I thought this past weekend would be a weekend of "Fallout 3."
Nope. It was half a weekend of finishing "Prince of Persia" and half a weekend of losing myself for the first time in months to the PlayStation 3 tower-defense game "PixelJunk Monsters."
That second half left me with a hollow feeling.
Great game. But a hollow feeling. Wait. Does that feeling make "PixelJunk" not a great game? I don't think it does, because I believe many good games can leave one feeling empty, like the hours we've played of them have been wasted.
Good games sucking your day away and leaving you hollow: you have experienced this feeling, haven't you?
One, two, five hours of your life spent not making much progress on some strategy or puzzle game. Hours spent surely having fun -- why else could I not stop playing? -- but when those hours have passed, what have I learned? What beauty have I absorbed? Have I gotten smarter or stronger? What if, as I did with "PixelJunk" on Sunday, I just failed and failed some more.
Two hours in the morning and two more hours smack in the middle of the day and I think I cleared just two levels and kept failing at a third.
Where did the day go? When did the sun set? Why don't I feel the energy I felt after I finished the magnificently constructed "Prince of Persia"? Why do I feel hollow? But why do I want to stop writing this and play some more?
What is it that some good games do to us? Do to our lives? What do they take? And what do we get back?
Next: I will play "Fallout" tonight. I will.
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