Tunnels of Doom

This week I shockingly play more WoW, finally get around to the Mirror’s Edge demo, try Halo Wars’ demo, get sucked further into the Puzzle Quest trap, save the world yet again and rediscover a game I keep thinking I’ll break free of eventually.

One thing I didn’t do was play Flower. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to try it but I don’t understand why Sony doesn’t have the same policy as Microsoft for their downloadable games and mandate a trial download. I can’t say I’m universally happy with the game trials on XBLA (I’m looking at you, online-multiplayer-only HD Street Fighter II) but at least there is something there for you so you can make informed decisions. Unlike full game purchases that can be rented or are ubiquitously reviewed, some of these little games fall through the cracks. I think especially for something like this game that has some unusal elements, it feels like such a risk to drop $10 on something that you may not care for. I don’t know about you but my gaming budget is ultra thin these days and I don’t have the patience for stupid marketing decisions. So way to go, Sony. You just cost yourself $10.

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The unplanned hiatus from Gaming Weekend updates may or may not be coming to an end. Blocking out time to write up my gaming activities used to be simply a matter of taking an hour or two out of my lenghty and typically dull Sunday shift and writing up what I’d done. But after switching jobs last fall, I don’t work on Sundays anymore, my shifts are rarely dull and my weekends are shorter. Granted, Gaming Weekend was always sort of clumsily named since I would discuss what I played through the whole week, but once my gaming downtime was no longer a reasonable time to discuss my gaming uptime, it became a matter of taking time out of gaming to write about… gaming. It seemed counter productive.

Still, I miss my regular forum to evaluate what I’ve been playing so I’m thinking of making a more concerted effort to discuss what rattles around my skull on the topic of games. We’ll see how it goes. For now, I’ll try to cover the highlights of what I’ve been up to for the last little bit. Catching up, if you will.

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