Return to Ascalon

I’ve played some pretty great games recently. I was particularly taken with Red Dead Redemption and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. I was enjoying Dragon Quest IX until I got stuck on a boss fight and gave up, much to the disgust of my eight year old son. I’ve been dabbling a bit more with Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands too. Generally though I’ve found myself without a game to really get stuck into. Although I play many games for work what really stirs my soul is the game I’ll play every night for hours and even sneak in a wee hour or two during the day. The one that consumes me completely, whisking me away from the real world and any thoughts about reviews or work or dinner or whether the house is on fire. It’s rare to find a game that leaves me completely unfettered by worldly concerns. This may be the reason why I have turned to the PC.

I had abandoned PC games to the extent of not actually owning a PC. I use my Mac for work and should I need to play a PC game for a review I make do with stealing Dan’s laptop. It’s been a long time but I have finally started to miss them and hanker after old favourites like grown up point & clicks and RTS builders like Settlers. Mostly though when I think about PC games I think about Guild Wars. I’ve avoided World of Warcraft like the plague because it gives me the fear. I’m scared I’d throw my whole life away on it. I would too. I’m the type. Guild Wars though was an absolute baby bear’s porridge of an MMORPG. No subscription, not very grindy and bright and colourful, it didn’t try to steal my soul but it definitely stole my heart. I can’t go back though. My time with Guild Wars is over. My mum took over my guild, my sister logged into my account and stole all my game money and materials and besides I’m just done, you know? I can’t go back but I can move on… to Guild Wars 2! My excitement about it is off the charts and without wanting to come off like a cynical old hack, that’s pretty unusual for a games journalist. It’s not a measured excitement based on the info coming out about the game. I’m just off my head about it. I think about it all the time. I went as far as to actually buy a reasonably powerful gaming PC just in preparation for it, as detailed in Dan’s last blog

In the meantime I’ve been staring at the big black box under my desk just waiting to fulfill its sole destiny as my Guild Wars 2 player. It seemed to be looking back at me dolefully. I considered playing World of Warcraft just to give it something to do but then I remembered what might happen. Instead I bought Settlers 7. It takes my mind off GW2 for a few hours here and there but it won’t sustain me through the many months until launch.