**** Editor's Note:  Blood's opinions in this article do not reflect the opinions of PCShooter.com or it's other staff members ****

Weekly Rant
September 5, 2001
By:  Blood

If you’ve ever read any of my work, you know I have a deep inner hatred of Quake, and Quake-like games. "What?" you may ask, "how can you hate these types of games and run a Shooter web site?"  Well, "it’s easy," I would say in reply, "Luckee and Frag-girlie run the Shooter web site, I just write an occasional review and the weekly rant."

Actually I have thought long and hard and have come to the conclusion that I am old. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not that old, I haven’t quite reached that age where it’s acceptable to wear wingtips and black socks with shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. I haven’t quite gotten to that ripe old age when I can take plaid dress pants and make them into cutoffs, or driving those really big cars 20MPH everywhere I go. Nonetheless I am old.

I think back to the good old days when the speediest computer on the planet was the good old Commodore 64. This was one fine computing machine. As we all know, the processor had the computing power of a Frito, and was loaded up with software with speeds rivaling continental drift. The  high tech graphics were rendered with pixels the size of small cantaloupes, but still this machine was a wonder to behold.

Looking past all the small flaws the machine had, I remember one thing that really stuck out about the games. The games in this era weren’t too terribly advanced, but the story lines, and the game concepts were unrivaled. This was the era of the pimply faced, greasy haired computer nerd (who tried, but failed to get away with several styles old people still use today). On theses old machines anyone with a little programming knowledge could sit down and write a decent computer game. The result was a market filled with amazing games.

I remember one game called Mail Order Monsters. Basically you start with some cash, buy a monster, then customize the monster with weapons. You take the weapons, donate them to a government program to get guns off the street, and then collect your $50. After your monster is ready you fight other monsters, if you win the fight (but you won’t since you sold off your guns), you get more cash and can add more items to your monster. This was an era where thousands of games came and went every day. The Ultima Series was born along with several other excellent games.

With all these people having fun the CDC (Center for Disease Control) decided this was an epidemic and invented what’s known today as boring games, or Quake. The years between the late 80's and the early 90's a disturbing trend started to happen. Computers got faster, upgrading from a Frito, to a Pop Tart, then eventually to the 8088 and graphics also got better.  Soon games required teams of people to make them and the era of the lone programmer ended. With the death of the lone programmer came the death of creativity and fun.

I feel like sitting in a rocking chair and talking about the good old days, but it seems now days we’ve sacrificed fun and gameplay for awesome graphics. Instead of taking an idea and building an incredible game around it. We’ve taken some graphics and tried to showcase them.

So why do I hate Quake? All graphics and no game. Think back... would the same story and gameplay have been as fun without the graphics? I wonder if I could get a good deal on a Commodore 64 off EBay?