Nintendo DS - Obsessions on the Go

WOW! A month without posting! I've been busy with my obsessions! Well, that, and life has been crazy. Quick sum up of what I've been doing with my life:
1) working.... a lot... TT_TT
2) getting ready for Turkey Day
3) visiting Remy for a week
4) Christmas shopping
5) Christmas cookie baking
6) gift wrapping
7) obsessions ^_^

My first obsession was with my Nintendo DS. In November I purchased the DS game "The Sims2: Castaway." I don't know if I just really like controlling a little computerize person, or what, but I always obsess over The Sims. I used to play it all the time when I was in college. Or, more accurately, my family had The Sims on the home computer, so I loved to play it while I was home. I then had to suffer through Sims Withdrawal whenever the new semester started. When I graduated I bought myself a new computer - the one I had through college finally died. However, even though I didn't trust Windows Vista, the saleswoman convinced me that it worked a lot better than XP and that all my computer games would be compatible. I proceeded to purchase the complete package of The Sims plus expansion - released and discounted when The Sims 2 came out. Anyway, I went to play The Sims and it would work only as long as the window was open. As soon as I exited the game I would have to re-install the whole set. I called tech support and their response was that they couldn't guarantee that it would work on Vista since the games were made before Vista was released. And everyone in the house had upgraded to Vista at that point - and no XP could be found anywhere - and so I had gone through MAJOR The Sims withdrawal for about three years.
Anyway, I FINALLY could play The Sims again on my DS! WHOOT! I played my little castaway every waking, free moment. Which didn't leave a lot of time to blog about the obsession. *^_^* The game has great replayability. It was a little annoying that you had to wait for random events to occur in order to progress the scant storyline, but you could craft things in the meantime, as well as improve skills such as fishing and bug catching. I was able to find the boat off the island within a week or two, but I still obsessively played the game. Why? Because of the collections. The most brilliant game element! Create a quick game storyline, but force replayability by having the player take forever to collect everything. THAT is what made me obsessed even more! I HAD to collect and make EVERYTHING.
What finally broke me of that obsession? A new DS game of course! While visiting Remy, we went to a Best Buy to try to finally spend a gift card I got like three Christmases ago. I was going to purchase one of about four different DS ideas that I already had in mind, but Remy talked me into Mario Party DS. Mainly because it had the game download feature. One person owns the game and up to four people can play by wirelessly connecting to the owner's DS. Now we can finally play a game together - he owns almost no multi-player games that we can both play when I'm visiting. ANYWAY. This became a quick favorite pastime for us. We played multiple games and generally had great fun with my new game.
When I got home I started playing the solo games in order to win achievements and play through the storyline in order to unlock things. Just like Castaway, this game centers on collecting/unlocking items/achievements in order to force replayability, and I fell for it! I actually have more than half the stuff unlocked currently (unlocked a new achievement just this morning before even getting out of bed ^_^).
And there you have it... my "valid" excuse as to why I haven't blogged in over a month... I was busy playing with my Nintendo DS. ^_^ I DID have another obsession, however, but I need to get to finishing Christmas candies before midnight, and so the obsession that got me to put down my DS will have to wait until perhaps tomorrow (most likely Sunday or Monday) for me to blog about it...
*I really need to think of a catchy sign-out line.... perhaps I'll obsess about it...*