Categories: Top ::

Gaming: When given a moment.. what to do?
Mon, 21 Jan 2008

I must admit that I've always been a gamer wannabe. I mean, as a kid growing up I was heavy into tabletop wargames: board games like Risk, Axis and Allies and Supremacy and so on, or wargames such as Battletech. Even throw in some AD&D and Rolemaster for good measure, to help establish my geek cred. Later as I got more into coding the real game began.. well, to be creating games, and far too many BBSes, and games for BBSes.

I pretty much skipped the Super Nintendo and Genesis years and didn't really game much except for a few classics on the Atari ST and early PC... Phantasie, Sim City, Civilization, and Wizardry.. but really, as Tuxedo was heard to say so many moons ago.. "the only real game you need is gcc." (Nerd in-joke of the year.) I'd extend that to be any compiler I could buy or steal, since I was basicly hooked like a junkie on honey. And any SSI or Westwood Associates game. Anyway, I'll stop ubergeeking any second now.

The last few years I've definately indulged here and there, but as always basicly spent most of my time coding.. business applications, backends, middleware, and of course handhelds and games. I've always said I'm a great fan of gaming in the same way a football fan is a fan of that sport. Read the news, follow whats going on, and eat a lot of popcorn, occasionally playing the real thing and getting creamed by the pros.

So I buy lots of games, play them for a night or two, and move onto the next thing.. more coding, or something. Anyway. I like to want to play games but never did actually played them much.. just perpetually had a long list of 'if I only had a few more minutes I'd fire that up and relax.'

Nowadays, I desparately need to relax a little :) But when I do get a few minutes, or even an hour or two (expecting to be interupted a few times therein).. a bit of panic happens. What to do now? A year ago I had my evenings planned.. but now.. uh, what? I'm not used to this 'free time' thing I've heard about..

Other beings are human and chose this moment to watch pay per view movies with their spouse; I try, but sometimes I've just got the itch.. the need to hunt my prey on the battlefield. I should've watched Spiderman 3 with my wife the other night, but I just had to kill some elves. *shrug* Sometimes I'm only half human.

Anyway, that all said .. I still don't have very much time, but the baby does sleep a little bit now (only till 11 or 12, so as to keep us up all night but mercifully she's decided we're allowed to catch a bit of TV before we pretend to retire for the night.) So I've been spending some late night time (theres a lot of that) trying to sort out .. if I was to game, for an hour or two, or maybe just 10 minutes, what should I play?

As a huge retro fan, thats a tough question since its across the breadth of gaming, and not just the last year like most normal schmucks. But at least for this discussion we can narrow to halfway recent titles as I've already installed some retro on my devices.. Dungeon Master 1 and 2, Eye of the Beholder series, Phantasie 2 and 3, Wizardry 7 and 8. I'm good on that count.

For very short matches I can pull out a handheld (as a handheld dev, I have a bunch) so I can fire up Field Commander or Jeanne d'Arc on the PSP, or maybe Ratchet and Clank or something. I'd like to copy over some Battlestar Galactica, or Dr. Who, or My Name is Earl (despite the scientology ties) or this new Terminator TV series. So handhelds and short bursts are covered. This then leaves thoughts for if I have more than a few minutes..

Strategy games; going back to my wargaming youth, I've been a LONG term fan of the Civilization series (such as Civ IV) and other similar games.. Galactic Civilization II (not related to just-Civ) is very good. Going back a few years, the Panzer General or Master of Magic games all good too. Lots of good strategy games out there. (I don't count RTS' like Starcraft strategy at all, but they're good in their own way.. just too fast for these bones nowadays :) I really want to keep my Civ IV love going, but I think I cannot stomach the long games .. when each match takes 10 or 20 hours, thats just more than I can afford.. it'd take me months for each match.

Action; Over the year I did manage to squeeze in a couple must-plays such as Portal and Halflife 2's expansion packs. At 5-6 hours each they only took me a couple months to handle each one (*sigh*), but great times. As such maybe I should keep going into Team Fortress 2 or Call of Duty 4.. fantastic looking and playing, and lots of action. Pretty tempting there, but definately need a good block of time (by which I mean an hour or two) for these. Definately on the table still. Maybe Thief III .. stealth games usually let you hide your character and screw off in real life for awhile so thats pretty handy nowadays, and really.. stealth games are not about the action, but about the puzzling -- action is just one of the tools where the player manipulates the world to a useful state. Good times.

I've got a UMPC now through one of my dev channels .. a small PC. Not a PDA per se, since it doesn't run a custom OS like PDAs do.. it runs honest to god full OSes, so can run old games. Not modern ones, but games up through a few years ago might run on it, and still be portable and quiet.. so much so as to be playable while holding a sleeping baby. Win! So this brings in the 3+ year old games... not retro per se, but getting there. Perhaps I need to look into Icewind Dale, try to finish Baldurs Gate, or fire up Neverwinter Nights. Or maybe MAX, Mechanized Assault and Explore. Hmm... so many options.

I'll figure something out. But as you can see.. its more about the choices than the playing. Thats my curse. Why play when you can code, or think about playing?

Course, even just installing a game onto a UMPC (with no optical drive), and running it without its protection freaking out, is a chore. Thats a game, too.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / life ] [link] [Comments]