high chance that they would interrupt my casting and then I'd be screwed. The few seconds it took to cast the spell seemed to take forever, but amazingly my casting wasn't interrupted and next thing I knew I was back in Freeport! My hit points were almost down to zero, but I had made it! Going back to what I said about games that make you verbalise at the screen, this was definitely a moment where I stood up and was whooping and yelling with joy. It was such an adrenaline buzz.

After this, I made my way up to Everfrost Peaks and handed in my rods to the quest giver. This in itself was quite terrifying, because the quest givers in EverQuest were notorious for just swallowing your quest items for no apparent reason and you got nothing in return. Once again I held my breath when I clicked "Combine" on the quest bag I had been given, but everything worked as it should and I was left with this:

This, undoubtedly, is my greatest moment in gaming. The sense of satisfaction from completing this quest was just incredible, especially soloing The Reanimated Hand rod.

So, how about all of you out there? What would you say your greatest moment has been

New Year, new games

Here's some games that I've been playing in my spare time since my last update ( all the way back in last yearville! Wow! ):

- Resistance: Fall Of Man
I'm about two thirds of the way through the game so far. It's generally pretty good, but there's nothing that really stands out about it. It's just a solid, fun shooter.

- Modern Warfare 2
Only the multiplayer, and I haven't played it for a few weeks now. I go through periods of being very addicted to it, and then not playing it for weeks. I think I'm up to about rank 35 or something so far.

- Flower
Well worth the asking price. A totally fantastic use of the Sixaxis controls, and beautiful visuals and sound make for one of the most unique games that I've ever played.

- Lemmings PS3
A bit average, really. I've only played about a dozen or so levels. I just bought it off the PSN Store because it was on special over the holiday period.

- Dragon Age: Origins
Hmmm. I'm still not sure about this one. I've sunk a good ten hours or so into the game already, but it honestly hasn't really caught my imagination yet. The story so far seems very, very derivative ( it particularly "borrows" a hell of a lot from the Wheel Of Time series of books ), and there's just so much talking. It's a Bioware game, yes, so of course there's a lot of dialogue, but none of it so far has been very interesting and the way in which you choose your dialogue options seems like a step backwards after the brilliance of Mass Effect and it's handy dialogue wheel.
I'm sure I'll come back to the game and carry on with my quest at some stage, but for the time being I can't really be bothered.

- Torchlight
Now, this is more like it. Instant fun RPG action. I've been really loving this game. It's so user friendly, and you can just jump in for ten minutes and have a quick bash around a dungeon and collect some awesome loot. I haven't really played many Diablo style RPGs before this, but this has actually got me looking forward to Diablo III.

- Street Fighter 4
I just bought this off Steam on a whim, because it was so cheap during their holiday sale. I've only played it once so far for about an hour, and it reminded me that I'm not really particularly good at Street Fighter. Still, it sure is pretty to look at.

- Critter Crunch
Another PSN game that I bought. Very, very addictive. Easy to learn, but hard to master, as all good puzzle games should be. The online play is a blast, also, even though I get my ass handed to me most of the time.

Most of my time has been divided between Torchlight and Critter Crunch. I'm training for a half-marathon at the moment, so along with work, training after work and on weekends, and spending quality time with the fiance, I find that the little spare time I have I really just want to play a game that I can enjoy in small bursts.

What games have I got my eyes on next? I played the Bayonetta demo on PS3, and it was bloody awesome. I'll probably wait until I see it on special or can buy it second hand, but I'll definitely get it at some stage. Other than that, I'm very curious about Heavy Rain. I played through most of Fahrenheit ( The Indigo Prophecy to anybody reading this in North America ) and found it a rather fascinating experience. I'm hoping David Cage can actually wrangle a game out of Heavy Rain, but even if it just turns out to be an interactive movie then it's going to be a gorgeous one.
Oh, and I still want to get Brutal Legend at some stage. The demo really impressed me, and I'm sure the full game will be a blast.

Gaming marathons

Going through my box of old games recently, as well as coming across Suikoden like I mentioned in my previous post, I also came across my Playstation Final Fantasy games, numbers VII, VIII and IX. The one that really caught my eye, of course, was Final Fantasy VII.


