Fruzs is going gaming

via Wikipedia

Yes, I will still sometimes write about public art and protesters, but my focus will be on video games from a female perspective. This switch should have happened last week, and it took Paul Tassi’s newest post “Why My Life Filled with Video Games is Not A Waste” to get me thinking seriously about this endeavor. Let me first introduce myself:

I am mostly a PC gamer, and my first favorite game was Heroes of Might & Magic II: the Price of Loyalty, though this was not my first video game- that would have to be Super Mario Bros for the NES, and subsequent versions thereafter. I was instantly fascinated by video games, for  obvious reasons. I would purposely hang out with a little boy who was 2 years younger than me, just so I could play his Nintendo. I didn’t care about the social stigma of an 8 year old girl playing with a six year old boy; not when video games were involved. In my preteen years I recieved a Playstation, but at this point I was also going over to friends houses to play their video games and going to arcades. I fell in love with the Time Crisis, Tekken, Soul Caliber and the Resident Evil series, and Dance Dance Revolution quickly became a favorite.

CoH: this lady is electric!

In college, I encountered my first MMO RPG (mass multiplayer online role playing game). No, it was not World of Warcraft. It was City of Heroes. I admit it, I developed Brian Schmoyer Syndrome. I would stay up until 4am doing Task Forces (a series of missions that can take up to 8 hours), and skip class to level up my hero(es). I was also working full time, but somehow was responsible enough to not miss work? I became an anti-social moron, and could only relax and be myself when I was engaged in a world that didn’t exist.  I knew that I was depressed and running away from my problems by escaping to an alternate reality, but it took until my hard drive crashed a year later (while I was taking a semester off, might I add),  to really put things into perspective. In hindsight, if I had played more console games in college, being as they are more social, I have a feeling my leveling addiction wouldn’t have spiraled out of control.  I now try to avoid any sort of game that has no ending, which is why I love the KOTOR and Neverwinter Nights series (Fallout 3 also deserves a mention). I cannot trust myself with an MMO RPG, not yet.

I also love strategy games, so for those of you who are casual gamers (and older) and don’t want to invest in a console, I recommend the Total War series.  Rome Total War is my favorite, and not just because I love using siege weapons and archers. Trade routes and family lineage is important, and there is nothing more satisfying than taking over Europe. Be warned, the Total War games are complicated and you should pay attention to the tutorial to avoid missing small but necessary details.  Needless to say,  you will learn a lot of history!

I am currently “addicted” to Team Fortress 2, a multi-player first person shooter, and I will blog about my experiences soon. Yes, I know TF2 is an old game, but it is a unique shooter. Stay tuned for more….

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