Admitting that I was a level 31 Mage made me feel really geeky...and I don't care.
I accepted it because I had fun playing this game. A lot of fun. For those of you who don't know, Dungeon Siege is an RPG dungeon crawler. It's basically Gauntlet with leveling up aspects to it. But it does it in a really cool way. Yes you level up with ridiculous numbers. Yes you have to know the difference between magic and melee. And yes, you you have to figure out what things like "Strength", "Dexterity", and "Intelligence" mean in the context of the game...so already you are delving into a world of geekdom from which you may never recover. But it's okay. Why? Because once you start playing you end up getting so lost in the world that you don't care anymore.
The game starts out with you picking what kind of person you are. I started out as a hot female redhead farmer...see, already 10 on the geekometer. Then I was told that I needed to save the ancient kingdom...this story was another big item on the geek checklist. The story isn't that great...just your typical dragon-fare with those horrible covers with a hot chick in a brass bra that you find in the dark corner of any bookstore. It's plain and simple and it really is just enough to get you going.
But once you get going is when the fun starts. It's pretty much a hack and slash kind of game. Run up to an enemy, pound him to a pulp, and recover your health with a magical potion if you need to. But what's cool is all the goodies the bad guys drop. You can choose what you want to pick up and put it in your inventory. And everything that is dropped is an actual item. You'll see those pretty boots you've been waiting 10 levels for...not just an icon...but actual pretty boots.
The world looks great too! You'll run through forests, caves, swamps and a castle. All of which look top notch. It will certainly satisfy your nerd nerve.
And as you run through the world you'll encounter a ton of different enemies. Ghosts. Skeletons. Dragons. Creatures. Goblins. You name it. And in order to beat up all these guys, you have to get a team...that's where other characters come in.
You'll encounter a bunch of characters on the way. And you can choose whether or not you want them to join you or not. Some will join for free, other greedy jerks want money. But all of them can help out in one way or another.
The great thing about all the characters is that you need to treat them just as deeply and delicately as you do your main character. You have to choose all their equipment, make sure they have what they need, make sure their weapon is useful, and make sure they don't die.
By this time you are so engulfed in the damn game that you don't realize that you haven't been to work in 3 days, that you haven't gone to the bathroom in 4 days, and that you haven't shaved or showered in a week. Your pets will probably be dead and your loved ones will most likely have left you by the time you figure out what you have become...one of those guys in high school you swore you would never turn into. You look around at your empty, filthy apartment...pizza boxes everywhere...soda cans toppling over on your desk...and a smell that would send any creature with a nose howling as it runs away.
And the sad thing is, you just shrug your shoulders and go on playing...because you need to swap your equipment around within your team and you just need 10,387 more gold to get that Tusk Helm that will up your defense +2.
My god...what have I become?