Friday, April 3, 2009

Friday Frustration

Yesterday's post was preempted for dinner and hockey, but I'm back tonight. Today's post is going to center on games other than hockey, though. Specifically, computer games. I've been an avid PC gamer (not particularly talented, but avid nonetheless) since I discovered Heroes of Might and Magic (HoMM) II in graduate school. I graduated from HoMM II to HoMM III, then moved to Diablo I and II, and from there made the inadvisable leap into the soul-sucking abyss that is Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games with the original Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC). After playing DAoC for three years, Brian and I moved on to World of Warcraft (WoW) when it hit open beta in 2004.

After three years of WoW, we kicked the hideous Warcrack addiction in late 2007 when Hellgate: London (HGL) was released. We had some great times with HGL because we could accomplish whatever we wanted to as a duo, and we're both sad that the people who made the game couldn't hang onto it long enough to release their second iteration. Bereft of multiplayer HGL, we dabbled in Lord of the Rings online for a few months, and then dropped the MMO scene altogether. The "omg-we-are-free!" feeling wore off shortly thereafter, but we've stuck to our guns and only played singleplayer or Wii games since. My most recent love was Fallout3, but I played it so much that I'm thoroughly sick of it now.

So why did I post that long and boring pedigree? Because I'm looking for a new game and I'll be danged if I can find one. Everything out there just looks "meh." I know more about what I don't want than what I do. No real-time strategies, because I stink at those, and no bloody MMOs. All the role-playing games just look like a pain, I hate puzzle games, and I don't have the reflexes for first-person shooters. This is quite a conundrum. Maybe the universe is telling me to do something more productive than obsess over video games. If so, the universe can just shush it. Everybody needs a hobby.~H

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