Origins of a Gamer 02.08.10: Week Three – The PlayStation Age

Posted by Chris Crowing on 02.09.2010

We head into the heady days of the 90s for the best games on the new Sony platforms, with key appearances by Metal Gear Solid, Driver, Grand Theft Auto and even some N64 titles, like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.




Failte,

This week I'll be talking about the third stage of my evolution as a gamer, graduating from the Sega MegaDrive to my PlayStation(s), and the real embedding of gaming as a key part of my existence.

COMING SOON - 411 Deathmatch Championship

Following my initial run with this Origins of a Gamer column I'll be helming the 411 Deathmatch Championship and this project will require some of your participation.

Basically, I want to see which Game, Game Character and Game Franchise* is most respected/beloved by the 411 Games community.

* To make it clear - Sonic 2 or Sonic & Knuckles are Games, Sonic the Hedgehog or Tails are Games Characters and Sonic or the Elder Scrolls are Game Franchises.

In order to make this a valid contest, I'd like YOU to let me know what you regard to be the best in each category, and once I'm done with this Origin of a Gamer introductory column, I'll sort each category into a top 16, bracket them and we get stuck into the tournament...

Each week we'll have one match-up in each category, with YOU getting to vote on who goes through to the next round, and sometime in summer, we'll be able to crown the first set of champions.

This idea is all about discussion and participation, so please get involved and let me know which Games (be it Sonic II, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 etc.), Game Characters (Solid Snake, Master Chief or Lara Croftetc. ) or Games Franchises (Grand Theft Auto, System/Bio Shock or Mario etc.) you think should be included. I'm giving your plenty of warning so there can be no suggestion of unfairness in my selections...

Anyways, let's get into the meat of this week's column...

Origin of a Gamer: Week Three – The PlayStation Age

I was a few months behind the fashion for getting my PSX, but it was some years until that console was superseded. The PlayStation franchise has long since been regarded as the outright winner in the incarnations of the Console Wars which it was a part of largely because of the massive range of games it had, right from the start…

It's strange to think back on it, but I honestly can't remember which games I received with my PSX, so this stage of my reminiscence will be a little hazy on the timeline…

Probably the most basic game I had was also one of the most addictive, and the simplistic controls and pumping soundtrack of Rage Racer consumed hours of my teenage gaming time.



A few years later a more adult and involved driving game would be the focus of my adoration. It was the elegantly titled Driver.

Such a simple premise was realised with such perfection in this game. I can imagine the marketing meeting now…

Marketing Dude #1: "What is the best bit in any given action movie, which we could make into a game?"

Executive: "Um…the car chase?"

Marketing Dude #2: "Exactly! Imagine a game which is all car chases…"

Executive: "But won't that get a little boring?"

Marketing Dude #1: "Well, the single player campaign will have a limited shelf life, but we will add a function where the player can record any of his chases and direct them like a movie with customisable camera angels etc."

Executive: "I'm sold…"

So was I. I blasted through the main campaign for Driver, but the ‘quick play' chase missions where you could film your escapades with the full Starsky & Hutch style camera-work was an enduringly appealing feature, to the point you were almost annoyed when you successfully escaped and were denied that big, car-killing crash…



Being a teenage Scots boy, the football (that's soccer for my occidental readers) franchise of choice was an important decision, and for the official license and real player names etc. my heart was given to EA Sports' FIFA series over the supposedly (at the time) superior game-play of Pro Evolution Soccer.

I had every FIFA game from 97 to 2000 (except the World Cup 98 game, although one of my friends had that) and played them all to death, spending hours playing through single-player league campaigns or in one-off matches against my friends. The glorious period of working out the tricks in each game (usually which angle the goalkeepers were incapable of saving shots from and which ‘special tricks' actually worked, rather than gifting possession to the opposition) was a yearly joy – although once you did have these quirks sussed out the games quickly became WAY to easy.

You know you have mastered a game when you beat Brazil 10-0 with San Marino on ‘World Class' difficulty….



Another franchise to capture my heart was the WWE pro wrestling games. The first game I had was (I think) WWF Attitude but the control system was terrible, the commentary was repetitive and annoying and the game looked like crap compared to other games I had.

However, I was a WWF/E fan at the time (I can barely stand to watch wrestling now) and when a ‘new and improved' game came out, I was all over WWE Smackdown!. A more coherent (easy) control system made the game more palatable, but a limited career mode and eventually repetitive game-play etc. has meant that once beloved game has aged really badly.

