My feelings about video games have taken a beating over the years. When I was younger and had no scope of the passage of time I was thrilled to waste my life away on fantasy. I percieved early on that I wasn't endowed with any inclination toward natural ability. so my warriors heart could only fine release through fantasy. The older I get the more unsatisfying it is and the more I hate myself for bothering with it. Afterall my body is just degrading sitting suelessly about, not that movement would do any good considering my shitty gentics have made it so I can't develop one iota of coordination or streangth no matter how rigoriously I train in complete futility. At best I can admit there is value to strategy and cooridnation. I can apreciate the mental challange, if I can even force myself to care enough to actually put forth the efoort and time to deal with failure and improve my skill. It's a problem to feed any gaming habit, because funding is scarce and I feel more and more selfish spending any on games. I had a long argument with myself about the moral implications of bootlegging and have decided against it, so there is no option for me. More and more gaming becomes a dying habit. It doesn't help that the industry is poisoned with banality. Unimaginative industy shit made to fool the unaware. even decent games carry no challange any longer. While games used to take skill, developers are settling for length and scope rather then quality. At best games can be cheap and broken in what is called 'dificult' for games these days. For an example devil may cry is 'hard'. Really it's just cheap and requires you to practice until you learn how to navigate patterns. It can't holda  candle to battletoads..which did similiar things now that I think on it. Maybe I'm just old enough to see that an ai can't offer a true challange. I sometimes have faith in games as a medium of storytelling. But good stories are few among games. I can only remember Shenmue, Legacy of Kain, and Final Fanatsy 6 and 10 as examples of great storytelling among games. I wonder sometimes what will amuse me now, and then I feel self loathing for wanting to be amused when I should be doing something better with my time.