I installed Sim City 4 on my PC a couple of days ago, and now I haven’t been playing anything else! I have to admit, I missed the game when it originally came out, so this is my first play though, and I am having a lot of fun.

It looks a little odd, this little box on my HD monitor, but what the hey, good games are timeless! I am still getting the hang of it, trying not to bankrupt my city, trying to bring in enough of a population that I can actually make some headway, and generally having a good old time. It’s always fun when you don’t really know what you are doing with a game, and yes there is a good tutorial, but I can’t really be bothered going the whole way through it… I am just like that.

Other games have done this to me too; Rune Factory 2: A fantasy Harvest Moon on the DS for instance. Since I started playing that, I haven’t made any progress whatsoever on Hatsworth or Ninjatown, and these are all very enjoyable games. I think it is the building type games that do this to us; The Sims and Civilization are prime examples of this type of game and what it does.

Any game that brings out the ‘one more turn’ or ‘just a little bit longer’ mentality seems to bring a screeching halt to the playing of any other game. They suck you in, make you think only of getting just a little further in, and before you know it, it’s 2:00am and you realise you haven’t moved in three hours. I actually know of an incident when my SO was younger and still living at home. She went off to bed one night, whilst her mother sat playing the original Sim City on the SNES. When my SO got up the next morning, her mother was in the same place… still playing the game…

That’s obviously going too far, but you see what these games do!? You see!? Bah, I am off to play more Sim City 4… I am working to get my city population over 2,000.

First off, Civilization I, II, III, and IV have all had more than a fair share of my gaming hours to date. It’s just one of those games! It’s hard to choose a favorite from the series, as they have all been so enjoyable. I have spent days on end playing this game, only stopping for food and to clean up. I also really enjoy the Civilopedia in each game, learning about all the factions and units, and of course the history of all the Wonders; it really is fun and you can lose a heck of a lot of time just reading, not even playing! What is it that makes this game so addictive? A few things that come to mind are being able to save at any time, which means when you play for a little longer you are not roped into a specific amount of time or furthering of your current goals, so you end up playing longer for some reason. Also the ease of turns, you hit enter and a second later its your turn again! And the constant completion factor, ‘just one more turn and I will have built Stonehenge!’ has kept me going time after time. Ahh, the memories.

Next up is Harvest Moon in its many incarnations, though Rune Factory was my recent favorite for two reasons. The game was more in-depth than the previous ones, and the DS is the perfect medium for the game, due to its portability and Harvest Moon’s pick up and play ability. Rune Factory was also the first in the series that allowed you to save without sending your character to sleep. I love the combination of the traditional aspects of Harvest Moon, farming and raising animals, with the more RPG oriented fighting in the caves. The game is bright and happy to look at, and the animals are somewhat offensively cute. ) I don’t know where my head has been for the last little while, as I just realised the sequel to Rune Factory is out… I am getting it… right now! This one has a slightly more enchanted look to the game world too, which looks great. This game draws you in for day after day with much the same mechanic of Civilization’s building/unit/wonder completion. Tomorrow my next harvest of sweet potatoes will be ready, I will just harvest those and then water and then I will feed my sheep and oh yeah I need more ore to upgrade my axe… and so on and so forth. That is why that game is so hard to put down, and you can lose so much time – or miss your bus stop – if you aren’t careful!

This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning The Sims, both 1 and 2. This was another game where I meant to be off to sleep at a reasonable hour only to find it was 3:00am. Again with the Sims, you could save at any time, so you never felt that if you played for a couple more minutes you would be stuck playing a lot longer, I don’t know exactly why this means I end up playing so much longer… it makes me feel rather contrary, to be honest, but there it is. Sims also has some of that regular completion thing going on… One more day at work and I should get a promotion! Of course as soon as you get that promotion you realise if you get one more friend you will be able to be promoted again! And on and on and on until you really need to be going to bed as you have to be up in a few short hours. Then there was also the time where I could only afford one block of carpet after each day of work so I had to keep going to work, I mean, how could I leave my sim with a grass floor!?