Welcome, welcome to Blog Banter, the monthly blogging extravaganza headed by bs angel! Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deeply insightful to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!


The gaming industry has been good to me in recent years; there have been a good number of games that have combined excellent gameplay with an engrossing storyline, From Baldur’s Gate to KOTOR, Halo CE to Gears of War 2. As I type I can see nearly a dozen such games sat next to my XBox 360 crying out to be played again, and I want to indulge them I really do. However between working full time and all the other “fun” commitments of being a socially well-adjusted adult there is not the time to give all of them the attention I would like. Bearded misanthropy looks more attractive after each and every Christmas party.
 
Fortunately we are entering the holiday period and most new releases are the same old rubbish they release year in year out. I have all the games I want at the moment, except for one. I still want a re-release of the greatest space flight simulator ever. I want Tie Fighter. Some of the younger gamers reading this may not remember this title, it was first released in July of 1994 and I can remember this as one of my earliest introductions to PC gaming.

While I am hesitant to use this description for most games, in the eyes of my peers and I Tie Fighter was Perfection! Every other game I have ever played that has warranted that 9/10 or even the coveted 10/10 score from the reviewing press has always had a least one minor irritation that annoys me.
Be it the sometimes awkward cover system in Gears of War, to the driving controls in Half Life 2, and even the whole second half of the last level of Halo 3 all of these irked me. Don’t get me wrong these are games I love and keep going back to, but I would be hesitant to refer to them as perfect in all things. Brilliant, fantastic and amazing I would use without a second thought, but not perfect.
 
Tie Fighter on the other hand I can think of nothing bad about it. Don’t be left thinking that this is merely nostalgia on my part speaking, I still have my copies of the game discs and spent many hours in the summer replaying the campaign on DosBox, well when DosBox would work properly I was. My MacBook doesn’t seem to like DOS very much.
 
The gameplay in Tie Fighter was simply amazing. The basic controls were easy to pick up and the more advanced controls were simple to grasp as you played through the game. The storyline to this day is as engrossing as it was to that 10 year old who played the heck out of this game back in 1994.
 
As I sat and listened to the first of the mission briefings I was transported back to my childhood, and I could remember trying to play this game without my Mother’s knowledge. My Mother was a bigger Star Wars fan than me, and she was very much on the side of the Jedi, she would never have forgiven me for flying under the Empire’s flag, let alone flying as Lord Vader’s wingman. How could I not though? This games greatest strength was its story, I quickly found myself sucked into this world of duty as I did my bit to combat pirates and restore order to the galaxy, you felt like a one of the good guys. It wasn’t until you got deeper into the game that events began to remind you that the Empire was the bad guys of the whole saga.
 
Next year is the 15th anniversary of this game, if I could ask the gaming industry for just one thing this year, I would ask for Tie Fighter to be released on the XBox Live Arcade. This title in full HD and surround sound would be the perfect combination of that exquisite gameplay of 1994 with the technological audio and visual marvels of today’s high definition gaming.
 
While they are at it LucasArts can do the same with Dark Forces, Monkey Island and the rest of the early LucasArts stable. These games were the games I and I’m sure many others loved as a child and with many classic console games making an appearance on the XBLA it would be nice to see some of these equally classic DOS games put in an appearance as well.






Other participants!
What I want in 2009, The “Roxanne” Edition, Dear Gaming Industry, if the industry gave us all presents this Christmas, Demands for the industry, Santa, Don’t Bring Me Toys I Have To Share, All I Want for Christmas Is…, My Wish for the Year, Crossing Over, Checkpoint Unobtained. errr., Loading Requests, LISTEN BITCH!!!, One Wish, Dear Video Game Industry, More games like Portal and Braid, Imagine, Dear Video Game Industry, A Wish for 2009!

My Lancer rumbles,
Blood is on the floor,
The Locust is dead.

Gears of War has had a strong grip upon my gaming time since it was released. I had passed the first Gears game by in favour of Halo 2 and only played it because of Rob’s overwhelming enthusiasm a few months before Gears 2 was due.
Oh how I wish I had listened to him earlier, it was such an enjoyable game, and while the writing is not going to win any awards I found myself genuinely caring about the characters of Marcus Fenix and his merry band of miscreants as they threw themselves into danger again and again.
By the time I had finished the single player story of Gears of War on I was hooked, I had to know what happened next. fortunately for me, though less so for my wallet, I pass a video game store on the way to and from work every day and I was able to pre-order Gears of War 2 the next day.

Five days pass and release day is upon me and bright and early I pick up my copy as the store opens, for a brief moment all is good, then the reality that I have eight hours of work followed by an hour and a half commute to go before I can play hit me. Next time a big release is coming I will book a couple of days off work, like I did for Halo 3, and make an event out of it.
Still over the next two evenings I was able to sit back and enjoy the game on casual mode. Yeah I know what a wuss my excuse is the same as ever first off I want to enjoy the story, then if I enjoyed the game I will then go back for the challenge of the harder difficulties.

At the present moment I am on Act 2 Chapter 5 on Insane mode, and boy they weren’t joking with that descriptor. I have not played a game that has left me feeling such extremes of emotion.
My mind is filled with an inense feeling of disappointment in myself when I die after doing something stupid, furthermore when I hear that riff in the soundtrack signifying that the battle is over and I have emerged victorious, I actually feel proud of my accomplishment. I haven’t felt proud of myself for beating a game ever, I have felt satisfaction yes but pride, never.

It’s an amazing challenge I am loving the fact that not only am I pushing forward on Insane mode, but more importantly I am doing it solo. It’s even more fun because I am not really a hardcore gamer, I only got through Hardcore on Gears of War playing coop with Rob. He thought I wouldn’t be able to get through Gears of War 2 on Insane mode and was genuinely surprised when I told him how well I was doing, though to be fair I am surprised how well I am doing. Here’s to me continuing this streak all the way to the end of the game.