Games

Ok, I admit it.  I like computer games, basically those in two categories: the genre popular known as "first-person-shooter" and any good driving simulator.  The former are the closest thing we have yet to true virtual reality, and the latter allow me to learn how to drive a car at its limits without being arrested, careening into another car, or generally causing mayhem on the streets. The guys who designed the Holodeck on Star Trek have it all wrong.  In the future, we're not going to walk into some room that magically changes its physical form and becomes larger to imitate any real-world environment.  We're going to plug ourselves into some apparatus that feeds sensory information directly to the brain to imitate external input.  The difficult part is the engineering: finding the right neurons to stimulate and getting the signal to them.  I can imagine some in-between stage, the primitive likes of which we already have, where the input remains external but all-encompassing.  Basically a big suit with speakers and pressure nodules and the rest.  No thanks.  I'd rather have a chip in my brain.

Anyway, enough futurist BS.  I am sure you simply cannot wait to see what I own.  As a special bonus just for you, I've even rated the quality of each game in units of Adrenaline   or Epinephrine for you biochemists / new school types.

	F***ing Awesome
	Pretty Damn Good
	Interesting
	Waste of Money
	It Sucks

Sorted in chronological order for your viewing pleasure.  By the way, I play these on a 400-Mhz Pentium II with 128 MB of RAM, Alesis studio monitor speakers, a Voodoo3 card and a force feedback wheel.  It helps.

Game	Adrenaline Rating	Comments
Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed		Wow. This game kicks ass. Thanks to this game, the Boxster S has moved to the top of my list of possibilities for my next car.
System Shock 2		Very immsersive, but not immersive enough to justify all the details you need to do to move through it.
Unreal Tournament		Decent game. Better for strategy and camping than Q3A, but nothing near the adrenaline rush. Very nice graphics.
Quake III Arena		Wow. F***ing amazing. There is no better way to get carpal tunnel syndrome real fast than this. No other game comes close in speed or brutality.
Carnivores 2		Not bad, and good graphics, but it's really no different from the original.
Half-Life Opposing Force		Very good, but not as original as the original (er...). The loads of new weapons are much appreciated. The squad helpers are interesting but not very impressive--they're not particularly smart and usually they just get themselves killed.
Unreal Mission Pack 1		Pretty good for a mission pack.   Gotta love the little lizard things.
Sports Car GT		The only thing it doesn't do is recognize the gear-flip paddles on my wheel.  But I can use other buttons for that.   Very realistic.
Official Formula 1		Mediocre.  No wonder it only cost twenty bucks.
Aliens Vs. Predator		Wow.  Predator mode is great, but what can be better than shredding hordes of acid-spurting aliens in a hail of bullets?
CART Precision Racing		Very realistic, but the graphics are so-so and the force feedback support is erratic.
Need for Speed IV: High Stakes		Great graphics, but the realism leaves a bit to be desired (real drivers do not leave inches of rubber on the highway).
Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit		Pretty good, but the lack of gamma control makes a couple of the tracks dicey and night driving impossible.
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith		Ok for a sequel.  I had just seen Episode I.
Carnivores		Surprisingly good for a cheap game.  Not fast-paced or action-packed, but probably the best dino simulator out there today.
Star Trek Klingon Honor Guard		Unreal engine.  Big deal.   Boring.
Half-Life Team Fortress Classic		It was free and it's still one of the best internet games.
Tribes		Very cool.
Half-Life		The best single-player game I have ever played.
Unreal		The second best single-player game I have every played, and it's gorgeous.
Test Drive 5		Bleah.
Quake II Mission Pack 2		Ok, this stuff is played out by now.
Quake II Mission Pack 1		Almost as good as the original, but most unsatisfying when you finish.  You get a screen that says you finished.   Oooooh... aaaaaah.  Bleah.
Trespasser		The worst piece of shit I have ever gotten.  It's slow.  It's buggy.  It doesn't look good.  The dinosaurs are about as a life-like as the big robots at the museum.  This is what happens when you build software on a tight budget, in limited time, don't test, and don't care.
Postal: Special Delivery		See below for the full story
Postal		I bought this one Friday when I was incredibly pissed off about things at work.  I got the mission pack for free.   It's one of those look-down-on-the-minions-from-above type games.  It's violent.  It's gory.  It's not really that good.
Quake II		The first release lacked a little polish but the engine was fanstastic.
Turok Dinosaur Hunter		Boring, long, and stupid.  I don't want to waste my time jumping from one little platform to another little platform, or run through 50 levels looking for the one stupid piece of whatever that I missed.
Shadow Warrior		More penis jokes than you can... er... shake a stick at.  Primitive graphics but lots of "interesting" enemies and weapons, and ya gotta love the samurai sword.  Lame ending.
Quake Mission Pack 2		Better than the original.   The dragon is great.
Quake Mission Pack 1		A little bit of a let down.
Quake		What more needs to be said?
Duke Nukem 3D		"Come get some".   Old-school graphics, vulgar jokes, tons of fun.
Star Wars Dark Forces		Pretty good, the first Star Wars game I really liked.
Star Wars Tie Fighter		I went through a space combat phase.  It was short, but it wasn't the game's fault.
The Hive		Otherwise known as, "Crap".
Final Doom		Enough already.
Doom II		Some new enemies and stuff.   Pretty good.
Need for Speed II		Bleah.  Early 3D graphics really sucked.
Rise of the Triad: Dark War		Erm, kind of a lame almost-3D shoot-em-up.   If I wanted to play Super Mario Bros. I would.  Admittedly, the firebomb weapon created just about the coolest explosion ever, and the flying eyeballs were a nice touch.
Doom		It's the best selling game ever and there is a reason.  It's good.  Totally ground-breaking when it came out, and only the second game that could really freak you out.
Castle Wolfenstein 3D.		"Gestapo!  Gestapo!"  The FFPS (first first person shooter) remains a classic.  Plus it had that freaky bad sound track.  Just the right cartooniness.  In what other game could you ever shoot at a Hitler wearing a robot suit?
Test Drive 2		Pretty good in its day, but samey.
Test Drive 1		Version 1.  And it showed.

That's as far back as my records go.  According to legend, there are other games from the ancient days buried in the archives such as Tankwar, Sopwith, and other memorable lo-res creations.  As far as what is coming up, the first mission pack for Half-Life is supposed to be basically a new game that absolutely kicks ass, and one of these days John Romero will release Daikatana.