I have a very messed up style of playing games. I either play in very short sessions or I sit down and play a game for 2 days straight.  Usually on a weekend, and most the time I finish it in those days. This works with a lot of games, however I had some situations like with San Andreas where I played for the 2 days, and was still nowhere near beating the game.  
 
I think this is also why I really like the arcade style -- play it for 10 minutes -- stuff like Audiosurf, Guitar Hero, Street Fighter, Burnout, and the like. Anything based on 20 minute long missions is great too (Red Faction: Guerilla). 
 
Also, I have a strange way of buying games, that leads to me owning way too many. 
 Let me break this down for you: 

• I make an Excel (or Calc because I use Open Office) Spreadsheet of all the games I want to buy, sorted by platform. 
• I then wait for those games to go on sale (usually Steam, although Amazon, or sometimes Gamestop -- 75% off Xbox Games comes to mind) and then I buy them.
• Then I have a massive stack of games. 
• ???
• Profit?

  As a PC gamer I feel I should add my 2 cents.  
 
First of all, I do not own a current gen console. I have all four last gen consoles, but this gen I decided to go completely with the PC. 
I find it strange that people are saying the PC does not have a wide variety of genres to choose from. Yes, MMOs, RTS, and FPS are very prevalent here, but they are not the only ones available. There are plenty of racing games, puzzle games, platformers, adventure games, action adventure. A quick glance at the Steam Store will tell you that.  
 
That is another thing that is worth touching on actually. The fact that Steam exists. The gaming media loves to fantasize about a platform with no physical media. Well, that platform already exists. It's called the PC. 
 
I think if there's one thing I want to stress about PC gaming is that it is a very free and open place.  
 
New developers can make games with little overhead, and get noticed. The indie scene has absolutely exploded on the PC. Consoles have this as well, but the amount of volume of indie titles on the PC is overwhelming.  
 
PC games also have large mod communities. We have games that grow because other users have decided to put their own time into giving other players more game to play. If you do not think this is significant go look at stuff like Pirates, Vikings, and Knights. This is a situation where someone took an existing game and made something completely different out of it, and not only that, but they gave it away for free. This type of thing just does not exist on consoles.  
 
Then there is stuff like Garry's Mod. There's a game that is made up entirely out of things from existing games, and it is supported by a lot of dedicated players that make stuff simply because they want to.  
 
There is also the matter of custom maps. I remember the first time I played Counter Strike on Lego Land. Yes, a map made of Legos. This concept sounds ridiculous, but it was really fun to be able to run around shooting each other on such a silly map. On a console, they would never make a map like that. The developers are dedicated to making sure the maps fit in with the rest of the game. And even if they did, they would charge you for them. 
 
 I love fighting games. Specifically 2D fighting games. Now I know people like to pretend there are no fighting games on PC, but this is simply not true. Street Fighter 4 is on PC, and do you know why? Emulators. Yes, you can argue about the legality of using roms and playing games through MAME or the like. But stuff like MAME allowed PC gamers to play almost every major fighting game (and a lot of non-fighting arcade games as well) that exists between the early 90s and up until just a few years ago. MAME also has a dedicated community constantly trying to improve the quality of the games, and get non-working games working. The point is, Street Fighter 4 came out on the PC because Capcom recognized that there was a community of people that love Street Fighter, but were not being sold copies. PC gamers aren't using MAME because they wanted to steal Capcom's classics, but because Capcom was not selling these games to them. Believe me, I probably would not have bought Street Fighter 4 had I not gotten hooked on Alpha 3 through MAME. 
  
I can also use whatever peripherals I want on my PC. You've all seen the videos of people using a Wiimote to play Half Life 2, but it does not have to end there.    Quick little fact about my peripheral collection. I have 2 Xbox 360 controllers (Regular Wired, and Ryu Fightpad), and a low end joystick that works on PC, PS2, and PS3. I can hook up the joystick and hand my friend a 360 controller, and we can essentially have a Sony controller vs a Microsoft controller. This is impossible on any other platform. The freedom we have to use whatever controllers we want is incredible. There are wheels, arcade sticks, flight sticks, regular controllers, all kinds of peripherals made for the PC, and we get to choose what we want.  
 
Backwards compatibility. I'm sorry, this is a bit of a low blow, but it's true. Most consoles do not have this feature, PC's have never really had to worry about it. While a console owner has to worry about whether or not their game from 5 years ago will work, most of the time PC users don't have to worry about if their game from 20 years ago will work. For games that are that old, stuff like DosBox exists.  
 
I see this has a gotten a bit long-winded, so I think I'm going to call it a night. But I just wanna say one more thing real quick. Most of the time the argument from the console side is always price and comfort. The PC is way more expensive, and games are more fun to play on a couch with a 50" screen.  
My TV is a piece of shit. How much was that 50" screen? 
What? 
I like my chair...

