The Ongoing Adventure of the Current Gen Neophite

And so it continues; my foray into the wily world of the 360. I've played little other than Dragon Age for the past couple of weeks with what little free time I've had. This means that the games I'd been playing or re-playing (Breath of Fire 4, Persona, Innocent Sin, Fatal Frame 2, Okami, Pikmin 2, Xenosaga 2) have taken a back seat to the electronic crack-cocaine Bioware concocted for the sole purpose of dooming me. It had been years since I'd been wishing I were home playing rather than out socializing, Final Fantasy XII being the last game in a very long time to have garnered this honor.

I'm 30-odd hours into the story and have squeezed every last lead for a quest out of my Dalish rogue. Every night when time allows some amount of play time I tell myself that I'll only play for an hour or so only to find myself 3 or 4 hours later struggling with my own self to put down the controller and go to sleep. Some allowances have been made due to the custom of December being a month given to excess and the general bending if not outright eschewing of rules. Hence, I don't feel all that bad about the exercise I'm skipping out on, but come January this must end. How will I manage, I despair. Well, only one way of finding out. I do intend to go through the game at least 6 times; one play-through for each origin. I don't know how many endings there are but I've read that the number generally accepted is 4, minor outcomes pertinent to player characters notwithstanding. A Herculean task simply in the sheer volume of time that I will gleefully plunge into the game.

I got Mass Effect as a gift from my sister for Xmas. It brings the DLC episode that adds a little to the story (on an extra disc). I tried playing it last night but was so gassed after a day careening after my daughter that I would repeatedly fall asleep controller in hand, waking up to find several minutes had passed in the interim. After a couple of such episodes I dispensed with the notion of actually enjoying my gift that night and hit the sack forthwith.

Life as a grownup gamer is certainly about balance. A game in its own right, really.