To introduce what I am about is going to take a little explaining. Recently my fiancé, Nick, has insisted that I get into gaming, Why? Because he is a gamer and is convinced that I’ll love it. Him being an expert on what I like, I have to give it a shot to see if he is indeed right. This blog will be half about this. The other half, food. because I actually do love to cook and know this about myself. I may not have that many recipes but the ones I have are fantastic.

I will be documenting my journey through the world of gaming with my blog adding a few recipes in there every now and again. It’s the mom in me, I feel the need to feed people.

SO lets get to the games!



My thoughts on my first “real” game, the first person shooter, BioShock.

I was skeptical at first…genetic mutation? Killing small children? Really? But the story and the deco feel peaked my interest. I started out slow because I don’t do very well with first person controls, I am either staring at the ceiling, the floor or my most impressive move, spinning uncontrollably. It took about 10 minutes of walking around the initial scene to get a good grasp of the controls to where I could step into some actual game play.

I loved the look of this game. Art deco? Awesome! Undersea world? Absolutely! Now, I think the last video game I played to some seriousness of a level was Super Mario Brothers back in 1986 so using an Xbox controller with all those buttons and triggers was a bit to get used to… left trigger? Right Joystick? What? How am I supposed to get used to this? Lets just say after 8 hours of continuous game play, my aim is still absolutely nothing to brag about.

Anyway….

I can say that a game like this will turn even the meekest of tiny women into a trucker in about 20 minutes. I think I dropped 20 f-bombs in 5 minutes. Nick was in his glory watching this and laughing. But, after about a half an hour he had to ignore me and sit where he couldn’t see the tv because apparently an experienced gamer boyfriend does not want to help, he wants to do. He explained to me that when I say “whats this? How do you do this?” his first natural response was “Lemme see that” (controller) so he could do it himself.

I slowly walked around, being extremely cautious, I still don’t have those ‘walking around’ controls down, so I try to stick close to a wall and do things as slowly as possible. I’m thorough, I look through everything to finding whatever I could. I search every corpse and every shelf. Nick is impressed at my searching abilities. OF course I’m going to be good at the easiest part of the game. I thought it was fun, it was like a treasure hunt. In the first part of the game all you have is a big wrench and what the game calls plasmids, which are injections that give you crazy super powers, like the ability to shoot lightning out of your hand.

(A side note about plasmids, apparently these things are the reason that the Splicers are on a crazy murderous rampage. They clearly used to be normal human beings. So the understanding on why you need to repeatedly inject yourself with them is lost on me.)

So you have this lightning hand and a big red wrench. This is the part of the game where you have to get your aim on. You shoot them with the lighting and whack them with the wrench. Are you kidding me? This was good though because most of the first level splicers don’t have guns, they just run at you and try to hit you with things.

Now, picture this. Beginner, walking carefully and slowly around a corner, splicers come running at you, you try your terrible aim with your lightning hand and miss, there are 6 splicers attacking you and your walking abilities are sub par… you start swinging your wrench in a panic and you are now spinning out of control. The screen is a blur of wrench and blood. Surprisingly this is a very effective method in this stage of the game.

Once I got past the first stages it was a pretty good experience. Nick was proud that I managed to make it through at least 3 hours without dying. I suppose that’s what happens when you are cautious. I watched Nick play for a little bit and he ran through that place like he was invincible. I can see why he had so much trouble not dying, but everyone has their own game play style I suppose.

I’ve been thinking about getting back to it all day, but a busy Sunday and a 4 year old lurking about makes that a bit tough. Once bedtime comes I’m hitting that controller and killing some splicers!