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I've started a Neverwinter Nights game with one of my best friends. I never was much of a real computer gamer, rather one of those poser gamers who happened to have übergamers as friends, one who would try to play at their level but never possessing the skill nor the patience to keep a game going for long. But I've always liked the aspects of gaming: the beautiful creatures and artwork; the supernatural and fantastical; pretending, just for a short while, to be someone you wish you could be; the collaboration; and the fact that some of it relies on chance, a simple roll of the dice, leveling the playing field just slightly so that people like me without an IQ above 160 can participate.
The one game I did love to play obsessively was Diablo II, perhaps my favorite game of all time. It's several years old now, long since moved from the best-sellers to the cutout bin. But it's one that I loved to play for hours and hours on end. It was like an addiction; mostly because I loved the way it played and the storyline, but also because I liked playing with my friend LD, my partner in adventure, who would be on the other end of the phone line clicking away with me, exploring dungeons, plundering corpses and saving innocent townsfolk until the sun came up.
I ran across a T-shirt the other day that made me laugh, because it brought back memories of all those interminable, sleepless Diablo nights I spent clicking, shooting, casting, attacking, clicking, shooting, casting, attacking. "Let's just finish the map," I'd say, struggling to keep my eyes open. Which, of course, is what I found myself saying the other night while playing Neverwinter Nights, as I struggled to fight off sleep. It's not as good as Diablo, but it's satisfied the little fairweather poser gaming nerd in me.
Current mood: Nostalgic