Today I'm going to talk about my favorite video game series ever, Fate. I'm sure if your a regular reader of my blog, you've at least heard of Fate as I do mention it quite frequently, so now I'm going to go too far into explaining what the game is. But if you want an incredibly depth look at Fate I would recommend reading my previous blogs about the game as information about Fate is scarce on the Internet:
One day when I was 7 years old, I took off school to go to a new dentist. Since I was only 7 and had never gone to this dentist before I was very nervous. The morning before the dentist trip, I was so scared that I went on the computer to look for fun games to get my mind off of it. I had played video games before but most of them were either educational or non-action games. So I went on a console that came with our computer called WildTangent Orb to look at the wide selection of games I'd never quite looked closely at before. They had a big list of games and most of them didn't catch my interest. The one that did however was a game with a simple title yet intriguing description. The game had the basic title of Fate, but what really got me interested was the fact that you could "battle monsters". I've always been interesting in made up creatures from Neopets to Pokemon to Lilo and Stitch experiments so I figured I'd give the game a try. I told Mom about the game and she asked me to check the rating for her. I said it was rated E10+ and considering I was only 7, she wanted to try it to make sure it's not inappropriate. I waited in my room while she played the game nervously hoping it wasn't all bad stuff, when she opened my door. I felt some serious nervousness in my stomach (on top of the already nervous feeling about the dentist) going on.
"The game's fine. I tried it and there's no bad words or anything like that," Mom said. As soon as I turned on the game, I was greeted with a beautiful medieval picture of a boy holding an axe with a cute little puppy (that ironically looked like my dog Scout). I was intrigued already. I named my first character Matt after myself and then found out that you could have a cat for a pet as well. Since I am both a dog lover and a cat lover, I decided to make my first virtual pet a cat and name her Spot after my little kitty. After I designed my hero, I saw a wonderful story about the history of the fictitious town of Grove. I sat back and listened closely to this beautifully written tale of a town being attacked by horrible monsters. Once the story was over something popped on my screen reading,
"There is a monster on Level 50 who's name is spoken in whispers. Slay this beast and become the hero of legend,". After that, I saw the most beautiful cartoon forest town pop up on my computer screen. The first towns person I talked to was the potion salesman, Bartleby. At first, I thought the townspeople were supposed to evil villains so I didn't want to go near them (especially the green goblin looking guy, I just didn't trust him). So I went in the dungeon with no quest and this was where my childhood was changed forever (OK, that's a bit dramatic, but it definitely got me hooked). I saw these weird blob creatures that looked almost like blobs of jelly. They were called gels but I mistakenly read the name wrong. We were currently studying cells in my 2nd Grade Science class, so I thought the creatures were supposed to be red blood cells. The next things I saw were giant rats, huge bats, and voracious spiders. Since I had defeated rats and spiders in a Lilo and Stitch video game years ago, that had me even more interested. I remember looking at Mom as soon as I fought my first rat and making a Tom and Jerry reference.
"I just killed my first mouse, something Tom has never been able to do," I said mistakenly referring to the rat as a mouse. Next I saw these little green troll-like creatures called Imps. They had bright red hair and a horn coming out of their head. I had played the game for a while when Mom said it was time for lunch.
"MOM! 10 MORE MINUTES!" I said.
"But Matt, I've got pizza," Mom told me. Just hearing the word pizza was enough for me to stop playing the game and go straight to lunch, but I promised myself I'd go back to the game afterwards. So I sat down with two big pieces of pizza and watched Spongebob. But I wasn't even paying attention to the TV, I was imagining what other cool creatures I would eventually run into in the game.
"Maybe there will be giant snakes. If so, there going to get chopped up instantly," I thought to myself. Don't get me wrong, I love animals, but I absolutely can't stand snakes. After a short lunch break of thinking of nothing but the game, not even laughing at Spongebob and Patrick like I normally do. I sat down on the computer, got my "serious" face on, and started delving dungeons. That night, I introduced Dad to the game and he watched me play it. We saw a few new creatures together and had a few laughs over just how strange these characters are. A few days later, I realized that this version is nothing but the demo and that a full version with MORE creatures exists somewhere out there. I eventually conquered the demo slaying every beast in the entire version. I also got to know the townsfolk better. Until my 8th Birthday, Mom got me three presents. I only hoped that one would be the full version of Fate and to my surprise, it was! I gave Mom and Dad a huge bear hug saying,
"Thank you SO much for giving me the full version of Fate!". I then installed the game into the computer, imported my old character, and delved even deeper into the depths of the dungeon. Matt and Spot slayed practically every mythical creature in existence from goblins to dragons to ogres to evil unicorns, if it has existed in myth and legend, Matt and his partner in crime Spot had beat the living snot out of it. That Spring, I was on my computer and found a rare creature that was a giant eyeball called a Watcher.
