Tag Archives: games

I’m the Dovahkiin

Yes, after the crushing defeat in the Collosseum of PhD’s, I’ve been a bit lost. See, that was my excuse for not writing, I was busy. First with PhD-stuff, now with Skyrim.  Because I am the Dovahkiin, you know?

Sure, I like to pretend I’m a gamer a bit more than I actually game. In fact, the only game I seriously played in the last few years was NHL 2014 on the Xbox and maybe I can consider my weird ‘return’  to WoW an attempt at being a gamer too. It’s complicated…  I don’t actually own an Xbox, but my brother was kind enough to lend me his. After a while of just playing NHL to blow off some steam, I go to this point in life and shoved that Skyrim disc in the console.

I’m not really a person that hides in fantasy that much. I did so as a kid, but those are different times. I did have a major gap in my life after I didn’t get my life’s dream: A PhD position. It was a painful defeat, I had worked on that for years and now it feels like all is over. I’m at the age now, where people around me have kids and such. And me? I’ve just had a major reset to my programming… and all I can do is play Skyrim. So yeah, that’s happening.

Why do I like it so much? There’s a lot of purpose in that game, which is exactly what I suddenly miss. The hero of the game can easily make carreer choices and pursue them. I’m not sure if I’m in a therapeutic fase, where I’m figuring things out by playing a guy who chops away with a double handed claymore or maybe just running away.

I’ll let you know. If I happen to get out of Skyrim….

PS. No elder scrolls in the game at all… none.

Image: source

 

World of Warcraft is a feeling #1

Source: WIkipedia

In general people assume I’m a gamer, because of Warcraft. By that I mean, people that don’t know me very well. Sure thing, I play various games on our monthly game nights (we hold them with a small and variying group of friends)., but the amount of video games I’ve played is small. Sure, I had days where I would try various ones, but in general it was never much. There’s a few games I did play a lot and one of them, though the word ‘franchise’ might be better, has always had a special place in my heart.

I played video games since I had acces to a Commodore 64 and quickly had a love for the good old RPGs and such, but there was hardly any of that. It took some time for me to get to that. I also played on a Super Nintendo  and a Game Boy, so Lufia and Zelda are no strangers to me. It was the game I played at a friend one day though, that captured me. I was allowed to pick a game from the list and chose the one with the resounding name ‘Warcraft’.

We played for hours, not realizing our mission we started building an enormous expansive conglomoration of buildings over a couple of days. Suddenly other creatures started marching into the screen, which were Orcs. We fought the bravely with our confused mayhem of wizards, clerics and foot soldiers and victory was ours… if we ever figured out about that bridge we had to cross to get to the enemy.

Now, back in that time there was so much on the market when it came to games, so I never got my hands on Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. I only played it at the friends house, but I loved that game. I loved the Tolkienesque setting of humans and elves fighting Orcs (not sure about the elves, but for sake of argument). The game play felt innovative, new and challenging and I was captivated by this game.

The cinematics where impressive, there was a guy speaking about epic warfare between Orcs & Humans. I mean, there were cinematics! What was also really cool is the general atmosphere of seeing a map, a war room with two people on a table and hearing a story every quest. It totally added to the experience, which was quite new. Granted, if you look at videos of the game now on youtube it will be hard to imagine how captivated we were by it. I had been reading Tolkien already and it made a major impact on me, so this game was exactly there at the right moment.

Source: Battle Net

It took some time for it to re-emerge and become the game we played forever. More in a following chapter about my favorite game.