Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’m ten. I’m sitting in the solvent-soaked school art room doodling, when my friends sneak in. They’ve got something amazing to show me. It’s a little dwarf made out of lead, and Fat Winnie has just bought it off Big-Nosed Will, who actually painted it. It’s like got an AXE! Will’d mainly used red paint on it (“For the blood” he says. He now works in advertising) but it’s soooo cool. This is the start.
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This week on Gaming Made Me, games journalist and scriptwriter Will Porter remembers less a particular game and more an era – when PC games arrived thick and fast, each one a bewildering new delight. Also, James Pond, GTA and Craig Charles. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh for Heaven’s sakes – Battlefield 3′s not even out yet, and already we’re previewing Battlefield 1942. There are 1938 more Battlefields to come first! Oh, wait. Yes, that’s right. The start of the series. Got it. So: Brendan Caldwell takes us back to where DICE’s war began, and reminisces about being a disgusting coward.

There was a time in first-person-shooter history, believe it or not, when World War II was not The Boring War. Oh, admit it. We all remember it well. “Dubya-dubya-two?” we asked excitedly. “Can’t get enough of it! Gimme some. I said give it to me. I want it.” Then the fatigue set in. Pineapple grenades lost their novelty. German uniforms didn’t give us a rude-on anymore. So we discarded World War II, like a soggy Metro full of old nibs.

Oh, but remember the good times. The French hedgerows, the crumbling grey bunkers. The beaches. The endless, endless beaches. Nothing like a trail of unsaved Private Ryans to soak up the salt, the sea and the atmosphere of intense brutality. Catching some rays by the seaside there, Private? Ah! You cannot be. For it is overcast. Also, you are dead.
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Our Gaming Made Me series has always focused on the writer’s personal association with a vital game from their childhood, but this week that emphasis is even stronger. Here, James Murff talks of how Parallax Software’s 1995 sci-fi FPS Descent became one of the keystones in mending his troubled relationship with a father – as well as why the flight-based shooter still has much to teach today’s game designers.
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In this week’s Gaming Made Me, Brendan Caldwell revisits a time when flight sims could have had it all – and a time when zeppelins still ruled the Earth. This is Zipper Interactive’s 2000 alterna-history aerial shooter Crimson Skies, and this is why it matters.

There are clouds above Hawaii. And there are monuments above the clouds. Who could have foreseen either of these things? In the hot wind of a Pacific sky a colossal white Zeppelin lumbers toward the site of a shipwreck, seeking the treasure once held by Sir Francis Drake. They call her the Pandora. Nestled in her belly is a squadron of fighter pilots. These are her citizens. Someone has painted four tarot cards across her sides. Justice. Wealth. Lovers. Death. This is her code.
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In this week’s Gaming Made Me, Richard Cobbett reminisces about an old crush. No, not on the sexy vampire villainess of this classic adventure/RPG hybrid, but on one of the first games that taught him to demand better of story in these silly little computer game things.

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This week, in our Gaming Made Me series, Lewis Denby explains to us how it was that Quake came to make him. In a very personal account, find out how violent videogaming took away a child’s loneliness, and even got him to go to school.

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We continue our Gaming Made Me series with a quick visit to the brain of Richard Cobbett, who might just have been exposed to an excessive amount of point ‘n’ click as a youngster. Let’s see what he has to say…

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Hello! Gaming Made Me is a new weekendly series that continues the theme of our previous Gaming Made Me excursions, which is a theme about the games that made people who they are today. In this new and fresh series various RPS chums will be invited to talk about their formative gaming experiences. This is the first one, with an Ages Of Empires II retrospective from Brendan Caldwell. Take it away, Mr C!
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And just one last one here, unless Obama suddenly mails us to tell us how Deus Ex inspired his political career or something. It’s the lovely Ed Stern, Writer at Splash Damage who finds himself thinking about what actually writing these articles says about games…
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Following on from the first two parts, here’s the influence of Deus Ex on two developers in very different places. EA’s RTS Lead Designer Saul Bass was in the industry for five years… and then left. Meanwhile, Aubrey Hesselgren was in Tiverton. There’s a dark future for you…
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