Skip it unless you want to read a midnight report on video games
I just finished Kingdom Hearts II, a video game purchased by Travis and myself about a week ago and was really amazed at how it can manipulate my feelings. I cried during one part rather close to the end, and after it was done with, when I finished the game about 30 minutes ago, I began to feel.... Almost lonely.... Purposeless. Rob once told me that you consider yourself that charachter when you play a video game. That's not Sora on the screen whirling those keyblades it's you. At first I didn't think so, but as I thought about it longer I realized it was true. After 40 hours of playing a single game, following a story with so much intensity that you forget you're in a broken chair in Santa Barbara and not in some unkown world fighting heartless and nobodies, you have put so much of yourself into it that you feel lost when it's over. You love these people. These CG animated charachters. You care so much that if one so much as looks like they're in trouble you become worried. And if one dies.... You cry. It's powerful. It's what makes them both amazing and addicting. We like to feel emotions and a video game can wrench them every direction with blazing speed and brilliant finese. The feeling of completing it then is all the emotions mixed into one. But mostly loneliness. You and your charachter are no longer bonded like they were. It's loosing a friend. A story. A life. It might seem unhealthy or silly or addicting, but whether you like them or dislike them, there's no denying that video games have come a long way to be able to do what they do now.