Cogs can think.

There was a time when I gamed on my computers. At that time, I played Age Of Empires, the first part, untill my eyes became watery, and my body wouldn’t function properly anymore. The longest game I’ve played was close to 8 hours in length. I almost exclusively played archer war. I ranked among the top100 Age Of Empires players online.

But people grow up. Gaming doesn’t really interest me anymore; the industry is pretty much dead anyway. They’re all regurgitating old ideas and concepts, but the mindless gamers of today eat those games like I eat croissants in the morning. The focus is all graphics now; these days, good graphics equals a good game. And that sucks ass. All the good games appear to have been already made; The 7th Guest, Wolfenstein 3D, the Keen series, Tetris, you name it.

The only company willing to take the risk to bring something new into the arena is Nintendo (see the DS). But even Nintendo is slowly starting to fail to innovate. On the Gamecube (the only console with the NES I ever bought), most games are mere regurgitations of old ones (Mario, Mario Kart, Mario Party, etc.), with maybe Pikmin I/II as an exception that confirms the rule.

But anyway, today I acquired Age Of Empires III. Part II sucked beyond recognition, so I was anxious to try out vIII. And I must say, I like it. My poor old AMD Athlon XP 1600+/512 MBRAM/Ati Radeon 9000 128MB is sweating its ass off making the game run, but with most of the fancy shmancy stuff off, it works quite well.

And I like it.