Becoming A Free to Play Junkie

I fear that I am very quickly turning into a free to play junkie. For the last couple of weeks I've been splitting my game time between Guild Wars and Free Realms, with the odd New Super Mario Bros. mini game. Although, now there is a growing tension between myself and the issue of PC Gamer magazine that I bought last weekend.

I couldn't help myself, it was sitting there on the shelf and practically screaming "365 FREE GAMES". I guess it was them trying to be helpful in a time of recession (because $10 for the fuckin' magazine itself is really easy on the wallet). So, I brought it home and found maybe one out of every ten games interesting and worth checking out; haven't really bothered yet, they are mostly flash games. For the last couple of days though, the magazine has been lying face down with cute, pixelated faces of characters from Maple Story staring up at me. Now normally I don't bother with Asian mmos, click-to-move is not what I want in a game experience. Somehow though, I think it must be hypnotizing me because I find myself staring at those ridiculously huge anime eyes and thinking, "It's a side scroller, so maybe it's different...and it's free, you can't argue with free." I am beginning to scare myself.

So, before I go and download a bunch of crap that I more than likely won't enjoy, I have a small request. If you are reading this and have given Maple Story a shot, please in the comments leave a little mini-review with your overall opinion of the game and maybe some positives and negatives of whatever types of game systems it employs (because quite honestly, I have not bothered to look up any info on the game).

I think I need to find some new games, because if I log in to Free Realms one more time I might end up spending money in that item shop. Seeing those RMT cards at Target and Best Buy are tempting me to do evil things, like break my rule about paying for 'free' games. Argh, WoW has ruined me!

Wrapping things up: if, for some reason, you should want to get in contact with me and berate me for my truly idiotic opinions then feel free to call me on Skype at max.castillo9791. I'm rarely on, but connecting with fellow gamers is part of what this blog is all about, so there that is.

Lastly, my first love is music, so from here on out I will be ending every post with what I've recently been listening to. Today it is:

Ra Ra Riot's "Can You Tell" which can be found here. Enjoy!

-Max

Caution: Devastator's Balls

For those that care, this blog is still deeply under construction.

So, tonight I just thought I would do a short post on what I'm playing/listening to.

Games:

• WoW Peggle - Only during podcast listening, don't worry.
  
• Guild Wars - I've been trying to get a friend of mine to play with me on odd nights, so I've just been popping in and out. Hopefully this time I can stick with it, the first time it didn't rub me so well.
• New Super Mario Bros. - After watching the Mario Marathon a couple weekends ago I got a huge itch to play some jumping plumber games.
• *I'm on the verge of giving Free Realms another shot. I think I should rotate all the unpaid professions; I got frustrated with mining pretty quickly.

Podcasts:

• Pretty much all of Virgin Worlds
• The perennial Shut Up. We're Talking.
• The extremely entertaining Van Hemlock
• The informative Massively Speaking
• The rare but delightful How I WoW
• The apocalyptic Through the Aftermath
• The obvious WoW Insider Show
• The Star Wars hype machine The Holocron
• Finally, ever since Epic Dolls went the way of the dodo I've picked up on the Turkey's other podcast Spouse Aggro. It is very quickly becoming a new favorite, due in most part to Beau Turkey being an awesomely entertaining commentator!
• *Also, I would give both my pinky toes to have The Online Gamer's Anthology come back. Please Jonathan, come back to doing what you do best: reminiscing!

So that is it. Please check back soon!

-Max