It was a lovely night in here in LA. I was about to go to bed, as I had to wake up early to get to my QA job the next day. I walked out to say goodnight to my roommates, who just happened to be having a lot of fun playing the incredibly popular Guitar Hero II.

"You want to play?" one of my roommates asked. I refused at first, but he persisted.

"Maybe just one song," I said.

I slung the small plastic guitar around my shoulders and instantly felt cooler. I selected a moderately easy song and began to play. I could probably count the number of times I’d played that game on one hand, but something about this night was different. I quickly got the hang of the controls and the song began to sound like it should. My roommates cheered me on. The percentage of notes I hit was consistently improving as one song turned into two, then three, then more. I finally pulled myself away and I went to bed, excited from newfound ability to 'play guitar'.

I had never been strongly attracted to Guitar Hero before. My sister had it and would play it in our house, so I had complete access to the game. I like rhythm games, but this one was pretty loud and hurt my fingers. However, that night made me realize that Guitar Hero can be addicting. You can have literally no knowledge of music and suddenly you can "play" a song. The game is structured so that you feel like you can play just as well as the real rock stars without actually doing all the work.

In a way, Guitar Hero feeds off your ego. Simply by having the word 'hero' in the title, it implies that you have done something great and possibly extraordinary. Within a few hours, you can develop the necessary skills to play harder and harder songs in the game, catapulting you to star status in an incredibly small amount of time.

I spent seven years of my life as a dedicated classical musician. I practiced one to two hours almost every day. Practicing is not at all glamorous. Music requires some of the most intense dedication of any career. With an instrument like the flute, taking just one day off can mean a huge difference in tone for the next one or two days. In some ways, Guitar Hero is almost a cheaters’ method of playing music; it feeds off nearly instant gratification and the satisfaction of playing beloved tunes. In real music, you can play songs you know and love, but it takes a lot of hard work to get there.

While I hesitate to say that I disapprove of Guitar Hero II, I find it hard to love a game that ignores the dedication it takes to become a great musician. I think this game can be a lot of fun, as long as people remember the difference between pressing buttons on a controller and genuinely playing music.  

Playing games all day and getting paid for it seems like a dream come true. Working in video game quality assurance, however, is a different matter. While my QA summer job means that I am testing games all day on the Wii, Xbox 360, or PS2, it is not the dream many would imagine. I play one game almost exclusively during my 40-hour week.

While I am not allowed to reveal details about the title I test, I can admit that it can be beaten almost twice in one day. I do enjoy this game, but continually beating it can take some of the fun out of it. Fortunately, I was placed on this title earlier in the testing process so I have been able to watch it improve. One of the most rewarding parts of my job is reporting a bug and seeing it get fixed. In a small way, I can have a direct impact on making the game better.

One of the strangest things about testing is how you can literally do the same thing every day. When I come home, I can list the same accomplishments (beating the game, collecting all the special items, etc.). What separates the days from each other are the experiences that are generated from gameplay, most prominent in multiplayer testing. Even if I find a seemingly fantastic bug one day, I find that nothing compares to the human element in multiplayer testing.

The addition of only one person can make all the difference. The other player can reveal a new play style, making me more aware of the ingrained habits that limit my ability to test the game for the many different types of players who will play the game. It took me over a month before I was shown a small area that I had never known existed. What was common to the other player was a new discovery to me in the game I thought I knew like the back of my own hand.

After being hired as a tester, I began to fear that this job would forever take the fun away from games for me. I once heard an experienced tester explaining how he had crashed nearly every commercial game he had ever played, including Guitar Hero. While my experience as a tester would only last three months, I still feared that I would become bitter toward games, which are inevitably flawed. Like humans, games are never perfect, and the constant pressure of budgets means that many games are released before they are fully ready.

Now that I have spent a few weeks as a tester, I am happy to find that I still love games. Unfortunately, my desire to play console games has diminished greatly, due to my desire to save the strain on my hands and avoid the monotony of doing something that might feel like my job. I get paid to play parts over and over even if they’re frustrating, and I have no desire to experience similar frustrations at home with other games without getting compensated. Fortunately, my DS still feels like an entirely different experience (as it is a portable console) and I have found that I am still excited to play it once in a while. I only hope that I will still feel that way after several more weeks of testing.  

