Token Female Gamer

New Years Eve at our house has evolved into an almost forgotten holiday and thus tends to be a quite affair. Having done the whole crazy, drunk, excessive, crowded party plenty of times, I find myself quite happy to leave it all behind for some snuggling and champagne. (Really! The idea of being sandwiched in amongst thousands of drunk, sweaty bodies is singularly unappealing.)

This year I took advantage of the guaranteed quiet evening at home and built myself a new computer.

For anyone who hasn’t kept up with my sporadic posting, my husband built himself a new computer as an anniversary present. And though I claimed that I would wait for a new computer until our next anniversary (I tried to wait, I really did!), I only made it as far as the New Year.

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Another 30 days of video games is completed! I even managed to get every post in on the actual day, ok more like middle of the night, despite my not having pre written that many and being super busy for the holidays. But it still counts!! Plus it was really fun. Thank you to everyone for participating.

In other ending news, 2012 is officially over, so happy new year everyone.

I am actually quite pleased with how 2012 turned out for this blog. With a total of 60 days of video games posts, 20 reviews, 80 books read, and (thanks to raptr) over 600 hours of gaming tracked, a lot was accomplished.

As for the brand new 2013, we shall see. The site could probably use a redesign, but since its unclear how much spare time there will be, I shall refrain setting my goals too high. How about a few more reviews at least? =P

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting. Its always a pleasant surprise to find out that anyone actually reads what I write. Clearly you are all being paid by me to comment the most awesomeest of readers.

Happiest of 2013 everyone!

These are all games that I have played in the past, games that I find not only historically significant, but that have also made a huge positive impact on me as a gamer.

Some of you might notice that my list actually consists of twenty games, not ten. Well, I’m really bad at picking favorites and they all seemed so important, plus I really wanted a diverse selection

Tetris, Super Mario Bros 3, Final Fantasy 8, Tomb Raider 2, Diablo1+2, Starcraft, Myst, Journey, Zelda windwaker, Animal Crossing, Civ 3, Pokemon, mortal kombat, quake, Baldurs Gate 2, gauntlet, Heroes of Might and Magic, Overlord, Professor Layton and The Curious Village, Portal.

That’s me playing Guild Wars 2 on my Desktop PC with chocolate and port and tea. My husband’s computer is directly to the left of mine. Side by side gaming. =)

Its so messy, but that’s all for authenticity, yeah. Authenticity. Lets call it that. =D

This might come as a surprise but my pick is Tingle from the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker game. He is this totally hilarious middle-aged man who believes in forest fairies, so much so that his only ambition is to become a forest fairy himself, thus the costume. He also happens to be a skilled cartographer.

Though he is a reoccurring character in the Zelda series, he had a starring role in the Wind Waker game, resident mapmaker. But the real reason I liked him so much (besides being ridiculously funny) was that Tingle could help Link by connecting the Game Boy Advanced to the GameCube. It was a total gimmick, but I loved every minute. It certainly ensured Tingle’s place in this line up. =P

Character progression is one of those vital building blocks of the average role playing game and probably one of the most challenging to implement smoothly. Finding the balance between effectiveness and progression, while still maintaining a level of fun is what makes role playing games great (or bad as the case maybe).

But the game that does it best, in my humble (ha!) opinion, is the Zelda series. While Link doesn’t have anything as pedestrian as a skill tree, he is always getting acquainted with new weapons and magical artifacts. These of course just happen to be presented to him with such perfect timing, that he always has the perfect tool on hand to get through the next challenge.

Its incredibly satisfying to know that the ‘skills’, or in Link’s case tools, are actually going to be useful. No filler skills here!

The game also has a much more fluid leveling system. The only indication of levels is Link’s collection of heart containers, which provide him with more hit points. These do get collected as the game progresses, but many of them are available outside the general story line, so they only loosely indicate progress or skill level.

No matter what, Link is uniquely prepared for each and every quest he faces. His progress is brilliantly tailored to makes the game fun, interesting, and highly engaging.

Instancing is a phenomenon of the persistent online multiplayer worlds of gaming, where segregating players into their own separate versions of the game creates the illusion of privacy, or change.

Despite my preference for multiplayer, I don’t actually like the ‘random other people showing up in my game’ all that much. More often then not his or her presence actually impedes my own progress, never mind the total jerks who enjoy making everyone else’s experience miserable (and we know the online gaming world is rife with those types).

This is one of the main reasons why I favor instanced. Having the option to literally block all the random people out of existence is a wonderful thing.

But its not simply about privacy, instancing has also allowed for less persistence in MMORPGs, where the world can change slightly for each single character, or allow for an entire personal storyline to unfold.

It’s a powerful tool that has been able to tackle some of the worst problems of required persistence in online MMORPGs. Every time I remember the three am wake up calls to go raid that stupid world spawn, I thank my lucky stars that someone invented instancing.

Multiplayer – simply because almost every game is made better by playing it with friends. In fact, friends have been the reason for my trying various games in the past and sometimes they are the reason I stick with a game longer then I would have otherwise.

EverQuest (WoW also) is a perfect example. I would never have played half as much had I not had friends and a guild with which to share the experience.

Friends are an awesome resource for help and support; they make the boring parts fun, and the irritating bits bearable. That doesn’t mean they aren’t sometimes aggravating themselves, but so far all the positives heavily outweigh the negatives.

I should probably also clarify that almost all the people I play games with online, I know in real life. My gaming friends are awesome and I am extremely fortunate to have them. <3

All that being said, I do love single player games. And even though I am a very social gamer, multiplayer will never fully replace my single player needs. There are plenty of times when I need gaming alone time. Thankfully multiplayer and single player aren’t mutually exclusive and I can enjoy them both at my leisure.

In general my tolerance for crappy games is rather low. The notion that I have to play a game for twenty plus hours before the fun part begins is quite intolerable. There has to be something redeeming or fun about the experience for me to continue.

I also prefer for the game to not be excessively difficult. Dying repeatedly in the first five minutes is not fun. Or making the game so complicated that it requires hours of studying before being able to play the game effectively is also not fun.

It really comes down to the fact that I have a limited amount of time to play games; I do not want to waste it on games that aren’t fun.

But I will say that writing reviews has definitely extended my patience and encouraged me to play games far past my usual point of abandonment.

Even so I rarely finish games that I don’t love, especially games that are really long. It is far easier to simply move onto a new game, because if it isn’t a game I really like, I have no incentive to play all the way to the end.

If given the option, I always pick female characters. Thankfully more and more games are making either gender available to play, but even in games where gender is assigned, I will go with the female option as my first choice.

Even though I have tried playing male characters, I simply don’t identify with them as much, which does impact my enjoyment of the game. My interest really wanes quicker.

This doesn’t mean that I never play games with male protagonists. If the game is good enough, it transcends gender. For example, Diablo 2’s necromancer is by far my favorite class, which only had the male gender as an option. On the other hand in Diablo 3, because either gender was available for each class, I made all my characters female.