So many games, so little time
Recently I’ve been playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for hours on end (especially on Easter weekend — four full days of all-day playing, and that’s not much of an exaggeration). I haven’t been concentrating on the main quest; instead, I’ve been doing miscellaneous quests and guild quests. I even made a list from the quest descriptions at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages Wiki; I listed only the quest titles of course and now I am crossing them off as I go along.
The strange thing is, I don’t much care for role-playing games. At least I didn’t know I did. I’ve never got into the having to train your skills (and choose which skills to concentrate on) side of games. I’m generally really bad at RPGs, too; I don’t fight very well. Well, I suppose that in Oblivion I’m trying my best: I concentrate on sneaking, lock-picking, and marksmanship. No one hears me, and I can shoot an arrow through their head from amazing distances.
Because of my sudden enthusiasm for Oblivion (I’ve had the game borrowed from a co-worker since October even though my sister got a copy for Christmas), all the other games have gone on the back burner. I should be practising Splinter Cell: Double Agent, because I don’t think I’ve had the patience to play it properly and it has felt a little difficult. (And I love Splinter Cell! That’s what makes it doubly worrisome.)
I’m apparently quite far in the Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay because my sister finished it last weekend and said it wasn’t a long game I don’t have much left. I can’t remember if I’m stuck or just taking a break that’s gone on for too long. Perhaps I should try Riddick for a change this weekend.
Not to mention Deus Ex 2. I’m probably in the final battle and I gave up after an alien killed me just once. Guess when I’ve installed the game? August 2005! And it was then when I actively played it: my latest save is dated September 3rd 2005.
I also have these installed: Path of Neo, Tomb Raider III, Silent Hill 4, True Crime: Streets of L.A., The Sims 2, Black & White, Area 51, Obscure, Constantine, Half-Life 2 — not to mention a dozen of little time-killing games. (I noticed that the hard drive had “only” 61 Gb free space so I uninstalled a few. Now there’s roughly 80 Gb free space.)
Having it in black and white (or dark grey and purple) now, I realise it’s not really about the large amount of games and small amount of time. At the moment I just seem to be lacking the motivation and patience to finish any of them. I need a vacation (for games, not from them).
Well I just reformatted again and this time I reinstalled Wolfenstein – it hasn’t installed on my computer for I don’t know how long. So I’ve been playing that, which would seem almost like a new game except for the fact that I played it so much when I first got it that I pretty much know everything that’s coming.
With that said, it doesn’t stop me from being afraid of heights when I’m up on the mountain tram.
After that I’m going to reinstall FEAR and see if that will work again too. I’m afraid that these games work with different versions of DirectX, so that once I install a newer one, the older one will stop working, as before.
I think I’ve played Wolfenstein, too. We have that on a 3.5″ disk! (Oh no, my computer doesn’t have a disk drive anymore…)
I haven’t played FEAR much because at the time when I got it, it was too hectic to my taste. I should play it, though, because the subject matter seems interesting. I’m just afraid that I’d get spooked all the time and my sister would make fun of me
When I’m playing Oblivion and sneaking around, I’m so absorbed in it that I jump if a skeleton suddenly emerges from behind a corner. Yes, I’ve flinched and eek’ed once.
I dunno, I thought Riddick was a good length (maybe ’cause it took 2 years or whatever). Thanks for reminding me. Had picked it up again and gotten a little further. Finally beat it this afternoon.
The mini-gun is a gift from the heavens.
I continued with Riddick yesterday. First I had to do a little patching because it didn’t work any more for some reason. I don’t know why, but now it complained about OpenGL version. Perhaps when I updated my system for Oblivion, I had installed a new driver that uses OpenGL 2.0 instead of the 1.3/1.5 that Riddick wants. (I don’t know if it’s possible to update OpenGL versions by mere driver updates…) There apparently was an issue with the OpenGL in Riddick (the game didn’t recognise too new versions), but the patch luckily took care of that.
My sister may’ve said that I don’t have much left in the game (instead of it being short) when she asked where I had got stuck (or stopped). Now I’m at a place where I should’ve brought the mini-gun because there are riot guards and I’m out of the lovely riot guard suit…
I beat it! Hurrah! Now I’m playing it again in Commentary mode. I’ll try and find all the cigarette packs and finish all missions (I didn’t finish all side-missions even though I got the things I needed to finish them…)
Oh man, no Commentary mode for the console version. I would love that in more games. I have to watch the ones on DVD movies even if I didn’t particularly like the film.
Oh, I see; the PC version came out 6 months or so after the console, which is a developer’s cut. Goes for cheap these days, would like to see it in a higher resolution. Think they did a great job with the graphics, but if you get to a large area it starts to deteriorate (although gracefully).
I’ve never watched a commentary on a DVD. I try and watch the other extras but usually I don’t unless I really really like the movie.
The developers did mention that the Xbox version of Riddick has some things unfinished which had time to make it to the PC version.