The Gym, and Civilization Revolutions

I've joined a new gym, which has given me the unique opportunity to beat the living shit out of myself on a regular basis. Which has also had the unexpected side effect of me dialing back my Netflix somewhat... because when I get home from a pummeling, I'm way more interested in a shower and sleep than sitting around watching movies. For a while, I was getting in 4-5 movies a week. Now... well, Man on Wire and Jan Svankmayer's Faust have been sitting on my desk and giving me sulky looks.

But I still write.

I traded in all of my old PS2 games for a couple of newer 360 titles, including Civilization Revolutions. I never played any of the Civ titles on the PC - I was way more into stuff like Diablo 2. Civ is a massive wad of a game, a very prix fixe experience. And the reviews online stress that this is like Civ-light for console noobs like me. I can only imagine what the "real" games are like.

(Side note to anybody who's reading this and doesn't know what the fuck I'm talking about: Civilization is a game in which you take control of a culture from various eras of human history - British, Egyptian, Mongol, etc. - and play through a "what-if" scenario of world domination by developing your technology, culture, infrastructure and military).

I'd already gotten into the rhythm of getting in 20-30 minutes on a game and moving on with my life... a habit which was perfect for Dead Space or (to a lesser extent) Fable 2. Y'know, play up to the next save point, go to bed kinda thing.

All of this is my long-ass way of saying I've had this game for a couple of weeks now, and I'm still on my second game, total. I like world building, and Civ definitely scratches that itch. And it offers something that was lacking in Age of Empires: the ability to make massive technological leaps versus your opponent. Age of Empires always kept you pretty close tech-wise, with only fleeting edges here and there, e.g. your guys might have gunpowder before everyone else, but five minutes later your opponents all have it, too.

However, in Civ, I get the sick and smutty joy of attacking armies of British redcoats with B52 bombers and tank blitzkriegs, sinking Egyptian slave galleons with my battleships. This may sound like cruel treatment to their little pixilated asses, and their little pixilated widows and orphans. But in my cold and Darwinistic video game fantasy world, if you fuck with the Aztecs, you'd better be prepared for me to crush my enemies, see them driven before me and hear the lamentations of their women.

And I just got done reading Dear American Airlines, which I just couldn't get into... I finished it because it was short and, by the time I realized I couldn't care less about the main protagonist, I was already almost done with the book. Onto Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.