Casualties

I've finally gotten around to playing NOLF. It's been on my radar ever since it was released, and, like most games, took forever to get to the top of my queue. My gaming list is a lot like the DMV. Long line, moves *really* slow, and for no good reason. Actually, I'd been on a self-imposed hiatus from most 3D intensive games because I wanted sufficient hardware to run them full-throttle. Well, that's covered now. In fact, I have to be careful because I find myself getting torqued when I can't run something 1600x1200 with 6x FSAA and 16x aniso. This is keeping me firmly grounded in the 1999-2001 time frame, with the notable exceptions of BF1942 and F1 2002. Which isn't to say that I can run either of those games at those settings. To the contrary, they're both fairly piggy. But I'm playing them nonetheless. At only ~1280, 2x FSAA, 8x aniso. Woe is me. :-]

But I'm off topic. What I wanted to post about was the fact that I'm playing NOLF, and it's not as much fun as I'd hoped. Oh, it's easily the coolest, most unique, best-humored, single-player shooter I've gotten into in quite awhile. But I expected that much going in, which is probably why I'm a tad underwhelmed. The combat is a hoot, but the stealthy parts don't come off so well, and that's unfortunate because they seem to constitute about 66% of the game.

Anyway, so I'm over halfway through NOLF and find my motivation waning, yet again. But instead of abandoning NOLF, I decided to just go prune some games off of my 'intend to play' list. Sitting here writing this, though, that makes less sense than it did a minute ago. If I'm not having fun with NOLF, I should quit playing NOLF, right? Sounds simple enough. Damn the story in these games! I'm only having marginal fun with the gameplay, but I'm sufficiently engaged by the story that I can't just get up and walk out. Maybe I'll just cheat-code through the rest of it. It wouldn't be the first time I'd sprinted to the end of a game when it stopped being fun (*cough* Half-Life *cough*).

Though I'm currently second-guessing it, my ennui with NOLF has resulted in some casualties in my game queue. I don't think I'm going to play Clive Barker's Undying. I'm also not going to play Battle Realms, or The Longest Journey. As you can see, I'm not exactly being logical in my pruning. Oh well. It's my party.