Hot diggety damn. I just finished my first runthrough of Dragon Age: Origins. What a fucking awesome game. It was such an enjoyable experience, I'll definately visit Ferelden again.

And immediately after finishing DAO, I started with Mass Effect 2. Up to now I am awed. Again, epic as the first part. Just the opening scene, a killer.

Remember those 4 famous id playing modes?
- They all feel like "Daddy, can I play with you?" now.

After finishing Wolfenstein this weekend, which really felt like a check mark on my list of games to be played, I can only say it was a major disappointment to me. Although the game looked good enough, using id Tech 4 and the story line was okay, although it felt too much like a rehash of the previous material. Most important however is the actual game play which was a major disappointment to me. The player must be put in challenging situations, the opponents must try to do something that seems reasonably smart (remember Return to Castle Wolfenstein). Hardly any of that actually present or maybe even worse than that, because of the veil soon enough you can overpower your enemies easily. Some of the more challenging bits (hold out positions, boss fights) are still manageable with enough trial-and-error but I did start and hate the long wait time between dying and waiting to press enter to restart.

Did I play multi-player? Yes. It was fun for a while. I checked my profile, I played it for 7 hours. That's it. It wasn't fun enough.

Since I bought Audiosurf for almost no money last week, I browsed through the Steam store bins and decided to buy some more nice goodies. Now I almost have that female feeling of satisfaction after having bought something, but I actually already have that after buying any new game, music CD, DVD or any gadget or PC item. This time I added Ninja Reflex, Everyday Shooter and the Best of Underground Pack which includes Eets, Rag Doll Kung Fu, Gumboy Crazy Adventures and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. I love my kung-fu .

It's good to have some casual/indie titles to refresh my mind at times in-between my longer sessions playing either ETQW or TF2, which are my most played MP titles. TF2 probably takes the win atm though. After playing ETQW for 1400 hours I needed a little breather into another title.

Games: The switch A few weeks ago, I already decided to leave my clan and at the same time reset my stats. The latter simply because the only thing I was focused on was trying to get better in the melee top 10, trying to get back on the first page of the statistics page.

I was actually more focused on stats and thus stats whoring than enjoying the game and gaming in general. This is one of the reasons I quit playing World of Warcraft in the past. Luckily I asked myself again, why do I play games and have I been playing games for so long now (at the unrespectable age I am ). I play to have fun, to enjoy myself, to kick it, to funk around, to fly out of my mind, to take a trip, to immerse myself in the story, to doodly dee as an extension of real life NOT WORK . I have work that pays so there I need to work. And stat whoring, farming, grinding, raiding, gathering is all a big **** to turn the actual game into work again.

This week I made the switch from pure ETQW to a mixed bunch. I bought some smaller games: Audiosurf, which is a lot of fun to play with your music, Ninja Reflex, which is just a casual game to train visual reflexes, and I bought Gears of War and SWAT4 (bargain bin).

I also picked up TF2 again, which is a lot of fun and makes for a hell of a lot of mayhem.

Just worked my way through DOOM 3 RoE level 3, so I have that sitting for another day.

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