Right. Monthly updates might just be a bit too slow. Although I’m not making any promises, this has got to change.

Last week I got sick, a silly cold screwing up my head. Too sick to play World of Warcraft even! And it kind of made me aware of how many things I was missing playing this game non-stop. Six months I’ve been living in Azeroth, every single hour of my free time. Any conversation in the real world would be WoW related, since I really didn’t do anything else and didn’t have anything else to say.

The addiction isn’t really the game itself though, it’s the people. You make friends, you battle side by side and you are part of a community. It really is a beautiful thing, how people from all Europe are united like this. But there is a downside. Playing with real people means real life problems. You can’t agree with everyone. There will be people who dislike you or disagree with your ideas. There will be a lot of greed, a lot of discrimination and anything else you can find in a real human community. And if games are made to get people out of that daily stress of real life, World of Warcraft really flaws on that level.

It’s a job. It’s more stressfull than my real life job even. I’ve done this to myself of course, starting our own raid group, website, organizing events for 40+ people etc. It’s hard to please everyone and it can really get to you, certainly when this is your spare time you’re spending on it all. You get a lot of appreciation which really keeps you going, but not everyone appreciates what you try to do and tries to screw it up for you anyway.

Since we have enough of all that in real life, I’m cutting down on the game. Not completely though, since 6 months spent in this game really does make it hard to throw away. I’ve made too many friends and you don’t just dump them.

But enough about World of Warcraft. Aside from the fact I’m in WoW rehab, I’ve stopped neglecting my other consoles and have finally picked up The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, a nice 2d Zelda game on the Gameboy Advance. Ofcourse I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t get a Gameboy Micro to play it on (yes I know I have 2 GBA SPs but still). Since the colors in Europe really suck (no black even!) I imported one from Japan, the special Mario 20th Anniversary Edition!

On the Playstation2 we got Burnout Revenge and SSX On Tour, which aren’t too bad, but the big winner is Shadow of the Colossus, an amazingly beautiful game from the creators of Ico. I’d say this game is THE game of 2005.

Then there’s Nintendogs on Nintendo DS, which Elke holds hostage. I have NO idea what the game is like, although we own it since it came out in Europe :( … Meteos is nice too, but Nintendogs owns the DS so I can’t really give a good opinion either.

On Friday, the doggies will have to make way for Mario Kart though. With it’s online gaming abilities, this is a must-have title for anyone with a DS. I think it’s even worth buying a DS for.

So yes, we’re sounding like a boring game site aren’t we :D. And talking about those (although not so boring), I’d advice you to check out Shizzle Games, a site by a good friend of mine. It’s in Dutch, but there’s a Babelfish link on it somewhere. Okay, so the guy is a bit of an Xbox lover, but deep inside he’s a Nintendo fanboy, so he’s forgiven.

Talking about Shizzle, we went to this game event two weeks ago. And you’ll never believe it, but the Sony stand of PS2 and PSP sucked. Xbox 360 was nice high def etc, but really didn’t offer anything new. Nintendo on the other hand ruled the event, with Mario Kart and Animal Crossing on DS, but the biggest attraction being The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Even though it wasn’t HD, it must have been the best looking game ever. One to look out for!

Anyway, on the movie front, check out Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, and also from Tim Burton, the Corpse Bride. Both great movies by a great mind. You see, quitting a bit of WoW did me good! I actually went out to see a movie! :D

And Sony, ffs, give us something good for PSP. It’s starting to gather dust…

No I haven’t lost touch with real life completely ;) Check out some new pictures on our Flickr account!