Gunslinger
Mildly Dipped
The phone rings. It's Friday one o'clock AM and I've got to get up tommorrow at eight for a behind-the-wheel lesson. I groggily tumble out of bed to pick the phone on my bedside.
"Whosdis?" I mutter.
"Steve, this is Tom," answers my cousin.
Yawn. "Why you calling me at-" I check the red glaring numbers on my digital clock- "one 'o'clock in the morning!" From my tone of voice, it's evident that I'm a normally deep sleeper.
"Five words: The Temple of Elemental Evil."
I bite back the unpleasant word I was about to say. Suddenly, I'm not so tired. "What?" I ask stupidly.
My cousin laughs. He works at an EB and I had asked him to reserve me a copy (sorta like an insider deal but perfectly legit). "I was just wondering if you'd like to play your copy."
I pause. One o'clock in the morning and I'll probably never get back to sleep. "You better not be shitting me, Tom," I attempt in my most serious badass voice that doesn't sound so threatening with a dry throat.
As an answer, my cousin holds up his cell phone receiver to his computer speakers. I hear some great ambiance background music and what sounds like a nifty spell effect. "I just cast Magic Missle," Tom states matter-of-factly.
"Oh shit."
"That's right," my cousin replies.
I convince my cousin to drive over to my house. An hour later, he's at my front door with a box. I look around discreetly before grabbing my prize and handing Tom fifty dollars for picking up my copy. I'm too excited; I close the door on Tom without thanking him.
It's now two o'clock and all thought of sleep has left me. I boot up my computer, tear open the box after drooling over the cover art, and pop the first disk into my cd-drive. "Would you like to install The Temple Of Elemental Evil right now?" a prompt box asks me. Hell yeah! I click (more like pound) on "Yes".
The installation screen starts up. I skip everything, clicking yes and yes and yes as necessary. Finally, the progress bar shows up and the game is installing all its goodness onto my harddrive. As I wait, my screen is filled with pictures of enemies, their statistics, skills, everything. I dare not blink.
Finally, after the game installs and my DirectX is updated, I start the game. The Atari logo shows up, followed by the bleak words of Troikagames. Then, the game loads up a cache and I'm greeted with a spiffy intro cinematic. My retinas are burnt at the multiple spell effects splattering upon my screen.
Whoa.
I'm shown the game menu and I click on New Game. I choose Normal mode (I'm not ready for Iron Man mode as of yet). I choose my alignment: Lawful Neutral. Then I'm shown a list of pre-made characters. I spend five minutes viewing the stats of multiple pregenerated characters before scoffing. Pfft, I can do better. So I go to the character creation screen with the intentions of making a character. I'm given two choices: roll for stats, or use a point buying system. Ultimately, I'd be given higher stats if I rolled rather than using point buying.
So I roll. 10, 9, 13, 15, 16, 11. Shit. That's not too good. I roll once more. Equally low scores. Shit, I say, shit! I'm not a stat-whore, mind you, but I've played D&D before and I know those are not good scores. Finally, after rolling about seventy times, I'm given some better decent stats. I place my higher skills into charisma, strength, and wisdom. Then, I choose my gender, height, hair color, race, and profession. My paladin is almost done. I then choose my portrait (a simple helmed warrior) and my character's voice. Then I spend five more minutes agonizing over a fantasy name. Gorm? No. Olger? Nah. Khazdan? Nope. Rhogar? Ugh. Finally, I opt for "Camaris" after a character from a Tad Williams book.
A good thirty minutes have gone by. Okay, now I've got to make three more characters to balance out my party. So I rush through and make a dwarf cleric, halfling rogue, and elven wizard. The game starts me off fighting a bandit and discovering the body of a dead priestess from Hommlet. I kill the bandit (cool, real time combat!) and then recover a gem off the priestess' body. Being Lawful Neutral, I head to Hommlet to notify the church.
So I head over the Hommlet and literally spend an hour just exploring the "small" town and interacting with the townspeople. I pickup a warrior and a mage to join my party, clear out the fog of war around the town, and get a few side quests (solving only one out of a handful).
I'm ready to find the location of a dungeon and do some sword play but then my dad opens the door. "You've got to take a behind-the-wheel lesson tommorrow, Steven," he says gruffly. I take the hint and reluctantly shut down my computer.
Okay, so after a relaxing five hours of sleep (ah, the life of a Roman soldier), I wake up at eight and take a behind-the-wheel lesson (which is basically a lesson that prepares me for my drivers lesson test) and I'm lucky that I don't manage to crash. When I get home, I eat my healthy breakfast of Coca-Cola and left over pizza before returning to The Temple of Elemental Evil.
