split/screen co-op

That’s a question I’ve often asked myself. How much time should I play in order to be able to do everything I’ve planned for the day? Should I have a schedule?

It was easy spending more time with a game when I was studying, but now I have to work every day and must also get my sleep, so it has gotten more complicated.

Here are five golden rules for playing responsibly (I’ve come up with those and know that when I stick to them, I’ll manage to do everything without getting too tired).

Rule No 1.

Never play in the evening on working days except Friday.

Rule No 2.

Never play more than 5 hours straight.

Rule No 3.

Never start playing a new level if you are already too sleepy.

Rule No 4.

Do not start a new game on Sundays, because then you will most probably break rule No 1.

Rule No 5.

Do not play more than 2 games at the same time (I mean playing one and then switching to the other).

We’re at the Apple Store at Covent Garden in London with five or so more hours before our flight back home, picking up some free wifi which I intend to use and write up a quick post about something I’ve been thinking about lately. Hot on the heels of a CDProjekt presentation of The Witcher 2 during the Eurogamer Expo 2010, I was thinking about the first game in the series and its ambiguous morality system where choices were rarely clearcut good or bad, and about how it left me completely unimpressed.

There was one moment in the game that filled me with genuine emotion and it had nothing to do with moral choices. I needed to collect some dog lard for a quest but I couldn’t find any in the shops, so I resorted to bludgeoning  random stray dogs on the streets. I felt much more uncomfortable going over to an unsuspecting mutt and breaking its back for lard (and glory, eventually), than doing all the supposedly hard moral choices the game presents.

The Witcher 2 looks like a really good game but I hope that when it comes out I’ll be able to care more about the differences between its 16 endings than about killing friendly animals in its impressively large world.

It is not easy finding good games for Nintendo DS on one hand and on the other it is not easy to find good games at low prices.

Personally, I think DS games are overpriced because they are mostly too short. I mean come on — paying 30 pounds for a shortened version of an adventure game is just nuts. An adventure game about Sherlock Holmes for DS costs nearly 40 pounds and the Agatha Christie’s ABC Murders was 20 pounds. But the most ridiculous prices had games like Puzzle Quest or The Amazing Adventures. The first one is a simple puzzle game and the second is a hidden object game. Normally games like that for the PC cost around 7 to 10 pounds. For the DS the prices stand around 20 to 25 pounds. It’s madness!

I’m starting to think, I should have invested in a Wii and not a DS. Generally I’m quite disappointed of the portable consoles we have at home, not because of their functionality but because there are too few games I actually enjoy playing on them.

We got just three DS games (pre-owned or on sale) — Hotel Dusk, Scribblenauts and Metroid Prime. I’ve tried out Scribblenauts last night and so far am satisfied with it. Hope that Metroid will not disappoint as well.

Still, I am pissed that Nintendo would sell DS games at the prices of games for the big consoles. It’s nonsense.