Xbox

I recently bought an xBox. it's a bit of a guilty pleasure, on all sorts of levels. First of all, it's a high-priced item in a down economy. It's another gadget that will keep me home alone. It's a generally very boy kind of toy, no matter how many gamer girls and girl gamers and women gamers and whatever are out there.

All that being said, I love it. I hate precisely because it is so fun to use that I could easily sit on the couch xboxing twelve or more hours a day.

To date, I've played the games that came with it, Halo 3 and Fable 2. Halo is a straightforward shooter: you're some sort of cyborg space marine shooting an invading alien army. The story is a mix of sentimental techno-mysticism common in modern science fiction, but the game play is fantastic - the AI is cunning, the levels are well-designed, and it's just a gorgeous game. Fable is intriguing in different ways. It's like playing a fairy tale. You start off as a little girl (or boy, if you choose) in a town, complete some simple quests to get money, buy a magical device, and are summoned to the local ruler's castle, where he promptly kills your sister and attempts to kill you in a scene straight out of Charlie's Angels.

It's also a great DVD player, and the online connectivity is something I've only begun to explore.