So long sleep, hello ToEE!
"Whosdis?" I mutter.
"Steve, this is Tom," answers my cousin.
Yawn. "Why you calling me at-" I check the red glaring numbers on my digital clock- "one 'o'clock in the morning!" From my tone of voice, it's evident that I'm a normally deep sleeper.
"Five words: The Temple of Elemental Evil."
I bite back the unpleasant word I was about to say. Suddenly, I'm not so tired. "What?" I ask stupidly.
My cousin laughs. He works at an EB and I had asked him to reserve me a copy (sorta like an insider deal but perfectly legit). "I was just wondering if you'd like to play your copy."
I pause. One o'clock in the morning and I'll probably never get back to sleep. "You better not be shitting me, Tom," I attempt in my most serious badass voice that doesn't sound so threatening with a dry throat.
As an answer, my cousin holds up his cell phone receiver to his computer speakers. I hear some great ambiance background music and what sounds like a nifty spell effect. "I just cast Magic Missle," Tom states matter-of-factly.
"Oh shit."
"That's right," my cousin replies.
I convince my cousin to drive over to my house. An hour later, he's at my front door with a box. I look around discreetly before grabbing my prize and handing Tom fifty dollars for picking up my copy. I'm too excited; I close the door on Tom without thanking him.
It's now two o'clock and all thought of sleep has left me. I boot up my computer, tear open the box after drooling over the cover art, and pop the first disk into my cd-drive. "Would you like to install The Temple Of Elemental Evil right now?" a prompt box asks me. Hell yeah! I click (more like pound) on "Yes".
The installation screen starts up. I skip everything, clicking yes and yes and yes as necessary. Finally, the progress bar shows up and the game is installing all its goodness onto my harddrive. As I wait, my screen is filled with pictures of enemies, their statistics, skills, everything. I dare not blink.
Finally, after the game installs and my DirectX is updated, I start the game. The Atari logo shows up, followed by the bleak words of Troikagames. Then, the game loads up a cache and I'm greeted with a spiffy intro cinematic. My retinas are burnt at the multiple spell effects splattering upon my screen.
Whoa.
I'm shown the game menu and I click on New Game. I choose Normal mode (I'm not ready for Iron Man mode as of yet). I choose my alignment: Lawful Neutral. Then I'm shown a list of pre-made characters. I spend five minutes viewing the stats of multiple pregenerated characters before scoffing. Pfft, I can do better. So I go to the character creation screen with the intentions of making a character. I'm given two choices: roll for stats, or use a point buying system. Ultimately, I'd be given higher stats if I rolled rather than using point buying.
So I roll. 10, 9, 13, 15, 16, 11. Shit. That's not too good. I roll once more. Equally low scores. Shit, I say, shit! I'm not a stat-whore, mind you, but I've played D&D before and I know those are not good scores. Finally, after rolling about seventy times, I'm given some better decent stats. I place my higher skills into charisma, strength, and wisdom. Then, I choose my gender, height, hair color, race, and profession. My paladin is almost done. I then choose my portrait (a simple helmed warrior) and my character's voice. Then I spend five more minutes agonizing over a fantasy name. Gorm? No. Olger? Nah. Khazdan? Nope. Rhogar? Ugh. Finally, I opt for "Camaris" after a character from a Tad Williams book.
A good thirty minutes have gone by. Okay, now I've got to make three more characters to balance out my party. So I rush through and make a dwarf cleric, halfling rogue, and elven wizard. The game starts me off fighting a bandit and discovering the body of a dead priestess from Hommlet. I kill the bandit (cool, real time combat!) and then recover a gem off the priestess' body. Being Lawful Neutral, I head to Hommlet to notify the church.
So I head over the Hommlet and literally spend an hour just exploring the "small" town and interacting with the townspeople. I pickup a warrior and a mage to join my party, clear out the fog of war around the town, and get a few side quests (solving only one out of a handful).
I'm ready to find the location of a dungeon and do some sword play but then my dad opens the door. "You've got to take a behind-the-wheel lesson tommorrow, Steven," he says gruffly. I take the hint and reluctantly shut down my computer.
Okay, so after a relaxing five hours of sleep (ah, the life of a Roman soldier), I wake up at eight and take a behind-the-wheel lesson (which is basically a lesson that prepares me for my drivers lesson test) and I'm lucky that I don't manage to crash. When I get home, I eat my healthy breakfast of Coca-Cola and left over pizza before returning to The Temple of Elemental Evil.
So long sleep, hello ToEE!
