Devauld.ca

For about the last month, I've been swamped with various undertakings ranging from improving my home through removing vermin and landscaping to trying to push my alternate sources of income. As is usual when I get into that frame of mind, I find that my stress level goes way up, time flies by way too fast, and before I know it: It's Christmas and I'm sick. Being pro-active, I've been scheduling time to relax.

Since I'm a geek at heart, and once aspired to get into electronic entertainment, I find that most of my scheduled down time has been indulging in video games.

It came about when I heard that Heroes of Might and Magic V was on store shelves, and since I was a huge fan of the franchise, I got myself a copy. I played it a few times and was really frustrated when the computer, as Glen put it, played the I'm going to win card. It always happened when I went from the surface to the subterranian world or vice versa. Although, I did come close to victory as the Necromancers, I never managed to get past that point with any of the other races. I wasn't having much fun getting my ass handed to me by the unfair AI.

Since HOMMV was about as fun as getting your drunken ass kicked by a bouncer, I stopped playing it. In fact, I may not touch another game in the franchise unless someone glowingly refers me back to it. For the time being I went back to playing the immensly fun Rise of Legends.

I was a fan of RoL's predecesor Rise of Nations, so trying it out was natural. I love how the game plays, and it can be set up so that you can very quickly and easily walk through the AI in order to relieve some aggression, or you can crank the AI up for the challenge of a lifetime. The best part is the variety and the control. I was very happy and content with RoL, that was, until I got my hands on Hitman: Blood Money.

I knew that the newest of the Hitman games were out, but had yet to get around to playing it, instead betting (incorrectly) on my favored genre of strategy (ala HOMMV). A co-worker picked the game up one day, and as he's prone to do, started talking about it. Suddenly my time sitting in my University dorm run, sneaking around wiring people in Hitman 2 came flooding back to me. As is true to the franchise, the game is fun. It's a unique roll together of a first person shooter and an opened ended puzzle. So far I've enjoyed the first few missions, and plan on enjoying a few more.

More and more I've been thinking about how much fun is within a game. My old room mates would climb onto my system with the latest and greatest first person shooters, real time strategy and city simulators and play games distributed free by PopCap. This has recently led me to spending a lot of time thinking about game design with the bulk of the console wars rearing it's head as we come closer and closer to the Christmas season. My bet is on Nintendo, because they make fun games. They have Mario in their corner, and buildings full of people worrying about how much fun a game is going to be to play. They've bet the future of the company that people will take fun over the next iteration of cool graphics, and antialiasing. Sure the other two consoles will have some fun games, but Nintendo makes games with lasting appeal. This is important, because in the end it's only the Fun that matters.