It’s sev­en in the morn­ing, and the sun still has­n’t come out yet. I’m com­plete­ly exhaust­ed. I’m going to try to take a six hour nap, and then stay awake until night to put my sys­tem back on track. Nick says he’s going to go to sleep now and wake up at noon. I say, “Hahahhhahah good luck bud­dy”. I’m too tired to go to prac­tice (I’d be scared of falling asleep on the bus ride there), so I’m just going to spend the day fight­ing sleep. Maybe I’ll watch Midway, Ghandi, or Seven Samurai to keep me busy. Maybe I’ll install Sands of Time so I can stay awake. Gaming is the only thing that I can do with­out falling asleep. After all, I’m still awake at this hour.

I snapped and bought Viewtiful Joe. I’ve been wait­ing for a game like this with old school play mechan­ics for a long time. Capcom height­ened the sen­sa­tion, and added in a bunch of great effects and depth. It’s a very dif­fi­cult game, but extreme­ly sat­is­fy­ing. I should real­ly stop spend­ing mon­ey like this, because I’m start­ing to look for things to sell.

I feel most­ly recov­ered today after the gam­ing marathon Nick and I host­ed over the weekend.It start­ed Friday after­noon and end­ed on Monday morn­ing, with a few sleep breaks and food/Family Guy/Mr. Show breaks in between. Trolley and Wheaties lugged their com­put­ers over, includ­ing a spare mon­i­tor for Aaron. Jacques brought his entire set­up by cab, that’s how hard­core he is.

We were able to play same Quake 3 and Serious Sam 2, but the bulk of our time was spent on try­ing to com­plete Diablo 2 with new char­ac­ters. We man­aged to get to the end of Act III, but the week­end ran out. At one point, we found our­selves sur­round­ed at a vital way­point, and start­ed doing drag­ging runs to fight small­er groups of mon­sters.

All in all, the best LAN ever.

Nick has lent me Myst III: Exile, and I have to admit that it’s been a fair­ly enjoy­able expe­ri­ence so far. The depth of the worlds reminds me of the Thief series of games, the way the details of each real­i­ty are cre­at­ed so beau­ti­ful­ly with so much emo­tion. It’s quite absorb­ing, and even though I lack the patience to take my time in cer­tain games nowa­days (games such as GTA: Vice City and Soul Calibur 2 I just fin­ished as fast as pos­si­ble), I find that it’s easy to be patient for a game such as this. The goals are unclear and the sto­ry unfolds through explo­ration, all allow­ing for a very deep gam­ing expe­ri­ence if one has and takes the time. The graph­ics are a bit dat­ed, and the cam­era can be dizzy­ing, but the sound is excel­lent and plays an impor­tant part in pro­gress­ing through the game. Finally solv­ing a puz­zle is the most sat­is­fy­ing part, pos­si­bly more sat­is­fy­ing than any oth­er puz­zle game I’ve played.