Games Day

Here's a thought.

Do they still have Games Days? Back in the day, twenty five years ago or thereabouts, there used to be an annual weekend of games playing of the role playing and board variety, with a smattering of live action role playing and miniatures thrown in for good measure and if you were lucky a Commodore PET running an Adventure type game. Quasits and Quasars, the fanzine that I helped to run with Dave Hulks, even made a respectable showing in the awards one year, beaten only by the mighty Dragonlords run by Marc Gascoigne, Ian Marsh et al. If they do have Games Days, I have a horrible feeling it will be all Warhammer games where you need to spend the equivalent of the GDP of a third world country on a lead equivalent army of $hilariouslylargemadeupnumber orcs and goblins, and even bigger amount of time painting the fiddly little buggers, before you can even shake a pair twenty sided dice in anger.

Anyhoo, I was musing because I managed to spend most of yesterday playing games of one sort or another. I started in the morning with my current DS game of choice, namely Zelda : The Phantom Hourglass, which takes the best elements of the original 2D Zelda games mixed with the 3D sensibilities of Zelda : The Wind Waker to make just about the perfect Zelda game. It has lovely touches, not least the stylus based controls where slashing or stabbing at the screen turns into an equivalent attack bringing even more immersion to combat than the wiimote based controls of Twilight Princess. Even potentially gimmicky things like calling into the microphone to talk to somebody on the far side of a locked door work beautifully in context, in the same way as yelling "Objection!" in Phoenix Wright : Ace Attorney did.

My Zelda-ing (is that a verb? If not it should be), was interrupted by the Postie bringing me my new toy that I picked up in the sales - a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet which does exactly what it says on the tin. I downloaded the new OS2008 software which brings it up to the spec of the new N810, and in the brief time that I have spent playing with it, I have to say that I am mightily impressed. The web browser really shines in the full screen mode and provided you have reasonably sharp eyes is very usable for just about every site I regularly frequent, including things like the Bloglines Beta and Youtube. There are many applications for it and you can even call up a linux shell should you need to.

After a lunch of finishing up some sausages, Jan went out to the sales and I settled down to play Portal for the afternoon. The concept is simple. You are a test subject in something called the Aperture Science Enrichment Centre testing a portal gun, a device for creating a link between two surfaces allowing travel between them. As the game progresses, it becomes clear that the computer guiding you through the various test chambers, each with a more fiendish puzzle to solve, is quite mad. If you haven't played the flash game, then you should give it a go, and then go and buy the full version via Steam, or on Xbox or PS3. Oh, and I *really* want a plush weighted companion cube ...

I've also been moderately obsessed with Duels - an online MMORG where you build up your character by fighting duels in an arena, and buying and trading weapons and armour as you go. It doesn't require much brain power, but it is oddly compulsive to have it running in a spare browser window issuing and replying to challenges. No prizes for guessing the name of my character if you fancy a fight.

My minicity of Pogwood is still growing, but any clicks are still gratefully received, particularly to expand my industrial sector. Thanks in advance!

Game over, man, game over ...