Imagine Moscow, 1994. I am 19 and live in a multiapartment building in the Yasenevo district with my parents. On the 14th floor. The residential area is divided by a large forest, known as the Bitza Park, from the rest of Moscow—a sea of green.
My cousin, Nick, 17, has just arrived from St. Petersburg for a brief holiday. I don’t remember what we’ve been doing during the daytime. However, I perfectly recall how we spent nights.
We played Doom II.
That was the year when this iconic first-person shooter game was just released. I missed the first version, but Doom II was good enough to make us happy.
We played level by level, shooting monsters in the apocalyptic industrial landscape. Each of us had three attempts until the monsters eventually managed to kill the player. Then another one took control over a variety of weapons, from chainsaws to RPGs to some sci-fi super shotgun, spitting blue fire.
The gamewas developed by id Software and enjoyed tremendous success all over the world, taking one step forward compared to Doom I—offering a better selection of weapons, more sophisticated interiors filled with new monsters, and a more advanced gameplay, in general.
We had never played such games before; it was like a revolution! State-of-the-art graphics for its time, breathtaking situations when monsters were jumping out of the walls or, on the opposite, slowly approaching, sending fireballs to kill you. That was sexy!!!
Nick and I had several nights full of fire. We still keep in touch; I plan to see him in St. Pete in July when I’ll be running the White Nights marathon there.
I am sure we’ll recall these good ol’ days – I’d better put it – good ol’ nites – to recall once again, over a beer…
P.S. I should find Doom II online and play it once again. Just for fun. Thirty years later.
My sexiest computer game
I found it during the infancy of home computers. It was the mid-1980s, and we had just bought our two boys their first ever computer. An Acorn Electron, with a magnificent 32 kilobytes of RAM. We were so excited, maybe more than our boys were! Christmas Eve, and me and Mrs. B had to try it out – the first programme we bought for the machine was called “Kaleidoscope” – and that was what it was. The screen more than resembled a real kaleidoscope, and boy, were we impressed. Anyway, I digress.
During that first year of our family being computer-literate, I downloaded, via my cassette machine, a game called “Football Director”. It was just brilliant. To this day, nothing has come close to emulating what I experienced all those years ago.
It was text-based, so there were no primitive graphics to worry about. You chose your team, you prepared it for a match by answering questions, and then you waited for your next match to take place. What drama, what anticipation! The match itself was depicted by the two teams involved on the top line, and when, or if, a goal was scored, it would appear below the team, with the name of the goal scorer, and the time the goal was scored. At full time, all the rest of the results in that league were shown, and then the current table (standings) were displayed. Magnificent!
Yes, it was rudimentary by today’s standards, but at the time, I felt it was such a brilliant concept, and nothing since has surpassed it in wonderment or enjoyment.
My sexiest computer game
First person shooters have never really been my thing. I suppose that’s a little unfortunate because the graphics today are crazy good. In fact, these games are so beautifully rendered that some show up on YouTube as real combat footage. You have to be careful and look at small details or you’ll think you’re seeing the real thing.
My favorite computer games are strategy games. If you are not familiar with these games you may be surprised to learn just how complex they can be. My favorite of the bunch would have to be Civilization, currently it’s up to Civilization VI. I’ve played most versions down through time.
You start with a country, a civilization, and you have to lead your nation through the ages. But… it’s not simple. In real life and in the game, some technologies are required before you can progress to superior tech. Many of these technologies require certain resources and they are often located in other nations. So, what kind of civilization do you have? Do you have a strong military? Then you may take what you need but you’ll soon have a bad reputation as a war monger. That hurts diplomacy and makes alliances and trade hard to come by. The game is layer upon layer and it may take a week to play a game (a couple of hours an evening). You really need to know where you’re going before you start or you will absolutely fail.
Of course, that’s just too much to think about after a rough day slaving over a hot keyboard. Sometimes you just want to go kill some shit. I like World of Warships. This is a completely different kind of game. Where Civilization IV is more of a chess game, this is more chocolate donuts with a side of history.
You command a ship. Each class of ships has certain attributes it brings to a fleet. Battleships have big guns and take a beating but a cruiser is faster and can fire its guns more often, just as in real life. Because modern computers have so much power, the game can take things like air drag on a shell into account. How thick is the armour on that ship where your shell hit? What systems are located in that area? How much does your shell weigh and what was the angle of impact? This is all taken from the real-life ship your pixel ship is based on.
You playing against real human players and a battle can last up to twenty minutes. It used to be based in St. Petersburg, RU but then the war came. So, the company had to leave and sell its Russian business. They are now based in Cyprus and the Russian business is owned by a company called Lesta Studios.
They have servers in North America, Europe, Russia and Asia. It’s interesting how each server has its own personality. The Americans have funny names and are normally polite. There’s a chat window where you can send messages to your team mates or both teams. The Americans will complement good gameplay, regardless of team. GG! (good game).
Europe has the most players and speaks many languages. They play well. Most players will play the ships their nation actually fielded. I’ve played many games on the European server.
We don’t get to play with the Russians anymore and I understand the Soviet ships are now overpowered. I can’t speak the language and my keyboard is in Roman letters anyway. I normally run American cruisers so I would get dogpiled on sight.
The Asian server is it’s own planet. Those guys are aircraft carrier crazy and have a reputation (deserved) of not being skilled players. I’ve seen them do truly dumb stuff.