So what have I been spending time on lately? Well, other than the whole figuring out what I’m doing for the rest of my life, I’ve been dividing my focus on two games: FEAR and Diner Dash.

Diner Dash I played to have something to click around when the TV’s on – I seem to have developed a pattern now where I play one casual and one hardcore game at any particular phase of my life. Diner Dash I like a lot – sure it’s casual, and sure I’m not part of it’s target market, but… well, it’s all about optimization. I’m a sucker for optimization. I love to pore over maps to see if I can find a way home that gives me one more minute of my life every day. I’m the type of lead designer that actually gets off on building schedules, and trying to figure out the optimal path to actually getting it all done. Optimization is fun to me.

And to a lot of other people as well. In MMOs, the drive to optimize becomes almost impossible to ignore. Sure, the story is nice the first couple of times you do your quests, but once you’re on your sixth or seventh character starting in the same newbie village, even the most dyed-in-the-wool roleplayer will click through the dialogue quickly, and the interesting puzzle becomes what’s the most efficient way to complete all those quests you’ve done half-a-dozen times before in the most optimal fashion. Diner Dash is intriguing to me because, well, optimization is ALL the gameplay.

As for F.E.A.R– I was really enjoying it. But I’m now on my 6th straight chapter that’s taken place in The Evil Corporation Headquarters office building, and it’s clear that the worldbuilders ran out of ways to rearrange cubicle pieces about 3 levels ago. I really hope they put me in a different environment at some point, because I liked what they were doing up until I realized that.

I started both games at about the same time. I didn’t really think I’d finish Diner Dash (and it’s sequel!) first.