Things I've noticed: Countdowns can be fun!

Merry Christmas Eve everyone!

As we are approaching the end of 2010 (eight days and counting), I am happily working through the various things I’ve borrowed from friends to try and return them for the New Year.

Currently my list of borrowed materials is a simple three items, and I’ll do my best to return them before the year is out.

1. Dorian Gray - the 2009 gothic horror adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic novel, starring Ben Barnes and Colin Firth, this film has sat on my gotta see it for almost a year now. Luckily my good friend the Edmonton Public Library (or if you prefer my wife’s name, my girlfriend – as in “Your Girlfriend called!” referring to the automatic messaging system which lets me know when one of my hold items is available), had a copy on hand and for the next week it belongs to me. Now, is the story of an immoral immortal a pre- or post-Christmas story?

2.The Avengers - The Emma Peel DVD megaset, featureing every episode of the Avengers featuring Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. This was loaned to me by my friend Ron and so far it’s been one of my surprise favourites of 2010. I’ve got a few discs into the colour episodes and so far they are pretty great.

3. Super Mario Galaxy 2, leant to me by my younger brother a few months back, I’ve finished the game, but am now collecting Green Stars for the second, secret ending (and yes I know I could just watch it on Youtube, but what’s the point if you haven’t earned it yourself?).

In the end no one will be annoyed at me if I run a little late – except for the library, which will charge me a dollar a day for overdue DVDs, but my hope is to finish everything up in the next week and a half!

Things I've noticed: My style of videogaming may be weird

Over the last week my kids have been playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the Wii non-stop.

Hold on - I guess I should put some sort of context to the term non-stop, as your definition is surely different than mine. When I say non-stop I mean they play for a couple hours (2-3) each day.

We borrowed the game from my younger brother who played it for eight to ten hours a day (this was before he went back to school) and finished the game in just under a week.

Personally, my gaming habit is to play 60 to 90 minutes twice a week (early Saturday and Sunday mornings).

I suppose all of us (my kids, brother, the readers of this post, and myself) all consider the amount of time we spend playing videogames “normal,” but when I explain to others how I play my games (two to three hours a week, one game at a time, until I’ve finished the game), I’m often met with strange looks – as if the way I’m playing is somehow wrong.

I have lots of friends who juggle multiple games for multiple platforms, but personally I like the style wherein I spend a couple hours a week actively playing and then take five days to think about what I’ll do next. In addition, because my local library now loans games and my newer consoles (PS3 and Wii) can both save my progress, I have a much larger catalogue of games to choose from.

In addition I have a couple games which get played on a yearly basis (on New Year’s Eve), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Katamari Damacy – both of which I’ve been working on steadily for 5-10 hours a year for the last five years.

It’s funny, but until I started comparing my time spent gaming with other people, I thought my way was the normal way – I mean, how else would you play a video game?