Gaming at Nearly 40

 The amount of time I have to play has certainly decreased, but gaming lives on. I still play SimCity 4 on occasion, and other older games that have been around for years. I also have the latest consoles -- the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch to keep me entertained.

As I head into my 40th year, with 3,000 games in my posession -- quality has become so much more important than quantity. I stick to the games I truly love. I spend my time learning new things to make money and advance myself, so when I play, I like to relax and do something I know and love.

It helps me relax. Just like it has for the past 37 years.

Divorced and Playing Games @ 37

 I'm divorced now, so I can spend even more time playing games and acquiring new ones. I have thousands at this point. Ditching that woman was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.

It's been awhile!

And in that time, I've played a lot more games and acquired even more than that. On Steam alone I now have 612 in my library. Are they all good? Well... nah. some notable ones include Factorio, SimCity 4 (that will never change), Cities Skylines, and The Sims 2 Complete. Have I missed some? Of course! It's been nearly a decade since I've posted.

It's funny though, it's been over a decade, but I still play games I played back then. C&C Generals, Bridge Commander, SimCity 4, The Sims 2, and F-22 TAW all have a permanent place on my hard drive. In fact, I've got save games older than my nephews and niece that I still play. Incredible? Yes!

My Latest Gaming Picks

First of all, I've managed to get my hands on the old Sega Genesis game "Tyrants" and learned how to play that. It's an acceptable game, but not really in-depth or all that fun. Honestly it seems pretty repetitive... good for a long road-trip though. If you don't know what it is (highly likely), it's a strategy game where you try to advance through the ages as you conquer territory and defeat your rivals. Oh, and the voice acting for it is terrible!

The only other console game I've devoted any attention to is Super Smash Bros. Melee. Whenever I can convince someone to play, I enjoy duking it out as Ness, Samus or Pikachu. I've taken to playing a couple new characters in order to entice the competition to play a little more often against me. If i only play as Ness, the game tends to get old a little quickly for everyone else...

On the computer side of gaming, just tonight I managed to get all gold medals in air training for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. What does that mean? Well, I can fly the Hunter... basically a copy of an Apache attack helicopter. Lots of fun flying that baby downtown, and well worth the effort to get it too.

I've also been playing SimCity 4: Rush Hour, and have a regional population of 2.5 million for the one I've been working on on my laptop. My other mega-region for the desktop is approaching 3 million people, and I've barely scratched the surface of the amount of usable land I have to build on. I'm expecting it to hold at least 100 million people when I'm finally done. I also noticed that it takes me about one to two hours to build a city with a population of 200,000 people. That's plenty of replayability there; not bad for a game that only cost $60 total with the expansion pack. If only there were more... instead of The Sims 2 expansion packs.

Last, but not least, in the real-time strategy front; I've been playing Act of War: Direct Action and of course Command & Conquer: Generals Zero Hour. I still have a difficult time in Act of War occasionally, but I've got Zero Hour down to a science. My preferred generals are the Tank General (even with the game's lame pathfinding AI) and the Superweapon General (no need for pathfinding AI). Nothing more satisfying than sending hordes of tanks against your opponents, or launching dozens of nuclear weapons and firing particle cannons to obliterate their base. Fun. :-)

So those are the games that have been keeping me busy.

This Christmas I'm looking forward to getting some new ones. Who knows what that holds in store for me...

I've got a new Hobby

I've been a GameSpot member for awhile now, and I've taken a bit more interest into the user-review aspect of it. Mostly, I like reporting morons who spam the review pages with crap like "OMG THIS SUKS" over and over. I also like picking out fanboy reviews/insults and just today I reported a 50 Cent game reviewer with the line "Is this even a review?"

Reviews should be at least slightly well-written, and explain why the reviewer feels the game deserves that score.

Personally I think I'll be going back and writing some reviews for older games like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and some of the other classics I have in my collection since those are the ones that don't really have much listed for them, although there are a few dedicated gamers out there reviewing the older games on GameSpot. That's where the real fun is, talk about how great the game was when it came out, and then discuss how well it's aged over the years since then.

An example of that would be SimCity 2000. I don't ever play it anymore, but it holds a special place in my heart. It was the first real computer game I played and I was hooked instantly. As soon as we got back from our vacation when we were playing it, we went out and rented SimCity for the SNES... and a few months later we bought it from FuncoLand. I'll never sell that game, and I'll never get rid of it. Someday I'll whip it out for the kids to play...

Anyways, it's fun shooting down spam reviews in GameSpot. I wonder if people get warnings for that or if they just delete the post and move on...