A you might remember from one of my blog entries a week or so ago, I picked up a copy of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic from a virtual bargain bin recently. I know, this game is 3 years old now, but I always regretted not playing it at the time and never got around to it, so I’m finally catching up. Plus, the days when I would only pick up a game that had just been released are long gone - that’s a luxury I had in my youth when I could play all the games I wanted to, when I wanted to, but no longer - there are much more useful things to be doing. So, now I graze the gaming libraries, my gaze being drawn only by a select few high-quality titles that fit my particular tastes, and if that’s an old game, that’s fine too. To be honest I have to stifle a yawn looking at most of the PC titles coming out now anyway, on account of the fact that I don’t play MMOs (I have a life), have one WW2 / military shooter already and don’t need another one, have played pretty much all the driving games I care to for the moment, and don’t buy sports titles. Thats' most publisher’s current lineups out the window 😉
Anyhow, although I don’t have much time to play, it’s been enjoyable so far. It has a lot of similarities with Neverwinter Nights in terms of the story structure and character interactions, but obviously transplanted into the Star Wars universe which is pretty well represented. However, at the rate I’m playing it’s likely to last me the rest of the year I think!
I still like single player RPGs (even though time is hard to find to play them) and really hope they don’t phase them out completely in favour of MMORPGs. You can play them at your own pace, and the best ones are highly story-driven, something that’s very hard to achieve in a levelling-focussed, anarchic multiplayer environment. I appreciate quality writing in a game, and it really makes all the difference in an RPG - my favorite of all time being Planescape : Torment; it is still the pinnacle of the form, in my opinion. You can keep your level-obsessed bash-em-collect-em-ups, Torment made me think, and made me want to keep playing to figure out what the hell was going on, not just to put up the horns at reaching level ‘x’.
Anyway, it’s a fun, quality game to relax with when I get the time. Work is pretty damn hectic and stressful at the moment, so whilst I’m still working on several Ogre features (I’m about 70% through a replacement DDS codec for Eihort, have some more OSX work to do, and want to work on a new 3DS exporter), I’m taking the time to chill when I need to.