About a week or two ago, I installed the original Halo on my computer, as well as Jade Empire, and played about five hours of the former and maybe ten of the latter. Halo is okay, but not super compelling. I like the futuristic feel, but it is a fairly old game, so it's lacking a bit where newer shooters have improved the technology. Decent though. Jade Empire is also decent, although I'm not super sucked into the story yet, which is crucial for an RPG. So far, it's all just, ooh, your character is important and has a destiny. Yeah yeah, give me something a little more interesting and specific. We'll see. I'm trying to get motivated to get into a game, but I tend to fritter away my evening hours lately. I might start playing something entirely different lol.

I installed Sims 2, with the first five expansion packs, on Frankenputer. I've only done one family so far, with one starting member. I've played long enough that he died of old age, but not before having three children. I'm going to try just sticking with one family for a while and see how that goes, but I'd like to start another neighborhood up with my parents as the start, instead of me as an adult. Because my family tree is a bit complicated, I've never tried actually copying the entire structure in the Sims. We'll see if I can do it. I stopped playing Oblivion and got into Morrowind hardcore for about a week, but those have both been set aside for now. It's weird, having no games on the computer and being able to start fresh. I'm somewhat limited by the little boy. I don't want to play too many loud violent shooters with him sitting in my lap. Colorful, cute games like the Sims seem okay, but I don't have lot of games like that of course.

Well, my 2006 built computer's hard drive stopped responding, and I couldn't boot anymore. So I took the hard drive and the awesome video card from my computer and transplanted them into my wife's computer, which I had just built for her about eight months ago. The combination, which I've dubbed Frankenputer, is actually pretty speedy. The PC I built for her was fairly budget, but it has a decent amount of expandability. It currently has 2 GB of ram and an Intel Celeron dual core, but I could upgrade it to 8 GB and a nice Intel quad core for about $400. I think I'll coast on this for a while, but upgrade one or both soon.

The bad news is I've probably lost most or all of my progress in my video games. Some save games can be easily loaded if you re-install on a new hard drive, and my old hard drive is accessible from the new computer, so it could still work out.

In the meantime, I've re-installed Elder Scrolls: Oblivion on the "new" computer, and have been playing it for a few days. I just tried the item duplication bug this evening and dropped ~10,000 apples down a hillside, so that was entertaining. Kinda froze the game though. Oh well.

Finished the solo campaign for Portal 2 about a month and a half ago, and I bought Dragon Age Ultimate Edition about a month ago, when Steam had it on sale for $20, a great deal. I played a little of the co-op with my brother about two weeks ago, but we haven't had another chance recently. Still, Dragon Age is pretty cool. Also saw a gameplay preview of Skyrim, which looks pretty great. Still, it reminds me that I need to go beat Oblivion. That reminds me, I created an account at The Backloggery, and I have to admit, I'm a little underwhelmed so far. It's just basically another site to make a list of your games on. Still, I found twenty games pretty quickly that I hadn't beaten yet, so I've got tons of free entertainment waiting. I'm sure I could go find another twenty if I dug back into the second and third string games. For now, it's about about the Dragon Age, which is a pretty fun game. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it is solid, and the story is decent. It reminds me of a mix of Mass Effect and Baldur's Gate.

Loving this game. I'm in Chapter 8, which I think is the final chapter, and it's very amusing and clever all around. Well done, Valve.

Does anyone else even bother to read Gamespot reviews anymore? I mean, it's completely obvious at this point that they are totally in the pockets of all the big name game companies, who advertise on this very site. When they're handing out only 8+ to every single big name title that comes out, and actual players are consistently rating the games much lower, you know something is up. I just stick to Amazon customer reviews now.

I'm still playing the crap out of this game, even after what, three weeks? It's just sooooo fun! I'm starting to look at some mods, and also contemplating doing some modding of my own. It would be a good excuse to learn Python. Anyway, there are so many ways to play the game, and I've got three different campaigns going now: a powerful vassal who had a large fiefdom and helped in wiping out one of the opposing factions; a rich merchant who is piling up the cash faster and faster as he gets more skilled in trade; and a freelance warrior woman who has stirred up a rebellion that has currently stalled out badly. All three stories are fun and entertaining, and I think some of the mods are supposed to make the game exponentially more fun, which is hard to imagine. I haven't even touched the other three games I got for Xmas, still.

Holy crap I LOVE this game. I'm ridiculously addicted to it. I can't remember the last time I got this obsessed with a game. It's just such a cool mix of action, strategy, and role playing. I can't think of any other game that has this particular mix of genres, and it just works. I'm shocked that Gamespot gave it such a lousy review. Obviously, the reviewer had no idea how to actually play it. Anyway, it's amazing. I'm going to have to write my own review for it.

So far, I only have some of my Xmas gifts. We had to postpone some of the gift exchanging because my mom had her appendix removed right before Christmas. Ridiculous! Anyway, I've gotten Battlefield Bad Company 2, which is pretty cool, and Mount & Blade, which looks dated graphically but has some interesting things going on with it. It reminds me of some of the medieval combat strategy games I used to play back in the 1990s, except you get to control one of the guys in combat, and it has RPG elements. I'm still getting into it, but I think I'll like it quite a bit. Some people complain that it doesn't have a real story, but if you think of it more as a combat simulator, and not as a traditional RPG, it better fulfills your expectations. I'll report more after I log more hours with both games, as I think I've put in maybe one hour with BF:BC2 and three hours with M&B.

Just finished the demo for this game, and holy CRAP it's scary. Not sure if I can handle the full game.