Non-gamers, stop reading now

At the risk of reinforcing the fact that I'm a geek, I got to play a few Playstation 2 games over christmas vacation, and they were pretty damn good.

Amplitude is a music-based game, similar to Dance Dance Revolution, and it's very good. It's pretty easy to learn, you can play with lots of people at once, and it's lots of fun. More importantly, though, this is the first music game I've played that has really made me feel like I'm actually making music, at least to some degree. That's impressive.

Other games to check out in that genre are Frequency (which Amplitude is the sequel to), Rez (which is weird enough that it could be a safe, non-toxic substitute for ecstasy), the critically acclaimed Samba de Amigo, and of course, the venerable Dance Dance Revolution.

In between games of Frequency, we pretended we were Kobe (um, make that Latrell) in NBA Live 2004 from EA Sports, hit the slopes in SSX 3 from EA Sports Big (no, I don't know the difference either), battled Nazis - and incompetent teammates - in Medal of Honor, and, um, pretended we were furry little cartoon characters in Jak 2. All solid games, and if you got a PS2 for Christmas, you can't go wrong with any of them.

In other game-related news, my sister got me Prince of Persia for Christmas, which is supposedly one of the best PC games of the year. I can't wait to play it! That is, as soon as she stops playing it herself so I can install it. :P