Meet the Reader: topgearsam

This week, we get to meet one of our regulars over the last two years, topgearsam. You might think the origins of his user name are obvious, but you’ll have to read on to find out, if it really is!

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We’ll start with the usual trio of questions: Who are you, how old are you and where do you come from?

My name is Sam Johnson, I’m 15 years old and I come from the little town of Bewdley in Worcestershire.

Only 15? I had you pegged as a few years older!

I do sound a bit old for my age, I’m also a quite tall for my age as well I’m 6′ 2″ and hopefully still growing.

I’m sure I’m dodging several innuendos by moving on and asking about your user name. How did you decide on topgearsam? Are you a devout Top Gear fan?

There’s no special story about my username, I just got round to making it on PSN and thought I like Top Gear, my name is Sam, and put them together.

As for Top Gear yes I’m a huge fan of it, and I own almost every series in one form or another.

Well that sets up an interesting twist for later down the line. However, we’ll move on to your gaming history. When did you first get into gaming?

I first got into gaming when I was around 8 when I first started watching my Dad play Quake and Doom on his PC. Which then lead to me wanting to get a games console, so then my Mom managed to get me a Sega Mega Drive with the first game I played on it being the first Sonic the Hedgehog.

That’s one awesome start to a life in gaming! Does your dad still play games? Perhaps he joins you for some of the recent co-op shooters?

No he usually prefers to play single-player shooters on his PC. While I keep to playing games on my PS3 and all the other consoles I have.

Speaking of which, by my rudimentary maths, you only got your Mega Drive in 2004! How did you get from there to the PS3? I’m sure you must have skipped a generation or two.

My Mega Drive sadly died about a year after I got it, which then led to me wanting a new one. Instead my cousin suggested I should get a PS2 which I did, then I remembered being blown away when I started playing Wipeout on it, as it was a big leap in graphics from the Mega Drive to the PS2.

A few years later I got enough money together to get a PS3, and then similarly to the PS2 my mind was blown at the graphics when I started playing Resistance: Fall of Man. Then I got round to getting almost every console from the current generation.

I’d bet it was a mind-blowing jump up to a PS2! So you’ve got a PS3, 360, maybe even a Wii? Which gets the most play time from you?

I have all three, but the PS3 gets the most use. With the 360 and the Wii being left for the rest of my family, or whenever I want to play an exclusive.

Since you’ve only got quite a limited range of experience, I’m quite curious what you consider to be your favourite game? Is there something from the PS2, or even Mega Drive that is still right up there for you?

Sonic was great on the Mega Drive, and I very much enjoyed the Kingdom Hearts games on the PS2, but most games I consider to be my favourites are from the current generation. I actually don’t know what is my all time favourite game. I guess it would have to be between one of the Pokémon games or Oblivion.

Do you find yourself tending towards playing a certain genre? I notice you just mentioned three RPGs in that last answer.

Yeah I do love a good RPG, and I also like strategy games, but I’ll play a game from any genre if I’m interested enough in it.

Good answer. Have there been any absolute clankers in your gaming past? Something your utterly embarrassed to have played? Perhaps you even enjoyed playing it?

No game I’ve been embarrassed to play, but when I first signed up for Facebook I started playing Farmville, I have no idea why but for some reason I kept wanting to go back to playing it. For a whole year I would play it almost everyday and make sure I harvested all my crops and looked after my animals. Thankfully I lost interest in it and started playing good games again.

Farmville is particularly evil, I hear, for sucking away time. Before we move on to other topics, what games are you most looking forward to from the last few months of this year?

Quite a few actually but now Resistance 3 has come out, I’m probably most looking forward to Uncharted 3 and obviously, being a big fan of Oblivion, I’m looking forward to Skyrim. I will lose hundreds of hours to that game. Maybe even thousands.

Have you got your hands on Resistance 3? What are you first impressions of it?

Yes I’ve actually just finished it, and it’s amazing. It’s the best in the series by far in my opinion. The story was great and actually shocked me at some points with some good twists, and the gameplay was really good. I never got bored during any part of it and overall I think it’s a brilliant ending to the trilogy.

I think it’s interesting how Insomniac have never sat still with the gameplay of the series. Each game in the series has had a very different feel to it. Have you taken it online yet? Did you get much time with the beta?

I didn’t play too much of the beta but it’s still very good. I thought it was good idea for Insomniac to cut down the amount of people in each game, because it was quite mental at times in Resistance 2, and far too many times would I get killed by a sniper from the other end of this huge map.

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45 Comments

  1. People weren’t to happy when you went running around in Uncharted 2 meets with the shotgun most of the time. I defiantly thought you were a lot older.

    • I didn’t use it a lot but the few times I would some people did get quite mad, I remember annoying yogdog enough for him to rage quit.
      I promise I wont do it for Uc3 well not a lot anyway.

      • Yeah, you bastard! That really annoyed me! :P

      • Yeah but it was pretty funny.

  2. 6ft 2? Blithering heck. I’m 19 and 6’4!
    Expect to be roughly 7 ft when you’re 19 TGS! :D

    • I’m 16 and 6″1. On holiday nobody believed me when i said how old i was because i was taller than all of them.

      • I get that a lot, I’ve been mistaken for 18 a few times and once someone thought I was 21!

  3. 18 and 6ft 4…. only started growing when I was 15 though, really, and yet to stop :(
    I don’t want to have to crouch down to kiss my gf!

    • But if you keep growing, eventually her head will be at the perfect height for [CENSORED] right in the [CENSORED] with a [CENSORED] [CENSORED].

  4. Nice to meet you Sam, not seen much of you lately but I hope that changed with BF3 and UC3 :)

    • Hopefully it will change, I remember we had some great times playing Bad company 2 together :D

  5. Great read, and nice to finally put a face to the PSN Id.

  6. Nice to meet a fellow Walking Dead fan (the comics are the best in my opinion)!

  7. I fell into the pit of Farmville too. Those were dark days…

  8. Nice to meetn you sam. And you’re only 15? I had you pegged as older.

  9. Top read, one of my PSN Buddies old TopGearSam :-)

  10. Known you for a while Sam but i feel i know you a lot more now. Great read and hopefully we can get to some resistance 3 coop soon mate, just completed it this morning and also a fan of the series and insomniac as a whole.

    Also humbled to see my name pop up as a ‘like to meet’ 2 weeks in a row! Didnt know my ramblings were that well recieved ;)

    • Yes we definitely need to play coop sometime, maybe even on superhuman if you’re up for it.

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