Late to the Party

Parts of me blown up all over the place in Team Fortress 2. Please put me back together.

I remember a time when I was completely satisfied with only owning one console.  I was born and raised on the NES and I couldn't get enough of that little Italian plumber stomping on turtles.  I wasn't even aware that a thing such as the Sega Master System existed.  I continued on with the SNES and couldn't care less about the fast blue hedgehog on the Genesis.  When it came time to enter the next generation of system, I jumped ship and went with the Playstation.  My reasoning at the time?  Cheaper games.  Many years later I picked up a N64 to play a few key games, though I think my choice at the time was the better one.  It wasn't until the next generation of games that I owned two systems simultaneously, and each to fill a particular need: the Playstation 2 because it had games like Devil May Cry and the Gamecube for my first-party Nintendo games.  When it was time for the current generation of consoles, the only system I owned for the longest time was the Wii, and I could only feel like I was missing out.

The release of the Wii coincided with my first semester of college, and as a "poor college student," the Wii's then-current price point of $250 appealed to me and was within my budget.  I belonged to a video game club at college, and my exposure to new video games was for the most part limited to what games other students would bring.  For the most part, multi-player games such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Rock Band were the games most commonly played, and on occasion someone would bring something new or obscure for the group to try out.  So I didn't mind for the most part about only having the Wii, as the other systems were available to me.

Then college was over.

Suddenly, I found myself in a withdrawal.  With the majority of the games I played for the last four years being multi-player games and now without my playgroup, I wanted to go back to the single-player experiences that defined pre-college days.  But with very few exceptions outside of the first-party titles, the Wii simply didn't offer the engaging single player immersions that the other consoles did.  Again, the third party developers had abandoned Nintendo's console in favor of Sony and Microsoft.  As a much less powerful system, games couldn't be ported to Wii.  And if a title did have a Wii release, it was a different game entirely.

In the past month, the number of games available to me has increased dramatically.  First was the purchase of a laptop that was actually able to play games.  Back in my freshman year of college, I purchased Half-Life 2 thinking that I could finally be able to play it.  However, after going through the process of installing Steam and the game, my six-month old laptop could barely chug along on the lowest settings.  So I abandoned the idea of participating in the LAN parties.  Now I am amazed when I can turn the settings up all of the way and have the game run smoothly.  I even thought of seeing what Team Fortress 2 was all about, so Valve making the game free-to-play couldn't have had better timing for me.  (My recent purchase of Left 4 Dead 2 will have to wait a bit.)

A few years back I initially though of purchasing an Xbox 360.  At the time, there weren't any exclusives to the much more expensive PS3 that had my interest.  Good thing I waited.  As time went on, the PS3 received many more exclusives that seemed like games I would enjoy.  Sensing a coming price drop given that many retailers were offering gift card deals, I waited for E3 to roll around before buying a PS3.  It came and went without any announcement.  Then, I just so happened to catch Amazon's Lightning Deal for a $200 160GB PS3 that lasted all of five minutes.  This is where being a member of CheapAssGamer really pays off.  So now it's time to check out this Uncharted series I've heard about.

Now a whole new world of gaming has opened up to me.  I felt like I missed out on some gems these past few years, but everything is a new experience to me.  And in playing through Assassin's Creed II for the first time, I must offer my sincerest apologies to Ezio Auditore da Firenze, as I would have included him in my Five Sexy Gaming Guys post had I known more about his character.  (That sure didn't take long to turn me into a fangirl.)

Sexy, sexy.  And I'm just talking about the outfit.