I struggled for a while this year to come up with something for TANKSgiving. In years’ passed I have done bits on rare WWI armored vehicles, early tanks…you know, the usual awesome stuff. This year for some reason I could not come up with an appropriate topic. Until I found the below picture during some online research.
Humming in the Shower
I talk about my gaming childhood all the time around here – games that I grew up with, that introduced me to the hobby, that left an imprint on my personality, and whose theme songs I still hum in the shower 25 years later. Moreso than Gunship!, F-19 Stealth Fighter, Impossible Mission, Archon or Winter Games, or two dozen other titles from the 1980s and 1990s, memories of Wings! have been with me, branded into my gaming soul, since it was released almost 25 years ago.
The original is one of my favorite games of all time, probably in my personal top five list, because of the game’s perfect World War I atmosphere, generated by a combination of music, art and mood that really placed my impressionable brain in the Great War. Combined with the [albeit] linear campaign, the authentic sounding names in the pilot roster, the unit journal of the 56th Aerosquadron and the goings-on of the unit while off duty, Wings!, while not realistic by any measure other than a human one, grabbed my gaming brain and never let go.
How Do I Look at the World?
I am a seasonal kind of guy. I read books that are indirectly connected to what’s going on outside my window. I listen to music to put me in a weather-appropriate mood. And I game the same way…linking what I play to my perceived notion of whatever season I’m in. I’ve written articles about this before, dating back about 10 years when I wrote a review of one of my favorite PC titles ever: Rome Total War – Barbarian Invasion (BI).
I remember starting my first campaign in that game in the fall, which felt so damned perfect it was palpable. The apocalyptic tension of the barbarian hordes slugging it out across a dynamic map of Europe and Asia blew my mind as the leaves on the trees outside my gaming room yellowed and fell to the ground. As a matter of fact it may have been BI that cemented this seasonal thinking in my brain. It may have started with books and music when I was a teenager, but PC games made it an official way of thinking, or some kind of disorder, as an adult. (Ed note: we’re voting for “disorder”).
Fast forward ten years and I’m still posting threads on what games are best to play in October, to get really juiced and jazzed for Halloween. I still listen to Type-O Negative tracks, the Cure and old U2…of course the album October by the Gaelic music gods is on constant rotation for me this time of year, despite the album being over 30 years old. But what to game?
Rarely is a review so easy for me to write. That’s because Wolfenstein: The New Order (W:TNO) is not only one of the most fun and creative shooters I have played, it is definitely one of the best games I have played, period. The quality of the visuals, the music, the story, the controls, the setting…everything about W:TNO proves that the developers at Id and Machinegames did indeed care about the tried and true Wolfenstein lineage, while not being timid in creating a brand new universe for this new Nazi-stomper, featuring our beloved hero B.J. Blazkowicz. I was engaged from the very beginning and tore through the single player campaign because it was a fascinating, exciting look at a dark, near-future. Add in a dash of humor and you have an almost perfect game.
