Ramblings

I guess I've been experiencing a bit of burnout writing about games. Every time I sit down to write, I feel like a third grader writing an essay. "I like Pandemic because it is a really fun game." It doesn't make for very interesting reading, that's for sure. I need to shake it and get busy on reviews as I've got a pile to do thanks to the prolific Mayfair publishing schedule. I've almost completed a review of Chicago Poker. (It was fun; I liked it. Review done :-)) Actually, it isn't a bad little game but it doesn't really stand out in a crowd. It's sort of a multiplayer Schotten Totten. I've recently played their newest release, Bacchus' Banquet, and kind of liked it as a sort of cousin to Bang! It has a neat central mechanism but I have a niggling concern that one of the assigned hidden victory goals is harder to achieve than the others. Obviously a few more plays are in order.

So far, nothing really excites me from the early reports out of the Gathering of Friends, which is going on right now. The hit of the show seems to be Stone Age but the descriptions just make it sound like a rehash of familiar mechanisms dressed up in a new theme. Yawn. A lot of the excitement seems to be coming from prototypes. From this side of the fence though, it's hard to get excited over a few teasers for games that may or may not be coming out months and months from now.

I continue to find more ways to waste time on the computer. I am now on Twitter (as SusanRoz) and Facebook. I am not sure if this makes me cooler or even more of a nerd. Perhaps I should ask my teenage son who always feels it is his duty to inform me in which direction I am heading. I need to fill out my profile on Facebook but I keep getting distracted looking at all the apps available. It all seems rather silly and yet here I've been, constantly fiddling with it for the past few days. However, let me just say this now - if this leads to a MySpace page complete with tacky wallpaper and an obnoxious soundtrack, just go ahead and shoot me!