Ahh, FFVII. This much loved, much derided game will always hold a special place in my heart. I had played RPGs previously, of course, on the Megadrive ( Genesis ); games such as Landstalker, Beyond Oasis, and the Shining Force games. FFVII, however, really opened my eyes to the possibilities of what an RPG could achieve. Since its release, I've recently noticed a bit of shift in critical opinion of the game. I accept that the nostalgia factor of this game is pretty high, but that doesn't stop me from loving it as much as I do.

And so, with this same misty eyed nostalgia making me smile like a loon, I put Disc One in my PS3 and have started up another game of FFVII. I have already played through the game twice back in the day. The first time I missed out a lot of the side quests, so I played through a second time and focused on uncovering all the secrets, such as defeating the Weapon bosses etc. Actually, come to think of it I don't know if I ever actually defeated Ruby Weapon. Bastard.

If memory serves me correctly, I think my play time for the second play-through was probably up around 80 hours or so. On top of the 40 hours I would have spent on the first play-through, this is a hell of a lot of time to spend on a game. I remember sitting in front of the TV for hours and hours, playing this game non-stop.

This got me thinking about how much I play video games now has changed. When I was in my teens, and even up to my early 20's, I could quite happily have these marathon gaming sessions. I remember the longest that I ever played a game non-stop was on Civilization II on the Playstation.


I once spent pretty much an entire day, 14 hours straight, playing this game. I remember that a lot of this time was actually spent doing nothing, just waiting between turns as the little Playstation processor took longer and longer to calculate between turns the longer that the game went. Still, I sat there like a zombie quite happily waiting for my next turn.

In my early 20's I got into EverQuest.


This was a time in my life when I didn't really have that much free time. I was studying at a Theatre school full time, had a girlfriend, had a bunch of really good friends and a good social life, but I still managed to find the time to pump hours upon hours into this game. I spent so many all nighters playing this game, and rather sadly I recall actually forgoing social occasions sometimes in order to stay home and play EQ. I remember that there was a command prompt you could type into the chat box, /char , which would bring up some info about how long you had been playing your character. My main character - because, like most players, I had two or three toons that I would play as - was Smoove Grooves the bard. I typed in /char one day, and to my horror realised that I had been playing for over a month. That's more than a month real time, around 700 hours. And this was just for one of my characters. It wasn't long after this that I quit the game. I did go back on two occasions for short bursts over the next couple of years, but the addiction was never as strong thankfully.

As I've gotten older, I've found that I simply don't have the time, or the inclination, to put in these marathon gaming efforts. It's rare that I'll play a game for longer than two or three hours in a row. A lot of this is due to how I live now. I'm engaged, live with my fiance, and have a full time job. She's very understanding about my love of games, and she's actually a bit of a games player herself, but there is no way she would be quite so understanding if I just shut myself away in the computer room for 12 hours to play a game. As well as this, I wouldn't feel right about it either. There comes a point in your life, of course, when you realise that in the hierarchy of importance games don't really rank as high as they used to.

When I was younger, I actually felt a bit cheated if a game didn't give me at least 20+ hours of gameplay. Now, at the age of 30, I actually prefer games that I can finish in 10 hours or less. Because I can't spend as much time on games as I used to, I really want to play games that I can comfortably complete without dedicating my entire life to them. Obviously I will always make exceptions for certain games, and it's not as if I'm going to not play a game simply because I know that it will take a long time to complete. However, the chances are that I might not actually complete it because I can't spend enough time on it. A couple of perfect examples of this are the two most recent Bethesda Softworks games, Oblivion and Fallout 3. I spent so much time playing Oblivion, but I never completed it. I'm still in the middle of Fallout 3. I go back to it now and then, but I'm not sure if I'll get around to completing it.

The last game that I really had a marathon gaming session on was Mass Effect on the PC.


This was last year. We were living in Melbourne, Australia, at the time and my work hours and her's didn't really match up which meant that quite often I would have the whole day to myself at home. She went off to work one morning, I jumped on the computer and booted up Mass Effect. Eight hours later she got home and I was still playing. I think this is understandable, however, because Mass Effect is a totally fantastic game. It was the game of 2008 for me.

As I'm writing this, I'm also downloading another Bioware game through Steam, thanks to their awesome holiday special they're currently running. That game is Dragon Age: Origins. Will this be the next game to coax me into a long, drawn out gaming session? From what I've read, quite possibly. Of course, this all depends on whether or not I can find the time!