Newbie's first impressions

[PCarroll]

If you enjoy fantasy TBS games then I recommend Heroes_3 and AgeofWonders:ShadowMagic.

I'm afraid I don't know what I like anymore; I seem to be hopelessly fussy.

I've played HoMM2. Liked it pretty well overall, but I found the game dragged on and on--and I hated it when a last enemy hero was wandering around on some distant part of the map and I had to spend a hundred more turns just hunting him down. The game was over by then, so it was just busy work.

I've also played AoW3:SM. Another good game. But it has too many "moving parts" for my taste these days. Too much fussing around with city improvements, production, resource guarding and harrassment, and so forth. And as often as not, I skip tactical battles because they get too big and long. (The stylized tactical battles of HoMM2 are more to my liking.)

A simple card game or classic board game might suit me. But then it's almost always abstract, and I miss the theme (be it fantasy, history, or whatever). Also, classic games tend to be very analytical; and to me, analysis is work, not play. I don't want to have to work at a game. Nor am I competitive. I play games for fun; competition is incidental.

Yet, it's a catch-22. I want a game to just be a pleasant escape, but I also want it to be worth seriously studying and getting good at. But I don't want it to be worth getting good at just so I can boost my ego by beating other players; I want it to be good for me--good mental exercise, stress relief, a way to exercise the imagination, or whatever. I also want it to suit my taste, and yet I don't want to whine and weasel out every time I run into something that doesn't quite feel right.

Lately I've been thinking of taking up a game like chess or bridge again. I do that periodically, but my discipline never holds out. I can happily while away hours studying at Chessmaster's "academy," but then I find it's really not much fun for me to play in actual games. Too analytical, too abstract, too much hard work.

But OTOH, I get restless when playing a just-for-fun game that has no real value other than just a break from the seriousness of day-to-day life. If a game doesn't somehow seem meaningful to me, I perceive it as a waste of time.

What a weird, tangled-up attitude I've delveloped toward games, huh?

--Patrick