I forget when it was, maybe 3 or even 4 years ago when I first heard about Aion. Just based off the trailer I knew I really wanted to try out this game but sadly it was subscription based so those hopes were instantly crushed away. Then not even 2 weeks ago, I heard that Aion was now free-2-play and I started that long.. very long download.The game is about 45gigs in total so I had many hours to wait for the game to download and install and surprisingly I didn't research Aion like I would for basically any other game. Instead I decided to go into this game completely blind and just enjoy the game as I slowly went through it. So after many hours and the game completed its install I fired up the
game and since I hadn't really done any research for the game, just
went with my gut for character creation.
So this could possibly be a surprise considering how much of a gamer I've always been, especially for MMORPG games, but I never played World of Warcraft until 1 week ago. The main reason probably being that I played Everquest on and off since it first released so there wasn't much of an interest in playing another game that had a subscription fee involved. Of course there was the trial's available out there and the game was at least somewhat interesting in that it had some interesting game mechanics and so last week being completely bored and doing an all nighter, I decided to give the game a try.
So once again this could, in a way, fall under video games but since it's got more to do with the ideas behind them and not the games behind the names, I'll file it under Life. I'm sure there are plenty of nicknames I've had throughout my life
so I'm obviously not going to go into all of them, but just the ones
that stuck around for a while for me.
My first online experience
Diablo 1 is where it all started. Shortly after we got our computer, this was one of the first games we got and probably my most played. The game was more about the single player back then but it did have an online mode and when I decided to step into that, I had my dad set up my account and the name he came up with for me: CoolKid999. Quite possibly the worst name I've ever seen but hey, I was like 6 so I loved it.
This game right here was probably my most played game throughout all of high school even though I would constantly stop playing at times. I remember hearing my friend Ray talking about it in Grade 8 french class, so I was about 13 at the time of starting this game. The game was basically brand new, possibly just finished beta when I started playing and that was the 'golden age' of this game.
So the game is basically a turn based shooter that at first, was nothing more than people having fun and shooting. Then people started realising that the game was basically one long unknown math formula to perfect every shot. There was wind power, shot power, angle of shot, distance of target, elevation, and environment that all played a role in your shot. Once people learned everything they could about these factors, it basically came down to human error of whether you hit or not. The good thing was, not a large population of people either had this information, knew it existed, or cared about it.
So this somewhat ties into being a video game topic, but that's more so how it all started and not how it developed. Once again I was about 6 years old and we had recently gotten our first computer. My dad was really into the thing and he would buy computer magazines and get these demo discs all the time. The one disc that stood out from all the rest though, was this one.
Demo disc with Resident Evil 1
Now, the disc itself wasn't actually what scared me. I was actually very interested in trying the game based off this picture, so one day I finally got to. Everything seemed to be cool, the game was very mysterious and I wasn't quite sure what was going on. I probably skipped the intro cinematic because all I remember is one thing.
I've been playing video games basically for all of my life. My first time was when I was 2 years old and my dad brought home a brand new SNES. Super Mario World was my life and I played that thing for hours. Although I did have to share the SNES with my dad who was a hardcore gamer so I mostly enjoyed watching him play. As a child I was very calm and collected when it came to gaming, not like I am now of course, so I never cried out of rage or frustration like this story led on to believe at first. No, my first time crying over a video game was actually when I about 6 or 7 years old.
*Spoilers*
After re-watching these videos to see how good my memory was, I'm actually surprised I understood the ending as a child since these confused me so bad just now.
So the game is Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals and one of my favorites that I actually have yet to go back and complete. The game has an interesting love story between the main character and one of your companions and just as you defeat the last boss, your wife is heavily injured and you have her die in your arms. Then you have to do a last mission of destroying the flying island you are on before it crashes into the earth. You complete the simple mission and your wife's spirit shows up and I'm assuming being drained by the task you just completed, you become a spirit and the 2 of you fly away. The clips it shows of your friends saying you'll be home is what confused me as to if you actually died or not but in the end it shows your spirits fly away so it became pretty clear.
Now I didn't cry right away when this happened, I don't really remember how I reacted to it. I do know that during that night I just couldn't sleep and I actually did end up crying, replaying that whole ending over and over in my head. I think this ending actually heavily impacted my life, I've always been a sucker for love stories, especially ones that are broken by death and this game may be the reason for that. It's not the happiest of childhood memories, but it is definitely one that will likely stick with me forever and I'm not going to lie, watching this ending again just now, I still cry a bit over it.
Yep. Grade 5, ironically introduced by our student teacher for a gym group project we had to do but god damn did I fall in love.Growing up I had always this strange dislike of basically all music.. I remember we had to do a survey style test before we saw this and I actually cheated off my friend because I was so out of the loop of music at that age that I didn't know what to put down. After we watched this video in class, the teacher popped in Eminem's Real Slim Shady and I was completely confused at what I just heard.
Shortly after all this my group decided that we were going to be dancing to another Nelly song, Country Grammar. (Dancing to a song was the gym group project by the way.) This time the song was dirty and gritty unlike the TV edits we heard in class and that sealed it, I was hooked from that moment on. That Christmas I dropped Nelly's 'Country Grammar' CD on my wishlist and when I finally got it, that thing was on repeat all day every day. I still wish that I had gotten into hiphop much earlier in life, and also possibly with a better entry than Nelly, but I think when I first started listening to hiphop, it was more for the dirty and rebellious feeling it gave me at that childish age of 10 but I will never forget what it did to me. Hiphop definitely changed me as a person, hopefully in a good way, but I know for sure that I was never the same after that day and I will always love Nelly for it.
