Blame it on Deus Ex, but I figured I’d try another PC game. Give the consoles a bit of a rest.

So, I spent a couple of hours last night, when I should have been getting an early night’s rest, digging through plastic storage bins and desk drawers to look for PC games.

It’d be nice if it was all in one place, and it’d be nice if I’d kept more boxes (I still have boxes for Dark Forces and Knights of Xentar, for instance, but the boxes for Starcraft and Icewind Dale are long since gone. Why? Who knows why.) because it made me realize that we have a bunch of titles where the manual is in one drawer, but the game disc is in another drawer, or maybe it’s in the box which is in a bin… or maybe the box is in a bin, completely empty, while the manual and CD are in two separate drawers… I can not find the first Simon the Sorcerer at ALL, and I know we should own it.

Nonetheless, I pulled out a bunch of games and bits of games, and laid them all out and took digital photos, then shoved them back into drawers and bins without taking time to do any real organizing, and then I went over the photos to see what we had.

This is much easier to do than actually making lists from physical objects, by the way.

End result: We have a bunch of RPG compilation disc sets. If I wanted to play any Ultimas, Bards Tales, Forgotten Realms, Wasteland, Might & Magics… the list goes on, but if I wanted to install DOSbox and play some mid-80s, early 90s RPGs for the next year, I could.

I decided that was maybe a little too retro and that I would restrict myself to stuff made in the last decade, so I added a “release year” to my spreadsheet, spent some time on Wikipedia, and came up with a longish list:

1998:

• Baldur’s Gate
• Heretic 2
• Incoming
• Starcraft
• Unreal

1999:

• Aliens Vs. Predator Gold
• Starcraft: Brood War
• Wheel of Time

2000:

• Deus Ex
• Diablo II
• Giants: Citizen Kabuto
• Icewind Dale
• Return of the Incredible Machine : Contraptions
• Sheep

2001:

• Serious Sam

2002:

• Neverwinter Nights
• Serious Sam : The Second Encounter
• Simon the Sorcerer 3D
• Warcraft 3

2003:

• Bloodrayne 2
• Tron 2.0
• Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne Expansion

2005:

• Ever 17

2007:

• Tomb Raider Anniversary

…and some eroge which we won’t get in to as this is generally a PG-13 blog.

Setting FPSes and puzzle games aside, since I just wasn’t in the mood, I got:

1998:

• Baldur’s Gate
• Starcraft

1999:

• Starcraft: Brood War

2000:

• Diablo II
• Giants: Citizen Kabuto
• Icewind Dale

2002:

• Neverwinter Nights
• Simon the Sorcerer 3D
• Warcraft 3

2003:

• Bloodrayne 2
• Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne Expansion

2005:

• Ever 17

2007:

• Tomb Raider Anniversary

A much shorter list.

Setting aside ones I wasn’t allowed to play unless I let my wife watch, it became:

1998:

• Starcraft

1999:

• Starcraft: Brood War

2000:

• Diablo II
• Giants: Citizen Kabuto

2002:

• Neverwinter Nights

2003:

• Bloodrayne 2

2005:

• Ever 17

I’ve never played Diablo II. It tempted me because I’d heard lots of folks rave about it. Still, it didn’t seem right to start with the sequel game, and it had come bundled with the first game, so I decided I’d give that a try.

Install. Launch. Needlessly dark opening. Wow, these graphics are really 1996. Deal with it. Click to walk around. Click to talk to people. Click until I’m told to go to the church. Dark church. Lots of undead. Very, very dark. Game is called Diablo, not Fluffy Bunny Sim. Click on undead. Click to kill undead with fire spells. Click to kill undead with lightning bolts. Pick up items. Go town. Sell items and heal. Go back to church. Click click click click click loot sell heal cli..ooh level 2! click some more and soon I’ll be level 3!

…click…

…click…

Another level grinding game I do not need. Quit, uninstall, feel like I’ve gotten away safely, spend twice as long writing long rambling post on blog.

Tomorrow I’ll try something else. Probably Brood War. I finished the original Starcraft ages and ages ago but never got far in the expansion.