Zombies ate my game time!

January is almost over. The Knight household got a small handful of games for Christmas, and I've nearly posted my reviews of all of them. The only ones left to go are Mass Effect (which I bought after Christmas with a gift card received then) and Forza 2 (which was more of a "spur of the moment" purchase; details to come later). The only thing keeping me from posting the reviews is that I like to feel that I've spent "significant time" with them, to make sure I have a good grasp on what the whole game is about. It used to be "completed the game", but then I slacked off to just "completed the main storyline", but this month I figured I needed to back off from even that or I'd never get anything posted.

The problem is, there's been one game that's been nearly monopolizing my game time for over two months now, and that's Left 4 Dead. When we get the kids to bed and I sit down in front of the Xbox for my "me time", it's what I want to play. I know I owe a lot of that to the Geezer Gamers community; because L4D is such a team-based game, and the number of Geezers nearly guarantees that I can find a team to play with, that actually communicates, acts like a team, and plays to have fun. Whether it's helping each other get achievements (I finally have all of them except for the "kill 53k zombies" one, which will just take time — at my current rate, I should get it by April), venturing into matchmaking to take on the timmies, or just playing the game for the sake of playing, I have been loving this game.

It does, unfortunately, mean that other games are getting completely neglected. WALL·E, for instance, only took me two days to finish the main storyline. However, those two days were over a month apart. My friend Solstice has gifted me some Forza cars that I still have yet to see, simply because I haven't even logged on with that game in 2½ weeks. And in Mass Effect, my Commander Shepard is only just now about to embark on his quest as a Spectre, having completed the preliminary "get to know the game" bits.

The thing is, I do want to play other games. When I get an invite to play Halo, I want to accept. But when I'm deciding between suiting up in a metric tonne of UNSC armor, and grabbing a health pack and some ammo and running in a tight squad with three companions for our survival, I pick the zombies every time. Why? Because I know I'll enjoy it. Win or lose, I know I'll actually play and have a good, fun, and exciting time. What more could anyone ask for?

Hmm, maybe more hours in the day that I could devote to gaming.…