Never shop at EB Games on an empty hard drive

I watched more movies this weekend. Surprise, surprise. For those of you keeping track of this blog you can look forward to a couple of mini-reviews of Mission: Impossible and X-Men tomorrow. I'm sure most of you have already seen them, but I'm also sure that you would love to read my review of them. Right?

Something else I did today was stop by EB Game (Electronics Boutique). This guy I know (who happens to live in my spare bedroom) wanted to trade some video games and I tagged along. Potentially a bad idea for my wallet and a fantastic idea for my computer.

My history-teacher friend already knows about the recent release of Age of Empires III. For the non-computer gamers out there, Age of Empires is a computer game franchise that happens to be the second most addictive single-player game I've ever played. It's one of those games where you sit down to play for an hour or two only to have your spouse come into the room 4 days later to ask if you're ever going back to work. And now the 3rd installment is available. This does not bode well for my savings account.

While drooling over the box for AOE III (we computer gamers rarely have time to use their full names), a commercial appeared on the in-store television for another game. Civilization IV. For the non-computer gamers out there, Civilization is a computer game franchise that happens to be the most addictive game I've ever played. It's one of those games where you sit down to play for a couple of days only to have your spouse come into the room 2 years later with a baseball bat. And now the 4th installment is available. Oh dear...

I'm not going to go into all the technical details of either game. Suffice it to say that they both look awesome and I'm worried my movie watching time might take a serious hit if I end up buying either one. Civilization itself has been described as the most acclaimed strategy computer-game of all time. How can I not buy it?

In the mean time, I'll keep watching those wonderful movies and I'll keep blogging about them here. However, if several weeks go by and you haven't heard from me, maybe give my wife a call and suggest she take some food and water to the den; it's very likely I'll have forgotten to eat.

Gamer: "After I installed Civ IV and started playing, I didn't
get up to go to the bathroom for 3 days."
Interviewer: "You didn't go to the bathroom for 3 days!?"
Gamer: "I said I didn't get up."