I’ve always played games, that much I know. And I’ve always had the latest consoles since the SNES. I had a Neo Geo at one point and I had a special Gold Game Boy with a fluorescent back lit screen! I had a Dreamcast and I’ve now got a Wii and a Xbox 360. So nothing has really changed, or has it?
When I first started playing games, I’d go through the Mario games. I remember one Christmas, presents under the tree and a suspiciously rectangular present labelled for me. The first day it turned up, I couldn’t stop thinking about this rectangular box. What could it be? I asked myself constantly. The anticipation was killing me.
Evil temptation got the better of me, I plotted the revealing of the contents without getting in trouble and came up with a flawless plan. Every morning I would get up before anyone else in the house and would scratch a corner of the box, making the scratches look as close to a dogs chewing as possible. At first the damage was barely noticable, but patience was the order of the day and after a few weeks the game revealed itself to be Super Mario Kart. The anticipation of what it was, was over, now I had the knowledge that I would have the game. But it was still at least a week from Christmas Day. The pain of knowing but not having was even worse. Lesson learnt? Nah!
That was how I was with games. I’d play daily. From Mario games I evolved to Command & Conquer and from there onto RPGs. For years those were my favourite games, first Final Fantasy 7 and then the awesome, bestest game ever made Suikoden 2.
Fast forward to now. What am I playing most? Mario Kart Wii and Call of Duty 4. FPS games are a new thing with me. I played Halo back in the day, but that was more of a social thing for me, playing and drinking with friends. Now I find myself playing COD4 online, frantically running for A, B & C on Ground War (Domination). I’d never really saw that gaming-evolution coming, playing FPS theoretically on my own.
My RPG days are dwindling too. I have Lost Oddyssey on the 360 and Opoona on Wii but I haven’t played them in months. I think what I really need is a new Suikoden. But having said that I haven’t completed 4 + 5 yet. And I think I know what is putting me off these new age RPGs. The graphics. I’m not a fan of the 3D RPGs. I’d rather play Suikoden 2 than any of the new Final Fantasys after 7.
I keep an eye out on games being announced and there are plenty that have me interested but they tend to feed off my interest in other things. Example, I’m very interested in Left 4 Dead. That stems from my love of zombie-fiction (Brian Keene/Max Brooks/etc).
I’ve evolved from playing mostly platform games, to more complicated RPGs to semi-repetitive FPS games. I have no idea why, maybe someone can shed some light on this? 
