One of the drawbacks, actually, THE drawback to being a student and a gamer is that midterms fall the same time all the big holiday-shipping games start to hit. It's bad when the only experience I got to have with gaming was a few battles in Final Fantasy IV or a couple of rounds of Lock's Quest.
Luckily, the biggest of my assignments, the first half of my paper on studying narratives in videogames, was due this past Monday. To reward myself, I dropped some MSP on Wednesday and bought Portal: Still Alive. With the thoughts of my paper fresh in my head, I was thinking about the story behind Portal, and how much I enjoy it. It's one of the few games I've finished multiple times, and although the length is one factor, the story is the real driving force. The simplistic brilliance of the story, and the way it unfolds as you progress, is totally worth the game's price tag. I never purchased The Orange Box, only rented it for the sole purpose of Portal.
If I'm going to play through any game multiple times, I want it to have a story that can engage me just as much with each successive playthrough. I've played through Resident Evil 4 multiple times because I enjoy the story. Granted, I enjoyed the gameplay more, but the story was good enough so that I didn't mind playing through multiple times. RE4 brings me to my current rental, Dead Space. That game is a whole new level of creepy. I'll probably mention more as I get through it, since I'm still in the first chapter, but I'm already enjoying it and I'm sure I will enjoy the rest of it if the reviews are any indication.
So I've got that on my plate, with intentions of checking out Fable II soon. Next week the cascade begins with Fallout 3, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and C&C: Red Alert 3. If Legendary is ever released I'd really like to check that out. November brings Call of Duty: World at War, Mirror's Edge, Left 4 Dead and the GTAIV episodes. Everything is moot however once November 25th rolls around, however, as I devote my time to Chrono Trigger on DS, and play through that for the 851st time.
I wanted this post to have a point, but it seems it never ended up that way. Maybe next time.
About the Blog
This site is one part video games, one part academia, and one part blog, mixed in a shaker, and poured over ice. Added wit and insight to taste. Served in a highball glass garnished with an NES controller.
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Perpetually Gaming by Bryan Wojciechowski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.