What's Your Story? - Laukku

Every time it appears I'm finally about to run out of What's Your Story responses, someone sends their answers through in the nick of time. This time it's Laukku that has come to the rescue! Another reader from that "traditionally forgotten land between Sweden and Russia", Laukku is already proving to be a welcome and knowledgable (particularly when it comes to audio) member of The Adventure Gamer community. So without further ado...

Laukku: No comment would do this image justice

My home country is… Finland, a very fine land indeed :-)

My age is… 20. I was born on the 2nd of April, just after April Fool's day.

The first adventure game I played was… Probably Monkey Island 1 or 2, but I was so young that I don't really remember. Heck, I didn't even understand English back then and still they were some of my favourite games!

My favourite adventure game is… Gabriel Knight 1. I just really like exiting thriller-type mystery stories, especially in adventure games. GK1 in particular has so many exiting, memorable moments! I would talk more about them but then I'd have to spoil you.

After the "best games ever" discussions this week, I want to play this game more than ever!

When I’m not playing games I like to… Draw and play the violin.

The one TV show I never miss is… Sherlock. Can't wait for the next season. In the meantime I'm watching Elementary, currently airing in Finland as Holmes NYC. It's another Sherlock Holmes set in modern times, in New York, if you didn't guess. ;-) What really got me interested in it was reading a description of its version of Watson: A young female Asian living in the US, and is apparently smart enough to do her own deductions and research. It made me think instantly of Grace Nakimura from the Gabriel Knight series!

I like my games in (a box, digital format)… copied to my hard disk, but just for the sake of convenience. I do have the original boxes of Legend of Kyrandia 1 and Kings' Quest V around, though.

King's Quest V: Would anyone really willingly go back to this?

The thing I miss about old games is… the many completely different audio and video technologies. For music especially, there were FM synthesis (AdLib and the Sound Blasters, Sega Genesis), low-fi PCM samples (SNES, Amiga, Macintosh), and MIDI (MT-32 and General MIDI). Sometimes I go to YouTube to compare the various ports of old games, or try out a game with a different video or audio card selected (well, the ones that DOSBox emulates). I like fiddling with the original configuration programs and it's one of the reasons I prefer playing games in DOSBox instead of ScummVM.

The best thing about modern games is… 3D environments. I've been playing the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games recently, and the ability to actually explore things in detail and in first-person greatly adds to the immersion.

I rarely look at modern games these days, so I'm always surprised when I see the quality of the graphics

If I could see any band live it would be… The Beatles, I guess. I'm not much of a fan of any modern bands or even pop music in general, and the whole Beatles appearing alive today would be a miracle worth attending. (No, I didn't misunderstand what you meant by "live". ;-)  I know English well enough.)

My favourite movie is… Mad Max 2, currently. I'm not even much of an action film fan, but the first time I saw it several months ago, I was absolutely awed throughout the film by how well made it was. I tend to watch films very analytically, and pick out any weaknesses in them (such as violations of "show don't tell", pacing problems...). There weren't any major flaws in that film that I could recognise. It was super entertaining. The characters were smart and believable. It was stylish, with good music and writing. Even just the opening narration is awesome.

I seriously don't think I've seen this movie since I was about 14. Your comment has made me want to revisit it!

One interesting thing about me is… I guess I'll use this section for random trivia that didn't fit anywhere else. Ilmari wanted to know the story behind my username, so here goes: My first name IRL is Lauri, and my family calls me with various nicknames that share the first syllable, such as simply "Lau", or random Finnish nouns such as "Laukku" (bag, case) or "Laukaus" (gunshot). I decided to use "Laukku" as my standard Internet username. I also have a YouTube account (http://www.youtube.com/user/laukkuthegreit) with various random videos of DOS games.

I really am out of responses now, so if anyone else wants to send theirs through and get 20 CAPs in the process, please send them to theadventuregamer@gmail.com.