As nerdy as it is, I used to play PC games. Sure I had my Playstation 1, but that was essentially reserved for Madden ’97 through 2001. All the fancy gaming like Deus Ex, Half Life, Castle Wolfenstein, Max Payne 1, Unreal and even No One Lives Forever were done with the old mouse and keyboard strokes. I took glitches and graphic card incompatibility as just part of the experience. I mean, it was more than once that I got stuck in a wall or some creature fluttered and exploded, taking my processor with it. After all, I wasn’t a serious gamer or anything. And then I experienced the smooth, flawless play of the Xbox. No more disappearing backgrounds, failed saves or pressing K to strafe. Of course I was spoiled when my first play was Halo. The thing was so clean and smooth that I almost took the realism for granted. Halo 2 is no different. Characters glide and leap. Vehicles roll and bump. And scenery slides by unmarred by dropped pixels or lag. The work that goes into creating these worlds must be insane. Every shadowy corner, drippy ceiling and echoing floor must be painstakingly created. It’s mind-blowing that I used to play with plastic toys when I was a child that weebled and wobbled, but didn’t fall down. The kids of today are freakin’ spolied. First they get a huge curve on the SAT, and then they get video games that are so amazingly lifelike that they don’t need to use their imagination at all! Back in the day, we had to just pretend the ball was floating in the air when that square cluster of white pixels cut its jagged trajectory through the infield on Intellivision baseball. Wow, I sound like a bitter, old dude who still plays video games after his woman goes to sleep.
stop, or i’ll make you say ouch with my stapler!
