I've been playing a lot of games recently so I should probably bore you guys (plural, who am I kidding? =P) with specifics. Let me start off with the game that started the recent spree:

Age of Mythology - PC
Did I say I was playing new games? No, I didn't; quit whining. I bought this game a while ago with Rome: Total War and Age of Empires, but never played it because I found Age of Empires dull after just barely making it through the tutorial campaign (I probably missed something). Anyway, I really enjoyed this one. I think that's at least partially due to the mythological beasts. I make the matches last extremely long just so I can build a huge horde of beasts to demolish the competition. I haven't even beat the first campaign yet, and I have no clue how far through it I am (<SPOILER>just a little ways past the battle where I had to prevent someone from busting down some big door</SPOILER>).

LEGO Star Wars - Xbox
If you're looking for a challenge, run away! This game is insanely easy, which also makes it fun for everyone. You could have your parents and/or younger siblings playing this with you. The camera is a bit annoying at times, but other than that it's a fun game. I find it functions best as an all out war outside of the diner (a lobby area of the game) once you've unlocked some evil characters, sadly the ability to copy your savefile information to a memory card is missing so you have to unlock everything again on any other Xbox you plan to play on (or just use the cheat codes). I seem to get lockups when I go out there after beating a level, but on a fresh load I can sit out there for hours and watch these (strangly flexible) LEGO guys go at it. Of course, the game is full of spoilers for episodes 1-3, even without voices in the cutscenes (which can be quite entertaining).

Sid Meier's Pirates - Xbox
No, you cannot get a parrot! Bartender's ask you where your parrot is every now and then and I've seen a few people asking how to get one. This game's pretty good, I haven't played it in a while, but I remember beating it (well, as close as I can get in a free-form game) three times and being quite happy with it. I took it easy the first time, and even managed to get enough loot for my pirates buddies to stay on full time (3,000 gold a piece, I believe). Later I tried it on the hardest difficulty and got creamed over and over again, when it came time to divide the plunder I was happy to see that I could set the difficulty down a notch. Even at this difficulty swordfights were not an option for me, but my navigation specialty came in handy. I decided to be a bit mean and capture a messanger vessel that I promised to escort (a mail runner, fastest and most... "Three days, that's tomorrow! Let's go"... agile ship in the game). Even with the very limited firepower it became a lot easier to please my shipmates, merchant galleons just can't handle this little mosquito-like ship. Sorry about that random quote, Family Guy is on and I'll be taking a short break to prevent further indiscretions.

Ok, so I went to bed, time for more.

Leisure Suit Larry - Xbox
Aww, this isn't very puzzling at all, it's just a bunch reaction tests. I was hoping for a good adventure game, but there's really nothing to figure out here. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty good at the hand eye coordination minigames, but after a while they get extremely boring and this game is built on them. They didn't leave out the crude humor, though, and the conversation minigame is entertaining whether you're winning or losing. I'll have to finish this game eventually, it's too funny to leave half finished.

Conker: Live and Reloaded - Xbox
One of my favorite games got an update. The campaign is still awesome with only a few changes. I'm not sure which version's multiplayer I like better, but since my best gaming buddy moved a bit further away I'm happy to still have bots.

Dominions II - PC
As far as global domination goes, this game takes the cake. It doesn't seem to have too big of a following so I feel bad about not wanting to play it multiplayer. I get creamed much like I do when playing other strategy games, but I have fun while it's happening. =P I summon every big baddy I can to try and hold off the invading forces, but they always make it in. I'll probably go back to this after I finish this post. Oh, and this is available for Linux and also has a demo available for download. I finally found a Linux game and now I can't play it on the Linux comptuer because I needed it's video card for this pc to be able to handle the newr games. I should probably plug http://www.tuxgames.com here because it was so easy to buy this. I paid $3 bucks more or so for the shipping, but I didn't have to give them my lisence, registration, birth certificate, employer's mother's maiden name, or the estimated amount of times I go to the bathroom per day. I just sent them money through Paypal and they sent me the game, what a pleasant shopping experience. It's too bad that they only deal with games for Linux, if any of you know of a website that will let me buy a game through Paypal without making an account or giving them my credit card number (what's the point of paying with Paypal if these guys still ask for my credit card?) please leave a comment.

That's not all of the recent gaming, but I'm getting tired of typing so I'm cutting it short (lucky you).