In the Video Game Culture course I plan to teach next semester, students will be required to write game journals, an idea I got from Laurie. We'll be using Blogger to write our journals, so I thought I'd start keeping a game journal on this blog, both to provide model entries for students and because I know you loyal readers out there care deeply about my gaming.

I recently read about the upcoming FPS Thriller F.E.A.R.. While I wasn't excited by what I saw before, the article in PC Gamer interested me for two reasons: 1) it talked about lots of nifty stuff the game does that makes it worth thinking about and playing and 2) it mentioned that the game was produced by MONOLITH, the company who created No One Lives Forever, a highly entertaining, campy 60s spy game. Having been reminded of NOLF, I decided to start playing NOLF2, which has been sitting on my shelf for some time.

I particularly enjoy funny games. Serious games are fine and dandy, but I prefer to chuckle than cringe. NOLF did that. I was excited to see whether NOLF2 would do the same. Sure enough, the first level features several conversations you can overhear, along with funny notes like this: