Just catching up on the E3 videos from Microsoft, and ZOINKS!  1080p streaming, Twitter/Facebook integration, digital downloads...all awesome stuff.  But nothing can top this:

No way is it going to work this well or look this smooth, but if it works even half as well as this....

I never used to be a big fan of shooters.  Sure I ate up Doom, Dark Forces, and Duke Nukem like everyone else back in the day, but that was because I pussed out and played with "God mode" cheats.  After that generation I got bored bored bored with them.  Even Halo and Gears of War seemed sort of "meh" to me.

But the last couple years?  DUDE!  Bioshock = incredible.  Gears of War 2 = shootilicious.  And Call of Duty 4?  DUDE!  DUUUUUDE! 

Which is why I'm sooooooo psyched for this:

This is gonna be the best year ever.

Not far from our apartment is a trendy computer repair shop.  It's housed in a loft-like space that looks like a dot.com office from 1999.  The walls are lined with Macs and cables and hard drives, but a ping-pong table casually squats in the center of the store.  The hipsters who work there have put posters of Angus Young and the Lost Boys on the walls, but what my daughter likes best about the place is the video game.

Right up front by the windows is a table arcade game, the kind where two players can sit across from each other and take turns playing Ms. Pac Man, Frogger, or Galaga.  It's a total throwback to what I used to play in pizza parlors and bowling alleys when I was a kid, except without the stains of countless greasy fingers and spilled cokes or the untouchable high scores.

I had to go there a couple of times to get our Mac checked out, and since there was a playground nearby I'd usually take my daughter with me.  While I talked with the techies about why my !&%$#$@ wireless would never !&%$#$@ work, I'd sit my daughter down at the table and let her watch the endlessly recylcing demos.  It wasn't long before she asked if she could play.

My daughter is three.  She has the hand-eye coordination of a cymbal-banging monkey toy with Parkinsons.  I was happy to give her quarters, but I knew that about 7 seconds later she'd have lost her third consecutive ship/frog/Pac-Man and wouldn't understand why she was once again looking at an options screen.  It was my responsiblity--my duty--as a parent to help her.

So each time we'd visit the store I'd bring an extra handful of quarters with me, just like when I was heading to Skatetown in fourth grade.  After I did my bidness with tech support I'd pull my daughter onto my lap, gently place my hand on hers, and guide her through her preliminary Jedi training.

You may recall that the controls on these machines are fairly rudimentary.  There's a stick with a big white ball on the top, a button on each side to fire (lefties welcome!) and two equally large buttons to select one or two players.  The simplicity of this system is part of it's magic, but it lacks on the nuance of the X-B-Y-A-left trigger-right-trigger-etc-etc chaos we have today.  I found, to my dismay, that I had retained none of the skills I built up in the arcades of my youth, and the endless hours of COD4, Splinter Cell, and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance had set my expectations for system responsiveness unfairly high.  It's safe to say I was better than my daughter, but not by much.

She wasn't helping, mind you.  She didn't grasp the concept that running into cars is a bad thing on Frogger.  Her shooting strategy for Galaga was to tap a button, then look up to see if it did anything.  And to her, Pac Man is all about eating, not avoiding, ghosts.  So as I'd try to cut left or right, her tiny hand beneath mine was straining to do the opposite.  Not consciously, but in the same reflexive ways in which three year olds throw balls: spastically, wildly, and forcefully. 

Despite our poor showing, we would always have fun.  She'd yell out "WE WON! HOORAY!" regardless of the outcome, at least until I caught her repeating my "D'oh!" when a diving alien would nick our dodging ship.  Soon she'd ask me if we were going to "the video game store," a question which inevitably raised eyebrows with the suspicious missus (which I think shall be the name of my new band).  And this on top of her begging to play Rock Band, although we're only allowed to play "Hungry Like the Wolf" or "Roxanne" (with her on vocals with an unplugged microphone, of course).  Her indoctrination into gaming has begun!

So as a precautionary measure I dropped some Microsoft Points on Pac Man Championship Edition.  Who knows when the day will come when her little hands can reach the thumbsticks?  I'd hate to miss that opportunity.  It's my responsiblity.--my duty==to be there when it happens.

And to be ready, which means I need to practice.  A lot.  I'll chalk that up to good parenting.

One more level.

It's always one more level.

Or maybe it's "I need to find a good save spot."  Or "I just need to finish this mission" or "I just need to sell this plunder."  Or maybe it's even, "I can't stop now, I'm THIS CLOSE."

Whatever.  They're all excuses.  I have no discipline whatsoever.

I promised myself I'd be in bed by 12:30 last night.  I was tired. I'd had an hour or so of the new Prince of Persia (pretty, but not sure if I'd call it "good") when I glanced down at my watch.  I knew in my head that the logical thing to do would be to turn off the Xbox and head to bed. 

But as I was repeatedly (and repeatedly and repeatedly) falling to my death I kept thinking about how I'd rather be playing Fable II, and how I might be able to squeeze in a quest before bed if I just could just hurry up and finish.  I do the same thing at movies...even if I'm not having a great time I just can't bring myself to leave.

Some people (i.e. people with self-control) would look at the time and, realizing it was too late, would take their medicine, resigned to their fate. 

Not me. 

Instead, I decided I HAD to find all the "light seeds" on a particular map in Prince of Persia, which basically involves your basic swinging/jumping/plunging to my death platforming but with the added benefit of being completely redundant.  In PoP, you basically clear a level, then redo the entire level to pick up all the "light seeds" you need to power up.  There's a word for that.

I manage to finish this up around 12:15.  Again SOME people would say, "No point in doing anything else now.  I cut it too close.  I should just go to bed since my daughter is going to climb onto my head in six hours and I could use 15 more minutes of sleep."

Not me.

No, I stand up, pop the game out, and drop Fable II into the system.

Why?

In retrospect, I'm not sure.  I felt I'd left it in a bad place last time.  I wanted to check out the new town I was walking into.  You know, just so that next time I'd be prepared.  Because that's what I do...I think about where my characters are in my games when I'm not playing them.  (More on this in an upcoming post)

So now it's 1:45.  I walked down a road, fought off fifty bandits, and banged my wife (yes, you do that in Fable II).  I found myself walking around the main town looking for gargoyles to shoot when I realized I was doing it.  Again. 

Just one more.  It will only take a second.  Just let me see if there's a chest in here.

I climbed into bed and my wife, bleary-eyed but still visibly disappointed in me, said, "You make me sad.  You can't control yourself."  I began to protest but knew she was right. 

Is this common?  Do all gamers get like this?  Am I just an obsessive problem solver who can't rest until I finish something, even if "finishing" takes 14 hours?  Or is this a curse I share with my peeps out there...the ones with the bloodshot eyes and callouses on their thumbs?

Fuck the inauguration.  If you're not staying in tonight to watch the beginning of the end, you've got psychological problems and need to be hospitalized.

If you missed any of the first four seasons (and, again, if you did, what's wrong with you?) then this little primer might help.