Futility

I admit it. I am not very good at video games. I used to play them a lot. And I mean a lot. Your Colecovision. Your ROB the Video Robot. But when I look back at my greatest video game accomplishments, probably #1 is finishing Pitfall on the Atari 2600 when I was 11. And I went backwards, which somehow seems less honorable.

I am just now--just now!--playing HalfLife 2 Episode 1, despite the fact that I have owned the game for years. I have a stack of games I started playing a good five years ago and kind of dicked around with for a week or a month before completely forgetting what I was doing.

Every once in a while I'll start up DragonAge: Origins again and it takes me an hour of confusion to remember that I'm supposed to be defeating some dwarf champion in the Battle Arena so I can oust a corrupt dwarf politician. And I have this terrible feeling that I should be able to make potions or something but I can't even remember what button to press to make that happen. And which dwarf politician is the good one? So much pressure.

My daughter plays Animal Crossing with a slavish devotion. I envy her this focus, which I seem to remember having when I spent entire afternoons playing Cosmic Ark in 1983.

*sigh*

At least there's always Katamari Damacy.