Addictive video games

I've always enjoyed playing video games, going through phases where I'd play one game nearly non-stop for a week to a month and then tire of it.

Among these are PC Games:

1. Neverwinter Nights
2. Elder Scrolls III (Morrowind) not Oblivion
3. Knights of the Old Republic

Game Cube:

1. Star Wars Lego
2. Pikmin (someday I'll remember to return that to Angela)
3. Zelda (any and all)

I'm sensing a trend that sorta shocks me. I never really thought that I like RPG's, and yet my top obsessive games are all that (well, single player versions at least). I do go through phases though - enought that despite not having finished the game, the icons have been removed by oh-so-helpful Windows to the "Unused Desktop Shortcuts" collection. Then I'll decide I want to see if I can get past that stuck point, and I'm playing it again all the time (Morrowind is experiencing that right now).

I can't really explain my latest addiction, and the one that prompted this post though. I dabble in the on-line games occassionally, but I thought they were all pretty much the same. If it wasn't a card game, it was some version of the matching game bejewelled. I didn't think much of that, and now I find this game on yahoo, and I can't stop playing it. I'm totally obsessed with it even though I don't really know what the goal is, other than to turn the backgrounds of the stamps all red. I want to line up 5 in a row, because that seems to get rid of a lot of them. I want to keep playing to see what happens after stage 4. I want to leave New York! I can't seem to get there though. Something weird happens in that stage (or maybe it's the next one)with umbrellas and rainy squares that intrigues me. I want to know if more things happen like that. It's not even a full game! I'm scared that I will want to download it, buy it, and grow more addicted until I eat sleep and dream swapping stamps. I work in a library, so I can see me out in the stacks swapping books on the shelves getting frustrated at why they won't dissolve so the next stack moves down and I can advance to the boss level.

That reminds me - I need to finish that javascript for the search page for my boss tomorrow....