Games and books...

So I've been playing Guild Wars 2 a fairish bit lately. I was a bit uncertain about it to start off with, as I'd never played a MMORPG (just old-fashioned MUSHes and MUDs) before, and the controls and gameplay took a bit of getting used to. But I got hooked fairly quickly. It's a pretty good game, for what it is. I haven't been playing it often, because when I get in, I tend to want to play for a while, which pretty much means I shouldn't play except on weekends. Also I'm playing it at pretty much the lowest graphic settings on my laptop and still the fan runs like it's trying to achieve escape velocity. This worries me a little, as my last laptop died due to overheating.

But then Andy and Erin started playing Skyrim again. And I think I'm getting sucked back in. I know I complained a bit about it before, but this is so much the game I want to play - flexible, immersive, pretty. It does't hurt that I can play it on the XBox with the full benefits of a HD TV. There's also been an update since last I played, with some interesting additions, including the ability to build your own house. It's still a bit buggy in places though. Andy tried to go into a part of his half-built house and ended up in a wierd limbo lakeshore environment with random pieces of furniture floating up into the sky.

At the moment I am reading The Two Pearls of Wisdom by Alison Goodman, which is a fantasy set in a universe inspired by Chinese mythology. Which is not a bad thing (in fact it's kind of cool), but the author seems to have randomly selected whether characters should have western or Asian style names, which is a bit discordant. And also she has renamed what is essentially (pun intended) chi as 'hua', which sits wrongly too.  

On the other hand, I have nothing bad to say about Sarah Monette. You should go read her books now.

Also someone has been eating a lollipop here and now my keyboard is sticky.