I'm officially bored.

On the work end, the year is coming to a close... thank Jeebus. After nearly two years, I am so sick of working at my current location. But the good news is that it looks like next year I'll be in a different setting. I don't want to be too specific, because for all I know my work googles me.

I just finished Indigo Prophecy, and it was so good it almost made me want to get a PS3 just so I can play Heavy Rain. I'm now playing Deus Ex: Invisible War, and so far I'm not too impressed. The original game took awhile to get going too, but there was still something about it that kept me intrigued. I'll give it a little while longer, but like Prince of Persia, I might drop it. Then again, Prince of Persia is something that I can trade in via Goozex, but Deus Ex was purchased through STEAM.

I joined the Lord of the Rings Online portal in my guild, and then I haven't had much time to play it lately. Figures. Maybe I could start playing it now instead of blogging.

Now that I'm finished with Indigo Prophecy, and currently frustrated with the fact that Borderland's latest batch of DLC breaks the original game's leveling system, I'm thinking of jumping into the second Deus Ex game. While the first game took forever for me to complete, I ended up loving it in the end. Plus, soon the third iteration will arrive, and I'd like to be prepared for it. Perhaps soon you'll see the second game under the "what I'm playing" section of this page.

Not quite an adventure game, not quite an action game, Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit in Europe) sets a new standard as an half-game/half-interactive movie. From the use of motion-capture, the great voice acting, to the copious well-placed quick-time events, this game is all about the ride.

The game's story revolves around a man who commits a murder, but isn't quite himself during the incident. The narrative then unravels from various points of view. Sometimes you're the killer, sometimes you're the cop trying to apprehend the killer. So in a sense, you often play against yourself. I enjoyed the back and forth nature of this game, as it gives a really well-rounded view of the story.

The game has a spiritual successor out now for the Playstation 3, called Heavy Rain. If you're a fan of one, there's a good chance you will enjoy the other.

I just shipped out Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, Overlord (it needed a map badly), Temple of Elemental Evil, and Metroid Prime Hunters.

This week, I received Assassin's Creed 2 and The Conduit. Although I haven't finished the original Assassin's Creed, I'm excited that I got the sequel (and the Conduit) for only $10 shipping.

Time to see if The Conduit is as "meh" as all of the reviews say.

That's how I'd describe Alone in the Dark. Yeah, I had read the reviews prior to going into the game, and I knew full-well the issues the Xbox 360 (and PC) versions contained. But to experience these issues first-hand, yikes.

The first-person view needs some kind of going-to animation, the game should pause when you open your clunky inventory, the right control-stick movement of what's in your hands doesn't quite feel intuitive enough, and the driving controls often continue to turn well after I have let go of the sterring stick.

Still, the game is somewhat interesting so far. I'm always a sucker for a good supernatural thriller, and I love that I can skip around in the game. This enables me to jump to the next chapter when I can't quite finish the one that I'm on due to difficulty, problem with the controls (driving), etc.

I don't think I'll trade this in just yet. I'll give it a few more run-throughs. Besides, it was cool to get the few achievements that I got tonight.

BOOOOOOOOOORING. Trading this sucker in. I was hoping to get a few achievements before that happened, but oh well.

True story. Now that I'm on spring break, I thought that I could officially push the time that I go to sleep. It didn't work out so well. Half a day later, I wake up with my dreams still ingering on my mind. In my dreams, I was so tired, I was falling asleep while I was walking. Weird.

Even though I'm on spring beak, I wasn't quite ready for it. Work has been a disaster. My supervisor has decided that he doesn't like me, and has begun to nit-pick everything that I do. I'll deal with it, but it's just annoying. At least next year will be better, as I'll be working in a different school. In the meantime, not every school is on spring break (like my graduate school), so I'm still in the midst of writing papers. Hooray.

Gaming is awesome, as always. I've almost maxed out my character on Borderlands, but then I grew tired of it. So I'm taking a break to concentrate on Indigo Prophecy and Lord of the Rings Online. Man, I'm so glad I forked over the $200 at the launch of that game for a lifetime subscription. It has already paid for itself with the amount of time I've sunk into that game.

I have a home server that I use for media streaming and backup storage. I also use an online storage option for my most precious documents, but this server houses the mundane. Anyhow, I was using Windows Home Server as an OS. It did a great job, but then the tral ended. I'm not about to fork over almost $200 when I don't have to. So, I tried Ubuntu Server. Yeah. After insalling that I was staring at a Linux command line instead of a GUI. I haven't touched anything like that since college (ten years ago), so away that OS went. Now, I just settled on using an old copy of WinXP Home with file and printer sharing on. Speaking of printer sharing, man that was a pain in the ass. At least I learned alot though.

