I played 15 different games in a single player capacity on my PC in the last week( Single Player Game List )

Of the singe player games there were 6 First Person shooters, 5 casual puzzle games, 2 platformers, an adventure game and a racer. This is a slightly atypical distribution because the racer was introduced to me at LANoWEEN and of course I normally don't play each game only once per week but I do think this does reveal a lot about my preferences.

My default deeper gaming experience is a first person shooter, if I want to play something with that game as the primary focus of my activity, then I will typically play a first person shooter. This I feel is largely because I am pretty good at them, especially in a single player setting, possibly due to a positive feedback loop that extends back to when I first played Wolfenstein 3d, but if I want to play a game and be assured that I will go decently, it will be a first person shooter. They also fit well into my typical slightly fractured gaming time in that they feature saving at any time and if I have a spare hour or two I can get a decent amount of progress, but if I am suddenly called away I can save and return to it.

My other main gaming categories are the casual games, even the platformers I played fit into that category to a certain extent. These are games I play a lot of because I don't need to devote my full attention to them typically, I have play them and watch a TV show at the same time without losing much of the TV show or the game.

Adventures games are a genre I love, but hold back in a bit because I am not so good at them, they are too often a bit Guide Dang It for me, I just don't really think the correct way. The other thing that influences this experiment away from them is that I have finished most of the adventure games I own. Currently I only have the longest journey games and Grim Fandango to finish. Though I do intend to purchase Strong Bad's Cool Game for Awesome People Season 1 when the dollar swings up again.

That said, now that the experiment is over, what games do I intend to revisit soon?
Peggle Nights, I may have finished the adventure mode, which does put it as finished according to my list, I really want to have a go at some of the challenges because they look really fun.
World of Goo: I really want to get more of this inventive and cool game done, it makes me want to go back and see if I can find a copy of Bridge Builder 2 and play that.
Unreal Tournament 99 and 2k4, I do like the fast paced FPS action that they offer, even if I have finished them before.
Heretic - Now that I have a decent copy of DoomsDay again, I really want to explore this retro title again, which I remember loving the demo of back in the day.
The Longest Journey - I just got into that police station, I really do want to find out what happens next.

Ultimately I do think that the experiment was worthwhile as it did get me to play a lot more of the games I have on my computer and has really given me some games to play again that I hadn't touched in some time.

Of course, Fallout 3 comes out later this week...

Tags: experiment, games
Current Music: Munchcast 48: Halloween Candy - Cammy Blackstone and Leo Laporte

I grabbed the latest version of the Doomsday engine and continued from where I was up to with both Heretic and Hexen. It runs much more smoothly than the older version I had, which somehow lagged on my 8800GTX. It was a lot of fun playing the games, but for some reason it is also quite easy to die horribly. I mean who puts jumping puzzles in a first person shooter?

I started on the Quake 2 mission pack, which was entertaining but did have some teething issues to do with configuration, my default FPS controls are slightly unusual compared to the norm. I don't use (and really dislike) spacebar as jump. Spacebar for me has been use and once that was removed it became crouch, because right click is jump. Now the general response to that is "What is Alternate Fire?" I started using the mouse with Quake, which lacked an alternate fire, so when we got Unreal Tournament 99 I mapped it to mouse 3, i.e. the mouse wheel as a button, which is unusual and admittedly tricky without practice, but these days I use mouse 4, which is the left side mouse button provided the game can take it.

This does mean that I have to remap the controls of every single FPS that has come out since Quake, but such is life.

I did also get some TF2 in, but I was mostly playing really terribly, in my opening round I had 5 deaths before my first point scoring action. Heck, I finished the round with only 2 kills and about 12 deaths.

The second map was even more of a steamroll than the first, so we swapped to another server, which was a low population 2fort. 2fort is really hard to self-balance in a low population setting. Without engineers scout is king, too many engineers means your team cannot attack, attacking with engineers leaves guns extremely vulnerable. Still, it can be a lot of fun, especially if you get a gun in their intel room.

I am looking forward to the end of the experiment tomorrow afternoon though, when I will discuss the end conclusions.

Tags: experiment, games
Current Music: Daily Giz Wiz 686: T-Mobile's G1 - Dick DeBartolo with Leo Laporte

I went to LANoWEEN yesterday, which is run by a friend of mine from High School. It was really convenient since it was just in Mosman.

I ended up just taking my laptop because I hadn't really thought about going until about 11pm the night before. It was a lot of fun though I had Steam problems and my phone kept dropping out, so I had to wait until they had the internet actually working mid-afternoon to get at most of the games I have installed on my laptop.

I got a variety of random stuff, like I do at many LANs, but it was a good opportunity to use my SATA dock. I did find the 2 USB ports on my macbook pro frustrating, but I found out that the powered USB hub we have somehow turns of the backlight on my laptop when it is plugged in.

Gameswise I played Flatout 2 in single player and multiplayer
Team Fortress 2
Zombie Panic! Source (which I am terrible at)
Doom (we attempted to get a multiplayer game going)
Wolfenstein 3D (whilst I was waiting for stuff to finish)
Puzzle Quest (for the same reason)
Zuma
DC++ (hey those progress bars can be plenty interesting)

Tags: experiment, games
Current Music: EP13 Incarnation Day by Walter Jon Williams - clonepod

My gaming today pretty much consisted of a little Peggle and Klondike on my iPod whilst at work (got 2 challenges completed) and Peggle Nights and TF2 on my PC after work.

I managed to finish the rest of the adventure mode, which means for most of my intents and purposes I have finished Peggle Nights, though I am likely to go back when watching things and casually attempt to finish all of the challenges. I really like the new challenges in Peggle Nights over Peggle, they are a lot more varied and interesting in their purposes.

TF2 is of course fun as always though I tend not to ever manage to set new records in that game anymore. It is great going really well, though kind of frustrating when you do die and you get this pop up saying you almost managed to equal your record, or you did manage to equal it, but never seeing you have beaten them.

I'm also planning on giving the Square-Enix game Song Summoner on the iPod, it is interesting seeing what kind of creatures pop out of my songs and audiobooks. Sadly it refuses to let me try my podcasts.

Tags: experiment, games
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Music: The Uplift War (Unabridged) Part 2 - David Brin

Gish - Quit due to frustration
Sin - Sick of the stealth section I am up to
2 games in less than an hour of gaming, this is not a good sign. 5:34pm

World of Goo - About an hour and a half, despite frequent display funktitude, afterwards i rolled back my recently upgraded graphics card

Tags: experiment, games
Current Music: The Uplift War (Unabridged) Part 2 - David Brin

Whenever I look at Steam (which these days is whenever I open a game) I am reminded of how many games on the list I have not yet finished.

As a result this week I am going to try an experiment. I will open any single player PC game on my list at maximum once. Also, I will only play multiplayer games upon invitation of other people (For the record, someone saying things along the lines of TF2 time on IRC does count). I will see how many games this results in my playing between now and 4:30pm on Tuesday.

For reference, here is my current list of Steam games, with games I have never finished (on any platform) marked:

Tags: experiment, games
Current Music: The Uplift War (Unabridged) Part 2 - David Brin