Gaming

I love computer games and sometimes I can spend weekends in front of the computer without a problem.

The things is, and this is very girly, I don't like being scared. I hate horror films and I'll never watch any slasher/splatter films. My imagination runs wild and I can't sleep and get scared of the dark. So any scary computer games are banned really.

You know that old game, "Return to Castle Wolfenstein"? It's World war two and the nazis have messed around with some buried demon from the past and woken up an army of creepy monsters that want nothing else but kill your character, the fearless American secret agent. Their favourite way of attacking you is hiding behind solid walls so just as you've walked past you'll hear a rumble and a hiss and suddenly you find your life level down to 25% and your screen filled with blood. I never played these levels...

But RtCW has a fair few non-monster levels when all you do is creep around and kill nazis, I always cheated and skipped the monster ones, to scary for me. Instead I liked the levels when you had to sneak around and be a sniper, picking off (incredibly) stupid nazis without getting caught. I'm sure that says something deep and sinister about my personality but I'm not asking.

My favourite games are simulations and strategy games. We had a really old version of Warcraft at home which my brother and I fought over. The very first SimCity was also a favourite (we are talking ten years ago now, you have no idea how basic the graphics are...) and needless to say I'm a sucker for The Sims, it's like a virtual dollhouse! I haven't got The Sims 2 yet, waiting for the price to go down.

Jeez, I'm rambling.

I love Myst too. Suits me. It's all logic and thinking and calculating what to do next. And the graphics are fantastic. Some say it's to boring but I think it's only boring if you don't have enough patience to crack the puzzles. And I guess if you've played Counterstrike your whole life something as slow as Myst will bore you out of your mind, you need to re-think your whole gaming experience.

My favourite Myst game though is Uru. Not like the ordinary Myst games, Uru is a 3D game where your avatar moves independently 360 degrees. It's a game I wish I hadn't played so that I could play it again. It's by far the most beautiful game I've ever seen, the whole atmosphere is very tranquil and sometimes eerie. All the time you have a feeling of walking around where you shouldn't be, reading other people's secret diaries. Unfortunatly, on my current computer Uru is choppy and doesn't run to well. I need to update the computer with some serious hardware and it's a project for next week. Sigh...

And I really should get back to work.

/Mel