I downloaded Steam the other day. As a part of my effort to broaden my gaming horizons. I think it’s safe to say I’m hooked. If you don’t know what it is, well go look. I’ll still be here when you get back.

The first thing I did was find my blogger friends and stalk them add them to my friends list. Then I started poking around, trying demos, I even bought a game (CSI: Hard Evidence), and another game (Need For Speed: Undercover). NFSU is awesome by the way. You should try it.

Next, I was invited to three groups. Twisted Nether Blogcast, Azeroth Expatriate Gamers, and Polygamerous. Imagine my surprise when I saw…

Yay me!  And Thank You Llanion!

My current game list includes Half Life 2, a gift from Triz (Thank you!!), Audiosurf  (imagine Tetris with your own music and on a roller coaster), a couple demos like Torchlight and Portal, Left 4 Dead 2 because Santa wanted me to have Zombies for Christmas, and of course I added some non steam games. WoW and Sims.

I can’t say enough about Steam, really. It lets me buy, download and install the games, as well as launch them from my games tab. No more digging through the start menu, no more icons on my desktop. And best of all when I get my new PC, any games I purchased through Steam are SAVED on their servers. Which means I just install Steam, and it will reinstall my purchased games. I can see what games my friends are playing, and even chat with them WITHOUT having to alt+tab out of the game to access an instant messaging service. When trying new games is this easy, how can I not look beyond WoW and try other Genres??  And they run some really great deals on games if you pay attention. Matter of fact, I got Left 4 Dead 2 for 33% off today. Yesterday I got Indigo Prophecy and Audiosurf for a grand total of $6.

I even discovered, I don’t dislike Shooters. I thought I did. But Half Life 2, while frustrating for me at times adjusting to a first person view, has proven to be fun, and just challenging enough to enjoy. Not so challenging I want to throw things, but not so easy that I breeze through it. In fact, I get stuck regularly. But it’s fun. Need For Speed: Undercover is amazing in my opinion. I love that after I finish a preset race, I can just continue driving around, aggravate the cops into chasing me, tear through towns, interstates, construction zones, hell I even rammed a crane and dropped it on a cop car.

Next month, I get a new computer. My first gaming computer ever. I cannot wait to play WoW again without random shutoffs, and I can’t wait to play more! And I must again thank the people of the Blog Azeroth chatroom, for encouraging me to branch out, when I stubbornly insisted I didn’t game. Turns out…I got game baby!

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Devourer of Souls, HA!

So, I un-quit. I realized no matter how good my intentions, evenings and weekends made me pull my hair out in fits of mad boredom. They are the times when Hubby is home…ya know when he’s here. My afternoons are ok. I have chatting, and facebooking, and Live Journal, housework and such to do. Oh and Blogging. So, I resubscribed and went back.

For the first time, I entered a dungeon with no research, no knowledge, no loot lists, nothing. Just walked on in there with my guildies. Ice Crown Citadel. With my shadow priest, who thanks to Blizz (no, I mean it, THANK YOU BLIZZ!!!) can now MELT FACES as opposed to singe eyebrows.

The scenery was awesome. Just Wow. The trash didn’t die when you look at it crosseyed, it was actually work to kill them. The place is HUGE! This is the best dungeon I have seen yet!

We didn’t have any deaths either…til my computer decided that while Running away from Arthas, it was a good time to turn OFF. Luckily, when it let me back in we were able to finish it.

That reminds me…WTF is wrong with Jaina??? Oh hey, let me lead you guys in here so I can look Arthas in the eye just ONE more time, because I’m SURE there’s still SOMETHING good in there"…"Oh, oops my bad…RUN!!!!" Seriously, Da Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.

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I got Sims 3. The first thing I did was try out the cheats. Particularly the one that allows non-standard interactions with certain game elements. So I hit ctrl+shift+C to bring up the window, I entered testingcheatsenabled true and started playing. All was going well. Hubby Sim up there (on the right) is in the military. He was just promoted, and the game suggested he make nice with his boss. So he invited her over for dinner.

He and daughter Bre (on the left) were standing outside chatting with his boss, Ma Bagley, when I decided to Shift+Click her and try out the "Trigger age progression" option. Uhhh…well she aged alright, to death! Uhhh oooops?

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