Last night I was playing Mass Effect 3 and enjoying it. I will admit that I have not gotten too far in the game yet. Work, family and other games have taken up more of my time. I am ashamed to admit that I was still only level 3 at the time.
It was during this play session that I noticed something that I find interesting, perhaps a trend in gaming these days. While in the very early levels of the game I noticed I received 5XP for picking up a med pack. Then, later on in the level I read a data pad and low and behold I gained another odd amount of experience. Something to the tune of 144XP if memory serves.
The funny part at least to me was that this was enough to level me up. It struck me, you really don't even have to fight things or do anything that requires skill to gain XP and levels in games anymore.
I probably show my age when I say that I remember back in the good old days when you had to actually fight to earn XP. But then I was thinking, were those really the good old days? When you think about how far games and gaming systems have come nowadays, the power they have now for immersion is so much greater than what it used to be. If you go back to the Atari 2600 days one of my favorite games of the time was Adventure. Great game, but you were a square. No joke, a square! Talk about having to use your imagination!
Games like the Elder Scrolls series make such good use of the world and your actions that when you sneak around, you get better at it. When you use magic, you get better at it. How cool is that? So, where am I going with all of this? I guess my point is, initially I thought it was humorous that I should gain a level from reading a data pad. But after thinking about it, I will take gaining a level from reading any day over going back to my character being a square!
What do you think? Do you long the gaming days of yore or are you completely happy with where gaming is today? Leave your comments below.
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