The Gamer’s Quagmire: 19th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

This week is a special week for gaming. No, it has nothing to do with games that may be coming out. No major tournament is around the bend. This isn’t even an anniversary of a game’s release. This is a special week because in three days I’ll be knee deep in video games along with some friends. Last year I spent vacation in my own personal Mecca- Cooperstown, NY. This year I will be going somewhere that almost undoubtedly close to Nirvana.

Ironically I will be in Seattle (if you don’t follow music at all then that last joke isn’t as clever as it would otherwise seem). For those that love playing video games for days on end without interruption understand that sometimes this is better than any vacation that involves traveling. The only thing that can possibly make these events better is a steady supply of alcohol, food, and friends. This is my A vacation for the year, so rather than sit down this week and ripping studies linking video games to pot smoking or a racy Hitman advertisement I figured I would outline my own gameplan for the week. Not only will I be sharing a can’t-miss video game marathon schedule I’ll also be fleshing out a schedule to abide by for the upcoming week.

Who said I couldn’t be constructive?

Everyone has their favorite games, but those willing to listen to a few suggestions for a great multiplayer gaming week should be ready for some expert advice. You see we already had our first Golden Age of video games and you may not know it. PacMan revolutionized gaming and put it on the map. In that sense the video arcade had its Golden Age, but video games overall didn’t have them at that point. I was lucky to be in college when it happened. Networked gaming was just starting to happen and the most entertaining games were just picking up steam. Here they are in no particular order.

The game that could be the most addictive and provide the most heated and drawn-out battles known to man is Civilization II. It’s true that there are sequels in this franchise that make needed improvements, but this game always afforded the opportunity to make battles last for over 5 hours. No, I don’t mean the game would end. I mean that your attack to conquer one nation’s capital could take 5 hours. Once you hit the modern age and you attack another nation technologically equipped to deal with all of your cruise missiles, battleships, Aegis Cruisers, Mechanized Infantry, and Marines (or, as I called them, kitchen sinks) the battles can become very intense.

The race to build Wonders, create a massive army, colonize a new continent, and get the spaceship launched can cause you to be so strung out on caffeine that people could be yelling in your ear and you wouldn’t hear them. You don’t get the full experience of this game until it takes over an hour to complete one turn to handle all the events from each of your cities. Also, for added fun give a unique them to your Empire so even the simplest of tasks becomes highly entertaining. My own invention is the Weird Al Empire, where every city was an item from one his songs. By the end of the game the most dominant city in the game was a dead heat between Cement Pond (which built the UN in 3 turns) and Jurassic Park, home of the Apollo Project.

Civilization II is more than just a great network game. The long drawn out battles make for great conversation later and creating a strategy in this type of game is much more interesting than strategies in fast-paced games. This isn’t a great game for 4+ people due to its enormity- you need a group of people who love playing the game to fully enjoy it. Plus there’s the added bonus of eliminating the French.

If you are feeling a little more retro you can always fire up GTA. I’m not talking about Vice City or anything recent- I’m talking about the original top-down view GTA. This is one of the best multiplayer games ever made (the tanks in the second game were way too overpowered for multiplayer use). The deathmatches and the cannonball runs are sources of endless fun. Causing and endless chain of exploding cars is always entertaining. Trapping someone next to car and pushing them into a river is high comedy. Taking a superbike over a bridge too fast and exploding when landing is too irresistible to pass up. There’s always something good going on when 4 people are trying to run each other over at the same time.

Next comes the revolutionary shooter Quake. This game provided the opportunity to have a multiplayer deathmatch server running 24 hours a day. It’s true that the only thing more irritating to college network admins was the original Napster, but imagine logging onto the server when someone has over 300 kills. The intimidation factor there is incredibly high. Sure, later on the multiplayer servers became smart enough to recycle the matches every 5 minutes so the maps didn’t become stale but what’s the fun in that?

Besides, first person shooters always seem to bring out the most taunting and trash talking than any other genre in existence. There aren’t a whole lot of insane things to do in this game (like placing proximity mines under armor- always a fan favorite from GoldenEye), but rocket jumping finally became a reality with this game. There were maps where you could crush someone inside a room with a switch. You could force people into lava with a rocket burst effect. Don’t forget the hilarity of hitting someone with a quad-damage rocket in a low gravity map. You could be completely outclassed in a match but if you had the most spectacular kill there is no guilt involved in milking it, and Quake was the first FPS that started allowing this to happen. Certainly not the best of the Quake series but it did open a lot of doors.

Those of you who enjoy the squad-control games fell in love with StarCraft. Honestly I think there is something wrong with you if you didn’t play this game for over 4 months if you liked this style of game. The game was simply too well put together not to enjoy it. I played this game for over 3 years and loved every minute of it. The second WarCraft game was pretty slick but it never was that fast-paced. StarCraft started to enforce the idea of having a quick twitch reflex, and ever since its release fans have been waiting for a sequel to it… and we’re still waiting.

When you start hooking your computer up to a television so you can record and play back your matches you know you have succumbed to your obsessive side, and it’s quite easy to do with this game. If you have ever tried perfecting a defense to the point where you could stop any invasion with a couple well-placed photon cannons, 2 dragoons, 2 templars, and 2 reavers you, well, that probably means you’re just me. My badge of honor was when my two main reavers lasted the entire 3 hour battle and each had over 800 kills. I think it was at this point the idea of veteran units started to cross my mind.

The current crop of multiplayer games are very compelling and some of them capture whole point of good multiplayer action. The graphic power of the XBox 360 is a great draw. PGR 3 and Ghost Recon are jaw-droppingly amazing games. Ghost Recon definitively drives home the point that the 360 is a next-gen game. Sometimes finding an awesome multiplayer game is as simple as digging through your closet for a classic from 5 or even 10 years ago. Sometimes that’s what a perfect gaming week is all about.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Post your comments in the Forum!