Brian – you just earned the Game Changer achievement by mentioning Half-Life 2! Congratulations!
I have been enjoying games for as long as I can remember, so taking this course seemed like a natural thing for me to do. The earliest games I played were on an NES that my sister and I received from our cousins. I also remember playing some MS-DOS games like Commander Keen on my Dad’s computer. By the time I received an N64 (best Christmas gift ever), I was already pretty hooked on games.
Commander Keen, doing what he does…
I enjoy many different types of games, but I feel like I can organize them better by developer than by genre. Many of my favorite games have been developed by Nintendo. Although games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Metroid Prime do not share a common genre (maybe Adventure is an appropriate label?), I find that there are similarities between their design. These games encourage exploration, and despite having fairly linear paths to completion, I always feel a sense of freedom when I play them. I also enjoy controlling characters like Mario, Link, and Samus, because they generally have little to no dialogue, allowing me to feel that I am the one making decisions.
Metroid Prime
Valve is another developer whose games I find consistently enjoyable. I enjoy playing games with a first-person camera, because it feels as if I literally am the character, not just controlling it. I think the first-person perspective is what allows the dystopian world pictured in Half-Life 2 to feel convincing, and what makes Portal’s main gameplay mechanic of shooting, well, portals so magical.
It kind of hurts to look at this… where is Episode 3?
One last developer that never fails to please me is Amanita Design, an indie developer that makes point-and-click games. While the gameplay mechanic is simplistic and not as interactive as many other types of games, there is still a lot that can be done with it. Some of the puzzles in Machinarium really made me flex my brain. And the simplicity of the game allows me to forget about controls and really focus on the visual art, music, and sound design. It’s rare that I find a game as endearing as Botanicula, where the interesting sounds and beautiful worlds depicted coalesce in a way that I feel really powerfully about. The game might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for some reason I can’t help but rave about it whenever I get the chance. Check it out here: http://amanita-design.net/games/botanicula.html
OK, I promise I’ll stop raving about this… eventually
Valve is one of about 3 developers I trust to consistently put out good games, along with Blizzard and BioWare. I usually buy most games these companies release because the production value is incredibly high, even if other areas of the games don’t turn out so great (I’m looking at you, auction house in Diablo 3).