Breaking up is hard to do. Oh, wait. I'm not breaking up.

19 Jan 07

Depressing. That's the only word for it.

Let me step back for a moment. Back in college (when dinosaurs ruled the earth), I played quite a bit of paintball. I wasn't the best, but I didn't panic, worked well as a team member and could shoot straight. I got more than my fair share of tags. Anyway I was pretty passionate about it. I had all the gear. I had some neat toys. Once I got a real job I even got a custom gun. They call them 'markers' these days.

Eventually, I realized I didn't have enough free time (or money) for all my hobbies. Eventually golf and gaming won out. I faded from the paintball scene, packed up my gear. I mention this because though I have fond memories, I don't miss it that much. In fact, when I found out our neighbor's son was taking up paintball, instead of seeing if he wanted a teammate, I offered the use of my old gear.

My point is I don't want to get to that place with gaming. I was looking at my list of 2006 releases that I played. To be fair, I did spend a lot of time playing previous years games I picked up in the bargain bin. Still, it was depressing. I try to keep somewhat current. To a large part, I failed.

I have plenty of excuses. I also had a good amount of quality gaming for the year. I think the biggest factors were short gaming windows and the limits of my main rig. Most of the 2006 PC releases just wouldn't run on my old workhorse. The laptop helped and let me play some of those games, but it never felt as natural as sitting at my desk with my big keyboard and room for my mouse. I'm hoping for a new gaming rig this spring or summer. We'll see if the finances work out.

Anyway, Monday, I'll go over what I did play from 2006. Here's something to play with over the weekend. It's Flash Element TD. It's a version of tower defense. Thanks to MattcOm from Gaming Trend for pointing it out. It's a good way to lose some time. If that doesn't float your boat, check out Games for Windows' (formerly CGW) list of 101 free games.
Jason