Still I'm confused

I've been resisting the urge to do a "State of the WWE" rant lately with the idea that I'll be doing a lot of sports related ranting/reviewing when the AFL season starts. I've actually already started tracking players from last season  and checking out how rookies are training in order to make up a kickass AFL Supercoach team so I'm keen discuss tactics once the season starts ;)

Christmas has been good. Got a new kid. Loving the older one to bits. Feeling perhaps the need for a change in the work arena as well, just to gain a bit more quality time with my boys.

Also trying to avoid the news, or at least ranting about the news, as I'm sure my opinions on guns laws and boobs out in public are going to be a little offensive to some. Don't worry, that blog is coming...just not yet ;)

So here's a little spiel on the games I've been playing:

• Far Cry - had potential but fails a little in vehicle missions and enemies supernatural abilities to detect the player. After a while it just got annoying.
• Far Cry 2 - seemed like it had great mechanics and was a big improvement on the 1st but known glitches with Win 7 64-bit made the game unplayable...as a result I'm now pissed and have no intention of playing Far Cry 3.
• Quantum Conundrum - Very cool game. The director of the game is Kim Swift, lead designer of Portal. The humor isn't as aligned to mine as Portal's was but I still recommend this game. Puzzles can be difficult but not overly taxing.
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - Was both frustrating and enjoyable. Frustration came from some bad mini games within the game (manning the turrets) and bad AI in your own party which made fights rather annoying. I still enjoyed the story and concept enough to finish it and buy KOTOR 2.
• Alan Wake - Brilliant game. Probably one of my favourites out of the last few months of gaming. The story is brilliant and immersive. There is real atmosphere in this game and I really liked playing the part of Wake in a twisted, dark and enjoyable story. Definitely feel it's more of an art piece than a computer game and I hope that is the direction a lot more games take in the future. Excellent stuff. 
• Minecraft - Yes I'm back into this again. It's a game you can take a few months off from, get some new ideas and then lose a few days playing. I don't think it'll ever go away. 
• Vessel - Started off great, with some real brilliant puzzles but after a while it seems the puzzle get dry and boring, and you're left with a rather uninspiring platformer. 
• Darksider - Seems like its made for a 15 fingered alien with the amount of keys you need to press to get your character to do the most basic combat moves. I gave up during the tutorial. It's lame.
• Great Big War Game - I loved this game for ages. Great humor, cool tactics and strategies to employ with a wide range of units to command...and then the game decides about 3/5ths of the way through that it's going to up the difficulty by simply giving the enemy unlimited money and hence overwhelming forces. That's just bad design. Make games harder by making AI smarter please. It's now gathering dust.