Some time ago, I came to the realisation that, if I wanted to be a professional writer, I was going to have to sacrifice my one great love, the humble video game. Given that I favour time-sucking strategy games and RPGs, this was a wise decision. However, all work and no play makes me a grumpy sod, so once a year I down tools and scratch that itch for a month or so. Last year it was Fallout 3 and all of the Thief games, this time around I’ve dusted off the PS2 and rented me some pixellated goodness. Given that the end of 2010 was frantic writing-wise, and that a huuuge stretch of writing is about to kick off, this is some well-earnt me time and I’ve loved every button-mashing minute.

Silent Hill: Origins

I’ve quite liked this series; its weird, moody atmospherics, the resource scrabble reminiscent of the Resident Evil games, and just a shade of old school survival horror, looking back to the original Alone in the Dark.  Good times.  This is a prequel of sorts to the Silent Hill series, but effectively it’s more of the same stuff – you trudge through a haunted hospital, a haunted loony-bin, a haunted theatre and then a haunted hotel.  Oh, and there’s another mirror world underneath all this stuff that is even creepier.  You basically need to hit up the walk-through if you want to finish this game in under six months, lots of puzzles and to-and-froing.  When I got to the haunted hotel, and saw how much stuff I had to do, I will admit that I ejected the disc in disgust.  That’s cool though, cause next up was:

Star Wars: Battlefront

Yay!  I’m in an X-wing, I’m in an AT-ST, now I’m a wookie!  Pew pew pew!  Great fun, drop it like it’s Hoth.

Civilisation IV

My long beloved time-sucking computer mistress.  This game has carved away perhaps a year of my life in total?  Worth every second.  Settlers make cities, cities make units, units make with the turn-based conquest.  I have all of the expansions for this, and must say I was never too enamoured of Beyond the Sword – it was just too busy, and with the addition of Espionage and Corporations, there was just too much going on for me to enjoy this game.  Micro-managers might dig that level of control, but I just want to jam a trireme full of vikings and just wreck someone’s shit.  So I’ve been cranking out Civ IV: Warlords, and a cool fantasy mod (Fall From Heaven) for the original Civ IV itself.

So I’ve officially had my gaming fix, and now I’m onto the outstanding submissions, doing some long-overdue edits, and I have a particular story up on the blocks for a complete rebuild.  Once that’s done, I’m going to stomp 2011 in the face, and exciting times await!