The Big Q - #004

After more than 10,000 words worth of essays, a few exams, plenty of coffee, and definitely not enough scotch, our forth addition of The Big Q finally makes its return! While pondering what could be the question for this latest feature, the usual ideas floated through my mind: Hit of the year (miss of the year), what you did last night, what you did last summer... None of these seemed very timely however. Then it occurred to me that the most obvious question could be around what I’d been doing best at the time – procrastination. Yep, it’s probably the greatest contributor to the marks I gain (or lose) at the end of this year, and assuming many of our members are also going through assessment period (or maybe some have already hit up schoolies) then this question is more relevant than ever. Of course, that’s being a little specific, so how about we generalise a bit for this addition of The Big Q:

Be it recent or in the past, which videogame(s) have caused you an unhealthy amount of procrastination in regard to any piece of work, job or task that you’ve had to complete?

BoonMcNougat

Guitar Hero World Tour and Mario Kart Wii were two games that contributed more to my procrastinating than any other. Having them in my room, people would often come by just to play them, and I could not help but join in. One night I deliberately handed in an assignment late just to muck around on World Tour with friends. Good times! In class I, like many others, would blow lessons away by playing flash games such as Heli Attack 2, Fishy, and the flash version of Portal. It was a sad day when the teachers learnt of the hidden task bar and alt+tab. Sad times!

Mercury Adept

Pokémon Diamond. I remember seeing this game on the shelf and thinking, "Could I really get into Pokémon again? I used to enjoy it so much when I was younger..." By the time I was finished with this thought I was already handing my EFTPOS card over the counter. Buying mainly for nostalgic reasoning, I figured I'd have a bash at it, and play it casually, and holy crap that plan didn't do too well.

Over the next couple of weeks I was pumping hours and hours in a day, despite the fact that I was reaching my end of term, climactic TAFE assessment dump. I'd be at TAFE, and people would ask, "How are you going with your assessments?" to which I would respond with, "Pft, I don't know. I've been playing Pokémon." While I was quite comfortable in that fact, a few people had a giggle. "We'll see who's laughing once I catch that Regigigas..." I thought to myself as I leered at them like a wild Ratata. Or a Ratata trained to use Leer. I'm pretty sure they can use it off the bat.

Speaking of bats, what’s the deal with Golbat having to evolve into Crobat by being happy? Were there no happy Golbats in the first couple of generations of Pokémon? It's a question that I ponder every night. All those unhappy Golbats. What were trainers doing to them? I have to find out.
This year I casually played Final Fantasy Tactics A2 for the first half of the year, didn't touch the PS3, poured a few hours into Pikmin 2, and my usual diet of Brawl, but for the most part it was pretty game free.

Then that fateful weekend where Scribblenauts, Mario & Luigi 3 and Pokémon Heart Gold all released happened, I ploughed through M&L, just finished Heart Gold's improved Elite Four this morning actually, got into a bunch of other DS games, been enjoying New Super Mario Bros. Wii too, and actually played a PC game for the first time in yonks, I'm fairly addicted to Torchlight. In general I've been playing a lot games since August and it’s been good. I guess I just needed a bit of downtime.

Dave

In the past, I never really procrastinated at all (apart from when it came to chores) and I was a reasonably good student. I had my Pokémon fix every couple of nights with Red, Gold and then Sapphire, but I was never hooked on them enough to stop me from starting a Geography assignment that wasn't due for another two months. On the odd weekend that I caught up with some friends, we'd play Smash Bros, Mario Kart, or *insert multiplayer game here*, but we were always more into playing sport or catching a movie. Then Wi-Fi came along...

Pokémon Pearl came out in June 2007, right? Now look at my "join date" on A-N. Coincidence?
Much like Merc, I saw the game coming out and I was unsure of whether I could get back into it but, after seeing some footage of the game (and how it included online play), I decided to buy the game on launch. Before I knew it, I was frequenting A-N to find out the latest news about any games that were coming out. I bought a Wii and spent countless hours playing online in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii. These games (+ Pokémon) were pretty addictive as they were. Add online play and the fun-factor is boosted over 9000. I just wanted to keep playing and, as a result, my assignments were left unfinished.

DarthHomer

Rittai Picross for me. Not too long after starting it, I made a promise to myself to 100% finish it, no matter what, by the end of 2009. That involves many sessions on Melbourne's trains, buggering off important jobs and need-to-be-done assignments, many late nights and many mornings where I'd do nothing but lie in bed hoping to solve a puzzle.

I'm nearly done with it too.

Infernal Monkey

My TAFE course may have well been a Certificate III in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. That game just completely took over. "Gee, I've got this assignment to do, it's due tomorrow, I'd better get star-I'M DICKING AROUND A VIRTUAL CITY ON A MOTORBIKE WHILE LISTENING TO TWISTED SISTER".

More recently, Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection is responsible for so much procrastination. So... much. In fact, I tried to write a review of it for Aussie-Nintendo once, but it never happened. It never happened because I couldn't stop playing it. Someone send help, please.

Jema

Tetris. Need I say more?

It must have been about 6 months ago, every spare second was spent playing game after game of Tetris DS. It's like some sort of sick form of mind control designed by the Russians to make the Western world less productive.

Holy crap, I think I just discovered a Cold War conspiracy.

Quote:

TSPhoenix responds: I often suspect that the development of StarCraft 2 is funded by enemies of Korea to ensure the whole country is too busy trying to defend a high-yield expansion and not their country making an invasion a cinch.

Ganon

There's no doubt that the end of this semester was full of some serious gaming procrastination, Wi-Fi Brawl was just so much more fun than writing about society and identity representations in Australian films! Brawl was only ever meant to be a "quick break" from the many thousands of words I had to write, but it nearly always turned into an hour or two of some great battles! And if that got boring, Metal Gear Online quickly filled the void (which I'm actually playing a fair bit of at the moment). Stealth action multiplayer is so very fun, and Metal Gear Online has some of the best maps ever created for a variety playing styles. With so much to learn and explore, I was never short of a few extra hours of procrastination.