Just Chillin'

Been back since Tuesday now and I think I've pretty much got the "only be awake during night hours" thing sorted now.

That's something I seem to be very good at in holiday periods. I seem to work off a daily cycle that works out to about 26-27 hours a day. The day is literally too short for someone who likes to stay up really late in games or forum surfing but still needs 7-8 hours of sleep in the average day. I blame highly addictive games - they don't take anything out of you physically so you just keep on going playing them. It doesn't help when those addictive games are broken up into phases of activity, where "just one more" kicks in ...

It's been a Steam holiday sale period and while I haven't gone berzerk with getting stuff, I've grabbed a few bargains ...

Space Pirates And Zombies - yep. Bought this before from Impulse/Gamestop but I actually bought it again for a couple of £ from Steam. Why ? I remember it being a really good game ... Which it is.

Plus I really didn't want to install the Impulse/Gamestop client on my new machine. Something to do with them insisting on sending over lots of offers which I couldn't do anything with because they were for the wrong market. It's also unnecessary software, which is Bad. Never let software on a machine if you're not intending to get full value out of it. It's not the software you intend to buy that tends to cause issues, it's the baggage that comes with it. Like a certain freebie antivirus program that wanted to install the Yahoo toolbar (no ta) or one of the bits of software that came with the new machine wanting to inflict the Zynga button on me all the time.

Uhhh - sidetracked again ...

Terraria's an interesting little game. It's a sideways scrolling platformer based in a procedurally generated (always different and random but based on rules) persistent world that your character inhabits. Simplicity tends to be King in terms of good game play and this one really hits the mark with ease of figuring out what's going on. Ok, the crafting system and "What do I actually do here ???" need quite a bit of looking up to figure it out but the gameplay proves you don't need killer graphics to make a highly playable game.

In fact, as a Neverwinter Nights addict, I much preferred the simple NWN1 graphics and playstyle to NWN2. I could never get into NWN2, although hardware and software issues (it was the last game I tried on my last machine before realising the Windows XP install on there was terminally broken) didn't help me there.

I'll see how deep I get into Terraria. There's hidden depths there just begging to be whacked at with a pickaxe. Or a hamdrax. Terraria is built as a multiplayer game but also has solo options. I first became aware of it through the TotalBiscuit & OMFGCata series on Youtube. They have an absolute blast streaming that game exploring their world, although they never seem to achieve anything ...

Next up is Mount & Blade - Warband. This one has you riding around on horseback introducing bad guys to pointy objects. It's on a Totalbiscuit recommendation, not that convinced I'll spend that much time in this one but I thought I'd give it a try.

Star Wars Old Republic wasn't from the Steam sale but it's been getting some play time now that it has gone on general release. I like this one, although I've not done much group stuff yet (outside of the beta). The guild we hoped to have just didn't happen so I've been playing solo and so far resisting overtures to get me into Gutted Ewok. I'm just a little choosy over who I band together with. Conversely, World of Warcraft got cancelled. Dunno if I'll miss that, it just doesn't have the same challenge that got me interested in it all those years ago. Too much pandering to the wrong part of the playerbase has made it lose something.

Not spoken to many real people since getting back.

I have ventured outside the house (Wednesday) to go bargain hunting at the Mall. Also needed supplies ... Spookily a song called Communication has just come up on iTunes DJ. I like being around people, although Wednesday was definitely too much of that. The Mall is a very busy place at the moment and the crowding on Wednesday was triggering the "get out of here now" instincts.

So much so that I came home for coffee + munchie instead of hanging around overpriced places at the Mall. Didn't even do a peek in PC World for keyboards (the new one has got the sack after "key hit nothing happened" issues in a second game).

I guess it's not so much being around people in general but being around people you like. Facebook is one tool for keeping in touch with people you like but it's a bit like shouting into a crowd sometimes. That said, I've not put much in the way of status updates on there lately. The typical FB status doesn't tend to fit the Wall Of Text I like to do. I'm missing people but not enough that I want to be back at work yet.