Gaming with Children: Wednesday’s little white lie

Hi. Psst, over here. I’ve got my telescope set up right out the backdoor. No, that’s not a sexual pun. I wanted to show you how the stars are aligning themselves into position. The wind is blowing from the east, ahhhh…the signs portend to gaming nirvana.

After the jump, the stars are right

I want to start Europa Universalis 3 and really get into it. This requires an initial time sink not afforded on the average day. So I do something rather sneaky that I’ve justified in my own way. I tell the wife I don’t feel well and stay home from work. The honest truth is I’ve actually used up a vacation day that I put in for 2 weeks ago. Now if the wife knew it was a vacation day, she’d leave me a list of crap to do around the house. Fuck that. Vacation days are for relaxing. But the bonus is with me being “sick” and possibly “contagious”, the kids are quarantined downstairs with their grandmother.

Ah, a full day of gaming bliss. Where shall we begin? You would think I’d start right away with Europa Universalis, which is my intention. But I like to start off with a little appetizer. So I set off to conquer a map of Heroes of Might and Magic 3. It’s such a light game that it feels like it belongs in the casual genre. But with the maps as large as they are, it can take an hour or two to finish. I somehow always get the feeling towards the end that I’m just wasting my time playing. It may be because it does suffer from a certain whack-a-mole formula when enemy champions keep leaving bases to capture resource nodes, then you gotta go capture them back. All you’re really doing is waiting for time to pass so the gold and troops pile up so you can get two or three killer stacks. It’s a matter of time, not strategy, before you win the game. I love exploring the maps, but when you’ve done that, you still have almost another hour before you actually win.

After lunch I plan to dive into EU3, the main course, but then my stupid addiction calls. With me “sick”, there’s no way I can stay up late tonight or the wife might come sniffing. And it’s almost impossible for a day to pass without me getting in at least two games of League of Legends. But you know how that goes. If I’m winning, I want to keep winning. If I’m losing, I want to keep playing until I win. Yes, I don’t go within ten miles of a casino. So it turns out I don’t get anywhere near playing EU3 for the rest of the day.

Next: Castille day
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J.P. Lucas works, pays bills, eats, and sleeps. He changes diapers. Lots of diapers. And he does whatever his wife tells him to do. It’s safer that way.