I’ve always been a gamer. From the days of the Atari 2600 with it’s fly wood grain finish, to the NES, all the way up to next gen PC games. I play games. I love games.
That is, I used to be.
In the past 3 year, gaming has taken somewhat of a backseat in my life. It’s not that I didn’t want to be playing games, it’s just that I could never quite find the time to actually play. Hell, if you do a search on the site for the term "Doom 3", a game which I literally waited years to come out, you can see how rarely I have played it. In fact, to date, I have yet to beat that game. I’m adding it to my to do list right now.
Up until last week, I can only think of 2 games that I have played for more than 3 hours in the past 3 years. Those games would be Guild Wars and World of Warcraft.
Then something came out last week called The Orange Box. It comes with 5 games, 4 of which I could honestly care less about. Don’t get me wrong, I am going to play them, but the real reason I bought the game was for something I have been watching in development for years — Portal.
I cannot remember the last time I have beaten a game. I beat Portal in 2 days. I could have done it in one if I go to the Korn concert the day it came out. I can tell you this though — it was extremely satisfying to finally beat a game I have paid for. I think the last game I beat was honestly for the Dreamcast. Now that I have a fresh notch in my belt, I’m going all out. I’m about 2 hours into Half-Life 2 right now, and I plan on installing Doom 3 again sometime this week. Possibly on Wednesday since I am off and Jess has to observe a class for grad school.
What this all boils down to is that now that I have my main system up and running, a decent processor, decent RAM, and a new video card, I can now play all the games that I always wanted to, but never could because of hardware constraints. I can be a gamer again.
What about finding the time?
Well, that may still be an issue, but I’m going to try and make the time. My work schedule right now is semi-consistent which is good. I think I can find a few hours a week to sit down and pull down some frags.
Hell, I even went so far as to setup my Steam Profile tonight. Having that really makes me feel like a gamer again.
I am the person I want to be.
