That library again.

So here I am again. Curiously enough, it's actually pretty quiet today. I guess people have finally caught on to the idea that Gossip Girl is best reserved for the screen, and not real life. Then again, what would I know? (Talk about making assumptions, and drawing parallels that make no sense)

As it is though, I find myself with little to do at the moment, other than to count down the minutes to the next appointment I have, which is supposed to be in a little under 2 hours time. I could eat (again), but I wouldn't want those recent hours being put into the gym and football training to go to waste simply because I am bored.

I've been playing Final Fantasy XIII a lot lately. Way more than any person (other than a fellow gamer) would consider healthy or nomal, and I have paid for it with a lack of sleep. It is simply too addictive. I'll be coming up with part two of my review on it soon, which will cover the deliciously intricate battle system, which is by far one of the biggest reasons to actually play it.

I am unabashedly in love with Lightning, and Vanille. Serah is taken (gasp, I know) so perhaps I should stay away from pining for her too much. Having said that though, maybe it would be unhealthy to begin with, to even suggest any sort of emtoional attachment with what amounts to be a punch of polygons on a disc, being pushed out on to a screen. Then again, the same could be said of people that develop attachments to movie or book characters, entities that merely exist in a medium of entertainment, and not in real life.

It puzzles me why there are human beings that seek to rubbish the videogame culture, implying that it is nothing more than sad childish escapism, when the same could be said of other entertainment options (Roger Ebert, I'm looking at you). If you were, on average, to watch a movie three times a week, be it in the cinema or at home, assuming that a movie is generally two hours long, then that means you use up 6 hours just sitting there and watching. And this is better than picking up a video game and using your brain to outwit the AI and exercising your fingers to do your will?

For those of you that consider videogames to be merely child's play, then please, pick up a copy of FFXIII, or God Of War 3, or Metal Gear Solid 4, or Uncharted 2, and tell me that your brain doesn't HURT trying to figure out everything; that the stories being told are not legitimate attempts at not just entertainment, but discussions on morality, ethics, love, life, philosophy and history; that the underlying genius of being a game developer lies in not merely making a world for us to play in, but making us feel like we are active participants in something greater than ourselves.

Let's not kid ourselves. None of us will become Luke Skywalker, and have the opportunity to blow up a moon-sized battle station. None of us will become Jack Sparrow, and be able to survive seemingly impossible odds just by swigging rum and making it up as we go along. None of us will become Batman, with huge amounts of money and martial arts skills that would give Bruce Lee a run for his money.

But in a video game, we can. It is one of the few, if not the only, way to be able to experience euphoria on an epic scale, to have an inkling of what it feels like to save lives, to experience new adventures, to challenge societal norms. In short, we can change the world.

Is that childish? Is that a sign of immaturity? To go up and beyond our normal selves, to become guardians of the virutal universe, to go beyond what we could possibly do in the mundane reality that we all share?

I am not advocating an existence that ignores reality. Far from it. I am advocating an existence that has its reality augmented by not just the tangibility of the physical realm, but the lessons and experience that mediums of entertainment can offer us.

Go play a game.  A proper one. Experience it at its most intense, and fullest. I guarantee you will learn something new about yourself, and how you view the world.

Seriously, what is up with this library?