Old School Gaming

So, I've been spending a lot of time lately playing WCIII. I know, it's not exactly "old school" considering it only has like, what, nine years? But, you know what? Game years are like dog years, so in truth it's actually kind of old now. Still, even though I've had this game pretty much since it came out (I can't believe the CD's still working. :|), and I've played it more times that I'm capable of counting, let alone remembering, I still find it incredibly entertaining. My friends, of course (those that do the game thing anyway), like to give me a hard time over it, claiming that WoW, the MMO successor of WCIII , is much better and more enjoyable.

Now, I have played WoW. I even went as far as buying the game, and the first expansion a couple of years back, and, even though I did find it amusing for a while, like with many things in my life, the novelty eventually wore off, I got bored, and couldn't be bothered to keep paying the monthly fees. Whereas WCIII's still there, keeping me going whenever I have nothing better to do.

The truth is that ever since I first played WoW, even when I did it the first time and it was "OMG SO AWESOME!", I did find it a bit repetitive. Basically it's your character running around, killing things, and picking things up, with the occasional, albeit rare, killing of the character itself. The dynamic may vary throughout the game, and the context in which it unfolds is bound to change, but the pattern always stays the same, and unless you're really small-minded it's not hard to notice. In WCIII at least you get to build stuff, and command your own army instead of playing with just the one character, and the game itself was much richer in terms of lore than it's successor (and that's one thing that Blizzard hasn't handled very well -- killing Illidan? WTF?!). But my friends, of course, still think that I'm just old-fashioned and weird. Oh well...

And WCIII is not the only old game that I love. I've played every single Final Fantasy game that has come out, from the original NES one to the latest FFXII for the PS2 and it's spin-offs for the NDS and the PSP. Not all of them were good (FFTA anyone?), not all of them were bad, but there is one that stuck with me, and that I still play from time to time, and regard as the best of all Final Fantasy games so far. And no, it's not FFVII, I don't have a mancrush on Sephiroth or Cloud. It's VI.

I love, love, LOVE FFVI. It's one of the most incredible games I've played in my life. It has an incredible plot with lots of lore in it, each and every one of its characters is well-rounded and endearing, and its villain, Kefka, is most likely one of the most awesome video game villains of all time. But the most incredible thing about it is that, no, this does not come with shiny 3D graphics or awesome cinematic sequences, or mind-blowing character maneuverability. It's just a SNES game. And it's because it's a SNES game that it's so great, because there's no smoke and mirrors, no flashiness, no nothing that will distract you from the game itself. And if you think that's not good enough in today's world, well, let me tell you, today's world is not what it used to be.

So yeah, my friends call me old-fashioned because I play old games, but that's okay, because these old games that I play will probably still be with me by the time MMOs have become a thing of the past.