Gaming time warp

Talk about out of character for me. A few weeks ago at E3, Al Lowe, one of the greatest video game makers of all time announced that he has created a new company called iBase Entertainment and was creating a new game called Sam Suede in Undercover Exposure. I’ve been a big fan of Al’s since the Leisure Suit Larry 1 days that I played with stunning 16-Color EGA graphics back in the late 80’s. I met Al about a year ago and had him autograph my copy of the Larry I, II, & II collection.

Of course the good picture of Al and I shaking hands was lost, so this one will have to do. Hopefully Al won’t mind me putting this picture up. We met because I knew he was an avid model railroad hobbyist. I’d been carting around the model trains I got for Christmas from Uncle David when I was 5 or 6, and I thought Al would like them or be able to use them. I believe Al gave them to a children’s hospital, which is great.

At any rate, shortly after Jessica and I met, we started playing games like Kings Quest (which Al also had a hand in creating) and Liesure Suite Larry together. Many many hours were spent on those games and we really had a good time playing them.

So after hearing the announcement, I had to play a game. Wasn’t an option, I had to do it. I wanted to play another adventure game that we could play together. Nothing like Doom 3 or Half-Life 2, both of which I’ve played, but not extensively. I played Castle Wolfenstein and both of the original Doom games, but haven’t really played much in the last 10 years or so. After Sierra started changing their company around they just didn’t produce many games that appealed to me.

Then we stumbled on Gothic II. Its a couple years old, but was re-released in December of last year. We’ve pretty much played it every night for more than a month. It is a very good game and reminds me a lot of the King’s Quest games, but more adult oriented. There is a lot of exploring, quests that you pick up from other characters in the game that you complete for experience points or gold, skills to learn and puzzles to solve. We’ve really been enjoying it. Oh, the adult parts consist of some drug use (swampweed) and our character has sex in a brothell. Of course, this being a German game, the original was uncensored. Since Atari distributed it in the US, they censored it for some reason. I guess we American’s can’t handle seeing nude computer generated women after we finish slaughtering Orc’s, wolve’s, giant rats and other human characters in the game. I mean the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Of course, I started this entry about two months ago. Since then Gothic III has been announced and I’m sure there will be another time warp at the end of November when its released in the US.