I do not exist

Yesterday, Andy surprised me by getting me a lifetime subscription to Lord of the Rings Online, along with all the expansions. Wow! We spent last night re-learning the game, since I haven't played since 2007.

I got Andy Civ 4 GOTY for the holidays; it includes all the expansions. Playing it again, we tried it at Noble difficulty, and I remembered once more what I have always hated about the Civ series- the cheating AI. When an AI civ is more advanced than it possibly can be or builds a Wonder suddenly right before I finish the same one and I know there is no possible way it could be doing that in the amount of game time that has passed, it makes me want to rip my hair out. I'd like to play at a higher difficulty than "Settler," but that's the only way to have a fair game, it seems.

I'm having a lot of fun with this game; it's daunting however because it's so HUGE. It also reminds me I need a graphics card upgrade. It's nice that the story continues from the first two games as well, although I never played all of Beyond Divinity.

It's not a game I will play through again immediately, but definitely in the future.

Whoo-hoo! Divinity II- Ego Draconis has arrived, an early Christmas present from Andy! Loved the first game, didn't make it through the second game, and I've been waiting on this one for YEARS. And of course, I'm baking my hands off for tomorrow's office party and will have no time to install and play. Oh well. Back to my turkish delight.

We played some Demigod with the new DLC, and it was fun but isn't going to hold my attention for long. I do still have a number of games that I bought and never really played: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, The Witcher, Two Worlds, Age of Empires 3. I may load up Civilization 4 again and play a few rounds. I'll need to hunt up some no-cd cracks, because I HATE switching disks around, lol. I'm starting to lean more towards buying my games from online services like Steam for just this reason, and also because I long ago ran out of shelf space. Which is also why I canceled my membership to Science Fiction Book Club. It served me all too well.

After finishing this game, I realize I have absolutely no reason to play through it again. Sure, it's fun once, but it's exactly the same the second time around, the third, the fourth ... it would have been a simple matter to correct this if the game makers had just made the characters different in ways that would make one want to play through again as a different character. Make one fight better with swords, anything to differentiate the characters. One of the big reasons Diablo 2 is still going is because there is so many different ways to play a character, even though the game itself is essentially the same each time (random maps aside.)

Andy and i finished Borderlands last night as well. The ending is a bit of a let down- big boss fight, no real reward. Now we're going to playthrough on Difficulty 2 to see what that is like. I'm not sure how long we'll stick with it, because I'm kind of bored with it.

Finished Bioshock over the weekend. I'm sure I missed some of the game; not that I rushed through it; I'm just bad at following maps in a FPS. Fun game and VERY pretty. After finishing, it would have been nice for the game to offer a 'fly-through' option, just to look at all the pretty.

Serious Sam- The first Encounter HD

All the Serious Sam goodness, but very, very pretty. Lots of gore, lots of mindless shooting, plenty of fun and little frustration. The only thing I wish it had was a map, because I get lost easily. Die and re-spawn right where you were; no backtracking. Co-op mode for up to 16 players. Customize your look! (Andy is playing Serious Elvis). A great revamp of a great game.

Seriously.

(groan)

Really, this is the game Left4Dead 1 wanted to be. Many more weapons, new types of zombies, and a lot more fun, even for someone like me who is not good at shooters. Luckily, I have someone to play with who is. Still, for only two players it can get frustrating, although the AI does an excellent job. But the infinite number of zombies can be overwhelming and disheartening, which is probably the point. There's a lot more models now as well, so it doesn't feel like the same zombie is being killed over and over. The voice acting is pretty stellar, too.

In other gaming news, I beat Portal tonight. Go me.