I have a love-hate relationship with Steam. I love that they sell me games for super cheap. I love that I can download them whenever I want. But almost every single weekend they hit me with a deal I straight up CANNOT REFUSE. I can't keep up with all these games I'm buying. They've got me with:

• Bioshock for $15
• Max Payne 1 AND 2 for $11
• World of Goo for $5
• Lost Planet for $5
• (I had to restrain myself last weekend when they had 2 Oddworld games up for $4.)
  

I was on G4's site looking for a review of World of Goo when I saw an article they had posted up. It was a beautiful and shameless plug for a website called Switchgames. I hit the link and checked it out. It looks pretty cool.

It is an online trading post for video games. You tell it what games you have that you are willing to trade and what games you want and it finds people that match you. I uploaded a bunch of games, and it seems to work pretty well. I could check what people wanted my games, and then look through what they had to trade. It felt like being on a playground trading Pokemon cards. There is no charge to trade, no points system. Just games for games. Also, according to G4's Article on their  Website, players can even send a kickback to the developer of the game they're trading for. Could this be a solution to the controversy over the used games market?

Shameless plugs abound:
Switchgames
G4's Article

So, I just finished Devil May Cry 4. And by finished, I mean I uninstalled because I was tired of it. I got about half way through the game before I remembered that I hate hack and slash. It was about when they started throwing random slow motion lazor dodging sequences that I called it quits. Ah well, I'm sure there are plenty of people that love this genre, and this game. I unfortunately, am not one of them.

In other news, I have a four day weekend coming up. Thursday through Sunday, nothing but gaming. The original plan was to play WoW the whole time, but I have a pretty significant stack of games I need to play through. My choices at this point are:

• Finish Max Payne
• Start and Finish Lost Planet
• Start World of Goo
• Start Half Life 2
• Play more Burnout
• Play some King of Fighters 2002 on MAME (this is definitely going to happen)
• Start The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

So, I've been playing a lot of Burnout lately. I'm about 15 hours in, and I'm really impressed. I've always liked Burnout, but I built a PC this gen instead of buying a console. I had to wait for about a year to get Paradise, but I'm glad I did. I'm blown away by how many good things I can say about it. I'm too lazy to write a proper paragraph on it, so here's a quick checklist of stuff I really like so far.

• Really well optimized. This game looks fantastic on all settings and manages to run amazingly smooth. After having to avoid GTA4 and Saints Row 2, it's really refreshing to be able to play Burnout like it was meant to be played.  I'm glad they took a year to work on it, because they obviously wanted to get it done right.
• Looks beautiful. I do not usually care about graphics, but Burnout looks awesome. The sense of speed in this game is insane, and the crashes make me mess my pants in more ways than one. 
• Online. This is old news to the people who have been playing it on consoles for the past year, but the way they integrate online is sweet as hell. It takes no time at all to get into a game, and the transition between online and offline is so smooth, it is crazy. The first time I went online was by accident: that's how smooth it is. The online component has a lot of neat touches too. Like the fact that when you take someone down, it snaps a photo of them and shows it to you. Also, they save all those pictures so you can look at them later. I am actually considering getting a web cam just so I can flip people the bird when they take me down. I like how the multiplayer focuses on creating a social environment rather than a competetive one. I feel like this is a game where I can just hop online and screw around and have a great time.
• Immersion. The sense of speed is great, but what really blows me away is how much stuff there is to do. I'm 15 hours in, and only 30% completed. There's a ton more content to experience, and I have barely touched Bikes and Multiplayer. I usually have problems playing long single player games, but I think I'm down for however long this game wants to be.
• Overall attitude. I love how this game carries itself. I was worried about the open city, but what it does is give you a big playground to mess around in. If you really wanted to rush through the main content, you could just go around and complete all the events, but I find it plenty fun to just drive around and break stuff. I find myself actively searching out signs and fences to knock over. It feels really weird, because the whole completionist  thing doesn't really appeal to me most times, but for some reason I want to complete absolutely everything in this game.
• Showtime. I know, I know. There are a lot of people that hate Showtime mode because they feel like the old Crash mode was much better. That's purely subjective, and while I do wish there was a crash mode, I really like this mode. I'm gonna be blunt about this. It is easy. Mad easy. However, I think that's part of the point. You can use it whenever you want, and so where and when you choose is entirely up to you. What I mostly did was use it after losing a race. You know those races where you're in the lead for the majority of the event, and then you crash 20 feet from the finish line and go home with nothing but a 'you tried' trophy? These races can be frustrating, and nothing relieves frustration quite like killing the entire fucking world.

• Dj Atomika. This guy is a fucking douche. Even when you turn him off, he still shows up at the end of every race to give you helpful advice that usually runs along the lines of "Could you please suck less."
• No custom soundtracks. This seems like a strange omition. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions both sport this feature, but the PC version either doesn't have it, or I can't find it in the menu. This really isn't a big deal though. All you have to do is turn off the in-game music and run iTunes in the background.

