Nothing major to report gaming-wise today.  I went to the local GBox to pick up a game: predictably, Mass Effect 2 was sold out, as were Bayonetta and Darksiders on the 360.  Those were the two main games I went to get, since they fall into a sort of odd category for me.  That category is of games I don’t think I’ll like, but would like to try anyway.

Getting a game like that through GameFly is a bit of a hassle, there’s at least a week’s turn-around on a game, and to get one that you immediately slip back into it’s mailer and put out to be mailed, means two weeks without any decent games.  Sure, I’ve got the 4-game subscription, but I’m playing most of those games.  (Well, I will be once I get the Wii set up again.)

So $2 for a night’s rental (or $6 for the weekend — let’s be honest) is decent enough for a game I might not like — I’ve had Girl take me back to the GBox on Saturday for particularly vile games, but this time around I didn’t even get into one of the games until Sunday.

I wound up getting Darksiders on the PS3, mainly because there was so much reporting about it being Zelda-like.  It took a few hours to get to that, though, and the getting-to-it part was all God of War.  It kind of feels like God of War with some Zelda-esque puzzle and dungeon design.  I’ll write more about it later in the week.

The other game I got was Borderlands, because I figured why not, and I always get two games from the GBox in case one of them is particularly vile. (As I note, has happened before;) In fact, I figured Borderlands would probably be the vile game, as I’d be playing is single player, and it was a FPS on a console.  As it is, I wound up playing it for sometime.  I have my thoughts about that, and I may return this one, since it probably qualifies to be a real GameFly (and thus cheaper, long-term) rental.

I also spent some time re-starting Dragon Age, this time on easy with a mage, and using some suggestions from the commenters here about how to play it.  I’m debating doing one of this thinks Kateri calls “a horrible in-character game journal.”  Partly as a talk about the morality system, and some of my complaints about the game.

I am enjoying it much more. I’m almost finished with Ostragar, and no one as died, and I’ve only had to pause to manage my party one time.  This is much more in line with the experience I want, so I hope I’ll be able to continue with it.  I’m not really upset by playing it on easy, I’m not playing it for gamist challenge, but to experience the world and story, and so forth.

I think I’ve largely settled on pygame for the Glorious Trainwrecks thing at the end of the month.  Right now, I’m trying to learn a tool, and get it to a comfort zone so I can make 2-3 2 hour games. It’s a push to get some things started, and I have a few decent, if not great ideas.  The point, I think, is to try and to iterate, and to work.  Over-design and over-thinking are the enemies of getting things done.

The point of the Glorious Trainwrecks is that quality doesn’t matter.  We’re going for Quantity here. Because, of course,  moar==better.

Something about the first of the month has me thinking pen and paper gaming again.  Perhaps Darksider’s Zelda-elements have me thinking about Amaranth, as well.  Girl and I were talking about playing D&D via telecommuting, and I remember that there were several proto-tools for this sort of thing available several years ago.  Perhaps there are better ones (or those tools have advanced) for doing this.  This would let us manage something, perhaps every other Saturday or so, assuming we can find other folks intersted.

I’m also working on reading some background for 4E game I’ve been invited to (I’m going a bit slow here, but I have ideas I need to communicate to the GM).  That, and I’ve been recently reminded I let my My Life With Master game go fallow over the holidays, and I haven’t brought it back in line.  So, there’s quite a bit to do this month.