Two days ago, on Friday, at 9 o’clock, I bought Smash Bros Brawl. That’s right... It FINALLY came out in Europe, at long bloody last! But imagine my surprise when this morning my Wii happily informed me I had played 30 hours worth of Brawl, along with all the unlockables that entails. I start to wonder if I am seriously addicted. But then again, who ever went into rehab with a serious video game problem. All the rock stars would laugh their grey skin off at you. I guess all and all video games are a far more benign addiction than drugs and alcohol, but addictive they are, and sometimes they can have side effects that can wreck someone’s life almost as bad (heck, maybe even worse) than their better known addictive cousins. Over my long life as a gamer (yeah, I’m 24 now and I feel Oooooooold) I’ve had a few gaming vices, that have gripped me by the short and curlys and dominated my life for vast periods. I’d like to explore a few of them now. I like to call this the Incomplete, but still deadly, list of addictive, yet orgasmically good, video games!



The first offender, in keeping with our video review this week, is a Final Fantasy game. Although not VII but it’s slightly less well loved cousin FFX. I LOVED this game, and played it for well over 150 hours. I know, you can easily get to SIN and beat him in like twenty to thirty if you work really really hard at it and don’t *bleep* about in the middle. Less if you skip all the cut scenes. But where is the FUN in that?! Also, finishing a game isn’t COMPLETING a game... and I needed to complete this, it was a burning itching need. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. I was a Nintendo kid when I was young and as such I got into Final Fantasy rather late. I went back and played VII and IIX and IX but none of them took me in the same was as X did. Once I was done unlocking all the secret weapons, fighting all the dark aeons and beating Nemisis I found my life outside of Spira was all but gone... oh well. Might as well go back and fight some Arena monsters.



A Link to the Past, and every Link game since, have each been life stoppers. As soon as a new Zelda game comes out it means I will be locked in the house for the next week.. month... year? HOWEVER LONG IT TAKES to find everything. This is made extra difficult because of my hatred for strategy guides, which I refuse to use, especially for a Zelda game. But God, do you realise how many craftily hidden pieces of heart, skulltula and mother *bleep*ing poe we are talking about here? LOTS. And when people say “hey, we are gonna go out to a club or something, you wanna come” and you decide not to, because you know that that last golden bug is around here somewhere... well that’s when you have a problem.



Just like Brawl, Melee is one of my great loves. But this one at least is a healthy addiction.. sort of. Because it’s a group activity! To play hundreds of hours of Melee you need to be playing with friends, so at least I wasn’t sitting in a darkened room all by myself. Brawl has sorted out this streak of social interaction however by allowing people to play online against unnamed and mysterious foes. Now you can play for ever even though you have no friends. Bonus!