It's not WoW, honest.

So that time of the year rolled around again… no, I don’t mean the Christmas / New Year period (although that was fun)! I mean when Valve decides to ruin my finances and put all their good games on sale with ridiculous discounts. And even though my wallet is empty anyway, I still managed to spend about £40 on games for myself, and £15 on gifts for others. Now, obviously I should see this as a good thing, getting so many games for cheap, but the problem I have is never getting around to play. Hell, I can go back and look at the games I bought in the summer sale, and see that I haven’t played any of them. Or I can go on my Backloggery page and see the huge list of games I already have to play. So why am I buying more? It’s some kind of addiction, the same reason I trawl around charity shops every other day looking for cheap retro games. Once I have a decent income it might be alright, but for now… bleh. Someone hold me back!

This time, I did play a few of the new games that I bought! Orcs Must Die seems like a rather fun mashup between the third-person shooter and tower defence genres, but it’s a big shame that I suck at any kind of strategical thinking. The dark, evil side of me that wants to go back to World of Warcraft decided to buy RIFT… and no surprises, it’s exactly the same game. Same spells, same monsters, same quests, even the keyboard shortcuts are the same! It’s certainly not a bad rip-off, though – It feels more like a holiday from Azeroth. I knew most of the lore and zones in Warcraft, so it’s nice to take a break and see a new world. I just need to make sure it doesn’t take over my life over the next month (I’m not planning on buying a subscription for it, not with The Secret World right around the corner), and actually do some productive stuff!

I guess I don’t have any big new year’s resolutions to break this year, just lots of small ones. I’m trying to read more (starting with James Patterson’s Along Came a Spider), do a little big of exercise every now and again (see: this), and try to hunt for my motivation to do anything. It’s been lost for the past year, and I’m sick of doing nothing all the time, so it’ll be around here somewhere. Maybe it fell down the back of the sofa? Have a good new year, folks.