So I'm back into playing seven games at the same time. Well, I don't know if "back" is the appropriate word, as I don't recall if I've ever played seven games simultaneously before. But whatever. This seems to happen whenever I don't have a game that fully grabs and engages me, but still have several games that I enjoy playing it spurts.

Space Siege is a game that received some pretty ho-hum reviews here at Gamespot. And usually I find isometric hack-n-slash games (a la Diablo 2) to be pretty boring. But for some reason, the demo for Space Siege grabbed me enough to buy the game off STEAM during one of their huge blow-out sales. So far, I'm about a third of the way through the game, and it's been fun. For anybody that enjoys Diablo but wish it had guns, this may be the game for you. Check out it's demo.

Indigo Prophecy is the other STEAM game that I've been playing on my laptop. I tried to get into this game in the past, but it just never grabbed me beyond the first scene. I think it took seeing Heavy Rain (the development studio's recent game) in action before I understood what the developers were going for here. It's kind of an interactive movie with lots of different quick time events that can alter your story. So far, I've killed my character off only once, when I accidentally made him take pain killers after imbibing way too much alcohol. Overall, this game is fantastic in its delivery, but its slow pace makes it so I can only play it in chunks.

Spore is a game that is immediately addictive, cute, and fun. I hesitated buying it because I never saw its price drop below $40 at any local retailer. So once Impulse had it on sale for $30, I jumped. I am currently in the creature stage, and am trying to figure out how too woo members of other species into not being hostile with my character. I know that I have to match their behavior displays, but so far, all I have to use is a jumping mechanic. I don't know if that's all I need, or i I need to somehow collect/gather/discover more behavior.

Prince of Persia is just not grabbing me. I picked it up once a week ago, and put it down until I am ready to give it another shot. If it doesn't do anything for me again, I'll probably end up trading it in on Goozex. I won't feel too bad about doing so, because I only paid $7 for this game during a GoGamer.com sale. I don't know what specifically it is, but something about the gameplay mechanics are just too simple when contrasted with the last Prince of Persia trilogy (which I enjoyed).

Demigod is a game that I just keep coming back to. Go Gas Powered Games, because this is the second of their titles that is on this list today. They crafted a really fun and methodical strategy game that was plagued by bad netcode upon its release. Many sales were offered in the following months to try to prove to the public that this game had recovered from its unstable multiplayer, but I don't think may people-beyond the PC Gamer magazine crowd-really jumped on board. It's a shame, really, because I never really got to develop my multiplayer skills the way I had hoped to.

Cursed Mountain is another slowly-paced, methodogical game, but this time of the adventure variety. You are set as a professional mounain climber, trying to discover why your brother went missing in the Himalayas. It is filled with Buddist mysticism and locations, and that intrigues me, as so few games are set in that locale. I haven't gone back to playing this gem in about a month, but I still keep it on my "what I'm playing" list because it intrigues me so much.

Borderlands Gearbox just keeps kicking out the DLC for this game, and I keep coming back to it. I skipped the last batch, but "the secret armory of general knoxx" has cost me $10 and hours of fun so far. If you enjoyed this game, then I highly recommend the first and third batch of DLC. Yes, that will set you back another $20, but it's worth it. More loot, more guns, more fun.

I have always heard that Indigo Prophecy (Farenheit in Europe) and Sam & Max Season One were gems. Granted, I've heard more about Indigo Prophecy because it's been out longer.

For the uninitiated, Indigo Prophecy is the forerunner of Heavy Rain. That is, it's basically an interactive move instead of a game in the classical sense. I've tried to play it a few times before in the past, but found the controls off-putting and the style too weird. I guess that all changed tonight, because when I hit the play button on STEAM, I was thrown into a compelling (ahhhh, industry buzz-word!) story with controls that-while different-work for the style of game that it is.

Sam & Max, coming from the classic adventure games, are a series of comical adventure games. Most of the time, I find adventure games to be filled with puzzles that make absolutely NO sense. Well, this game isn't any different. So far, the only puzzle that I figured out on my own was to use a gun on a block of cheese to make the dairy-product appear of the Swiss variety. While this game (at least the first episode) is cute-and I love the banter between Sam & Max-it's not nearly as grabbing as Indigo Prophecy.

Ok, back to the games.

I just finished the first batch of DLC for Borderlands, "the isle of Dr. Zed Ned." While I'm too damn tired to write a review, I'll just say it is definitely worth $10 if you were a fan of the original game. Now I just have to decide whether or not I'm going to buy the latest batch of DLC, "the secret armory of General Knox." Hmmmm.... my wife probably wouldn't like it too much, as I just bought Spore on sale from Impulse.