I’ve been playing Puzzle Quest a lot before work lately. There’s something relaxing about immersing yourself in a puzzle for a few minutes before facing the day. I don’t get very far at a time, but the consistent puzzle solving has become a nice habit.

I changed my strategy a lot since fighting Dugog the first time. Certain special puzzles, like capture puzzles and spell puzzles allow me to see the board in a different way. The “very hard” difficulty spells require many matches, forcing you to be diligent about creating 4 of a Kinds whenever possible. AI enemies like Dugog may seem ridiculously lucky, but I seem to have gotten more “lucky” lately. I'm going to guess that it's less about luck and more about training yourself to see moves ahead of time.

So just how much of each Puzzle Quest puzzle is based chance as opposed to skill? I don’t think it’s the same answer for every puzzle. For example, all the capture puzzles I have encountered so far have all pieces visible on the screen from the start. No pieces fall into the board, so all is known in the beginning. Winning those puzzles is almost purely a matter of skill.

Spell puzzles and normal battle puzzles seem to be a complicated mix of chance and skill. Spell puzzles have no opponent, so you control every move. While you may not be able to see the pieces that will continue to fall into the board, you usually have many options in the beginning. For example, you could choose to match the first set of three you see or you could search carefully for any possible 4 of a Kinds. Finding more matching pieces in a row can significantly speed the win, reducing the chance of having no moves left and losing.

Finally, the normal battle puzzles seem to be the puzzle type most largely determined by chance. Without the ability to control enemies’ actions, you have little influence over the board you are given each turn. Also, battle puzzles have a large number of spells that can be applied. With a spell like Stun, you can set up a move one turn in advance. The enemies can also resist spells like Stun, creating another factor that you can’t predict.

Puzzle Quest is still holding my interest weeks after I began playing it. I think the chance element plays a large part in this addiction, as sudden victories can occur when your character is hanging on by a thread. The chance can make you feel like it was your clever playing that got you ahead when it may have just been blind luck. Whether or not my skill has kept me alive in Puzzle Quest, I like to think that I am slowly improving my strategy and becoming a great knight.  

For several months, one of my coworkers has insisted that I need to play Ratchet and Clank. I put it on my game rental queue and forgot about it until recently. I was able to borrow it from a friend and finally began the famous platformer.

As a fan of the Spyro the Dragon games, I was hoping that Ratchet and Clank would deliver the same solid gameplay. Fortunately, I was right. The game was clever and fun, filled with characters that were quirky without being too annoying. Unlike Spyro, which seemed geared toward a younger audience, Ratchet and Clank was a little more gritty. Enemies exploded and you got to shoot with a gun. It felt more like a PG movie rather than a G movie.

I breezed through the first few levels. There was not quite enough story to compel me to play past two hours at first, but that two hours was a lot of fun. I didn’t seem to have too much trouble with the jumps (a common trouble spot for me) or locating necessary items. Ratchet can glide like Spyro, helping the game to feel familiar simply through its mechanics.

I had a lot of fun playing Ratchet and Clank today. Compared to games like Jak and Daxter, where the voices grew annoying and the game had some ridiculously hard required tasks, this game felt very well-balanced. Diligence in collecting the currency around levels would help you get the best weapons. It felt rewarding in all the right ways.  

There are few points in a game like Puzzle Quest where you get so frustrated that you stop playing. My experience fighting Dugog was one such occurrence where I took a break from playing. I had to regroup and develop a strategy.

Before Dugog, I had been following the main storyline and paying little attention to the additional side quests and other opportunities to boost my character. I hadn’t developed my citadel, which allows you to learn spells from captured enemies. Certain spells, such as Regeneration, can become invaluable. It allowed me to cure myself with one simple spell that didn’t change the board at all (unlike the previously earned cure spell).

Initially, Dugog seemed unbeatable. The AI seemed to “favor” him, allowing him to get two or three “4 of a Kind” matches as I watched in distress. Some of my friends shared my frustration – the AI enemies did seem unusually lucky.

However, I soon realized that I could gain a much greater advantage by a perfectly honest method – leveling up. At its heart, Puzzle Quest is largely an RPG, so it is only natural that increasing your characters’ abilities is essential to moving ahead. I stopped ignoring the side quests and soon had a much stronger knight. When there were no more side quests to complete, I decided it was time for a rematch.

