Free-Form Friday: Favorites

As part of a camping trip I was a part of this week (more about that in a future post), I was posed (as was everyone) a series of campfire questions.  I figured that Free-Form Friday would be the perfect place to share the answers to these questions with our readers.  While the final answers are the same as the ones I gave at the campfire, I am taking this opportunity to elaborate on the reasoning behind the answers.  Without further ado, I present you the Free-Form Friday Fireside Favorites Edition.

What was your favorite toy as a child?

Even though my family wasn’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, my parents spoiled my brother and I to the best of their ability.  Our annual Christmas toy haul was huge every year.  If there was something (within reason) that we wanted, my father added a few hours to his work schedule so that we could have it.

I had a large number of toys.

I looked just as dorky as that kid.

My favorite toy?  The one that I constantly came back to and played with most often?  That’s easy.

I was an avid collector of Star Wars action figures and the accessories available for them.  I recreated scenes from the movies.  I developed games with rules to determine who won battles.  I did my own thing.  There were massive firefights, thrilling chase scenes, stealthy recon missions, you name it.  My favorite setting for these intricate miniature space dramas was the Death Star playset, though the Hoth playset wasn’t far behind.  The miniature cross-section of the Empire’s massive space station/weapon of mass destruction was complete with the infamous trash compactor and a huge cannon that my heroes had to avoid in their x-wing fighters and the Millennium Falcon. It was also a great obstacle during lightsaber battles.

Unfortunately, when I was a stupid teenager, I sold all of my Star Wars action figures and everything that went with them (along with all of my baseball cards) to buy a car.  That car had a bum transmission and didn’t last very long.  Facepalm.

I'm not a fan of this guy.

What is your favorite movie?

I thought about this one for far longer than I needed to.  I was hooked by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind from the very beginning.  The revelation that I’ve had much more recently however, is that it’s not just the story that draws me to this movie.  The story has actually taken a backseat to the mechanics for me at this point.

Mechanics?  What do you mean by that?  This is a movie, not a game.

I am drawn to movies that work on or involve multiple levels of consciousness.  There is something about a story that involves several levels of the human brain at once that intrigues me.  This explains why some of my other favorite movies include The Matrix, Dark City, Somewhere In Time, Donnie Darko, Memento and Inception.

Honorable mention: The Godfather.

Who's your daddy?

What is your favorite video game?

This is another question to which I devoted a great deal of thought as the answers went around the campfire.  I am a huge fan of the Silent Hill games and other titles in the survival horror genre, but my favorite video game is Bioshock.  Through a combination of stunning visuals, engaging story, solid mechanics and creepy atmosphere, this game drew me in and kept me hooked.  Rapture is a first-class setting for a video game.  The art deco retro stylization of the architecture, music, and even character attitudes was a stroke of brilliance (I also love it in the Fallout games) and adds to the creepiness of the whole thing.  The Big Daddies are terrifying opponents.  The intrigue between the various residents in the ongoing power struggle in Rapture pushed it over the top.  This game still gives me the chills.

Honorable Mention: Alan Wake

This guy probably went through a lot of pairs of pants.

Name a video game that you think is responsible for changing the video game industry in some way.

To be fair, this question was asked by a different person and wasn’t answered by everyone, but I still think it deserves an answer.  There are so many choices here, but I pick the grand-daddy of side-scrolling action games, the game that paved the way for not only Super Mario Bros., but also the Tomb Raider franchise: Activision’s Pitfall.  Pitfall gave gamers a solid challenge with a set number of levels, both above and below ground, that scrolled by as you ran from left to right (though you could also run to the left and play the game in a whole different way).  It also gave you a solid action hero in Pitfall Harry.  Is he Nathan Drake’s grandfather?  You be the judge.  That’s all I’ve got on this one.

When it comes to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, what did you like better, books or movies?

This was another unofficial question, asked on the van en route to our destination (again, more on that in a future post).  My answer?  The books are better by far than the movies, though the movies are still spectacular.  I was surprised by the number of people who liked the movies better than the books.  Most of them gave the same reason: “The books are too slow.”  Kids these days…

Your Turn

Please weigh in below in the comments section with your answers to the above questions.  I want to know what you think.