Friday, February 10, 2006
Computer game confessions
I invite a discussion of total time wasting.
Have you ever played a game called "Bounce Out" on Yahoo! Games? It is not only without any redeeming social value, but also makes really silly noises. Tina and I both play this dumb game. (I know she's doing it because I can hear it going "cuckoo!" when she loses. It also goes cuckoo when I lose, but I have turned the volume down.)
I also play Spider Solitaire -- the same game over and over until I win. That's my rule. As soon as I win, I stop, even if it's just 2 a.m.
Sporcupine and I have in common an unrecognized, possibly world class, talent for Tetris, which is a meaningless game of falling-down things in different shapes and colors. The real frustation of Tetris is that the better you get the faster and harder it gets, and you never actually win. It just keeps getting worse until it seems like hard work for no pay.
The most elegant and interesting game is "Pandora's Box" which has beautiful visual puzzles of art and architecture. This one has redeeming cultural value.
My true favorite, however, is Jezz-Ball (also known as Bolo Loco) which is all over the www, free and involves dividing up groups of rapidly moving balls with horizontal and vertical lines. I was at one time so good at it that I could go to the Jezz-Ball Olympics. I don't play it at all, though, because a few years ago, I was home with a cold and I played so many games in a row that my hand went numb and I had shooting pains up my arm. I had to take prednisone. My doctor, normally sympathetic, actually laughed at me, which probably wasn't Hippocratically Correct.
Have you ever played a game called "Bounce Out" on Yahoo! Games? It is not only without any redeeming social value, but also makes really silly noises. Tina and I both play this dumb game. (I know she's doing it because I can hear it going "cuckoo!" when she loses. It also goes cuckoo when I lose, but I have turned the volume down.)
I also play Spider Solitaire -- the same game over and over until I win. That's my rule. As soon as I win, I stop, even if it's just 2 a.m.
Sporcupine and I have in common an unrecognized, possibly world class, talent for Tetris, which is a meaningless game of falling-down things in different shapes and colors. The real frustation of Tetris is that the better you get the faster and harder it gets, and you never actually win. It just keeps getting worse until it seems like hard work for no pay.
The most elegant and interesting game is "Pandora's Box" which has beautiful visual puzzles of art and architecture. This one has redeeming cultural value.
My true favorite, however, is Jezz-Ball (also known as Bolo Loco) which is all over the www, free and involves dividing up groups of rapidly moving balls with horizontal and vertical lines. I was at one time so good at it that I could go to the Jezz-Ball Olympics. I don't play it at all, though, because a few years ago, I was home with a cold and I played so many games in a row that my hand went numb and I had shooting pains up my arm. I had to take prednisone. My doctor, normally sympathetic, actually laughed at me, which probably wasn't Hippocratically Correct.
# posted by Charlotte @ 6:48 PM 
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When I am in a "hang everyone" mood, nothing beats a first-person shooter. (This one may have a gender skew).
i got tired of waiting for gruntled who is probably off drinking coffee somewhere anyway so i goggled it. it's an interesting concept and i guess it makes the game more realistic. i have slight dyslexia so i'm not very good at target games.
# posted by 
: Saturday, February 11, 2006
: Saturday, February 11, 2006
oops...i googled it, although goggled might be appropriate in this case,:)
# posted by : Saturday, February 11, 2006
: Saturday, February 11, 2006
Endub may remember that when they had the Oregon Trail game, she protested when I shot food to feed my starving family, as in "No, NO! Not the deer! Not the wild goose! Oh, No!" but I kept right on shooting.
Barely, do you play any computer games?
Barely, do you play any computer games?
Sorry, been busy. A first-person shooter is a game in which you are looking through the eyes of the player, whose main job is to shoot anything that he (yeah, he) comes across. Doom is the emblematic one -- recently made into a bad movie. Very testosterone driven.
First-person shooter games are also very, very dangerous in combination with adolescent male frustration. Michael Carneal, who shot up Heath High School, does not appear to have ever pointed and shot a real gun before the day he hit real people squarely between the eyes: he learned all he knew about aim and control from those guns. The games also match modern army techniques for desensitizing young people so they kill at will--but without any of the surrounding military controls. I trust my 40+ husband with them: I don't want near my son.
Sudoku on line allows one to go on and on and on. There's an Australian site with a nine-month suppy!
when my kids got one of the first commodore 64 computers, i became addicted to tooth invaders. d.k tried to eat all of your teeth, but you could brush it away and if you brushed very fast you could earn a fluoride rinse. it was scary to be addicted to such a weird game. since then, i usually only play the occasional word game.
# posted by : Saturday, February 11, 2006
: Saturday, February 11, 2006
A tooth decay game does sound weird. I think that a losing weight game would be a HUGE success though. This would be one where you made rapid-fire nutritional choices and won "exercise" games to turn a blimpy person into a skinny person. Maybe it could even be set up so that you could put a full-length photo of yourself into it, and do a complete makeover. Try on wigs, try different clothing styles, have a face lift etc.
I'm kidding, but also getting slightly horrified as I think about this because MARK MY WORDS, somebody's going to do this and sell it!
I'm kidding, but also getting slightly horrified as I think about this because MARK MY WORDS, somebody's going to do this and sell it!
And a first-person shooter, too? And maybe a Vent like the AJC? Maybe editorial cartoons (I could draw the Vice President mistaking his friend for a duck and blasting away, and then saying, "Hey, he was supposed to announce that he was about to stand up.) Or maybe I'll leave that whole subject to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
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