WWE Smackdown! 2: Know Your Role was better looking, had slightly better controls and was generally an improvement. However, while some more simple games have aged well, I wouldn't even consider playing any of the WWE games anymore…



Probably the best game I had for my PSX was the legendary Metal Gear Solid. Very few times in my history of playing games have I been SO captivated by a game and immediately regarded it as ushering in a whole new era of gaming. There have been a million words written about the awesomeness of this game and I'm sure I don't have to add to them here, except to say captivating, ground breaking, brilliant…



While I never had an N64, friends of mine did have it and a few games for that console made a real impression on me.

Many hours were spent playing the stunning Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time which presaged my future (and current) obsession with fantasy RPGs. However in all my travels through Tamriel and other lands, I've never again experienced a game where an entire level takes place in the gut of a giant fish. Trippy, addictive brilliance…

I also regard Mario 64 as being similarly awesome, but not quite as well realised or as much fun as this, my most favourite instalment of the excellent Zelda series.



Probably my favourite N64 title was the stunning Goldeneye 007 - this was largely because some beneficent soul brought their N64 into our Sixth Year (senior year) common room and left it there, resulting in many, many hours of four player death-matching with a queue of blood-hungry adolescents waiting for their turn to kill. This of course resulted in a great many missed classes and such but as everyone knows, a communal gaming experience is more important that Sixth Year Studies in Mathematics, isn't it?



In due course it became time to replace my ageing console, and while I flirted with the concept of a Sega Gamecube, if only because the Star Wars game looked quite swish, but at the end of the day, I'd loved my PSX so much, that the only choice was to go for the PlayStation 2.

Like so many people, my console came packaged with the oh-so-perfect Gran Turismo 3 which remains one of the most addictive and pretty looking racing games I have ever played. Like many games before it, most achievements can be defeated by simply buying a faster car, but accruing the wealth to buy a better car, or a car suitable for a certain style of race soaked up thousands of hours of gaming time.

The endurance races and the awesome soundtrack remain a fixture in my mind, and this far I would say this was probably my favourite racing game ever…



The most enduringly awesome franchise on the PS2 was the Grand Theft Auto series. While the original top-down game had been a fixture on my home PC (more on that next week) the real revelation was the almost open-world construction of Grand Theft Auto 3. An easy to master control system, a large and detailed world to explore at your leisure and some pretty damned compelling and often rewardingly difficult missions made this game a complete winner.

Even if there was no story mode, there are hundreds of hours of game-play just exploring Liberty City, seeing where you can climb/jump/drive to, not to mention the more morally dubious activities like shooting people, hit & runs and the ever entertaining pastime of seeing how long you can survive against a full-on police onslaught.

Oh, and the talk radio show with Lazlo still makes me laugh out loud…

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City improved on this design, mostly by making Vice City a little larger, allowing you to take control of helicopters and also change your outfit into a snazzy selection of 80s themed outfits. Classy.

The soundtrack was also seven shades of amazing, with the success of the franchise allowing them to license real bands from the 80s for the soundtrack. I'll freely admit I spent a lot of time listening to the rock station while cruising down the strip on a stolen motorcycle…



Of course, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was the cream of the crop featuring a MUCH bigger world, control of aeroplanes (and parachutes), the ability to swim, change your hairstyle, clothes, tattoos and body mass and an even wider selection of music and chat on the soundtrack.

I would say that San Andreas was probably the greatest mainstream game of it's time, being a better RPG, driving game, shooting game, etc. than most of it's competitors could manage in any one facet. Hey, if my PS2 hadn't gone to the big Games store in the sky, I'd probably still be playing it, looking for hills or ramps to jump off, or likely spots for a contrived ‘last stand…'



Big mountain? Check. Ramp? Check. Wide variety of vehicles? Check. Parachute? Check? Spending WEEKS completeley ignoring the actual missions and having the most gaming fun of my life? You better believe it!

One of the things which made the PS2 the most successful console of it's time was the sheer range of quality games it had, and the few I've discussed here are just the one's I was absolutely rabid for. I had platformers (most notably a Rayman game), football games, flight simulators, role play games and many others which floated through my collection, before I went back to GTA…

However as I have mentioned above, eventually my PS2 died and became an oversized paperweight and since that time, some four or five years ago I have been without a console and have been a solely PC Gamer. Next week I'll finish up this Origin story with my adventures as a PC gamer both through my first PC as a teenager in the 90s and my newer shiner Dell PC in recent years…




Not much this week. However el_piablo seems to remember Maximum Carnage as an awesome game....

Hmm, time to check your dose of dried frog pills, Mr Piablo, sir!

In any case, come back next week for an expansive review of my PC gaming history!

Slainte,
Chris Crowing

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