Oh oh oh so I found the list of games I'd played over the past few 3 or 4 months! Kinda slowed down/stopped now though as am deeply entrenched in Steven Erikson's Mazalan epic, currently on book 2 of 10(?) each weighing in at seven to nine hundred pages. Yes. I like my epics to be epic. So far it's like Jordon meets RR Martin, very convoluted and it pulls no punches with the mountain of (refreshingly original) Lore, but unusual protagonists and decent characterisation so far. High magic high drama. I like. So yeah, no time for computer games really.
Summer in London has been kinda rubbish weather wise. Yes there's the heat and ok storms can be fun the first couple of times, but generally it's just hot and muggy, with occasionally breaks for cold-and-wet or hot-and-sunny, depending. For example Glastonbury was perfect (or so I hear, sadface) but Brighton Pride this Saturday was a complete washout. I'm a little sad we didn't persevere a little longer with it as by all accounts there was great fun to be had in spite of the weather, but we were late to the party, slightly hungover, completely sober and almost posse-less, so after getting soaked we went home, showered and cooked, like old people.
Was really nice to have Luke over for a long weekend too, good times, fun wanderings, much snuggles, though it's ridiculous how much we bicker, given my previous opinion on couples who do that.. I think after the deceptive calm of the relationship with Si I seem to have gone to the other extreme: interesting but tiring. Plus he ate all my food. Damn him. Oh! And someone submitted a picture I took on Saturday to Look At The Fucking Hipster starring my *cough* beautiful *cough* boyfriend. He seems to be taking his new-found fame well.
I finally registered and went to the doctors recently about my upper/mid back pains, which I used to attribute to my arthritis and just grin and bear but I'm no longer convinced; it seems more muscular. I'm hoping to get seen by a physiotherapist soon to see what, if anything, I can do about it. I really want to try and get in decent shape and I can't when flexing any part of my back gives instant cramp-like pains :-( The short term involves a crap-load of tests though. I've already had blood tests (many vials filled, erk) and a couple of x-rays taken, next I'm going to get some sort of endoscopy thing to find out how much nomming ibuprofen like it's candy over the years has screwed up my insides. Probably lots. SADFACE. I've been banned from taking my beloved ibuprofen tablets for now so I'm relying on deep heat and ibuprofen gel which is kinda awkward. Still though, it was nice to be able to walk in and out of hospital unaided.
Work is pretty good right now, the all-company meetings sound slightly corny and are easily dismissed but I really get a feeling of where we are and where we are going as a company, and it all sounds good, even if I do take it with a pinch of salt. There's clear evidence of progress, from the report on the company Vision and Values that I helped put together and present to the London office FINALLY having a web presence at www.mrmworldwide.co.uk. I did the markup and styles for that as well which is a nice touch. At the last all-company meeting I learned that one of the websites I've been working a lot on recently (on of those projects that just won't go away) is to be on store PCs on the shop floor of every PC world in the country. Which is nice. On the other hand it's odd to have so many new faces in the tech department, what with the redundancies and redundancy-fears earlier in the year, as well as a couple of people leaving, part of that is down to us going from a .net house to .net and Java. Interesting times. I still walk to work every day which is awesome. Hopefully we'll stay at this address for another year to keep that lovely perk.
Oh yeah, here's the list of games.
- The Last Remnant Didn't grab me in the first hour. Fail.
- Demigod Good, but it's just DotA
- Fallout 3 Not that awesome really. In any sandbox game like this I always get sidetracked making my fortune. I never care enough about the main plot.
- City Life Delux Confusing.
- Crusader Kings Damn confusing. And old-looking.
- Europa Universalis 3 AWESOME. With the Magna Mundi mod this game keeps me coming back.
- Europa Universalis: Rome Didn't catch on.
- Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 Silly but fun.
- Overlord Silly fun. Frustrating sequentiality given the lack of a map.
- Empire: Total War Kinda easy when I first played it. Shelved it waiting for patches.
- LotR: Battle for Middle Earth 2 Decent.
- LotR: Conquest Shite.
- Universe at War Good. The differences between the races kept it fresh in spite of the old-school UI
- Warhammer Dawn of War 2 Good, but I didn't get the big deal behind the multi-player which is clearly its main strength. With only 1 race single player quickly became dull.
- Civilisation IV I have trouble remembering which civilisation is which. The same flaw I find with every one is that the AI produces hundreds of units and I don't, because shuffling around hundreds of units is DULL.
- Chris Sawyer's Locomotion LOL
- Elven Legacy I can see some people liking this but hex wargames are a little oldschool for me.
- Sim City 4 Classic. I think Cities XL might steal it's crown though, god knows Sim Cities Societies damn well isn't.
- The Sims 3 After Sims 2 with all the add-ons Sims 3 very feature-poor. I'll have another look in a few years when the money-grabbing bastards have pumped out the obvious expansion packs that they already did in 1 and 2.
- Prototype AWESOME. Smashy smashy game with a decent plot. Didn't like the protagonist at all but I'm sure empathy would get in the way of all the smashy.
- Far Cry 2 Promising start, though my computer might die.
- CoD 4: Modern Warfare Really really good for the handful of hours it took.
- Overlord 2 Much better than Overlord. Made me realise I love having a palace/castle/den to upgrade and have ever since Civ 2 and BG 2
- Stronghold Legends Baffling.
- Sacred 2 - Fallen Angel Awful. Diablo and Dungeon Siege have a shit child.
- Plants Vs Zombies Good arcadey fun. Desktop flash game basically.
- The Witcher - Enhanced Difficult to get into it a second time, I wish there was a way to skip the tutorial bit. Yes my attention span is that small.
- Left for Dead Shot some zombies. No big whup. I assume you have to play it online to care.