GregHowley.com

I'll bet a lot of you have been saying, "Wow! Greg has been talking about something other than video games!" That's because 1) I haven't been playing a lot of games recently - I've been doing housework and baby stuff, and 2) Someone pointed out to me that I was writing about nothing other than games, and I can imagine that's fairly boring. But in any event, I plan to remedy this lack of gameage in this post.

Due to a lack of free time, I've largely been playing Desktop Tower Defense, where a game takes about 20 minutes, and Puzzle Quest, which you can play in even smaller chunks. Assface, my fighter in Puzzle Quest, is 20th level and rides a level 10 griffin, which I've been considering getting rid of - I like the spider mount better. I'll review this game once I complete more of it - for now I'll just say that it's probably the best DS game I ever played, excepting only maybe MarioKart.

I'm still playing Zelda: Twilight Princess whenever I can get at the TV in our living room, and although I'm only up to the end of the Sand Temple, it's certainly one of the best games I've played all year. The Wii controls don't give it much that couldn't be accomplished with the GameCube controls, but they don't detract in any way, and the game has enough variety to keep me very interested. In my book it's right up there in my top games list, just below Beyond Good and Evil and Psychonauts. It does wallwalking as good as Prey, and giant-fighting as good as Shadow of the Colossus. The mini-games and puzzles are top-notch, and it has just the right amount of collecting without going overboard. If you don't have it, you need to get it. If you stopped playing it before getting far, you need to pick it back up. Yes, I'm talking to you - you know who you are.

I'm still playing Jade Empire, mostly on the weekends. Chapter 3 is loong. I'm finished with the Imperial City. I think. Not sure what comes next, but I'm hoping that the minigames aren't 100% flyer games. I'll review this one too once I get further.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl has turned out to be a big disappointment for me. I've heard that some people really like it, but I find it tedious. It feels more like a MMO than a shooter to me. Not that I've ever ever played a MMO. But there are many other STALKERs around, all like you, all with names, and many with better equipment. They feel like other PCs, which annoys me.

There are lots of quests, although they're all fairly boring. And viewing your inventory or quest log doesn't pause the game, so you can be shot while on your inventory screen, or while in the talk interface. The graphics and the atmosphere are great, but the firefights feel like those battles you'd get into in Dragon Warrior, where one pops up every 30 seconds. At least in Far Cry or F.E.A.R. you could clear out all the enemies in an area to give yourself breathing room.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. apparently has all sorts of creepy monsters and cool environments, but the game couldn't hold my attention long enough for me to even get to that. I'd have liked to have seen Chernobyl, but not badly enough to keep playing. What the heck does S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stand for anyway? I never found out. Too many acronyms. Maybe I should call this site G.H.D.C.B.O.W.

Space Rangers 2 isn't a bad game, but it's got the same feel that Galactic Civilizations 2 had, and I'm getting bored with it for the same reasons. It's all about flying around different solar systems, trading, battling pirates, upgrading your ship, and gaining experience. Eventually, you want to help the various races defeat the Dominators, who are a race of robots taking over the universe. It's all turn-based.

The main way you gain experience is via quests, which in my mind are the only thing that really saves the game. The FedEx quests are fine, but boring, and I avoid bounty hunter quests at all costs. The quests that have you playing a RTS are the one part of the game I haven't made my mind up about yet. It's a very simple RTS, but works. Still, I'm stuck on the one I'm playing right now.

By far the very best quests are the text adventure quests. I've done three of them so far. In the first I was hired to travel to a faraway planet, assemble a rock band, and hold a concert. That was really fun. The second had me managing a ski resort, and played like a game of Lemonade Stand. The third one was less fun, and seems to have been based on a George Lucas idea: The Pod Race. You had to choose a pod, and then fly differently, weighing risk at each stage.

I'll likely go back to Space Rangers 2 from time to time, but my character is advancing really slowly, and I'm as of yet no match for the Dominators.

So that's the games I'm playing and the games I'm dumping. I'll probably look to pick up Supreme Commander next - that game looks wicked.