Mention the concept of “grinding” in a room full of gamers, and you are liable to get one of two reactions: either some titters of excitement, or a cacophonous mix of sighs and groans.  There are, in my experience, very few people who respond to the idea of the grind with simple ambivalence.

Grinding, in traditional gaming terms, stems from RPGs where the player has to fight battle after battle in order to gain experience and level up before being able to proceed further in the game (think of the original Final Fantasy and the huge jump in difficulty when moving from one area into the next). In more general terms, grinding is any time the player engages in a repetitive activity for the purpose of gaining some sort of reward (think brewing hundreds of potions in Oblivion to become a better alchemist). 

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been on a throwback gaming binge. After finishing up The Ur-Quan Masters, I found the entire X-Com series on sale on Steam for a mere $2, which was impossible to pass up.  The original X-Com has always been near the top of my list of favorite games of all time, and being able to get the whole series in an easily-playable format was a golden opportunity.  In fact, I was so happy about it, I decided to make a gift of it to a friend who had never played any of them, explaining that it was vitally important that he play the original right away.

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After wrapping up with A Boy and His Blob, and deciding that I’d had just about enough of Dragon Age, I found myself in a bit of a game lull for the past few weeks.  My DS still had a stack of games waiting to be played from over the holidays, but my PC and consoles were sitting relatively dry.  Torchlight was still there for some time-wasting, but I was looking for something a little meatier.

And so, as I sat staring at my desktop, trying to decide what to do, I spotted a long forgotten icon tucked away in the corner: The Ur-Quan Masters.

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