Growing up as a kid, I never had access to online games and was content with just a small little Xbox sitting next to the old DLP TV - back when they still had the "Blades" dashboard (Surely there's some others that remember this)
And the very first game that I loaded into that bad boy was Forza Motorsport 2.
Wow. Just wow. My younger self was mesmerized, driving around and around in circles and going backwards on the track back into the other cars merely out of spite after I spun out.
I became a bit of an addict. Every time I got back from school, I was right onto Forza Motorsport, trying to get a better time; I raced lap after lap after lap, dedicated to finding a better path. I was addicted to racing games and nothing would stop me from getting the best hotlap.
But eventually, as we all know, 2007 - 2008 was the golden year of game releases and boy was I absolutely stoked - I had just saved up all my money and was heading down to the local Video EZY (Surely someone else remembers this) to pick up a copy of Halo 3 & Rainbow Six Vegas with my dad. We took the games home, sat down on the couch with our brand new LCD tv and booted it up... Crickey did I suck yet again, but that was the most fun I've ever played. Nothing I can play to this day will ever come close to the amount of fun I had before.
Unfortunately for me, the next year, my brother would pass away in a critical accident and I became a bit of a hermit, playing solely shooter games to relieve myself from the stress. Bang bang, boom boom.... it was all I knew for a massively long time. I had gained a fair bit of weight then too, and my life was going downhill from the massive chunk that was taken out.
I remained this way for a long time, until something came out... something so similar to the Wii, yet unique and different.
The Xbox Kinect.
Now this thing was something else - Kinect sports and the new dashboard? I was thrilled!
I played kinect sports until I almost dropped out of exhaustion, and surprisingly, I managed to get into peak physical condition from all that squatting, jumping and kicking
With this "revolutionary" piece of equipment, I had all the power in my hands - Literally!
This started my kinect phase, where I solely played kinect games, used the kinect to traverse the menus... even Forza Motorsport 4, steering with just my hands! (Look ma! No hands! was an achievement back then)
Eventually, I moved off of that after finding out about the PC. This changed everything up so much - I could do so much more with the PC's keyboard and mouse... and from there, I found the game Settlers and Age of Empires, which started my strategy phase. I just couldn't get enough of the strategy games - Empire Earth, Settlers, AoE, Warcraft (Reign of Chaos was my favourite) - This also paved the way for me to start playing chess competitively before winning a national competition! (Well, I came second tied, but c'mooon, what's one point)
Now, I'm absolutely stuck on 3 games - War Thunder, Lethal Company and iRacing
I guess I've taken a taste of all the flavours out for offer and found my taste - Neapolitan, all of them!
I still play some of the old games for a nostalgic hit, and my Xbox 360 is still purring in perfect condition to this date, with the controller's backing being taped up... but nothing will ever replace those memories and the path of games I followed.