Back then computers represented boring stuff like typing homework or learning things, I knew games existed on this machine, I had even stuck my toe in at school by playing Oregon trail and Zork, but it wasn't something I imagined a kid like me being able to interact with all the time. It was a rich mans drug.
Nobody knew what to do with it. It's hard to believe now, but back then computers were not even close to as big a deal as they are now, even though pretty much everything that makes the internet what it is today was in there. You needed a person in the know to show you what it could do.
The person that showed me what computers could do was my buddy "Noodles." I met him through skateboarding, and we also both happened to be obsessed with video games and comics. When he heard there was a computer in my home he brought over a shoe box full of floppy disks and CD's. I watched him install all of these games with funny names, stuff like "Kings Quest," "Hexen," and "Doom 2."
He showed me how to launch them, I asked him how I would be able to play without a controller, he just laughed and said he was going home. I asked him why he didn't want to play a few games before he left, he said to load up "Doom 2," and don't worry, we will be playing together all night. That was the end for me.
I am almost done with Rage, and it breaks my heart. What happened? I never thought I would see the day that ID software would consider the PC version of a game an afterthought. The game looks pretty, on a console. The PC version seems to only care about character models and mad jukes.
The UI is a mess, the video options are barely customize-able and suffer from Goldilocks complex, without the just right bed. And what story? The game has you collecting junk to sell, actual junk, not junk to assemble things, just random junk.
The modern fallout titles feel more like iD atmosphere, the modern CS/COD titles feel more like iD combat, the modern Serious Sam titles feel more like the iD spirit of fun for fun's sake. This should not be, I feel as if iD is too big to fail. But time marches, I believe in iD, they'l get it done.
