Too bad I have to work tomorrow and Sunday...8 hours both days..bah.
So while you are choking down your ribs, pilau and kachumbari, think of me will you? I will probably be sitting in the small Diagnostic Transport office with a book in my lap trying to stay awake until my shift ends at 11pm.
Well, enough with the shameless attempt at garnering your sympathies, on to the real substance of this post! Which is...err..Actually, I don't have much substance in mind, which is really indicative of my general state of mind these days. I don't have that much bubbling away in my brain since I started this job. Not that I'm blaming it for sapping my mental energy, it's purely coincidence. What really happened was that I installed a new strategy game on my computer and it has me hooked.
It so happens that I have been playing games in this series since the demo for the first in the series, Shogun: Total War was released in 1999. I had played various strategy games ever since we got our first computer in 1996, mostly the Age of Empires series (that first computer also led to my first encounter with gay porn, but that story for another day) and I had enjoyed those a lot. Great way to while away those dull Sunday afternoons in Nairobi.
This game was something else - real time command of little animated guys on a 3-D battlefield. Amazing! The music, the voices, the setting all worked together to create an immersive experience that had you believing you were the leader of one of Japan's great samurai clans, destined to reunite a country at war and bring peace to the land...by the edge of one's sword if necessary..heh. The demo was a particularly divillish challenge, and I spent hours trying to successfully complete it. I really think that game is to blame/the reason for my fascination with almost all things Japanese. It was latent before I think, but this game just brought it out with a vengeance.
In case you think that when I say I was "hooked" I mean it in a vague general sense, consider this - I put myself $1700 in debt for this game. Yup, I bought a state of the art computer (for the time) just so I could play STW when it was released in the summer of 2000. Hooked doesn't even come close to describing the gaming frenzy that ensued afterwards. I would lock myself in my dorm room for hours and hours on end, emerging only to eat/drink/excrete so that I could spend more time playing. Hours could pass by like minutes when I was immersed and boy was I ever immersed..
I have bought every game that's come out in the series since, and I am currently hooked on the latest iteration, Rome: Total War, which brings the game fully into 3-D, from the strategy map to the battlefield. Yum! The highlight so far has to be the war elephant unit - 18 of the most pugilistic pachyderms ever to raid a maize plantation. Charge a unit of these babies and watch the soldiers fly (literally!)
So basically, when I am not working, cuddling with my bf,cooking,or watching one of the summer's skanky new reality shows (Kept, Strip Search, The Real World), I am playing at elephants and pancakes :-D
Not much time for anything else, now is there?
posted by WM @ 00:24
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