Pile Of Shame - Video Game Edition UPDATE

A quick update to my pile of shame. It has not shrunk. It has grown. Two months since I announced my grand plans and they have not happened yet. Shocking. I did spend a bit of time playing some random games as noted previously. I spent the majority of my gaming time playing Football Manager 2009 and World of Warcraft. In the few hours I didn't spend in those games, I was buying other games. Damn you internet and your sales. I did play some Pirates and Railroads, so those aren't really shame games. But I haven't touched Hitman, Hitman 2, Hitman 3, Drakensang or Vampire: The Masquerade at all.

This weekend I will endeavor to clear something from my pile of shame. My World Of Warcraft account is not active. Dragon Age comes out tuesday. So, I have three days to do something about my pile before Dragon Age arrives and consumes all my free time.

My September of Computer Gaming

I am typically a console gamer. These days almost exclusively on the xbox360. This year, I have started to devote some more of gaming time to playing games on the computer. I use a Mac, so gaming isn't that easy. Back in January I installed Windows Vista on a separate partition, so that i could join the rest of the world and play some PC games. It has been a pretty good year. September was particularly eventful, so I've decided to make a little list of the games I played last month.

Football Manager 2009 - Every other year or so, I become completely addicted to this game. I love it so much, but I really have to keep it out of sight or it would take over and not let me play any other games. So I played this and nothing else for about three weeks this year. Then I put it away and will probably return to it again in January.

Desktop Tower Defense - My first tower defense game. It is supposedly one of the better ones. I enjoyed it for thirty minutes or so. I will return periodically, but not something I want to play every day.

Tropico 3 Demo - I played a shit-ton of Tropico back in the day. There is a new version coming out next month that looks like a return to the excellence of the original Tropico. the demo was great. I will definitely be buying this game at some point.

Majesty 2 Demo - I am not a fan of RTSs (real-time strategy), so I was quite skeptical that would like this game which is sort of an RTS. It came highly recommended, so I gave it a shot. In this game you don't actually control any units, which is why I was interested. You build buildings which allow you to build different types of units, but once created the units just cruise around and do their own thing. You can lure them to certain areas. Place an exploration bounty on an area and some unit will want to cruise out there to collect the gold. Declare that you want the wolves cleared out of an area and will pay 500 gold and some hero will wander over to kill the wolves. A nifty idea. The first scenario in the demo was quite fun and short. The second was way to fucking hard. I can't see myself paying $40 for this, but if it goes on sale I will think about giving it a further look.

Prison Tycoon 4 Demo - I have never really played a Tycoon game and this one sounded like it could be fun. It was also on sale for $5, but instead of just buying it I checked out the demo. There was no real tutorial, so I spent about 45 minutes trying to figure out how the game worked. I never really got the hang of it and it didn't seem like it would be as fun as I had hoped. So, I didn't buy it.

Diablo 2 - I've never played Diablo and I keep hearing about its awesomeness, so it was time to try it out. My wife had a copy sitting around, so I installed it and jumped right in. Two hours of clicking the mouse button later, I quit the game. I didn't really have that much fun. If I had played Diablo back in the day I probably would have enjoyed it, but it isn't the type of gaming experience I am looking for right now.

Sid Meier's Pirates - Another update to a game I played a lot as a teenager. Pirates was awesome and this version is awesome too. It was on sale for $5 and I bought it and I love it.

Sid Meier's Railroads - I've never played the computer game version of Railroad Tycoon, so I dropped $5 on this to give it a try. I played it pretty obsessively for about three days and had a super great time. I will definitely be putting more hours into this.

Drakensang: The Dark Eye - An 80-hour, single-player RPG that has been getting solid reviews. I figured I would pick this up eventually. Then it went on sale for $5 and I bought it. Haven't tried it out yet, but it looks like it will be a good time.

World Of Warcraft - It looked like that would be the end of my computer gaming for September, but my son activated his World Of Warcraft account again recently. He was complaining about not having enough gold to get his flying training, so I activated my account to send him some gold. And since my account was now active for the first time in a year, I decided to check in on my characters. And now I've been back playing WOW for a couple weeks. It has been fun getting back in. My son and I spent the vast majority of last weekend cruising around together and we had a blast. I know I am not back in WOW for good, but I will give it a month and have some fun before Dragon Age comes out next month...

Mark's Box - October 2009

Holy crap. This was my biggest box ever. Chock full of awesome. I haven't been reading comics the last couple weeks because I've been reading some non-graphic novels. But this box is making me wish I wasn't in the middle of two books right now. I need to start reading these things as soon as possible.

But first, a quick update on last month's featured titles. Pax Romana = Awesome. Essex County = Still unread. Unknown Soldier = Mildly intriguing, but not for me.

This month's titles that did not make the top three or have been previously mentioned: Pluto Vol 5, Black Jack Vol 6, Black Jack Vol 7, Marvel 1602 (by Neil Gaiman), Marvel Masterworks Avengers Vol 2, Ythaq Vol 2, and more...

Anyone who can spot the connection between this month's featured titles and posts a comment is entered in a contest to win my copy of Unknown Soldier trade paperback volume one.

V For Vendetta by Alan Moore & David Lloyd - A little known early work from an up-and coming talent. Well, maybe not. Alan Moore. Heard of him? He wrote a little book called Watchmen that got a bit of press recently. This is probably his second most 'famous' book and I've never read it. That will change soon. Really looking forward to this one. Amazon link

Promethea by Alan Moore, JH Williams III, & Mick Gray - To kind of quote the wikipedia article: 'Promethea explored Moore's ideas about consciousness, mysticism, magic, écriture féminine and the Kabbalah.' I am not even sure what all those words mean, but it sounds highfalutin and possibly awesome. If anyone can make that awesome, I trust Alan Moore to do it. Amazon link

Tom Strong by Alan Moore & Chris Sprouse - It's got a gorilla, so it must be good. Tom Strong is a tribute to the old-timey pulp comics from Alan Moore. Tom Strong is a 'science-hero' who lives forever or something like that. Should be a groovy read. Amazon link