Task 5: My Personal Gaming History

I’m what most of you older gamers would call a noob when it comes to computer games that I have played.

My very first console I played on was my Dad’s PlayStation Original. I used to play ‘Driver 2: Back on the Streets’ and some of the Fifa series games. However my favourite game for the PlayStation was ‘Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue’. It was an amazingly fun platform type game that leads you around 15 levels collecting pizza tokens you got these tokens by finding the all-important 50 coins, 5 lost items, competing in a race, completing a certain task at a specific location and defeating a boss. The game was very addictive and very hard at certain levels, I remember being stuck on Level 4: ‘Construction Yard’ for a very long time. You were climbing up steel girders on the construction site. These girders were hard to keep Buzz Lightyear on so you would be constantly restarting the same sequence but I wouldn’t give up because I was addicted to it.

I then Had a Gameboy Colour and I used to play ‘Pokémon Yellow’ and ‘Pokémon Silver’ all the time on it. The Gameboy Colour was great for me because I could take it on holiday and play it during my travels. My favorite game on my Gameboy Colour was ‘Micro Machines v3’ which saw you racing a microscopic vehicle against A.I on different circuits i.e. food table and ponds. After completing certain levels you got to drive different vehicles like jet skis, tanks and racing cars.

I received the original Xbox for a Christmas present and all I remember playing is Jet Set Radio Future (JSRF) for the first few months of having my console because it came bundled with the Xbox In JSRF you played several characters you part of a gang of inline skaters/graffiti artists your job was to express yourself in a future Tokyo where freedom of expression was outlawed. The main things I remember about this game were the music and the cell shaded stylization. The music was up tempo and played in a playlist, each area had a separate playlist and was randomized. Mainly Japanese dance music was played but there were some recognizable names like the Beastie Boys and Scapegoat Wax.

The best games I have played on the original Xbox have been the ‘Halo’ franchise starting with ‘Halo: Combat Evolved’ and then ‘Halo 2’. I remember days and nights when I would have my friends around to play 4 player Halo, the banter was intense. This introduced to the multiplayer side of playing games.

I’m going to skip talking about owning a PSP and Gameboy advance because they are hand held gaming devices and I only used them in long car journeys or on holiday and the games weren’t amazing that I owned.

The era of the Xbox 360, I received my Xbox 360 again as a Christmas present but I couldn’t play it out of the box because I was DOA (dead on arrival). Fortunately it was replaced on Boxing Day so not too much gaming time was lost! I have since had 2 more replacement Xbox 360’s (1 with the inevitable red ring of death) and I had to buy a completely new one once because the broken ones warranty had ran out. Thankfully later machines seem to be more reliable.

The first multiplayer game I recall playing on the 360 was Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Vegas’. I played with my friends countless time online we would get into lobbies and then just own the enemy team because we played as a team each with there own individual tasks. We then started to play competitively on Game Battles, at one stage our team got to number 44 in the European ladder.  However we stopped playing three quarters of the way through the season this was mainly due to our leader getting banned due to offensive language when playing! This unfortunately lead to the break up of our team.

Currently I enjoy multiplayer player games such as ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Gears of War’, and ‘Battle Field Bad Company 2’ and any other shoot em ups,

I also enjoy single player games in particular ’Bioshock’, ‘Batman Arkham Asylum’ and ‘Assassins Creed’. These games have stunning visuals and are very atmospheric.

So that’s the end of my history with games but i am looking forward to the future with games such as Bioshock infinite, Guild wars 2 and L.A. Noire. I also think the next generation of consoles will come out in 2014 or even later but I am looking forward to playing on the Nintendo 3DS when released.