I’ve got a pot of chocolate-covered coffee beans at the moment, which is always a risk, because it’s too easy to munch them by the mouthful like the tasty crunchy chocolatey morsels they are, ignoring the bouncebounce jumpy fidgetpills they also are.
Hopefully I will get some sleep tonight but at the moment I’m as twitchy as a gazelle in a wildlife documentary.
I’ve been hobbling around like a geriatric today after my long sesh on Wii sports. Sad to say, I don’t suppose I’ve burnt many calories – just strained a bunch of muscles that normally get to lie around slothlike. Perhaps that should be hang around slothlike. Anyway, I played The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess instead, the latest installment in what is probably the greatest video game series of all time.
I’ve only played three or four hours so far, so I can’t offer a final conclusion as to its place in the pantheon, but here’s a good sign: normally in these games the plot exposition is a tiresome interruption when you really want to get on with solving puzzles and killing monsers, but I found the story so engaging in this that I was almost sorry to get to the first dungeon. It feels like being in a real narrative, a novel or a film. Even if it doesn’t manage to sustain that feeling for the whole game, it’s made an impressive start.
I’m stuck at the moment. Not surprisingly, since the basic dynamic of video games is that you are stuck most of the time. If I wasn’t stuck I’d no doubt still be playing, tiredness be damned. Hopefully a night’s sleep will help me see how to get past the current impasse.
I got my Nintendo Wii today. For those who don’t follow these things, the distinctive feature of the Wii is that it has a motion-sensitive remote controller. So for example, it comes with a game called Wii Sports, and to hit the tennis ball you swing the controller like a racket; similarly with baseball, golf and bowling.
It’s actually quite physical. After a long session of bowling and baseball my shoulder was so tired I could hardly lift my pint of ginger beer shandy. Anyone who’s done some gaming is used to getting a bit of thumb-strain, but this is the first game that could give you tennis elbow. Amusingly, there are lots of in-game warnings about making sure you’re not standing too near anything or anyone fragile, in case you hit them over the head while going for a big forehand.