In the last week I have finished three games: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed ("The F.U.", reviewed here on LJ), Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (old game that I played to wash away the taste of The F.U. from my mouth), and Mirror's Edge: Hey What Do You Mean There's No Colon In My Title.

On the one hand, finishing these three games in one week isn't that meaningful. I was already halfway through The F.U. and nearly done Mirror's Edge, and Jedi Academy is one I already knew.

Mirror's Edge is definitely a fun and different game. It has limited re-playability, I think, and isn't really that long so I might recommend renting vs buying, but it's DEFINITELY worth playing. It's a great, original game, which is a rare thing to find on consoles these days. For example, I won the achievement for never shooting an enemy (or firing a gun at all, actually). How many first-person games can boast that as a viable route to victory?

As I said above, playing through Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy was a necessity to remind myself how awesome a proper Star Wars game can be. It has interesting and varied level, many of which are delightfully non-linear (yet are still non-frustrating and tightly focused). The RPG-aspect (spending points to acquire force talents) is meaningful and warrants a replay just to try a different combination. Your character's power level is perfect for the genre; with proper skill and tactics you can cut through swarms of Stormtroopers and come out without a scratch, or you can mess up and get blown away by a few lucky hits. One way to compare The F.U. to Jedi Academy is to show how they handle encounters with rancors. In the F.U., you slaughter a score of them -- you just mash your buttons until the Quick Time Event comes up and you then watch your character do an impressive, but relatively non-interactive, set of moves to dispatch them. In Jedi Academy your goal is to merely find a way to survive -- your weapons don't have any hope of significantly impacting the beast, so instead you use the level itself to keep a few steps ahead of the beast until you can find a way to cage it again.

Anyway, to return to my initial point: I think I'm bored/depressed, which is why I'm devouring these games. I went ahead and bought another pair of games last night (which my normal frugality is rioting against) so that I'd have something new to distract myself with. I bought Mass Effect because it was super-cheap and it's something I've been meaning to play for a while. I also bought Call of Duty: World at War, which is the one I have decided to start playing first. I've never played any Call of Duty before, and I think I need to go find one of the older ones because it's the more standard European theater that appeals to me. World at War deals with two fronts: The US-Japan battle and the Russian-German one. It also features some of the most robust multiplayer in the series, allowing you to unlock perks and create custom character "classes" (by mixing-and-matching perks, which might unlock weapons or give you better damage/accuracy with some weapons or give you abilities such as camouflage). I haven't actually played online yet though -- I want to play through the solo campaign first to learn the game.

This article states that sex/masturbation is linked to higher rates of prostate cancer:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090126082343.htm?ref=aggre_pop

In the right-hand column of this page is a link to an article that says that a high ejaculation frequency DECREASES the risk of prostate cancer:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/04/040408090927.htm

So all you guys who are fucking/jerking-off without cumming are in big trouble.