Boredom...

I’m bored. I bought a new ironing board today, and I was excited about it. That’s how bored I’ve been lately. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s the weather or something, but everything’s been very dull and repetitive lately, and I’ve found myself lazing about doing nothing, dreaming about doing even more nothing.

I attribute the problem to a lack of stimulation on two accounts.

1. The entertainment industry (both TV and film) has served up a lot of jack-squat recently. There’s been nothing that has really got me interested. About the only thing I turn on the tube for is nature programs, Battlefront on the History Channel, and endless reruns of “Who’s Line is it Anyway?” which although one of my favorite shows...gets old.

2. Gaming.

I’m not gonna argue about the entertainment industry. I don’t foresee any great upcoming events or shows. Even the new Discovery series “Planet Earth” turned out to be mostly a disappointment. If the entertainment industry can’t provide me with entertainment, I’ll just go somewhere else!

Okay, so...somewhere else is my computer. Which don’t get me wrong, it gives me hours of entertainment in the form of writing, surfing, drawing, 3d-modeling, etc....but a guy’s gotta have his mindless slaughter. All work and no carnage makes Shoobie...very very bored!

So what’s up with the gaming industry lately? There hasn’t been a good new game out in probably six months! At least. In fact, many of my core games that I play frequently are over a year old! I DEFINITELY don’t want to get into a rant about how heavily piracy has actually hit the gaming development community, but what I will get into is the lack of quality in what has been put out recently!

Let’s see. I won’t list the games I’ve bought that are almost a year old or older (like FEAR, SIN, Call of Duty 2, etc). Games I’ve bought in the past few months that are new...

Deus-Ex: Invisible War – I picked this up through Steam for $14 ‘cause it looked cool in the preview snaps. Believe it or not, I never played the original Deus-Ex, so I figured it was about time I got a hint about what this cult classic was all about. Boy was I robbed. Okay, the concept had merit, I was truly impressed by the idea and storyline. However, Eidos, the makers of DE:I, chose to use the Unreal engine to make the game. I have nothing against the Unreal engine, it’s a cool gaming engine that has seen incredible success, but truth be told, Unreal isn’t the world’s best engine for making FPS interactive games. Deathmatch, yes, but when you slow things down the curious, visual and physics intense nature of an FPS, it totally sucks. The interface is very difficult to use, even when you get the hang of it, and at the best of times the game just isn’t anything stellar in both graphics, action, intrigue, or wow-factor.

Okay, so I lost out on $14, so what? No biggie. Although I kinda would have wanted a game that stuck around a bit longer. I played it for a week, and haven’t touched it since.

Medieval Total War II – I’ve never been a fan of the Total War series. There’s two reasons for this. One, even my better-than-average machine couldn’t run it very well, what with all the massive battles, and two, you practically have to BE a military genius in order to kick butt.

Against all my internal processes, I went ahead and forked out the $50 (yes, fifty bucks) for the game, and waited for Steam to get all the files to my machine. I have a brand new machine now, which is a heck of a lot beefier than my last one (which still wasn’t bad) and so this time MTW:II played smoothly, even under the most massive battles. I was happy. The graphics, soldier models, and weapons physics, were top notch, and it really was very trippy getting down on the ground in the battles and pretending to be a general in some famous battles. Although you would assume otherwise, the landscapes and man-made features (like castles) were almost the opposite. The landscapes weren’t very impressive when one takes into account the technologies available today, and the buildings looked like they hadn’t received the same update as the soldiers had for the second MTW release. Sorry, but a fuzzy-shaded box with a slanted roof, doesn’t cut it for a house anymore. It did in the dawning days of Mechwarrior, but not today.

Strategy is what downed me on this game. The world-map view is where you really spend most of your time, because the battles get so petty and repetitive that you get bored with them very quick. Plus if you took the field every time, it would take you about 6 months to win the game. The world-map game-play reminds me a lot of Lords of the Realm 2, which is a game I really loved, so this part was moderately amusing. However, sooner or later yer gonna drop into the big battles, because let’s face it...that’s why you bought a game like MTW:II.

Aside from very minimal training on how to use the interface and command troops, you aren’t given very much instruction on how to actually be a general. Sure the helper dude gives you some tips like “Don’t charge your cavalry into a spear-wall, Sire!” but you’d have to be comatose not to realize that. So unless you were born the reincarnated figure of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, or Benedict Arnold, you pretty much end up making lines of foot soldiers, with archers behind them...wait till a huge mosh pit forms, then charge yer cavalry in and pray.

Personally, while it is nice that I can learn to become a great medieval general by trial and error...I’d rather the game train me to be a general. Just like a nobleman’s son would have been trained by military advisers in medieval times.

So why was this disappointing? Well, aside from a graphics update, it’s still the same game.

Well, I’m off to break my boredom by cooking some dinner. Lemon-pepper chicken aught to do the trick. I wonder if I have any chicken in the freezer...?