Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

I haven’t been doing much gaming lately.  For the past two weeks I have been quite hooked on the Winter Olympics (Yay Canada!) and haven’t really been interested in gaming.  With the games closing this past Sunday however, I was back to the PC to get some gaming on.

I turned on the PC and soon after I heard a grinding noise.  I recognized the noise instantly, and knew it was my video card.  A few weeks after getting the card, the grinding noise would appear now and then.  It sounded like something was hitting the fan.  I took the card out and checked for any obstructions, but saw nothing.  I then did what any sensible person would do and blew on the card, put it back in the system, and powered back on.  The noise disappeared for about a month, until I heard it again the other night.

Once again, I took out the card, checked for obstructions, saw nothing, and put it back in the PC.  This time, after turning the PC back on, the noise was worse than ever.  It’s now a constant grinding noise which begins at system start up, and doesn’t stop.  I’m not going to lie, there was much cursing that ensued.  I just wanted to play a quick game, my chances to do so having become ever so rare, and my video card decided to annoy me.

That now leaves my gaming PC out of commission for however long it takes the RMA process to occur on the video card.  Sometimes I really hate computers.

I sat down to do some gaming the other night but was unsure of what to play.  Nothing was jumping out at me, but dammit, I wanted to play something!  I looked over at my little row of neatly stacked game boxes and my eyes settled on Titan Quest.  It had been a while since I played it so what the hell, I threw it in.

Every time I come back to that game (once every blue moon) I’m reminded of how fun it is.  At least I seem to enjoy it.  There’s just something about it though that keeps me from obsessively playing it through to completion.  Perhaps it’s best enjoyed in short bursts.  I wonder if I’ll ever finish it…

There was a time where I finished just about every single game I played.  This magical time has long passed.  At least I’ve stopped buying so many games.

I was all set to finally start playing Dragon Age: Origins last night.  There was nothing planned on my schedule, so I figured once my daughter was in bed I’d be able to sneak in a solid two hours of game time, three if I was lucky (and willing to be a little bit tired at work the next day).

Things, of course, didn’t go according to plan.  As usual I spent the evening playing with my daughter and our rousing game of hide-and-seek around the house riled her up a bit too much because she was way too wired to fall asleep after going to bed at 8:00.  It wasn’t until 10:00 that she finally closed her eyes and drifted off to never-never land.  Unfortunately, by the time 10:00 rolls around, I need to start heading off to bed myself, otherwise there’s no way I’d ever hear my alarm go off at 5:00 AM.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d gladly trade any amount of “free time” to play with my daughter, but there are certainly times that I miss the days when I could get home from work, have a quick supper, and then game all night.  It’s incredible to think of all the time I spent playing EverQuest II for instance.  In fact, it outright blows my mind.

This is the big reason I don’t really play MMO’s any more; I just don’t have time.  Games like Braid, my game “du jour”, are perfect.  I can pop in, play for a few minutes, and pop back out.  Brad is even extra cool because it saves your progress in such a way that I launch the game and I’ll be standing exactly where I was when I previously quit.  No load screens, no menu screens, just instant gratification.

I think I may have trouble getting into, and subsequently through, Dragon Age.  There have been times where I’ve had a few minutes of free time but I gather that you can’t really play a game like Dragon Age in twenty minute chunks, so I’ve played something else, or just browsed the web.

Is this what it feels like to be a grown up?

There was a time where I’d buy just about any gaming related magazine off the store shelves, but these days I don’t buy any.  The last one that I read with any sort of regularity was Games For Windows magazine, but that died some time ago.  Before that, PC Gamer was my mag of choice.

I can actually remember picking up the very first issue of PC Gamer, complete with a demo of Theme Park on a floppy disk.  For several years after that, I purchased and read every single issue.  I tried a subscription once but that was a horrible experience.  My issues would show up a solid month or two late.  The following months issue would already be on store shelves before I got my subscription issue for the previous month.  I could understand that if I lived in the North Pole, but I’m in the middle of Canada for crying out loud (insert North Pole joke here).  Needless to say, I didn’t renew and just continued to purchase them off the shelf.

If I had to guess, I’d say it was about five or six years ago when I stopped buying them every month.  I’d still get the occasional issue here or there, but it was mostly restricted to when I was really bored and wanted something simple to read or when I was traveling somewhere.

I would suggest that it was around the time when Greg Vederman left as editor in chief that the quality of the writing took a steep nosedive.  Just a few months ago I picked up an issue on a whim and it was littered with potty jokes and all manner of sophomoric “humour”.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a good poop joke just as much as anybody, but it was pretty bad.  The layout was also terrible, using some ridiculous font which made the whole magazine look completely low budget and ugly.  Finally, the articles themselves were poorly written and extremely short, presumably to make room for all the pretty screen shots.

The point of all this is to say that I’m not surprised to notice that PC Gamer has all but disappeared from all the stores I normally would have bought it from here.  It’s been about two months since I’ve seen one on a shelf in the grocery store I shop at, the local 7-11, or even the bookstores.  It all feels eerily similar to the situation leading up to the close of Games For Windows magazine.  I checked the PC Gamer website and it appears as though the magazine is still operating, having just announced another new editor in chief, but from where I am it looks as though it’s going belly up.  Any word?

I stupidly made some gaming resolutions at the beginning of last year.  The truth is, I was probably desperate to post something to the blog, and resolutions are easy to pronounce.  Living up to them is harder.  Probably the only kind of blog post that’s easier to do is a recap of past resolutions and seeing if you did or did not live up to them.  So in that spirit, here’s my first (of many more to come) lazy post of 2010.

The first resolution I made in 2009 was to cancel World of Warcraft, which I did in July.  I have not been back since time expired on the account, although I have felt a pull now and then.  I’m hoping that playing Runes of Magic can satisfy my MMO urges in the time being to keep me from re-subscribing to WoW.

The second resolution was to become competent with the Source SDK and make some levels.  I got as far as actually downloading the SDK, which really isn’t difficult through Steam, and I may have even launched it one or two times.  That’s it.  Apparently I’d rather play games as opposed to make levels for them.

The third resolution was to learn to program C++ or C#.  I went with C# given its similarities with Java, which I’m already fairly competent in.  I bought a book and everything.  I got a few chapters into the book and have enjoyed it, but it’s stalled somewhat of late due to various other reasons that I can’t think of right now.  I think my biggest problem is that I’ve got too many hobbies.

Finally, I mentioned a few games that I wanted to finish and I managed to achieve a fifty percent score on that, which in my book, is a passing grade.  I finished both Oblivion and Fallout 3, but failed to get through Baldur’s Gate 2 and GTA IV.  I don’t think I even played GTA IV once through the entirety of 2009.  I did start playing BG2, and it was great fun, but like a moth to a flame I was distracted by other newer, shinier games.

As for 2010, I don’t want to make any resolutions.  There, that was easy.