This whole situation is kind of scary actually. I’m fortunate enough not to be a part of PSN, and the credit card I had associated with SOE has long since expired, but there are millions of accounts that weren’t as fortunate. I’ve even recently been toying with the idea of re-subscribing to Vanguard to try it out again, but I most definitely won’t be doing that now.

What an absolute embarrassment for Sony.

Of course, there were some compromises.  My collection of World of Warcraft and EverQuest II boxes are staying put, along with my Vanguard box, and the two collector’s edition tin boxes that I have.  Plus, I’ve only discarded the cardboard boxes; I’ve kept any plastic cases that the games shipped in, including the games themselves of course.  And yes, there’s still the few large boxes packed full of more (older) computer game boxes that are still sitting in our crawl space that I’m holding on to for now.  Some of my all time favourites are in there…

I thought it’d be fun to write a quick blurb about each of the freshly departed, and whether or not I’ve gotten my monies worth out of them… how nerdy am I?

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings – One of my all time favourite RTS games.

Age of Empires II: Gold Edition – I got this for the expansion that it included so that I could play multiplayer with some friends from work.  We had some epic battles.  Great fun.

Age of Wonders II – Great game that I didn’t play enough of.  One day though… right?

American McGee’s Alice – Loved this game, played it from start to finish.

Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn – Played a tonne of this.  After sinking a bunch of hours into it, I lost my progress when I accidentally wiped out my hard drive.  Have never finished it, but sure do want to.

Baldur’s Gate II: The Collection – Bought this because it was cheap and I didn’t already have the expansion.

Bioshock – Played it.  Finished it.  Ultimately didn’t like it.

Black & White – Remember the hype for this one?  Loved the introductory tutorial, but hated the actual game.  Never made it a single mission past the tutorial.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: Game of the Year Edition – Still playing this one, roughly half-way through.  It’s okay, not great.

Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion – I loved Transport Tycoon but just couldn’t get into this one.  Picked it up real cheap though.

Civilization IV – One of my all time favourites.

Civilization IV: Warlords - I can’t think of what this adds to the base game, but I probably enjoyed it.

Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword - I’ve never played any of the scenarios, but I’m pretty sure it adds certain stuff to the base game, right?

Command & Conquer: Generals – Picked this up in a bargain bin and never played it.  Bargain, eh?

Company of Heroes - One of my all time faves.  I’ve strictly played multiplayer, no campaign.  I hope to get to it some time.

Deus Ex – Awesome game, from start to finish.

Diablo II – I played the crap out of this game.

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction – By the time this was released, I was so sick of Diablo II that I just critical-pathed my way through this expansion to see the cinematics.

Disciples II: Dark Prophecy – Awesome, awesome game that I picked up on a whim.  Glad I did.

Doom 3 – Started off really cool, then got really, really bad.  Why are so many monsters hanging out in tiny closets?  Just stupid.  I eventually enabled god mode and whipped through it just to see the end.

Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil – I bought this one cheap and because I had read it was way better than the main game.  I wouldn’t know, I only played the first level or so.

Dungeons & Dragons Online - I bought this for just over $2.00 and played the free month that came with it.  When that month was up, the game went free-to-play.  I’d say I got my moniey’s worth.

Falcon 4.0 – I so desperately wanted to play this game hardcore, but just never did.  I never played the campaign, just flew around and shot at random stuff.  A shame.

Fallout – Played it, loved it, finished it.

FarCry – I was loving this game right up to the point where you stop fighting other humans and had to take on the mutant creatures.  That’s when I stopped playing.

Guild Wars -  Played this a bunch, even tried getting back into it last year.  The highest I ever got was level 14.

Half Life: Opposing Force - Great expansion.  I must have the Half Life box in my crawl space.

Half Life 2 - A classic, but it ended to quickly.  After finishing it I remember thinking, “that’s it?  It’s over?”.  I also remember not being able to play it on release day because the Steam servers were being pounded and I couldn’t create an account.

Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday – One of those games that I wish I had the time to sit down and play.  I almost picked up Hearts of Iron III during the holiday Steam sale but reminded myself that I still haven’t played this one.

Home World: Game of the Year Edition – Found this one super cheap one day.  Played a few missions, nothing more.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault – The first WWII FPS that I played, and I loved it.  Finished it.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 – Another one I only wished I had spent time with.  I never played it beyond flying around looking at some scenery and crashing into buildings.

Neverwinter Nights – I played this one all the way through and really liked it, although the first chapter was a bit of a struggle to get through.  I remember the final encounter being crazy hard too because my party had no magic left and there was no place to sleep to restore your spells.

Neverwinter Nights: Diamond – Bought this one cheap so that I could play the expansions… which I never did.

Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis – Man, did I ever love this game… right up to where they make you drive a tank, which I had no interest in doing.

Operation Flashpoint: Gold Upgrade -  Never played it.

Operation Flashpoint: Resistance – Never played it… *sigh*

PGA Championship Golf 2000 – I loved this game and played it a tonne.  I remember downloading custom courses and everything.