It still took me a few tries to beat Dugog, but I was much closer to winning each time. Considering the fact that Dugog was the first major boss, it should come as no surprise that he proved a challenge. I was glad that Dugog was difficult, because he taught me to explore the game and enjoy the journey.  

I finally decided that it was time to stop avoiding Chocobo Tales because of one silly race. After all, I was close to the end and I couldn’t let it hold me back. I had really enjoyed the rest of the game and wasn’t ready to give up yet.

I began the race and found myself much calmer. While I didn’t win the first time, I was consistently improving and beat it shortly. Without my emotions running high, my hand was much steadier and it made all the difference.

While the game had a little twist at the end that kept it going a little longer than I expected, it only took me a couple of hours to beat the entire game. The final battle was a mini-game much like hockey. True to the rest of the game, nothing was too difficult after that one race that held me back.

As the credits rolled, I was surprised by their length. Instead of normal scrolling credits, each name or names appeared separately with a screen for each person’s title. I didn’t want to touch the screen for fear of missing some “reward” movie for sitting through the credits. However, I touched the screen by accident once and was surprised to see a letter turn a color and make a noise. After a few screens, I figured out that, if I touched all the letter O’s, the whole credit would turn rainbow colors and I would hear a happy chocobo “KWEH!”

When the credits finally ended, I saw a score. The credits themselves were one last mini-game. I was impressed by the creativity in using the credits as something more than another movie to sit through. My final play time was eight hours and 25 minutes.

Looking back, I really did enjoy Chocobo Tales. Aside from the two mini-games where I was temporarily stuck, I had relatively few problems. The card battles, which had a large chance element, were often very close. I almost always won, but the opponents seemed well-matched to my level and created a challenge. I hope that I will soon be able to try out the multiplayer mode and play it in a new way.  

My family was in town this weekend, as my sister was graduating. They love to ask me questions, especially about the game industry. I have a lot of support from them for my chosen profession, but it is interesting to see how my perceptions have been shaped from a very different society.

I grew up in a time when multitasking was incredibly common, if not required. Often when I play games, I do something else at the same time, such as reading a strategy guide, talking to my sister, or even talking on the phone. I always try to show respect towards the people I am talking to when multitasking, and never attempt to play when someone is having a serious conversation with me.

It did not seem unusual to me to bring my DS to the graduation ceremony. I had to be at school at seven in the morning, a full two hours before the ceremony began. I was tired and cranky. I had had little time to play games in the past few days and my family wasn’t talking to me very much. So I pulled out my DS and began playing Puzzle Quest with the sound off.

Puzzle Quest is the type of game that doesn’t require my full attention every second. I find it relaxing to work through a puzzle while doing something else, like talking to people. Also, I have no time limit for my turns in the game, allowing me to respond to the outside world when I want. I thought it wouldn’t be a problem to play, as I felt I would be a more attentive listener later if I had a little time then to enjoy my game.

Unfortunately, playing my DS caused a fuss. Suddenly I became the center of attention, and all my relatives wanted to talk. I would listen and respond like a normal participant in any conversation, but my family kept teasing me about playing games. “We’ll have to take it away from you,” they joked, even though the half-hour marching of the graduates was still a good 20 minutes away.

I grew frustrated with the lack of acceptance for my game at that particular moment and put it away after only 15 minutes. I began to wonder why I was so frustrated. If my family supported my interest in games, why were they offended that I would take a few minutes to play around them?

I soon realized that my relatives weren’t as familiar with the idea of multitasking. While multitasking has become a necessity for me, the idea that I could play a game and still pay attention to my family was foreign to them. They saw me as actively ignoring them and rightfully felt upset. I realized it was probably a mistake to play in front of them.

However, my sister’s boyfriend understood how I felt. He also has Puzzle Quest, but his version is for the PSP. At one point, we left my sister’s graduation party for a few minutes to see if we could play against each other. Unfortunately, the PSP and the DS are not compatible for wireless multiplayer functions. I had no idea the PSP version was set up so differently but, with only one screen and no stylus, it makes sense that it would look like another game.

I did find some time to play Puzzle Quest later, but it was mainly on my own. People like my sister’s boyfriend understand the desire to play, even in the company of others. Yet many people, like my relatives, have not been around games long enough to see how much they have become a part of our culture and a major component of my life. I hope that someday, in the near future, playing games in public will become mainstream and people will understand the how games can help calm and exercise the mind.