Socialising in its many forms

October 28th, 2003 - 20:38 | 6 comments

Last night I went to a leaving do for a friend of mine from Classic Rock. Of the 6 of us who worked there when I joined, she was the last to leave. I was nervous before going - I’m not the best at socialising, I tend to end up saying nothing for extended periods of time when around people older than me - but had a great time in the end. The other four were such nice people that I never really felt out of place, despite being the sole male representative One of the others was the only other person I’ve ever met of a similar age who doesn’t like alcohol because of the taste, which was nice as I sometimes feel like a freak of nature! We went to Pizza Express in Stratford, which although strangely cold was very pleasant.

My friend Ben said yesterday that he’s heard good things about Crimson Skies, so I downloaded the demo. After discovering very quickly that a joystick is pretty much necessary, it was pretty good. I doubt I’ll buy it, but it made me realise my lack of adventure when it comes to computer games. I tend to only be interested in the classic first-person shooters, which is a bit silly since I’m so bad at the multiplayer aspect of them, without thinking that I could get into team-based games, flight sims etc. In this vein I’ve downloaded the Battlefield 1942, Call of Duty and IL-2 Sturmovik demos. The idea of being competent in a virtual spitfire / parachuting into battle as part of a unit is very appealing! Ben’s laughing now, he knows my that my real life team skills consist of pretending to want to be in a group then shooting them in the back the first opportunity I get - if laser quest / unreal tournament are anything to go by anyway. This is probably one of my many phases, but who knows, I might really enjoy it.

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6 Responses to “Socialising in its many forms”

1 Ben Oct 28th, 2003 at 11:00 pm

Let me know how IL-2 Sturmovik goes…I don’t usually have much luck with flying games - the learning curve is usually vertical to me
Freespace was about the only flight game (a space one, surprisingly enough) that I ever got vaguely to grips with…though Crimson Skies seems relatively straightforward
2 Andrew West Oct 29th, 2003 at 10:14 am

will do. I got pretty good at tie fighter when it came out, but you didn’t have to worry about air resistance / stalling / hitting mountains in that one Are there any decent space sims around? Tie Figher with modern graphics would be great!
3 Ben Oct 29th, 2003 at 10:17 am

The only space sim I know of is the Freespace series, and when I tried to get the freespace 2 demo last night no-where seemed to work
4 Andrew West Oct 29th, 2003 at 12:53 pm

I get all my demos etc. from http://www.fileshack.com. You have to register and can get put in a queue, but it’s nicely organized and is generally faster than searching for other mirrors that work. If you download in the mornings, before the US wakes up, there’s generally no waiting time. Even when there is, the estimates are at least accurate, unlike 10mins=3hrs Fileplanet. I get 55k/s on a 512k connection on all downloads, too. Just downloading Freespace2 demo from there. Then, it appears, I need the demo patch. This amuses me
5 Simon Nov 12th, 2003 at 8:50 pm

Well, I am not sure what kind of detail you are after in a space sim, but I enjoyed Freelancer. Its in more of an elite vein and isn’t that complicated to control.
In FPS I must recommend the Savage demo. Its not too hard to get into though it is hard to master. It is a team game but its not as intimidating as cs is, nor as frantic as UT online etc. Plus, the demo gives you the entire game engine and 1 whole race. Ok, you only get two maps, but it reminds me of the way shareware used to be a long time ago. I have bought the full game (not released in europe yet but the publisher has a d/l server) but generally there is not much point yet for the full game over the demo.
6 Lil Nov 12th, 2003 at 10:49 pm

I like Crimson Skies!! I’m really bad at it tho

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