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Wheeeeeee!

“Okay, just keep flying and hope no-one notices we broke the citadel.”

Gaming update.

Well I finally got a World of Warcraft character to level 60. Which was the orginal level-cap for those who are interested in such things. (It goes up to 80 right now, and as Blizzard have announced a THIRD expansion “Cataclysm” is on its way then there will be level 90’s running around soon enough.)  Anyway, just because I am 5 or so years behind the curve, doesn’t lesson my personal sense of achievement. (See one of my favourite comic artists deal with this very topic at http://www.xkcd.com/606/)

Must say I didn’t spend a great deal of time with Rollercoaster Tycoon. For one thing the graphics were… not good. Did things really look that bad in 1999? I guess they did.  I started off with the easiest scenario, running a themepark in Sherwood Forest during the Dark Ages, which is a nice idea and had me raising an eybrow at least. But unfortunately the gameplay was just not my cup of tea. I’ve never really been a simulation gamer. My father could (and has) happily spent hours building up infrastructure and micro-managing all manner of stuff in games like these -  I just can’t get in to them. I played the original Civilisation a bit, and SimCity too, but my heart was never really in it. (In SimCity’s case I would usually have only played for an hour or so before I got bored, eventually a message would pop up telling me that there was traffic congestion some-where-another and I would call down a couple of hurricanes and earthquakes as vengeance for my city’s population whining about traffic.)

I was just as bored with Rollercoaster Tycoon. I’m not saying the game doesn’t have an amazing amount of detail and depth, but frankly for me its detail I could do without. I don’t want to click on a punter and examine his hunger, nausea or need-to-go-the-toilet stats. I don’t want to make decisions about the lift-hill chain speed or the lateral g’s of one of my rides. Essentially playing Rollercoaster Tycoon well means balancing the books – earning enough money from a smoothly running theme-park – and I find that about as enjoyable as an excel spreadsheet.

End verdict – All the fun of a theme park with way more responsibility and no actual fun!

So on to another game from my game-loot for me then. I’ve started playing “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare”, I’ll report back when done. Or bored. Or horrified with 1st person shooting actual people in realistic real-world looking situations…

Oh I almost forgot, here’s what guest contributor Lizbt had to say on her Horsez experience -

“Picking up a horse simulation game that pluralises with a ‘z’, I expected silliness, coat-brushing and a fair bit of canter. What I did not expect was for it to be hard. This game was hard. Well, not hard. Difficult by design, in that I had no idea how to complete many of the set tasks. The very first mission, your introduction to the game, involved you (as the horse) saving a young girl clinging to a cliff face. Realistic, I hear you say. Also, nearly impossible. The poor girl plunged to her death 3 times before I googled the damn thing. Ah, yes, press spacebar when you pass her incredibly camouflaged hand reaching up the side of the path. Of course. My hoofy rescue complete, I settled in for some good brushing. That was the ticket. I even got to use that hook thing to clean the pebbles out of the horse’s shoes. This increased my horse’s moral, which had presumedly taken a dip after the glow of the daring cliffside rescue had worn off. Then followed some sort of dressage / DDR combo, where I pressed the arrow keys in time to complete awesome galloping moves. I could dig it, I’d played my fair share of Shrek Super Party. But then, once again, it was fail-city time, as my horse just would not jump it’s little jumping gate, not matter how many times I clicked the button as it turned green. This all culminated in a cross-country race in which I had to collect a statue from inside a country church with an hours time or a pawn-shop owner would not sell me a pack of cards. I really needed those cards. I’d thrown the last deck in the fire in a fit of teenage hormanal rage over not winning an undisclosed card game (plot!). But the “map”, it no show me where I was. Or where I was going. Or how long I had left to complete the mission. So, I did the only possible thing I could. I rage-quit out of that mother, and played some Fairway Solitaire. Birdie!”

“Aww…”