02-22-10

There aren’t nearly enough co-op RPGs in this world.

Last Friday night, after a crazy busy week suffering video game withdrawal,  my boyfriend Daniel and I were bored and looking for something fun to play.  Tired of our usual go-to FPS genre with old standbys like L4D, we started searching around online to see what other alternatives we could come up with.  We ended up wasting half the night looking for games that either didn’t exist or games that we didn’t own and/or couldn’t put our hands on immediately.  But we had at least narrowed it down to three criteria.  We wanted to play something that was 1) Co-op.  2) Fantasy-ish.  3) Action/adventure-ish.

Turns out there’s not a whole lot to choose from.

We searched in vain online, Googling things like “fantasy co-op games” and “co-op RPGs” only to turn up a smattering of relevant results, usually in the form of old forum posts where other co-op-starved couples before us had ventured, daring to ask the same futile question and met with the same small, precious handful of games in answer.

Eventually we realized that if we were going to get our co-op RPG on, we’d have to kick it old school.  So I drug out my boxes full of old console games and began rifling through them, and to my delight, discovered a very neglected-looking but otherwise working copy of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II for Xbox.  I had had fond memories of the first Dark Alliance game, which, in a former life, I had beaten on co-op with my boyfriend du jour.  But I had never spent much time with the sequel, let alone play through it co-op.  Daniel and I suddenly had plans for our Friday night.

Eerily similar to our WoW alter egos, Dan selected the Dwarf Rogue character while I, comfortable in my usual role of heal bitch, opted for the Human Cleric.  I thought perhaps we’d play through the starting zones, maybe get to level 3 or so before getting bored.  But ever since last Friday night it has been non-stop BG:DA II every chance we get.  I forgot how much FUN these types of games are, especially on co-op.

And now back to my original point–why aren’t there more co-op RPGs out there?  Off the top of my head, the ones I can think of comprise a very short list:

• Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance I & II
• Champions of Norrath 1 & 2
• Diablo
• Gauntlet Legends
• Phantasy Star Online
• Sacred 1 & 2
• Secret of Mana

If you know of any others (any GOOD ones, that is), please comment…I’m listening!

02-09-10

Trying on a new outfit…

I’m messing around with a new theme today.  Pardon my dust!

11-27-08

Happee Tanksgivinz

11-25-08

I never quite grew up…

That’s me at age 5, circa 1986.

When I was a little girl, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have probably said Jedi. If you had asked me to name my most prized possession, it would have been a tossup between my overflowing box of X-Men comics or the well-worn Ninja Turtle plushies I slept with every night. And if you had asked me who I was going to marry, I would have said, without hesitation, Daniel Larusso from Karate Kid, or perhaps Atreyu from the Neverending Story. (Or best case scenario, they could fight over me.)

But my first true love was the Nintendo Entertainment System. Had I known that innocent-looking gray box would ignite a lifelong passion for video games, I might have tread more carefully before plunging into the darkest dungeons of Hyrule or the secret warp zones of Mushroom Kingdom. Over the years new loves have drifted in and out of my life, like the Sega Genesis, the Sony Playstation, at least a dozen other consoles, and hundreds of individual games all competing for my affection.

Twenty-something years later, not much has changed.

Regrettably I never did become a Jedi, and both Daniel and Atreyu had the audacity to grow old and not wait for me. But I am still very much the same geeky girl I’ve always been; the one that would rather stay home on a Friday night re-reading Lord of the Rings for the seventh time, the one that knows every line to The Princess Bride by heart. I still read comic books, only now I might call them graphic novels, and I shell out $12 at the box office every time one of them is made into a movie. I also still suffer from an incredibly overactive imagination, which I try to channel into being a sometimes writer of young adult fantasy. And of course, I’m still playing those damn video games.

In short, I never quite grew up. These are the kinds of geeky things I will be blogging about.