Fortune and glory

This is a rather parochial post and is in response to a couple of the comments left on the previous one asking what video game could drag me away from the unforgiving mistress that is blogging.

I’m quite a serious gamer. No actually that’s not true as this could be taken as implying that I’m any good at games. I tend to like quite serious games. Strategy games, sports games (cricket / motor racing in the main) and first person shooters are generally what I will play.

I have no problem at all with video game violence. In fact creating a bit of mayhem can be quite cathartic after a days work.

I do have a major problem with children playing games or being bought games that are utterly inappropriate for their age. It’s a shocking dereliction of parental responsibility not to be aware of what your children are playing and to censor and restrict access accordingly. I know of one parent who allowed their seven year old to play Grand Theft Auto which bears an 18 advisory age warning. The parent hadn’t taken the trouble to find out what the content of the game was.

I’ve never been a great fan of colourful platform / puzzle games though. Mario and Sonic are a waste of useful memory space and processing power when there are hordes of virtual Hun to be dealt with.

However. Our two boys recently completed their reward charts. You earn a star for doing something good / well and once it’s full up (no mean achievement) we will buy them a treat agreed at the outset. In this instance they had asked for the Lego Indiana Jones: The Complete Trilogy video game

Basically it lets you re-enact key scenes from the first three Indiana Jones movies, but with the characters and (mostly destructible) scenery in Lego form. It’s essentially a puzzle game with platforming elements and a bit of sanitised combat action to boot.

But the most enjoyable thing is the humour that runs through the whole production and the replay value as once a level is completed you are then freed to replay that level but now with any of the game characters earned or bought during the game. And the levels have obviously been designed with the replay factor in mind. So whilst it may only take a few days of mildly concerted effort to complete the game first time around there are many hour of treasure hunting left to do.

Never would have considered buying this for myself but it really is great fun and so once the kids have gone to bed I’m off to get a little ‘fortune and glory’ all for myself.

The attached ‘puff’ piece will give you a better idea of what it’s all about.

Normal service will be resumed soon