"Where can I get this eye beast?" I asked myself and found out you can download him. I searched all over the Internet and couldn't find him. This went on for weeks and weeks on end until finally one day, I was on the Internet and found a link titled Owlbear.zip. I then put the creature into my game's files and defeated him. He also come with his partner, the mighty Owlbear, the king of all birds. I defeated them both with my mighty dragon sword and Spot meowed with victory. Then one day, Mom and I were going to see the theater to see the movie Wall-E, before we left I checked my WildTangent console and I saw something that made me almost scream with joy. There was a Fate 2! I told Mom and she was SO excited for me. I went to my Aunt Shelley's house that evening and she bought the game for me, I put it on a disc and took it home as our Internet was too slow to download. I conquered the monsters in that game over a few weeks. I felt kinda done as I had seen all there is to see until one day I was browsing the web and found out about something called mods.
"What are mods?" I asked myself and found out that you can add 100s of new creatures to the game. The Watcher wasn't the only one of his kind, just like Stitch, he literally has over 600 cousins. I spent days trying to figure out how to add these "Watcher buddies" and couldn't figure it out, until one day I was at my friend Emerson's house. We were watching cartoons when I saw her copy of the game laying on a desk. She had a different version than me! I asked her if I could borrow it and she said sure as she had lost interest in the game a long time ago. As soon as I got home, I installed the version and put these mods. I went into the game and tested them and oh my goodness, they worked!
"THE MODS ACTUALLY WORKED!" I yelled to Mom with tears of joy in my eyes. That night, we made popcorn and watched the movie Hercules to celebrate my newest achievement. Then I went through a phase where I wanted to collect every single one. I ended up with 100s of them and traded my doubles with kids at school to get rares one like Pokemon cards until eventually I got them all! I had my entire collection of mods on a disc that I still have to this day. Then one day, I was sick in bed with a cold when Mom told me that something came in the mail. I picked up a package and found something I'd never heard before, Fate 3 was in the box.
"I got this for you as a late birthday present," Mom said and as soon as I got over my cold and played the heck out of it. That Fall, I introduced Mom to Fate. She was skeptical at first but it turns out she really liked the series. She played all of 1 and 2 but not 3 as it feels kind of like an expansion for 2. I actually remember feeling a little disappointed when Fate 3 came out as they didn't add enough new content to it, but I liked the game nonetheless and to be honest it became my favorite in the series for some time. Then one day I was hanging out with my babysitter and we were talking about all kinds of different stuff, I told her I was into Fate and she told that me that she used to play it a little herself (the demo only, though). So I looked up pictures of the full version to show her when something really great happened:I read that they were making a Fate 4! As soon as Mom woke up, I told her the news and we were both very excited! We spent months waiting for this sequel. The kids at school got sick of hearing about it as it was practically all I talked about. Some of things were into the series like I was where others played more Minecraft-type games.
One kid even gave me a fake "spoiler" by jokingly saying,
"I got a copy of Fate 4 and at the end of it, you fight Barney the Dinosaur!". I knew right away that that wasn't true. Mom and I spent days frequently checking WildTangent's Facebook page and forum until one day it finally happened:Fate 4 came out! We downloaded the demo that night and a few days later bought the full version from Gamestop. I was 12 when it came out and I played/modded this game well into my teens. When I was 15, I started feeling like cartoons and video games were "kid stuff" but even then I wasn't afraid to play Fate. Fate was one of the few kid games that I wasn't only not embarrassed to play, I was proud to play! Because Fate isn't just for kids, it's not overly kiddie but not overly inappropriate either. It's more of a family game because kids can like it and adult can like it too. I'd recommend it to anybody who likes games like that! In fact, I still play Fate to this day and await the release of new mods frequently. WildTangent, if one of your workers is reading this, PLEASE make a Fate 5! I am your biggest fan (possibly) and would love to see a at least one future sequel, just keep that in mind, :D. Anyway, I'm SO glad that I was able to blog about something that impacted my childhood SO much! See ya next time on the Matt show.
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