Personnel Files – Mark

Name: Mark John Paterson

Age: 21

Current Location: Livingston, Scotland

First gaming memory: Earliest thing I can remember playing was a demo copy of Beneath a Steel Sky for the Amiga that my sister and I got from some magazine or other. We used to play it all the time, despite it only containing a tiny fraction of the full game. It didn’t have voice overs like the PC version did either, so what the two of us used to do was take turns reading out the lines of speech in our own made-up voices. The result of that being that everybody sounded like a Scottish kid between seven and 12 years of age.

Longest gaming session: I’ve played quite a number of games for about 12 hours or so in the space of a day but none of them are all that noteworthy. I did once play Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers for well over eight hours all night, though, right through to early the next morning. I just couldn’t sleep at all and that game had me hooked at the time, so I thought “ah, why the hell not” and switched on my Xbox for a game or two. Next thing I know, it’s 9am and I’m fucking shattered – I promptly fall asleep, wake up fifteen minutes later and feel fine for the rest of the day.

Least favourite genre: MMORPGs. All that technology getting hundreds of people to play together and they do nothing but hide it behind some bloody World of Warcraft clone. Thankfully, games like Dust 514 and Firefall seem to be trying to move server-based gaming away from the traditional toolbarpocalypse and onto something more involving gameplay-wise. I’m also not a particular fan of fighting, racing or real-time strategy games, but that’s just because I tend to suck at them.

Favourite gaming snack: I wouldn’t say I have a favourite snack specifically for when I’m gaming – I generally just have a munch on whatever I can find. My favourite snack in general is McCoy’s Oriental Rib flavour crisps which are amazeballs, so I’ll probably go with them as my answer. In an ideal world, I’d just fill a cupboard with them.

Reaction to dying in-game: When I die in-game I’m sometimes okay with it, mostly when I consider my death to be my own fault due to recklessness or whatever. For the most part though, when I die in a game I become an incandescent manifestation of pure rage. For but a brief second, the power of a million exploding stars courses through my veins and quickly rampages towards my voice box, where it manifests itself as “aww, for fuck’s sake” or something to that effect. Sometimes I punch myself in the leg repeatedly too, which probably isn’t healthy. Everybody does that though, right? Right?

Favourite game character: My favourite character is Rad Spencer, and not that wanky, brown-haired fuck that was in the Bionic Commando game from 2009. I’m a particular fan of his appearance at it is in Bionic Commando: Rearmed, which I believe is based heavily on Val Kilmer’s character Ice Man in Top Gun. Rad oozes cool and it’s quite inspiring to see a character who’s like that, especially when they’ve got red hair like myself. It’s actually helped me overcome some of my own self-confidence issues – for me, Rad’s a hero in-game and out.

Most hated game character: I find it very difficult to hate characters in games, I usually just have an apathy towards them. To that extent I find it quite surprising how much I hate Larry from The Walking Dead. He’s just a total arse to you every time you’re near him but even then, you start to sympathise with him a little bit later on when you find out more about him and Lilly. Child characters in games tend to annoy the shit out of me too – they always seem to have the whiniest fucking voices imaginable, pretty much without fail.

Favourite game EVER!: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. While I do sometimes wonder if this is just the nostalgia talking, I’ve always regarded it as a perfect game. I’ve played through it several times now on it’s original SNES incarnation, on the GBA bundled with Four Swords and on a ROM that let you play it in what was effectively 1080p display resolution with procedurally-enhanced textures. There’s just so much replayability, so much depth, so much to see and do all over the place. To this day, I still remember the feeling I got when I was moments from beating the game and discovered that actually, I was only about a third of the way through. The best part is it still looks as great now as it did when I first played it 13 odd years ago, even without emulated enhancement.

Dan asks: “If you were a wild cat (or OS X version) what one would you be?” I’d like to consider myself a lion because they’re always portrayed as quite noble animals and they’ve got brilliant manes. Those are qualities I’d like to think I shared with lions anyway! I’m also going with lion because of their connection to Lion-O from the Thundercats, who’s a childhood hero of mine.

Laura asks: “What’s your favourite book?” My favourite book for ages was Fantastic Mr. Fox – I’d read it loads when I was a kid and it was a story that always stuck with me. But about a year ago, some crazy woman introduced me to this book called Ender’s Game and it became a real favourite of mine even before I’d finished it. It’s such an excellent science-fiction epic unlike anything else out there and I’d highly recommend it to anyone, even if you’re not much of a reader.