It’s dark outside. I’m sitting in my bedroom with only the glow from my monitor washing over me. On the bed my two Bengal kittens are sleeping, curled up together, almost merging into one another, their dark markings indistinguishable in the dim light. It’s dark, I remind myself once more – that means it must be close to nine o’clock in the evening, but more importantly it means that I’ve been playing Battlefield 2 for near on eight hours solid!
Now, you’re probably thinking that I’m some kind of obsessive gamer, that my entire life revolves around how many kills I can grab in a round, or what my overall ranking may be on a specific server, but I’m not like that, no really. Believe me when I say that I’m pretty normal compared to many hardcore gamers out there, and thankfully I’m still a million miles away from FPS Doug – BOOM Headshot!
To be honest I rarely have time to play games, since I spend most of my time working and if I do have any free time I prefer to spend it with my wife. However, since she’s away for a few days I decided to spend a bit of time reacquainting myself with the world of online gaming. Of course, I’m in no way indicating that my wife isn’t happy with me playing games, because that’s just not true. In fact, as Benny keeps reminding me, I’m very lucky to have a wife that not only doesn’t mind me playing games, but actually enjoys playing them as well.
But getting back to my recent activities, I can’t remember the last time that I’ve sat in front of my computer playing a game for this amount of time, so why did I end up doing it today? Well part of the reason is that I built myself a new PC yesterday and I was keen to see what my new Athlon 64 X2 based system was capable of. Also, I was curious to see whether I could get Battlefield 2 to work at all. You see, the copy of the game I was playing was kindly donated to me by Wil from Bit-Tech when we were working together earlier in the week. It was a strange situation where we were sitting back to back in the office, both working on high-spec Alienware PCs, but while I was reviewing mine, Wil was trying to get Battlefield 2 to work on his.
You’d think that there wouldn’t be much problem getting even a demanding game like Battlefield 2 to run sweetly on an Alienware Aurora PC with an Athlon 64 X2 and a pair of GeForce 7800GTX graphics cards, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. It seemed that every time Wil connected to a server, he’d get thrown out after a few minutes with random explanations that made no sense whatsoever. Now, Wil knows a thing or two about PCs and gaming, as do I, but between the two of us we just couldn’t get the game to run. Add to this the fact that for the short period of time that he was allowed to play, the frame rate was so jerky that it wasn’t really playable anyway – ok, I guess it could have been network lag, but the game had the whole of a 1Mbit link to itself.
So, after installing Battlefield 2, I assumed that it would be a repeat performance and imagined that I would be throwing the game back at Wil the next time I saw him, thanking him for a frustrating Saturday afternoon. But you know what they say about assuming and in this case it rang true. Despite not holding out much hope for an enjoyable gaming experience, that’s exactly what I got.
For a guy that usually plays Counter-Strike: Source, Battlefield 2 came as a bit of a shock to my system. Not only are the maps huge in comparison to CSS, but teamwork is the name of the game. Unfortunately, there never seems to be much team work going on in public servers, as Stuart pointed out in his review of Battlefield 2, but for some strange reason that just didn’t bother me today.
Kitting myself out as a Special Forces soldier, I set about doing as much damage as a covert and deadly one-man army can do. Since much of the game revolves around capturing flags from the enemy, sneaking up to an outpost and quietly disposing of the enemy troops guarding it proved far more effective than rolling up in an armoured personnel carrier and announcing to the world that you’re coming. I had this image in my head that I was Eric Bana’s Delta Force character in Black Hawk Down, slipping through the battle zone, unheard and unnoticed until it was too late.
And all the time I was playing, the only things I was thinking about were capturing the next outpost, or nailing that next kill. But the important thing wasn’t what I was thinking about, it was what I wasn’t thinking about. What I wasn’t thinking about were the things that usually worry me during every waking (sometimes non-waking) minute – deadlines, reviews to write, reviews to edit, articles to upload, press releases, press briefings, budgets etc. etc. etc.
The upshot of my marathon gaming session is that I actually felt more rested and refreshed at the end of it than I usually do after a full night’s sleep. Whereas before I started playing I felt too exhausted to sit down and write anything, as soon as I had shutdown the game I felt an urge to write, rather than an obligation.
So, the next time that your partner, parents, friends or whoever tries to tell you that playing games is a waste of time, don’t listen. Sometimes it’s exactly what you need to give your brain a rest and recharge those cerebral muscles so you can throw yourself back into the real world with renewed vigour.
Just remember not to get obsessed and end up spending all your time playing games, thus leaving no time for using that rested brain for anything else. Thankfully, I am very capable of moderating my gaming, so there’s no way that I’ll become an addicted, obsessive frag fiend. Now where was I? Oh yeah – BOOM headshot!
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. Eu vou meter no forum Anedotas e Curiosidades, mas tambem meto já aqui:
