I have never been much of a fan of computer games. However, I confess I have occasionally succumbed to their allure, and found them as dangerously addictive as much of the rest of the human race. Luckily, I have the strength of will - and the breadth of other interests - than I can fairly readily step back from the addiction. And I do not expose myself to such temptations very often.
I think their particular attraction for me lies in their challenge to my analytical and creative powers. I have gone through brief periods of similar obsession with board games - particularly with the more elaborate military strategy games that attempt to recreate famous historical campaigns. I would spend hours reading and pondering the rules, working out how to win (and only rarely feeling the need to play a 'practice game' or two against myself, to test my theories). It wasn't usually all that hard, since game designers seem to be focused more on throwing in as much historical detail as possible, rather than considering the statistical significance of the weightings of the various factors at play in the game. (I recall once playing a representation of The Peloponnesian War, in which it soon became very apparent that the only possible winning strategy was to throw all available troops against each other outside Epidamnus on the Adriatic coast - because control of this city secured a huge trade revenue stream, far more than could be derived from any other colonial possessions, and could thus rapidly secure a massive dominance for the side that managed to hold on to it. This was not how the real war played out, but in the game.....)
Computer games, I suppose, have the added draw of a highly adrenalised real-time experience that sharpens up your co-ordination and reflexes. Also, they tend to offer rather broader and more flexible environments and scenarios, where there is more scope for your imagination: I quite enjoy thinking up improbable or outlandish stratagems to try; and I am, as often as not, disappointed when I discover that the game's designers hadn't thought to accommodate them.
Anyway, as I say, I've never really spent much time on computer games. But, when I first moved to China, I was worried that my extreme penury would leave me with not much to do in the evenings. And I had recently become the owner of a laptop computer for the first time. So, I did buy a few computer games to bring with me. One of them was Return to Castle Wolfenstein (then, a relatively recent release, I think), a canny blend of the original classic sci-fi demon shoot-em-up Doom (which I'd spent many an unhappy hour puzzling my way through on my first desktop computer, when I was a law student) and the hugely successful WWII Normandy landings game Medal of Honor - Nazis and demons: a winning combination!
Furthermore, I discovered, there was a titillating infusion of sex appeal in this game: the eponymous fortress/secret weapons lab/portal-to-the-evil-dimension where most the action was set was guarded by a troop of slinky, leather-clad maidens known as 'The Elite'. Yes, you could get your arse whooped by a couple of dozen Nazi Emma Peels - how exciting is that?!
I perused the instruction booklet in some detail (a habit I suppose I'd carried over from my earlier experience with board-based strategy games; although, in fact, computer game booklets rarely tell you anything of any use at all in playing the game, outside of the basic control functions).
In the course of this reading, I noticed that a "motion-capture actress" was credited - presumably the model for the dangerously acrobatic Elite guards. I was sufficiently intrigued to do a little Googling, and.....
Yes, it was none other than last weekend's 'fantasy girlfriend', the dauntingly sportif Danelle Folta - willowy Playboy model and endurance athlete.
That is how I became aware of the very striking Ms Folta, a lady who would otherwise have passed completely under my radar.
Funnily enough, I never did get around to playing the Wolfenstein game (although you can find more information about it here, if this is the kind of thing that interests you.)
No comments:
Post a Comment