Tomorrow, Spring officially beings and along with it the unending heat of summer. Though many despise the perpetual coldness that winter means, I love it and I will miss it dearly when the hot, humid days begin to pile on.
On the game front, I have been playing numerous games lately, and with my purchase of a new desktop computer back in December, I am now able to play many more PC games. I have buffed up my Steam collection tremendously during this year, mostly through Steam sales and through purchasing Humble Indie Bundles. I have also discovered GOG.com (Good old Games), offering many awesome looking games of yesteryear.
Heroes of Might and Magic III is an outstanding game available on GOG. When I purchased the game, I was feeling the urge for strategy and remembered playing a port of the game on Game Boy Color when I was younger, which I really enjoyed. This game is truly a good old game, though the graphics are certainly dated, this game has given me a lot of enjoyment and has sated some of my desire for strategy.
The version of HOMM III on GOG.com is the complete edition, giving you all of the official expansions, which will provide hours of play time. The game also provides tools for you to make your own maps, scenarios and campaigns and comes pre-loaded with plenty of campaigns as well. You begin most scenarios with a hero and a town.
Your hero is the unit you move across the map, and use to battle other heroes, command your armies, and with the armies, capture towns. You can recruit other heroes in the town taverns. Your heroes don't actually fight in battle, for this you must recruit creatures, which will form your army. Heroes begin with a few creatures, but you must build structures in your towns to recruit creatures, though they can also be recruited throughout the map.
In order to build structures and recruit creatures, you will have to gather several different mineral types that are found in mines throughout the map, these mines provide a certain amount of the mineral each week.
Heroes of Might and Magic III is truly a gem among the games of the 1990s. I would definitely suggest picking up this game, as it provides great value for it's price, less money than most modern DLC packs, and providing much for value.
Geometry Wars 2 is another game I have recently purchased. This Xbox Live Arcde title is a few years old, it provides a great old-school style shooter experience, with fantastic HD graphics. Though the game isn't exactly deep, it provides great pickup and play quality and tight control.
I still play Minecraft quite regularly, on minecraftserver.com, but not nearly as frequently as when I first began began playing around a year ago, during Beta. The newness has worn off, but every once in a while I still find myself playing for an hour or so at a time. Once Minecraft comes out on the Xbox, hopefully this week or the next, I will have new inspiration to play, as a few Xbox friends who I now play a few Minecraft clones with (CastleMiner Z and Fortresscraft) will be getting the game. I will have a much more personal connection to our Xbox server, as the people I play with will be personal friends. The server I now play on now on the PC has no personal friends of mine on it, so I tend to simply play by myself, only entering spawn to trade, etc., so I am excited to explore this newest Minecraft port when it is released.
