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The year was 1997, and I (as I've written about many times on my reviews) did not have a Super Nintendo or a Playstation, so I was playing PC games. Games like Diablo and Age of Empires, or Star Wars: Jedi Knight and Heroes of Might and Magic, or Civilization II and Myth: the Fallen Lords. I read PC Gamer ravenously every month because most of my friends did have Playstations or Supers Nintendo and so they weren't reliable sources for new PC games coming out. Every month, PC Gamer came with a demo disc, and I got to play a bit of Diablo (the demo went through the Butcher and included a "repair items" skill that reduced max durability that didn't make it to the main game) and games I never went on to play, like Interstate '76--I still remember the radio line that plays after the first combat where the cops say "Use of deadly force...is encouraged."
One of the games I still remember to this day was Fallout. It takes place in "Scrapheap" (which was reused for Junktown), a town split by rival warring gangs, where you can side with either of the gangs (or kill them both, or sabotage the generator and doom the town). There's only a couple screens, no character creation, and two quests (deal with the gang, and meet Dogmeat), and I played that demo maybe a dozen times, scouring the entire town for everything I could find it in. Playing other RPGs had already taught me to talk to everyone, and at that point, the lack of total knowledge due to the rudimentary state of the internet meant that every single game was imbued with infinite potential because if I didn't discover something myself, it was possible I'd never learn about it. For example, I only learned you could sabotage the generator when writing this post!
When the full game came out later that year, I bought it immediately.
Well, that last guy they sent sure didn't get very far.
( Read more... )
One of the games I still remember to this day was Fallout. It takes place in "Scrapheap" (which was reused for Junktown), a town split by rival warring gangs, where you can side with either of the gangs (or kill them both, or sabotage the generator and doom the town). There's only a couple screens, no character creation, and two quests (deal with the gang, and meet Dogmeat), and I played that demo maybe a dozen times, scouring the entire town for everything I could find it in. Playing other RPGs had already taught me to talk to everyone, and at that point, the lack of total knowledge due to the rudimentary state of the internet meant that every single game was imbued with infinite potential because if I didn't discover something myself, it was possible I'd never learn about it. For example, I only learned you could sabotage the generator when writing this post!
When the full game came out later that year, I bought it immediately.
Well, that last guy they sent sure didn't get very far.
( Read more... )
