E3

Now that the hype has cooled down a bit, I’m reflecting on E3 and feeling kindof depressed. While there were some very cool games at the show, they were, for the most part, all shooters: Halo 2, Half-Life 2, Doom III, Call of Duty. I can’t recall any really exciting strategy games or RPGs. Granted, MS rolled out Mythica but that, as well as the other big MMORPGs (World of Warcraft, Middle Earth Online) are way out on the distant horizon. We’ve got Star Wars Galaxies out soon, but beyond that…very little non-shooter gaming to look forward to this year.

Weekend recap

So, Memorial Day Weekend ended up being 3 days of pouring rain. Hooya!

Well, on the bright side I had no big plans anyway, and it did give me the chance for some hardcore media viewing. Over the course of the weekend I watched A Beautiful Mind, Donnie Darko, Metropolis (an anime film, not the old classic), The Fellowship of the Ring (extended version, natch) and the anime tv series Dual: Parallel World Adventure. Whew! No wonder my eyes are tired.

In and around that, I went through a compressed MMO cycle with Planetside. I have several phases I go through whenever I get into an MMO. First I obsess about it. During this phase I can think of nothing else and I orient my life around maximum playing time. Once that intial intensity burns out, I go into my mainstream phase where I just play and enjoy the game like a normal person. Lastly, I go into disgruntled phase where I’m no longer truly enjoying the game but I still play out of habit or out of the hope that I’ll have one more grand adventure.

Generally this cycle takes 3-6 months for me to work through. With Planetside it took about a week, most of it compressed into this past rainy weekend. I’m truly hoping that it was just a glitch in the system and that the next game will last me 3-6 months again.

And its still gloomy and rainy. Everything is starting to stink of mildew and damp. And the more it rains, the more I want to go home and pull the covers over my head for a week. Except its too warm for that, isn’t it? Heh. And I have “The Most Boring Conference of All Time” to attend this week (OSCOM: Open Source Content Management). Yippee!