Games, the universe and everything

I needed a game to play during the hours of daylight (such as they are) while I wait for Animal Crossing to arrive from Canada, so I loaded up Freelancer. It’s a space trading/combat/exploration sim and despite the title, it’s quite heavily plot driven. Just as you settle down for some money making activity (pirating space transports and orbital storage depots is my favourite), the next section of the plot kicks in. It’s quite a good plot though, with some spectacular set piece battles and a good mix of mission types including the very sensible cut and run ones where you end up fleeing from superior forces trying to reach a jump gate. Good fun, but I’m tempted to download a hack to put me in a neutral universe where everybody isn’t trying to kill me all the time.

The other game continues to be Call of Cthulhu, which is fabulous although bloody hard in places. The level I’ve just finished was set on a navy ship, overrun by marauding Deep Ones, lashed by supernatural waves (“Why am I looking at the moon? Ah, the boat is tipping up to nearly vertical”) and finally being battered by the absolutely humungous Dagon – quite the most stunning boss character I’ve ever seen in a game. For some reason though, I found myself singing “Dagon. Daa-aa-gon. Dagon come and me wanna go home” … :-)