I need a release

Over the past week...well it hasn't been the best of weeks thats for sure. School's being a bastard and since I attend school 5 days a week now, it feels like my life is centered around the idea of work, teachers and all the other stuff that is associated with school.

But wait! Before you think A Boy and His Blog: Adventures into Blogolonia has turned into a personal reflection site, recording the day to day activities of Jared Araniego and his subsequent moaning/joy and as a result really really long run on sentences that don't seem to go anywhere, no this is still a blog site that talks about games. Bear with me.

So going back to the first paragraph. It hasn't been the greatest of weeks, and more often than not I'd find myself on my bed just staring at the ceiling, thinking of what's happening. I needed relief, and no surprise, I turned on my PS3 and started playing Rock Band. Suddenly all the negative emotion had disappeared, if only for a few runs on 'Maps' on expert. I wasn't frustrated about school about anymore, I was in my own little bubble of concentration, trying to coordinate my hands and legs in a furore of smashing the drums while listening to the wonderful voice of Karen O. School didn't cross my mind, and that was a good thing.

So what am I getting at here? Well for one that games have the power to take you out of your worst moments and immerse you in a world where the only thing that matters is the game (assuming that the game is good). There is some sort of wonderful science behind it, several techniques game developers use to maximize immersion (can be read about in one of the previous issues of Hyper, Eleanor Eiffe has an excellent column called 'Games Wank').

But of course the last paragraph might just apply to me. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that whenever you, the fine reader, find yourself in a hole that makes you mope like the world's gonna end, do something you love to do. More often than not it'll take you out of whatever horrid moment you're in, and just take you into another world. I know it did for me.