Puzzle Quest – I bought this cheap, for $10, after reading a review in GFW Magazine that gave it a 10/10.  I don’t like puzzle games though, so how stupid am I for spending $10 on it?

Rainbow Six 3: Gold Edition – Great game, played some multiplayer with a friend, but never did the campaign.

Rainbow Six: Covert Ops Essentials – Didn’t spend much time with this one.

Rise of Nations: Gold Edition -  One of my favourite RTS games, and the game where I had one of my greatest gaming moments of all time.  Long story short: multiplayer game with two friends, came down to me and one other.  He had the defense technology that made his territory impervious to nuclear strikes.  I brought a big chunk of my army into his territory on the left side of the map, and when I saw his entire, frickin’ huge army come out to meet me, I retreated.  He followed me into my territory where I promptly nuked him and obliterated his army.  My main army then flooded in to his area from the right side of the map and finished him off.

Scrapland – I bought it because it was only $3.00.  I never played it.

StarCraft Battle Chest – Bought this one because of the hype; I was never big into RTS games.  I was blown away by the cinematics, which was what drove me through the campaign.

StarLancer -  One of my all time favourites.  I sure miss these types of games… please Chris Roberts… bring Wing Commander back.

The Wheel of Time – When I bought this game, I knew nothing of the books.  I really enjoyed the game and subsequently started reading the books.  I like the game better than the books.

Titan Quest: Gold Edition – I really like this game, but can only take it in short bursts.  I really do intend on finishing it some day.

Unreal Tournament – Probably the one game I’ve played more of outside of MMOs.  One of my faves.

WWII Fighters -  I think I like the idea of playing flight sims more than the actuality of it.  At least with this one I started the campaign and got a few missions in to it.

I’m in the midst of cleaning up my computer room, also known as my “man cave”, the place where my wife dare not go. Its become a dumping ground over the past few years for all of my crap: books, action figures, Star Wars toys, Warhammer stuff, Dungeons and Dragons stuff… all the junk a typical nerd picks up over the years.

The closet in my computer room is full of all the boxes from all the games I’ve purchased over the years, and these are in addition to the boxes that I’ve shoved into our crawl space from my last clean up. For whatever reason I can’t throw them out, but this clean up project I’ve started has got me thinking that it’s time I send those boxes to the recycling depot. With digital distribution, I don’t have to worry about that stuff. The boxes used to be nice when they actually contained printed manuals, cloth maps, and other goodies in them, but those days appear to be over. I don’t see the point of a box if it’s just going to contain a paper sleeve to hold the DVD.

The other benefit to digital is no longer having to have the DVD in the drive. Call me lazy if you wish, but the other day I went to load up Oblivion and when it told me I needed the DVD in the drive I said “screw it” and played something else. The DVD was literally two feet away, but I couldn’t be bothered.

I picked up another two games on the last day of the holiday Steam sale, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Plants vs Zombies Game of the Year Edition. I was happy to see Amnesia put back on sale, as I had regretted passing it over the first time it was on sale a few days previous.   This leads me to yet another advantage to digital purchases… there’s no physical evidence of the growing pile of games that I’ve purchased and have yet to play.

I can’t comment on most of the titles that appear on the years best games lists because, for the most part, I haven’t played them. What did I play this year?  I’m glad you asked. Here are some thoughts on all of the gaming related items I took part in during 2010…

New Hardware
In March I purchased a Nintendo Wii. The main motivation behind the purchase was for EA Sports Active, which has seen a good amount of usage in our household. I’ve got a copy of Twilight Princess that I haven’t touched, along with Super Mario Galaxy that I’ve played for about twenty minutes total. My daughter and I sometimes play together, usually Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey, or Bowling.

In July I finally replaced my aging PC with a pretty sweet Alienware, and there was much rejoicing. The guts of the machine consist of an i7-960 quad core, 3.2GHz CPU with 12GB RAM, Radeon 5870, 2.5TB hard disk space, and a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium. That’s in addition to the pretty lights emanating from the case and the funky alien head on the front.

In October I purchased a Nintendo DS. I was initially on the fence about getting one of these things, but since buying it, its seen use almost every day. I don’t regret it for a second.

The PC Games
I’ll start with the big one, World of Warcraft, which easily took up the majority of my time. I played fairly consistently throughout the year, starting up in January after a few months break. I levelled my Mage to 80 and he’s now my “main”, supplanting my 80 Shaman. I also started up an Orc Warrior who currently sits at level 61. I’ll continue with the Warrior once the Mage is 85.

I think Cataclysm is pretty cool, but not quite as awesome as I was hoping it would be. As of today, I find my interest is beginning to lean away from WoW towards my growing stockpile of un-played games. I think at this point I play WoW because I can jump in for a half hour or so and knock off a quest or two before I have to attend to “real life” matters.

The other MMO I (sort of) played this year was EverQuest II Extended. I tried playing this, but I just can’t. I have so many fond memories of my three and a half years with EQII, but each time I go back to check it out those memories seem to drift further and further away.

I managed to play through a couple popular puzzle-type games, in Braid and Limbo. I quite enjoyed Braid and actually managed to get through it fairly quickly because I couldn’t put it down.  On the other hand, I thought Limbo was merely “okay” and not deserving of all the hype it was receiving.

