...from six years ago!
As some of you may recall from my then-constant bitching, I used to have a video card made out of scrap lumber with the words "geeforse lol" scribbled on the side in crayon. It had no pixel shader support and I was a very unhappy caveman because my fellow Constructors were going hog-wild over all these fancy effects. That is, until I got myself a brand-spankin' new (well, it was still shrinkwrapped anyway) e-GeForce 6200 so I could make my happy Construct dreams come true. What a marvel of ancient technology it turned out to be! Gentlemen must have popped their monocles and spun their top-hats over the bleeding-edge visuals it provided them back when the 6200 was first released in Victorian times.
<img src="http://i36.tinypic.com/1zpr3ur.jpg">
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is I've been a bit behind in my gaming and I'm trying to catch up. It's still kind of frustrating to find good games that run well on my card, but one I've found rather enjoyable is Morrowind.
Yeah, I know it's probably an old and boring game for many of you now, but hey, it's new to me. So here it is, my impromptu and unsolicited review of Elder Scrolls: Morrowind.
It's, uh, pretty cool. I tried running it on my old card once and the framerate was so choppy that it was completely unplayable. But now I'm pleased to report that while still a little choppy (but only outdoors at full draw distance) it's very much playable, and I've been very much playing it.
I must admit, at first I didn't see what all the fuss was about. It took like 45 minutes just to get the character creation and opening tutorials done. I wasn't much impressed. But I stuck with it, and stuck with it some more, and got my ass handed to me several times before I got the feel of the game.
It's surprisingly deep and detailed. I can't recall ever playing a game before where you didn't walk into a house and clear every little object out. It's strange to me to have a game with so much useless stuff lying around. In every game I played before this, if you found a fork, you'd be needing that fork later for some puzzle or whatever. In Morrowind, there's a freaking fork on every table and you don't ever need a single damn one of them. It's just... bizzare.
The apprehension I feel when playing is also new. I find I have to exercise restraint quite a lot. I'm used to feeling that in games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, where everything is claustrophobic and you don't know what's around the next corner or what's behind the door. But this game makes me nervous about going outside in the open, which is weird. It's safe indoors... but stray too far from town and you're ambushed by weird creepy things.
At any rate, I'm enjoying it quite a bit, and if you've never played, I suggest you do. And if you have played, suggest some fun stuff to check out or do (I taunted Stargel in Balmora into attacking me just because I liked the way he dressed. Nobody was selling black pants or a pimped-out shirt like his so how else was I gonna get those clothes other than off of his corpse? ).
Also, feel free to suggest any favorite games you may have from a few years back that my fancy new card might be able to handle. And I'll report back in another few years when I've finally had a chance to play Oblivion.