Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Four years waiting, and you missed your chance?!?

I think it was in 2001 that I heard that a computer game was being made, set in the world of H.P.Lovecraft's New England horror novels and short stories.  Having been a big fan of the books and the RPG since I was knee-high to a short thing, I was excited, albeit a touch impatient at having to wait another year or so for release.  In general, the horror genre leaves me a bit cold (as do the bulk of works in the fantasy and sci-fi genres: I am a poor quality geek indeed at times), but Lovecraft really works for me, and I well remember reading the short story "The Rats in the Walls", alone one evening back in Kirkside (an isolated 20-something room manse, next door to a graveyard, built on a site that certainly dated back to the 1500's at least, and whose walls for many years were a night-time cacophony of scratching and scrabbling before the addition of two cats to the family).

Anyway, four years and an endless stream of delays, excuses, setbacks and reschedules later, and a month after the absolute final, this is it, we're not joking this time release date, it finally hits Gamestation, in the shape of "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth".  The same week as Civilisation IV.  Now there is the dictionary definition of a missed window of opportunity.  Civilisation IV: the latest release in a decade-long love affair that has robbed me of time and sunlight, and which was responsible for missed deadlines and ignored exams.  Oh, Sid Meier, developer and designer responsible for Civ, and for F19 Stealth Fighter (free download here) come to that, how I curse your name.  In a good way.  What is worse, Civ IV seems to continue in the same tradition: awfully, wonderfully, nightmarishly good.  Silicon crack, as Timothy Burke calls it.

Anyway, Call of Cthulhu was not the only game to run into the double-thickness wall which is World of Warcraft and Civilisation IV.  I also had every intention of buying west-coast gangsta game Grand Theft Auto for my shiny and delightful PSP.  Even as I sit here having my lunch, Mark, Dennis and David are, erm, representin' and, urm, beatin' on each other in multiplayer mode across the office.  They be taxin' this stuff like it be rich.  Word.  But that purchase will have to wait a while, by which time they'll have moved on to the next game and I'll be left alone in the 'hood.

I have no idea why great game releases cluster so.  The other must-have gaming release of the year, the marvelous and gnostic time sink which is Football Manager 2006, is also out this month.  I dare not buy it yet: my only choice would be to abandon work and reclaim the remaining eight hours of the day.  For a game comprising virtually nothing but numbers on a screen - a moderately attractive Excel spreadsheet, really - it shares with Civilisation an alarming ability to lift me bodily from my seat at nine p.m., instantly depositing me, unmoved in space but mysteriously relocated to five in the morning.  Just one more turn...

How I hate the sound of birdsong when I go to bed.