Monday, February 15, 2010

12 Years without Stealth but Still Gaming

Today we played the demo for Heavy Rain.  It is not a co-op game so we switched off the controller between each different characters point of view.  The game looks and feels more like an interactive movie than any game I have ever experienced.  Heavy Rain showcases how far games have come in such as short period of time. 

The controls are strange but in a good way.  After discarding a handful of games we finally looking forward to a new release.

When East Bakersfield still had a mall there was a toy store called K-B-Toy Store.  The year was 1998 and John and I went to said toystore to buy the first PlayStation version of Metal Gear Solid.   I remember it was like forty dollars in change that we counted out in piles on the counter.  Lori (Johns Mom) went to a department store while we counted the change.  I am not sure if she was embarrassed at our coins or annoyed that we were spending all of our monies on a game. 

After the adventure of buying this much anticipated game we got back to Johns and took turns playing.  I died moments after emerging from the water. Then it was John’s turn.  We learned quickly that this revolutionary new stealth game was not my strength.  It was still fun and exciting to read about a game, talk about a game and then get to sit the day it came out and figure it out together.

Heavy Rain has clunky controls but no stealth required. 

Things are different than they were 12 years ago.  There is no East Hills mall. Instead of gaming buddies, John and I are married with kids.  Instead of tirelessly counting pennies we will just pay Amazon.com to deliver the game to our doorstep. It makes me take pause and wonder how different our world will be in 12 more years? 

1 comment:

  1. ahh the good ol days. I remember playing the demo of Metal Gear for like weeks on end, because i wanted to play that game soooooo bad. Now tonight we played the demo for heavy rain and as with most demos nowadays once is more than enough until the full game came out.
    Yeah the fact that there really isn't an east hill anymore or the idea that i used to go to KB's for all my game needs is very odd. Now its always either Amazon or the occasional Gamestop, followed by a reselling on ebay when we feel like we are done with the game. I can see in 12 years gaming to be kinda of like what "cloud" (i think is what it is called) where you buy a system and everything is just streamed from the interwebs no downloads or installs just stream and play

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