Extreme Doing Nothing
These foolish games are messing with our heads.
      by Rachel Hyland

Tetris: best game ever.

Is there anyone in the world who doesn't love Tetris? Computer game designers really hit their peak when they created the wonder that is this ever-enchanting puzzle, and it's all been pointless from there on. I mean, why do they keep trying to out-do perfection? Seems crazy to me.

For those of you who don't know the glory of Tetris, well, I pity you. You've got these little blocks, right? And they fall down, right? And then you have to put them into vacant slots, right? And then you get points for it! It's genius! Nothing can ever possibly compare!

And it doesn't pretend to be something it's not. It doesn't profess to be real.

Not like the fancy-schmancy new technological games you get nowadays. Foolishly, those deluded programming geek-types persist in trying to best the unbest-able. I don't mean how they brought out Tetris 3-D, or that Tetris where you had to match up colors as well as shapes -- or even that naughty-type Tetris where the descending shapes are actually nekkid people in some impossible, non-chiropractor-recommended positions. No, I mean all of these other, not-even-remotely Tetris-y, games that keep appearing on the marketplace, and on the Web. That people -- many, many people -- actually seem to want to download, buy and play! Weird, isn't it?

I mean, what's so cool about these silly games, anyway? Really, you have to wonder. The First Person Shooters are just like Space Invaders, the Role Playing Games are also like Space Invaders, and the fabled Networked Games are pretty much just 2-Player Space Invaders, but without the special bonus points when you shoot that big balloon thingie at the top of the screen before your opponent does. There are also these newfangled Simulation Games, Strategy Games, Action and Adventure Games, which, while their credibility may not be called into question by a resemblance to Space Invaders at all, do make the impossible claim to somehow take you to the edge of reality, and even beyond. Apparently there are games that can create some kind of an illusion that you are a little blue hedgehog, or a cannon-wielding sewer dweller, or a big-breasted chick in tight shorts. Oh, so it's reality. Of course. I see what they mean.

Now, I'm not suggesting, with all this sarcasm, that I am necessarily an advocate of said reality, especially being a genre fan and all. But these games, with their often idiotic premises, violent under-, over- and in-between-tones, and patent lack of anything even approaching redeeming value, often seem little more than ways in which to spend huge chunks of time not doing very much at all. Let us examine them, in all their splendor...

Remember Frogger? Remember joysticks?

Take the First Person Shooter kind of game, for example. This is the kind that lets you be inside the skin -- well, okay, pixels -- of your representative out there in the computer-generated world. In the FPS, you are Da Man, Gal or Alien with the gun, and boy do you know how to use it. Point and shoot. Shoot, shoot, shoot. Kill 'em, kill 'em all, don't let 'em slink away, that's it, get 'em in the back, they're the enemy, evil, kill, kill... ow! They shot you! They shot me! I'm dying, I'm dying...

Wow. That felt so real.

Conversely, in a Role Playing Game, you are not you. You are, fittingly, someone else. Like a holodeck with a keyboard, the point of RPGs is to become the character that you choose, and to act in that character's manner. Oh, like I don't have enough non-reality in my life, I have to find more ways to be not-me for quite impressive lengths of time. I'm a spy. I'm a warrior. I'm an ageless wizard, trying to defeat the Black Sorcerer -- hey, I can be a boy, even. Oh, and it's so real, so life-like. So not.

What I wanna see is an RPG University, where you get to shoot the annoying know-it-all lecturer's pet in your Biology tutorial, seduce your hunky, married, Literature professor, and then skip class to pull a bong in the Quad without any repercussions. And then you get an Advanced Degree in Time Wastage at the end of the game! Now that's a final fantasy for ya.

Meanwhile, in a Networked Game, you're pretty much doing the same as above, only instead of fighting against the computer and it's artificial intelligence, you are trying to a) defeat, b) destroy or c) murder a real live person who can be sitting in either the next chair, or the other hemisphere. It's all a race against your friends as you try to beat them -- and beat them up -- with the winner getting little more than bragging rights (and possibly first call on what kind of pizza to order.)

Of course, it all depends on just where you are playing these little games, now, doesn't it?

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