What to do....

So, what do you do when your wife has had surgery for breast cancer, your mother-in-law has had a heart attack, the game you like to play is full of douche bags and you've got burned to a crisp by the sun?

Well, you play snake of course...

Nokia have a lot to answer for.

Three Games I Can't Face (Again)

Three games I often think about, but which I could never return are raising their heads with me lately, the first being Eve-Online.

I was invited back by a friend, whom wanted me and my three decently trained (for 2012) accounts to go back in to the game, and run mining operations for him.  If you're not aware, mining in Eve is pretty much staring at rocks, you have to be in a special place, and busy with other stuff to let your game time turn into this monotony.

He assured me there's loads of new stuff, "since you like mined Xel, there's loads"... But my heart just wasn't in it.  I did install the game, and try a free account for like 25 minutes, until I got utterly bored with it and had to stop.

My main problem is probably the style of game play, I loved Eve, I played way back before the new engine.  It was a clicky menu fest then, and it seems twice as much so now.

Though I still love the Armageddon!

The next is World Of Warcraft, I don't often get invited back to WoW nowadays, but when I initially quit I was asked perhaps every other day.  With the release of the movie however, my interested was peaked, and so I took a look... 

What have they done to my beloved Stormwind?

I just can't, I can't face it.  But I look back on my appearance on "Shut Up We're Talking" (which incidentally spawned this very blog) and I remember saying that damage & level inflation would devalue and dumb down the game... Boy, was I right, or was I right?

The third, and final one, is CubeWorld.  I was big into this when it came out, I begged a friend to lend me his account before I bought it (which he wouldn't - *cough* tight wad) but buying into it, was great.  It mixed Zelda with Minecraft with a proper olde tyme Adventure feel.

I had high hopes it would become part of my regular rotation, unfortunately, development seems to have utterly stopped, and it blows in the wind like dust from my gaming bones.

Do you miss an old game?  Do you insist you have quit a game, or stopped subscribing to it?... Let us know what it is in the comments below!

Chess - Waiting

I've continued to play chess online, and again after doing some of the training puzzles I took to another rated game... and this is where I find myself...

The chap has fallen into my trap with the knights and queens, he had the upper hand on the left, but then I had the two knights defence and he fell into this position.

All he can do is move the knight to block the my Queen (blue line) and then I move my Queen (red arrow) and we have check-mate.

However, he's not moving... I don't know if he's left, or quit, or just wants to let the time roll down, but I'll just keep giving him 15 seconds to stop him trying to time the game out.  So this is maybe another toxic player from the community.