the play girlz gaming blog

Second Life: First Impressions

by Ingrid on March 30th, 2006

Yesterday I succumbed to the morbid curiosity that is Second Life. Everywhere I turned, someone was writing about it, and I decided it was time to see what all of the fuss was about. So I went to the site, sighed up for their free membership, and got rocking. The setup was amazingly easy and fast. I only had to download a client and that took only a couple of minutes. Soon I was logging into my new (and improved?) virtual life.

The first thing that struck me was the atmosphere. I spawned (can I use that term for this kind of game? I don’t know) at the top of some hill or something and I immediately felt like I was in some kind of weird cultish world. Everything was just so … blah. The talking hand told me that up ahead they would help me change my appearance. I tried walking but the toon walks all weird. It was almost like she was trying to emulate a real human being and then failing miserably. The graphics were plain and boring. Then I got to the part where I change clothes and I spent about 20 minutes getting irritated that all the options sucked. Plus, my character was ugly as sin. Maybe it’s because in the free version you get less options, I don’t know.

Eventually, I gave up trying to make my character look remotely cool, and just set on to see what else awaited me. The Instructional Clickable Hand told me that they would teach me to fly up ahead. I thought, “Awesome!” Flying rocks. So I attempted to fly over a ravine, but the controls for the damn game are entirely craptastic. I kept banging into pillars. Now, maybe people who haven’t flown before don’t seem to mind that flying in that game sucks, but having flown in City of Heroes before, I can say that I’ve had better flying experiences. The controls are simply not fluid, and perhaps I’m complaining too much but I expect a certain amount of quality from a game that keeps trying to get my money.

So after I managed to stop banging into pillars, the Instructional Clickable Hand told me I was ready to teleport to some other place. I was somewhat annoyed that the entire time, the game kept trying to sell me land. I didn’t want no stinkin’ land. I just wanted to know what I had to kill to get to level 2.

After I was transported to some other creepy, cultish-looking setting, I got to stand around and watch other people standing around. One person was saying stuff like, “There’s lots to do in Second Life. You can visit shops and …” Meanwhile, I was irritated that everyone else looked a lot cooler than me. That chick with the mohawk was rockin’, while I just looked like an ad for Sears.

There were about 40 toons avatars just standing around doing absolutely nothing but talking. That’s when I realized that this game was a waste of my time.

Now, because my first impressions of the game are somewhat harsh, I intend to go back and give it another shot at getting interesting. I just haven’t found the point of it yet, and maybe, for me, there isn’t. It seems that a lot of people are into it because they can cash in on virtual goods, or maybe the game is set up in such a way that casual-to-non-gamers get the hang of it pretty fast. Maybe some people aren’t interested in getting to level 60 so they can get l33t armor. Maybe they just want to meet people in a non-threatening environment.

Regardless, I’ll be back with my second impressions.

Share This

Related Stories

• Second (Life) Impressions
• Poll - Worst Launch Award Goes To…?
• Second Life Fertile Ground For Religious Missions.

POSTED IN: News, Review, Second Life