Thanksgiving: Full Stomach Gamer

I'm pretty sure the only time I went more than a couple of hours without gaming this past weekend was when I was sleeping. Not that I didn't have any motivation to do other things. I could have worked out, I could have changed the oil in my car, I could have helped finish painting a room in the basement.

But I was seriously addicted to games this week, as my Xbox will profess. There's really not enough I can say about Crackdown as a game. It shines in every category. It's fun, immersive, funny, and when you play it with a friend, oh, the tangents that you will run off on.

I also picked up the new Halo book, Contact Harvest. It made the NYT best seller list in just a couple days at #3. I'm a few chapters deep now. It's a precursor to all the books and games, detailing the beginning of the Covenant War. I'm interested to see what caused the Halo games to be. Was it because the Covenant were ruthless to begin with or if humans did something to screw it up? I'm sure the book was written with some current day, real world reflection in it.

(btw, two people I know shouldn't go out and buy this book for themselves. At least until after Christmas.)

The Wii's Super Mario Galaxy is shaping up quite well. As I find new planets and galaxies in the game, I'm just more amazed at the levels that Nintendo cooked up. They are completely amazing. Sometimes I feel like every galaxy is a short sci-fi novel. Great little twisted ideas, packaged in perfect wrapping, open them up, then move on. The game just never gets old and platform gaming is a genre where a game can get stale pretty quickly.

But Thanksgiving was all about family. I didn't even bring up the Wii for the neices to bowl with, nor Guitar Hero II for the adults. I saved that one day for pure family enjoyment. But then, as soon as I got home, I realized I'm not ready for kids and plopped down to hunt down Crackdown's hidden orbs.