The Thing That Follows The Thing.

I've done no reading on this but let's say there are two types of video games: open and closed games.

An open game, like the majority early video games, never end. They go on and on and the best you can do is, I dunno, roll the score over. Pac-Man is an open video game. Asteroids is an open video game.

Closed video games have endings. Metal Gear Solid is a closed video game; you can win. Closed video games may offer incentives so that you replay them, but it's not that awesomely sisyphean experience where the game never gives ground. You can master Pac-Man, can play for as long as you want, but you can never beat Pac-Man. Those ghosts will never turn to you and go, "Okay, okay! Jesus, enough already!"

In either closed or open video games, you spend a lot of time dealing with The Thing, and knowing that you're going to be dealing with The Thing that follows The Thing. You're gunning down a ton of guards, but on the next screen is a Boss so you better save some ammo. If you position yourself partially behind a shield, you can shoot at the invaders as they go by.

Honestly, I'm not sure how good I am at dealing with The Thing that follows The Thing. Strategy? Too much thinking! Just lemme run around and make crashing noises! (And this is why I was a little ahead of the curve with GTA III, having loved precisely the same sandbox thing with GTA Uno. GTA III was all about ignoring your immediate objectives and doing cool, immediately gratifying stuff.)

I'm balking about how this actually (and depressingly) also describes my approach to life, so maybe I'll get into that in another entry. The point of this entry was to talk about how, now that I'm wrapping up MGS:Subsistence, I have to deal with the Thing that follows The Thing: what video game do I play next? Or do I finally grow some stones and drop video games altogether?

The interior poll currently runs: 30% drop video games; 20% Guitar Hero; 15% Kingdom Hearts II; 10% Star Wars Legos; 5% Baldur's Gate II on my PC; 5% Amplitude (bought it used in Half Moon Bay, which was also supposed to be an entry all its own); 5% Shadow of the Colossus (which Joel said he'll loan to me); 5% Resident Evil 4 again; and 5% walk to Hollywood Video tomorrow and rent what's there.

(Some notes on those delicately honed statistics: Guitar Hero's rating would be higher if 6 minutes of Amplitude hadn't reminded me how retarded I am with rhythm games; Star Wars Legos would have been higher (and I would have played it much, much sooner) if they hadn't taken such a long fucking time to release it at Greatest Hits prices; Baldur's Gate II would be much, much higher if I wasn't resistant to playing video games on my PC; Amplitude would be lower if I hadn't sold off a bunch of my old favorite games; and dropping video games would be much higher if I had more backbone or I could lie to myself more easily. As it is, that option is probably even lower than the cited 30%.)