 Hello
Hey everyone, my name is Anna, I'm 30 years old and I'm from southern Italy, although I spend most of my time in Amsterdam.
I must confess I have never been much of a gamer. I played a few videogames when I was little, starting with Defender of the Crown, Sensible Soccer, Another World and Lemmings on my brother's Amiga. I also enjoyed the occasional arcade (Bomb Jack, Ghouls'n'Ghosts, a cool frisbee throwing game called Windjammers and the strangely addictive Track & Field come to mind), and later I played quite some Super Mario, Mario Kart, Legend of Zelda and Wave Race, on a Nintendo 64 that I shared with some flatmates when I first moved out of my parents' home. I also played the occasional game of Civilization III and Civilization IV on the PC, as I once had a boyfriend who was a huge fan of those kinds of games.
But the truth is that I had more or less given up on videogames until a few months ago. The thing is, over the years I have steadily been having a harder time enjoying games, and feeling immersed in them. I am no longer a teenager, and I have become much more refined in my tastes and much more difficult to please, and most of the times games just seem like a waste of time, with poor storylines, boring gameplay and overall little entertainment value. There are just too many things I enjoy way more than playing a videogame in front of a computer or TV screen, and even though I tried out some games now and then, in search of that long lost feeling of carelesness and innocent enjoyment I experienced during those endless school-free summer days of my childhood, I was never able to find anything that would engage me for more than an hour or so, and I always ended up being disappointed.
Then, about a year ago, I bought a PS3. I bought it because I have a real love for Cinema, and when I went looking for a Blu-ray player to hook up to my projector, the Playstation 3 simply happend to be the most convenient option.
I didn't buy any games with it at first, but then a few months ago, GTA IV was released, and there was a kind of media frenzy about it, and so during a lazy sunday afternoon stroll through the city center, I ended up impulse-buying it out of curiosity, and I must say, I did not regret it.
Suddenly I found myself thrown into a living, breathing virtual New York City, immersed in a story line which is quite engaging, but still being awarded the freedom to do as I wish. So I went exploring, walking and driving all around the city, stakling people, listening in on their conversations, and generally trying out all the different kinds of things you can do in-game, and suddenly there it was, that long lost feeling of pure, innocent fun I had not experienced for so many years.
I am amazed at the production quality of GTA IV: its scope is almost overwhelming, and the attention to detail simply stunning. GTA IV makes me think that videogames are finally catching up to my (perhaps snobbishly) high standards, and that - if it is any indication of the general direction videogames are going towards - my future bad weather sunday afternoons will perhaps be split three ways between books, movies and videogames, instead of just two ways between books and movies.
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July 21st, 2008, 06:41 PM
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