When People Do Cool Things

I’ve been a fan of the Guild Wars franchise since I first heard of it. Conceptually, I’d be interested in checking out games like World of  Warcraft, or Final Fantasy XI. Final Fantasy XIV has magitek armor! FTW! But I also am a very cheap individual, and I refuse to play a game that holds my ability to play at ransom. If I buy a game, I expect to be able to play it, and the subscription model doesn’t work for me.

Guild Wars had my respect immediately for their approach to online gamin that doesn’t involve a subscription model. I remember at the time of it’s original release, that there was a lot of skepticism about whether it would be able to survive without the monthly fee… and how much money they were giving up by refusing to take the same approach as WoW. I was a poor  (and very busy) student when it first came out, and so it wasn’t until after I graduated that I finally sunk my teeth into it. I’ve ended up purchasing all the expansions for it, and honestly it’s a great game that still holds up.  This week marks their 8th anniversary, and though Guild Wars 2 is the new “thing”,  I think the original holds up and is fun enough that at $30, that I can’t recommend it enough.

I still am keen to check out GW2, but admittedly I’m restraining the amount of time I play games these days as I have too much other stuff on my plate at the moment. So I will still wistfully look at the website now and then and contemplate buying it… but I just know it will be a huge time vacuum if I do. And ArenaNet? The Super Adventure Box was just playing dirty.

But since I’m sticking to my guns about being thrifty both with time and money at the moment, I’ll have to settle for Rytlock’s Critter Rampage instead. RCR (Retro City Rampage? River City Ransom? Maybe RCR is the secret to having a cool NES era game?) is a cool retro game that you can play for free in your browser, and the story behind it is as cool as the game itself, so be sure to check it out. And be sure to look for the graphic with the jumping character and blue arrow; that’s the easily missed link that brings you to the actual game. It’s a nice little game, and fantastic to see what happens when people do cool things.