Hey guys, hope you’re all doing well. I am looking forward to beginning Psychonauts soon and my quest to conquer the backlog will resume quickly, but I am going out of town (to mainland China) this weekend for some family stuff and won’t be able to write as soon as I had hoped. I’ve been relaxing and cooling down since the epic journey that Planescape: Torment was and kind of readjusting for the idea that the next game may not be so long or, dare I say it, a commitment. It’s refreshing.

I’ve stuck to my ideals of not getting any new games (OK, I did get Silent Hill HD collection for PS3, but I already owned that for PS2), and have just been reading and playing some older casual games I have. My wife and I have replayed Peggle and Peggle Nights in their entirety which is a great thing to do. She’s not great at many video games (hope she doesn’t read this), but she may be better at Peggle than I am. I’ve also been messing around with Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers which I picked up several years ago. I remember I was disappointed when I bought it a few years ago to sate my OCD tendencies because there was no deck building. Now, however, I really like the restrained puzzle aspects it offers as a diluted and palatable MTG experience. If you’re looking for some good critical thinking and short in and out gameplay, give it a shot. A new 2012 version has been out for a while and I hear that 2013 is in the works, too.

[Nerdiness... becoming... too powerful.]

I’ve also been trying to get into Starcraft 2 as my birthday was last week and it was bought for me by my buddy who is quite good at it. I’m really terrible at RTS and am pretty scared of it, but maybe I can get a foot in the door and enjoy myself. It’s definitely a blast from the past back to middle schools days of playing the original over the modem. I’m looking for other people to play with because of time differences, so if you’re into SC2, let me know and maybe we can match up and you can destroy me.

[Lots of research going into this, thanks dApollo.]

Look out sometime next week for the background info on Psychonauts and the following updates about what seems to be an awesome change from somber Planescape.

--Backlog Killer