Jul 31, 2009

Army Break 3: Games for men

Surely most wont be surprised, but the people (involuntarily) serving the Greek army are indeed men. Men coming from all classes, of all educational levels and generally between their late teens and early thirties. Men, one would say, that are what video game demographers would describe as the gaming's hardcore audience. So, this being a gaming blog and me having understood that people not in the army don't find army jokes and funny situations particularly amusing, let me talk about what these men play. Oh, and please don't expect any sort of sociological insight and/or analysis. The army does after all rot ones brain. Severely.

Anyway, in their vast majority soldiers tend to enjoy Pro Evolution Soccer on either the PS2 or the PS3. Shockingly even sheepherders (a certain sheepherder actually) that can't read or write also play and love it, as do most officers. Football Manager on the PC sits firmly in the second place, closely followed by the collective forces of console-based fighting and driving games. World of Warcraft and Street Fighter are also among the more popular titles, unlike all things Wii. Nintnendo's ultra-popular family oriented beast is, it seems, considered an obscure kids console that can't even play porn DVDs.

As for handhelds the PSP is by far the more popular. The iPhone comes a distant second and I've yet to see a Nintendo DS.

Oh, and on an unexpected note, adventure games are actually popular among us grunts. Especially Monkey Island and Gabriel Knight it seems, though Grim Fandango has more than a few admirers itself.

Cheers for now. Gotta sleep some more. Last night's 14 hours were apparently not enough...

Jul 3, 2009

Army Break 2: The Indie Rox (and military blues)

I really don't feel like discussing the army or anything related to it. I'll just mention the general lack of sleep it seems to impose on people and the fact that I never thought I could lose that much weight that fast. Oh, and it's dreadfully stupid, paranoid, tiring and boring. Right. Now I'll move on to something more game related. A list of interesting things that seem to have happened while I was guarding obsolete stuff nobody would ever want to steal anyway: