Wednesday, March 2, 2005

We usually shy away from talking about gaming, dear reader, because in my mind most of you can live without this particular topic. Certainly I don’t rest my fingers on the pulse of the readership every afternoon, vainly trying to calculate the exact average of all your wants, but we tend to stick with real-world subjects.

Hip. Urbane. Slightly geeky. Hot. These adjectives–this will be the only compliment you receive this quarter, so cherish it–fuel the anatomy of the typical reader, and in doing so they preclude the very notion of shouting at polygons. Quick, what choice words come to mind when video games are mentioned?

Twinkies.

Twinkie wrappers.

Everquest.

Twinkie wrappers surrounding a fat, unwashed, pockmarked dork given to inopportune voice cracks while commanding his guild of dark warlocks in search of elven uniques.

There is stigma, yes, though that won’t stop us from talking about Counter-Strike: Source. Sometime last month I bid you farewell because I wanted to sample this game. I installed it, finished it, and although it didn’t transport me to new levels of enlightenment I’d play it again.

Now that I’m connected to the webiverse, however, I haven’t gotten around to a second time through. I’ve been logging into Counter-Strike instead, one of the multiplayer components of Half-Life 2, and its pick-up-and-play mechanics are very endearing. The game pits counter-terrorists against terrorists in an eternal struggle across thousands of servers worldwide, with objectives such as defusing bombs and rescuing hostages. Sounds like fertile grounds for escapism, right? It would be perfect, were it not for the children and Steam.

If you play the game, make sure to turn off microphone support. I can see professional clans making full use of this privilege, but players generally abuse it. Excessive vulgarity abounds and, in an expected twist, the vulgarities come from the mouths of 13-year-olds fighting their own losing battles against puberty, terrorists be damned. The players who don’t cuss enjoy spitting commands into their mics, affirming in their minds that, indeed, they could lead a platoon through Basra right after dinner.

Steam is Valve Software’s controversial stab at digital distribution. It’s also a certifiable pile of shit. I tried running Half-Life 2, legitimately this time, and the game brought my outdated computer to its knees, whereas my pirated version ran pretty well. I’ve also caught the bugger downloading things on its own volition, and for all I know it could’ve crammed a Bulgarian hamlet, piece by piece, into my computer. My guess? Steam is really a mound of washers secreted away in a barn somewhere.

These things are easily overcome, so that’s enough bellyaching. Let me know if you play as well. Perhaps we can shoot each other in the head.