Addictive Video Games

This past weekend, I had my brother over. He just finished his second year as a medical student at The Johns Hopkins University. Though he has started rotations now, he has many more free weekends than when he had classes, so I finally got to spend some time with him. Being the dork that I am, I decided this time would be well-spent playing Rock Band, partially because I wanted to see how he'd like it since I was considering buying him and his housemates the game. They already have Guitar Hero III, but they only own one guitar and plus there are three of them.

Anyway, my boyfriend and I started him out on drums while we played guitar and bass. We warned him to try easy first (note: if it was his first time playing guitar, I'd suggest medium, not easy), but he decided to try medium. The first song he failed too quickly for either of us to even have the chance to develop enough energy (or star power, for those Guitar Hero players) to save him. So he switched to easy, and after failing the first few songs, got the hang of it. Then we switched it around, and I made a four song set list for him to play lead guitar on. I chose: "I Think I'm Paranoid", "Maps", "Say It Ain't So", and "Orange Crush", which he played on hard. I think these are the most fun songs to sightread on hard or expert. (Feel free to chime in with your own suggestions of what songs are the best to sightread for the first time on hard or expert levels.)

It got late so my bf went to bed, but my brother and I stayed up looking for more games to play. We went through several random XBox Live Arcade games, and then I decided to show him my Puzzle Quest character. I showed him a fight, then went to find another mob for him to fight. It turned out it was my first chance at capturing a Liche. So we went into the capture puzzle so I could show him that the game also has other types of puzzles.

Little did I know, over an hour later we'd still be on the same capture puzzle. This particular one had a lot of flaming skulls, which I always have more trouble predicting. We took turns trying to defeat it, while taking into account each other's failures and successes. Finally he beat it. It was 4:30am by then and I was exhausted, so I went to bed and gave him control of my character.

The next morning I woke him up at 11:30am so we could go to the NBA playoff game we had tickets to. It turned out that he had stayed up until 9am playing, leveling my character from 33 to 37. The game is strangely addicting. What sort of game is it? Basically, it's like one of those puzzle games with colored gems on the board, and you have to pick two adjacent gems to switch positions in order to make a three-of-a-kind along the vertical or horizontal for at least one of the two gems. Except this variant is an RPG. You can earn money or experience by matching certain pieces, do damage with others, and gain mana with the rest. Instead of switching gems, you can use your mana to cast spells as your turn. Leveling allows you to gain higher stats (which give you added bonuses on matching) and better spells. You travel around to different cities looking for quests to do and mobs to fight in this matter. See? It sounds like an innocuous game, but start playing it, and you'll find it strangely addicting. My brother just called me last night. He downloaded the game on his houses' XBox 360 and started his own character.

Meanwhile, my boyfriend was somehow addicted to Ratchet and Clank. While he was using the TV to play that, I was bored, so I downloaded Puzzle Quest onto my laptop and started a new character there. He just got to the final boss though, so I guess he's done with that game.

Luckily, after I make this post, I'm headed out to buy Grand Theft Auto IV. It got a perfect 10 on GameSpot (only the fifth time it's been awarded) as well as a perfect 10 on IGN and IGN UK (the first perfect 10 given by IGN UK). Think either of us will get addicted to this one? Nah... of course not!