New Game +

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Let's all raise our glasses to the start of something new! We've all been playing and thinking about video games since we were wee things, and we've decided that those thoughts are often worth sharing and discussing. Here's hoping you all agree.

As for me, I got my start in gaming by going over to a friend's house after school to play with his Nintendo. We took turns on Mario and Duck Hunt, until he got a Super Nintendo and proceeded to thrash me at Street Fighter over and over again. I now greatly prefer co-operative gaming to competitive, and I'm sure that this traumatic memory has something to do with it.

My first gaming machine was a computer, and I played adventure games for years: King's Quest, Space Quest, Quest for Glory. I went on lots of quests. I later played Zelda and started in on Final Fantasy and other Japanese RPGs (more quests!). In college, I even ran quests on a Neverwinter Nights persistent world. One could say quests loom large in my legend.

The first Half-Life was my gateway shooter.

And just to give you a sense of my current tastes, here are my top five games of the last few years:

1. Portal
2. Braid
3. Bioshock
4. Half-Life 2: Episode 2
5. Fallout 3

I've also been catching up on the back catalog of awesome, and would put Psychonauts, Beyond Good & Evil and Eternal Darkness on that list if I wasn't so woefully behind the curve on them. I buy pretty much every game BioWare puts out. I am ashamed to admit that I have yet to finish Shadow of the Colossus. This will be remedied!

This is my New Game +, since I have done a lot of levelling up on the way to where I am now, but there's still a lot I want to accomplish, and a few alternate endings that have yet to be seen. But enough about me! There are more contributors to introduce, and then we'll really get down to the nitty-gritty.

Welcome to Press Pause to Reflect. Let's take our time, and think about what we play.