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"Baldur's Gate"
Developed and Published By: Bioware and Black Isle Studios Baldur's Gate is the game that made it's developer, Bioware Corp. famous, and made me realize that maybe Dungeons and Dragons nerds were on to something entertaining with all their elves, faeries, and dungeon-ish dragon-esque nonsense. They're still fucking nerds though.
 While I've been playing console RPGs since I was able to pick up a Nintendo controller, I'm still a bit new to the whole computer roleplaying game scene. I missed out on what all the old folks refer to as the "glory days" of computer RPGs. A prehistoric era when dinosaurs roamed the earth; and games like Ultima, Wizardry, and Bard's Tale were what those same old folks called "the cat's meow". I would like to take a moment to offer a bit of youthful insight to these aging gamers:
With that said, I believe I can move on to the business at hand: reviewing this piece of software commonly known as Baldur's Gate. I originally picked up Baldur's Gate without any knowledge of the whole Dungeons and Dragons craze, if you consider a "craze" to be three fat teenage boys huddled around a table, rolling a bunch of dice while screaming "Cast Magic Missile! Cast Magic Missile!!" at the top of their lungs, before shoveling handfuls of Cheetos into their mouths. I see this fact as beneficial, because it means I am able to offer up a completely unbiased opinion of the game... And my opinion is that this game is fucking bad-ass. You crotchety nimrods can keep your Ultima games, I'll stick to Baldur's Gate, thank you very much. Now on to the important stuff. Baldur's Gate tells the tale of a hero descended from Bhaal, the god of Murder. Even though this kid's daddy is the fantasy equivalent of Ted Bundy, he (or she, for all you politically correct types) is actually a good person, and completely unaware of their lineage. Raised by some elderly guy who calls himself Gorion, the hero spent their life in quiet solitude, much like what one can find in Superman's similarly named fortress. Of course some evil, menacing asshole has to come along and spoil things for our hero, who has at this point grown into a young man/woman/thing. This particular asshole goes by the name of Sarevok, and is quite possibly the coolest looking bastard in the history of computer games. Unknown to the hero, is just how closely related Sarevok is to them. Since this game's been out for like six years now, I'm going to go ahead and spoil it for you: Sarevok is your half-brother, and also one of Bhaal's offspring. You see, Bhaal was a pretty busy guy. Fearing that some party of D&D nerds was gonna' kill him someday, he took a brief stroll through the world, and knocked up everything on two legs, thereby making sure that he has plenty of kids to carry on his legacy of naughtiness. This also means that he owes a lot in back child support. Fucking deadbeat. The plot of the game is pretty damn entertaining, but I don't have all day to explain it to you, so here's a brief version: Gorion, realizing that bad stuff is about to happen, decides to drag you along with him, although he won't say where or why. Not too long after you flee from your village, Sarevok shows up for the first time. Your hero manages to escape while Gorion stays behind to stall the baddies, and promptly gets his old ass handed to him. At this point, I guess the hero cries himself to sleep or something, because it's the following morning when your quest really begins. From this point on, you'll spend dozens of hours running all over the place, meeting allies and enemies alike, while you search for bad-ass weapons 'n' stuff. Eventually, you discover that Sarevok is secretly trying to instigate a war between the two major superpowers in this region of the world, the kingdom of Amn, and the port city of Baldur's Gate. Since you're a hero, it's your job to fix everything that Sarevok fucks up, before finally having a chance to kick his ass. All in all, this game is excellent. I've played through it twice since originally buying it, and that's one of the highest compliments I can give a game, since playing anything more than once is a rarity for me. In fact, I'm currently finding it difficult to say anything offensive at all about Baldur's Gate, which means it's probably time for me to wrap up this review. In closing, I have to say that anyone who uses their computer for more than just looking up internet porn, should go buy this game. Now. KTHXBYE.
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