philmophlegm | Why do I do it?

You'd think I would have learned by now. Every year, I buy a new version of (Pro) Cycling Manager. I've had Cycling Manager, Cycling Manager 2, Cycling Manager 3, Pro Cycling Manager and Pro Cycling Manager 2006.

And every year, I get so far into the game before I get to an unsurpassable bug such that I can't play it again.

This time, I actually lasted two seasons. I had signed some exciting new riders for the new season - Thomas Dekker, Markus Fothen, Marco Marzano, Vladimir Karpets. But last night at 10.00pm, reached the point of no return.

Aargh.

I love this game. It hates me. And everybody else.

I have actually played almost nothing else for the last three months. This is very unusual for me - usually Football Manager takes up most of my gaming time.

So what now? Pro Cycling Manager 2007 is out, but that's unplayably buggy and I really am inclined to finally give up on the series.

I could go back to my Football Manager campaign, but to be honest with the new (real) football season starting, I think I want to play with all the exciting players that MU have bought. The new Football manager isn't due out until Christmas.

So what other games could I play? Perhaps this is the chance to catch up on games that I already own and haven't given that much attention to. The beautiful PS2 game 'Okami' for example, which I had for my birthday. I could go back to my Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion campaign. When I left this, the Western and Eastern Empires were at war, but at pretty much a stalemate. I'd burn Rome, they'd burn Constantinople, we'd both slaughter a few Saxons, that sort of thing.

Bioshock got a really good review in this month's PC Gamer ('best game since Half-Life 2') but that isn't out until the end of the month. Half-Life 2, Episode 2 itself isn't out for a while.

Anyone care to recommend a PC game to me?

No MMOs.

I don't normally like RTSs (the Total War games are an exception), otherwise I might have tried Supreme Commander or the new Command & Conquer.