1.  I, along with Lady Aravan, spent the weekend playing Mass Effect.  When some people say that, they mean they spent several hours doing something.  What I mean is, we got home from work on Friday night and started playing, played until 2 am, got up Saturday and played from noon until 6:30 am, got up Sunday and played from noon til 11:30.  I finished my second full run-through, including at one point going back 6 hours to an old saved game since I screwed something trivial up.  Lady Aravan finished the game for the first time, threw in Mass Effect 2, and started playing until she realized that there was a bonus for getting level 50 in ME1 in the second game.  So she reloaded a saved game and spent a good number of hours finishing nearly every quest in the game (she missed 1 that I am aware of, and couldn’t get it without going even further back) as well as finding pretty much every debris field and resource on every landable planet.  When she finished the game, she was 50 and I was in awe, since even though I went back 6 hours and did the same shit another time through, I don’t have the fortitude to do what she did.  Although I have to admit it bothers me that I’m 48.  Moral: we like games.

2.  I love being me, and I love my wife.  I enjoyed the weekend.

3.  The cut-scenes, and gameplay for that matter, in ME2 are absolutely stunning visually, as they are in the first game.  Little touches, like the slight smile Shepard gives in the end scene as he/she emerges from the wreckage, make it seem that much more lifelike.  I wonder why more movies, actual films, aren’t made in that style, or maybe they are and I just haven’t seen one or heard of one.

4.  Mass Effect and Zombieland both cost me 20 bucks (helps to have a friend to borrow a copy from).  I enjoyed them both very much.  One lasted about 2 hours.  The other lasted, what, 60 so far?  And I’m not done.  ME2 was 60 bucks, but even then a 10:1 better ratio of dollars to time spent is pretty amazing.

5.  That said, I may need to buy anther copy, so I can play it before Lady Aravan is done.