There’s only one industry where the producers would brag without conscience about the addictiveness of their product: games. Tobacco conceded the sole position in the nineties. We brag about how Peggle Nights is the most addictive Peggle yet, or some such nonsense. Can you imagine: “Arby’s new curly fries are the most addictive yet! You won’t be able to stop eating them even if you try!” Wouldn’t work. I bring this up because on Saturday, I played King’s Bounty for ten hours.

Ten hours. On a beautiful Saturday.

In Oblivion, one of my favorite RPGs of all time, I managed to avoid the distraction of “Oh what’s that thing? What’s this over here? Hey, what’s that?” In King’s Bounty, I have no such luck. Rewards are strewn over the game map like a dragon’s lair exploded and left gems and money sitting all over the landscape and cities with new and interesting units are stone’s throws from each other.

I really didn’t like the game at first. It was super slow and contrived. Then in the graphics submenu, I found that you could turn up the animation speeds. I maxed that sucker out and never turned back. Now the call of “Ok, let’s just see what’s over that hill” is irresistible. It’s still a big heaping mound of cliche, but whatever. Sometimes you need a little high fantasy, I guess.

It’s not like the game is even that innovative in gameplay, either. It has the basest kind of “Ooh, Piece of Candy” system to string you along. But damn if I’m not a sucker for it.

Dead Space, what?

In other news: Catcus has a new Mondo game coming out. Anything that isn’t a shmup from him I eat up. It’ll have to wait until after King’s Bounty though.

Also: I won’t be playing Fallout 3 (!) or Little Big Planet on Tuesday as it is my two-year anniversary with my girlfriend. Damn me meeting a wonderful girl during release season!

I’m going to have to start a series of major failures on espn.com’s homepage. For those who missed the first entry, a link has been provided.

For help on this sensitive subject, I present the authority on the issue.

Posterous is this new web service that lets me post via email simultaneously to any combination of blog, Twitter, Posterous Site, Flickr, Toaster, etc., I’m trying it out in order to post more images from my camera phone. This picture is from my trip back to western Pennsylvania last month. I was tooling around on some trails and back roads on my parent’s ATV. Beautiful country.

Posted by email from Zack’s Posterous

I’m ninety minutes into Dead Space and wondering how much it will continue to rip off Bioshock. To me, it isn’t a problem - Bioshock was excellent. And I don’t remember Bioshock having zero gravity sections, so bonus to the Ishimura there. But:

• Game intro has player wistfully looking at photo (in this case video) or object of longing? Check.
• Game starts off with player visiting unknown creepy place? Check.
• Method of escape destroyed? Check.
• Stations to upgrade weapons and buy ammo? Check.
• Second stage is a hospital? Check.
• Telekinesis power? Check.

It’s not like Bioshock pioneered any of these things, so I’m not calling thievery. My point is that if you liked Bioshock, you will likely find at the least the first two stages of Dead Space very familiar. I’ve got surround sound for the first time and I’m very much digging it. More info as I get farther.

1. Jehovah’s Witnesses are like spammers in many ways.
2. I bought Dead Space today but didn’t play it at all as the tee vee was occupado when I wanted to use it. So I tried the King’s Bounty demo on my PC instead. It suffers from what I call book-in-hand syndrome. It’s where the battle animations take so long that the only way to play it is with book-in-hand. My title of choice is China Mieville’s The Scar. A damn fine writer he. Maybe the full version has a way to speed it up?

   It is otherwise an extremely enjoyable Might and Magic clone that itself is a remake of a game that Might and Magic was a clone of? I think? I got to fight a guy named “Beardless Joe” who clearly had a beard and told a town eldar worried about a missing miller that he should be worrying about his carbs. That’s pretty enjoyable right there without overextending itself as a comedy game like the Penny Arcade game does. I just may pick up the full version.

3. I also watched the presidential debate this evening. We are so incredibly fucked.