Hey guys, I just came from doing a ton of Trivia questions, and I discovered something strange.

Every single true or false question always has the SAME ANSWER.

I currently have a 100 question streak, all from just hitting "True!" on every True or False question. I'm answering questions correctly about games I haven't even heard of. Also, there were several questions about Everquest, which I haven't played, but I got them all right. I think there's a problem.

So yeah, if you add trivia a lot, and you want to put up true or false questions... Please, just put up a few "False" answers, just to keep it fair. I mean, I don't anything about a lot of these games, but I'm getting all these questions right.

Screen Shot or it didn't happen?

Hey, you remember how a few months ago Half Life had its 10 year anniversary?

Well, Valve put up the original Half Life for 98 cents, and I couldn't get my wallet out fast enough. I had a stack of other games I needed to play, but I wasn't about to turn down Half Life for a dollar. So today, I decided to fire it up and play through it this weekend.

10 minutes later, I had to stop. My head is now in a great deal of pain, and I have this constant feeling that I'm about to throw up. That was around 6 PM. It's now almost 1 in the morning, and my nausea still has yet to completely subside. Man, this sucks.

It really pisses me off too, because I love Valve, and this game has been on my "GAMES YOU NEED TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE" list for quite some time. I only spent a dollar on it, but it really sucks to not be able to play what is apparently one of the greatest FPS's ever made. 

This isn't the first time this has happened to me though. I always started to get headaches from playing Counter Strike: Source, but that usually didn't set in until about an hour in. I've also played a bit of Half Life 2, and that didn't have this effect. I get this a lot from console FPS's too, Halo, Riddick, and Medal of Honor have all done this to me at one point or another.

What about you? Do you ever get motion sick from playing games? If so, what games? And what do you do about it?

Ehhh, I'm gonna go sleep this off.

Let me tell you how my weekend went.

First of all, I got lucky as all hell on Thursday. Chicago's seen its first sub-zero weather since 1996, and this of course means that all the schools close down because they don't know what to do. So school's canceled Thursday, and Friday.

Sounds great right? Of course. It's been awesome. Thursday I played some Devil May Cry 4, and attempted to play Viva Pinata. This was my first run in with Games for Windows Live, and hopefully my last. If I disable it, then I can play the game, but Microsoft decided it was a good idea to require you to be online to SAVE. This means I can play Viva Pinata, but I can't save it. Meh. Kinda ruins the design of the game.

Anyway, the rest of Thursday consisted of listening to the Bombcast while playing a ton of Trackmania. Ah, good times.

Friday involved me FINALLY getting around to installing Call of Duty 4. And I commenced my tradition of playing first person shooters in the dark with head phones on. (Immersion is insane)
Then I got a call to go hang out with some friends. Which means I went to use his SNES.

Saturday, my friend came over. Let me paint the picture.
2 PC's
36 pack of Mountain Dew
A bag of Doritos
A brick of cheese

20 hours, 10 cans of Mountain Dew, and about 7 heroics later, I'm now in a great deal of pain.

What's messed up too is how after playing World of Warcraft for that long, I haven't even progressed that far. Even though I got several pieces to advance my tanking set, I feel like I still have a long way to go. I also am beginning to grasp the reality that I won't be able to get anywhere in this game while enjoying anything else the medium has to offer. There are a lot of games I'm looking forward to, as well as a shit-ton of games I missed that I need to pick up.

I have an Excel Spreadsheet of all the games I need to buy at some point. But guess what, I don't have time to beat the games I already own. Much less these other 86 games I want to play. I can't hate on WoW, because in all aspects it's a great game, and in my opinion the best in its genre. However, I'm starting to think maybe it's time to move on and play some other games for a while. This might just be the sugar withdrawal talking, but I know I'm missing out on a lot of games, and I wonder if the endless nature of the MMO genre might be hampering my enjoying of the rest of the medium.

This weekend I got to jump around and play a bunch of different kinds of games. And I really like that, but the problem is I can only do that  when I have a lot of time off.

I don't know. I need sleep.

Unfortunately I'm still a slave to the WoW expansion from November.

However! I am seriously looking forward to SF4, and the re-release of Burnout Paradise. I was excited about the PC version of GTA4 and Saints Row 2, but that didn't work out too well. If the PC version of Burnout doesn't work on my PC, I will rage. I really hope it ends up being a good port, because so many of them are bad. My copy of Viva Pinata sits on the shelf Iaughing at my INABILITY TO SAVE). But anyway if it doesn't work, I  will probably either cry or buy an Xbox. Most likely a combination of the two.

So, both? I guess. I need to play some more L4D. I have a spreadsheet (no I'm not joking) of all the games I need to buy, so I'm still catching up on games from last gen. I am pretty excited about 2009's releases, if I can get away from WoW long enough. (Help me)