What's your game?

Five and a half hours

That’s how long I played Rise of Nations last night, thinking I was going to have a quick game, then go to bed.

My Conquer the World game is progressing nicely. Last night I wiped out the Germans and Greeks, giving me solid control of about 60% of the world. I’m poised to take over Japan and most of Africa, under control of the Egyptians tonight. After they’re gone, I’m just a few battles away from total world domination, when I take out the Incas.

I finally decided to start using the bonus cards, since I’ve only got six or seven fights left at most. My favorite is easily treachery, which gives you an enemies territory without a fight. Talk about handy.

The more I play this game, the more impressed with it I become. At the end of every real-time battle, in with all the other stats about technology and land controlled, is a section that tells you how you use the game. It tells how many formations you made and how many times you use them, how many hotkeys you press, how many clicks you make in the game field and in the UI. It’s extroidinarily cool, and I wish more games would give you those kinds of stats. A fighting game that saves profiles that tell you how many attacks to the head you take versus the number you dodge and other in-depth stats would be badass.

We watched Adaptation last night. It was a little too clever for my taste, and the writing wasn’t anywhere near as clever as Being John Malkovich. It is very funny to hear Meryl Streep call someone a “fat fuck” over and over again though.

The mold is going away. I hit the toilet tank with some bleachy water again to finish it off. Gina and I both still have coughs though, and my nose hasn’t stopped running since about last week.