I finished the XBox Live Arcade game Limbo the other night and while I mostly enjoyed the experience, I have to say I don’t really get all the praise that this game has been receiving.  Yes, it has a cool appearance to it, and mostly interesting puzzles, but for what I paid for it (1200 MS points, AKA $15), it was way too short.  I finished it in two sittings, roughly three hours in total.

Just take a look at some of the gushing critic reviews at Metacritic, like this quote:

It’s also one of the most essential must-play experiences this generation.
- GameShark

What?  It was cool and all, but even if it was only $2 (which is what I paid for Braid), I still wouldn’t call it a must-play.  I didn’t find any of the puzzles particularly difficult and was able to solve them all relatively quickly.  The “story” is non-existent.  I suppose I could guess as to what’s going on, but I didn’t really care, unlike Braid which kept me interested and driving forward.  I kept playing Limbo for two reasons: I wanted to get my $15 worth, and I kept waiting for the “must-play experiences” to come around.

Perhaps I needed a little more fartsy to go with the artsy, but when my three hours was up with the game and I watched the credits roll up, the only thing I could think to say was, “that was a waste of time.”

My daughter is away this week, visiting her grandparents at their cabin on the lake, and my wife will be away in Vancouver for a few days for work.  That means I’ll be home by myself, with just my dog to take care of, which subsequently means I’ll be free to play whatever games I want, and be as irresponsible with my time as I choose to be.  Of course I miss my wife and daughter, that goes without saying, but still… guilt-free gaming baby!

I’ll be spending some quality time with StarCraft II tonight, no doubt.  I played the first three missions of the campaign last night and I like it so far.  I’ll hopefully have some more impressions of it at a later date.

What I really meant to post about was the news that EverQuest II was going to introduce a free-to-play server.  You can read all the details at the official site, here: http://everquest2.com/news/read/current/3630.

I’ve said it many times before, that I loved EverQuest II back when I played it, and hopefully this move does something to introduce the game to new players.  It used to drive me nuts to hear people put the game down without having tried it.  I’ll definitely be trying it out again myself.  It’s too bad I won’t have access to my existing characters, but they’ve been dormant long enough that I probably wouldn’t know how to play them anyway.

My only concern is that this move may prove to be too little too late.   The last time I was in EQII (free period just before the release of Sentinel’s Fate) it really showed its age and it couldn’t hook me in.  I can’t see anything having changed since then.  It’ll be nice to have the option of poking my head in now and then though.

I’m actually a little surprised that EQII was the game that SOE decided to try the free-to-play model on (aside from Free Realms of course).  I was hoping Vanguard would be the first to go that route.  I would love to play that game some more, I just can’t justify paying for it.

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.