I played a fair amount of StarCraft II, but I’m still a mission or two away from completing the campaign. I’m not the biggest fan of real time strategy games, but I had to check this one out, and I wasn’t disappointed. Actually, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, although once I’m finished with the campaign I doubt I’ll load it up again until the next campaign is released.

With the purchase of my new PC I found myself looking for games that would show it off, and for that I played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Far Cry 2. Call of Duty looks great, but the game play wore off on me fairly quickly. I can’t stand the lack of freedom throughout the levels. If you don’t move fast enough, you die. If you move too fast, you die. Basically, the game moves at its own pace and drags you along for the ride. Far Cry 2 is the polar opposite, and I really enjoyed it. It looks great, and I love the open world concept of it.

Finally, I spent a little bit of time playing Torchlight, which was cool and nostalgic for about half an hour, at which point I started to fall asleep. I haven’t been back since. I also played Trine for about twenty minutes, which isn’t enough time to have formed an opinion of it.

The Portable Games
I played through and finished Golden Sun, an old Game Boy Advance game on my Nintendo DS. It was decent enough, but the random battles drove me crazy. I’m now playing Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, and I’m loving it. The graphics are great and the story and game play are both really well done. I didn’t know a whole lot about this one before getting it, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I’ve even found myself grinding levels not because I have to, but because I’m enjoying it.

The Console Games
This year saw my Xbox 360 red ring on me, but fortunately it was still under warranty, so I sent it off for repair. My replacement box has been running smoothly ever since. This wasn’t a big year for the console for me. I spent some time playing Tomb Raider: Guardian of Light cooperatively with my wife. It’s a great, fun little game.

Most of my time on the 360 was spent with NHL 10, which is the best dang hockey game I’ve ever played (I haven’t played NHL 11). The only other games I spent any decent amount of time with on the Xbox were Deadspace and Halo ODST. I’ve made it through about half of Deadspace and it’s really cool. I love the atmosphere and it’s genuinely pretty creepy. ODST however is a little disappointing. I love all of the other Halo games, but just a few missions in, I find it a little on the boring side.

There are other games I dabbled with on the Xbox here and there, but nothing I spent any significant amount of time with.

Steam
This year marked my first purchases from Steam. Typically I like to have a box and printed manual, but given that less and less shelf space is being dedicated to PC games and most of them no longer come with printed manuals, there was no longer anything to keep me from purchasing my games from Steam. The frequent sales don’t hurt either.

The Games I Bought but Haven’t Played
As always, my eyes were bigger than my amount of free time. I have purchased, but have yet to spend any time playing the following games:

• Left 4 Dead 2
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Dawn of War II: Gold Edition
• Super Mario Galaxy 2

I also recently received Halo Reach as a gift at Christmas, and purchased Super Street Fighter IV and Forza Motorsport 3 with a gift card, also received at Christmas. I won’t count those games among the ones I “haven’t played” as I’ve only had them for a couple days now.

My Game of the Year
Looking back over the year, I’ve actually played more than I thought I had. There’s no doubt that World of Warcraft took up the vast majority of my free time, but I certainly wouldn’t say it’s the game I enjoyed the most this year. For that, I’ll turn to Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies for the Nintendo DS.

It does so many things right. There are no random battles, so if you just want to get from one place to another quickly, for the most part you can. It’s got all of the requisite bells and whistles, such as nice graphics and great music. It’s got a nice world that feels big without feeling too big, and once you reach a certain part in the game you’re more or less free to explore it as you wish as opposed to being led through it in a specific order.

What does it the most for me though are the underlying mechanics. I love the way the party and class systems work. You can adventure alone if you wish, or create a party, and you can also choose from among several classes to play and change your class whenever you want (after a certain part early in the game). If you’ve got a DS and like RPGs, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, I hope you all have had a great year, and here’s wishing you the best for 2011.

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.”

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.

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?

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?

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.

The Stolen Throne is not typical of the books I read, and to be honest, I didn’t really expect it to be any good.  I picked it up on a lark, thinking it’d be interesting to get some more background info on the lore of Dragon Age.  The reader reviews on Amazon were surprisingly positive however, so my hopes began to elevate a little.

I finished the book over the Christmas holidays and quite frankly, it’s kind of bad and I had to push myself to continue reading it.  I will not be reading the follow-up novel.

There are a lot of problems with the book, but my biggest issue was the over-use of tired, old, fantasy clichés.  There’s the prophesizing witch that lives in the mysterious foggy forest, the over-the-top evil guy, and the young, naive prince who rises to heroic stature seemingly overnight.  I kept thinking that the book felt like the final project of a “How to Write Fantasy in 21 Steps” course.

I really hope that the game does a better job than the novel at providing a sense of scale to the world.  In the novel, it apparently doesn’t take any time at all to travel from one edge of the map to the other, as the characters in the book end up criss-crossing the map seemingly at random.

Fortunately, the book has not dampened my enthusiasm for the game.  Like I said, I bought the book thinking it’d probably be bad, and it lived up to those expectations.