This summer, I spent my vacation trying out some different video games with RavenTresses for a bit of excitement and as an escape from the dull, everyday routine of going to work, being yelled at by Geea, almost getting fired, and coming home to buy shiny things for my girlfriend. While we had a great time and whatnot, we were glad to get back home to There because I know how much all five of my loyal readers missed my column.

The first place we spent time in is called Battlefield 2. This is a sequel to the game Battlefield 1942, which simulated battle during World War II. If you're like me, you thought that this new game followed the same naming convention and you expected some really intense combat during the year 2 A.D., but this is more of a modern warfare game. A warning to all of you still trying to run games on your sizzling fast 486s... you will need no less than a supercomputer to run this. In anticipation of this game, I bought a very powerful new computer which dims the lights in my entire city when I turn it on.

In summary, you run around with a weapon of some sort and run over people with HUMVEEs while your team tries to capture the flag. Meanwhile, Voice-Over-IP functionality immerses you in a realistic battlefield environment as you receive verbal orders from your 12-year-old squad leader over the internet. Nothing makes war seem more real when you’re fighting alongside a bunch of pre-pubescent boys with their awkward, breaking voices barking orders and giving status reports with their mothers yelling at them in the background while explosions and whizzing bullets surround you.

We weren’t really any good at shooting other people, but our There experiences did grant us somewhat of an advantage in running over people in dune buggies and HUMVEEs. The enemy soldiers -- and in RavenTresses’ non-discriminating case, friendly soldiers -- go flying just like a newbie avatar with no forcefield on when struck by a buggy! And just when you think you’re about to capture a flag for your team, the enemy commander can randomly rain down artillery shells down upon you for extra-frustrating goodness!

If you stink at running around like a retard, arms all flailing around, firing wildly at anything at moves, you can get into a tank and drive around into things until your tank explodes. And if you stink at that, you can take to the air in a helicopter or jet aircraft and try crashing them into the poor, helpless sods running around on the ground. You can also choose different classes of soldier, like medics and engineers and snipers. My favorite is the special operations soldier, because I can stick explosives onto RavenTresses’ jeep and send her off as an unknowing suicide bomber. RavenTresses’ favorite soldier type is whichever one doesn’t have to crawl around on the ground and get all dirty and smelly. She likes to run around with the knife, chasing me and yelling, "Ima cut you!" even though I'm on her team. On a related note, the longest we have ever gone before being kicked out of a multiplayer server is like four minutes.

The other place we spent our vacation was in a game called Guild Wars. This is just like Dungeons and Dragons, but without all the weird 17-sided dice and the lack of showering for three days in your mother’s basement with your geek friends. You can choose two job types and get armor, weapons, and skills, and then venture out with a party to complete different quests and missions while monsters chase you around and severely beat you just like my dad did when I was a child and he asked me to go get his belt. It never really occurred to me that if I didn’t retrieve his belt and hand it to him, he couldn’t whoop me with it... but I was just a smelly little kid and back then all I knew about was how much a Lego hurt when you stepped on one, how to transform Optimus Prime from truck form into robot form and back, and what time I had to be outside for the school bus so it wouldn't leave me and my Rainbow Brite lunchbox behind.

My main character is a ranger, because I like to hide behind the women and fire my arrows from relative safety. Additionally, being far away from the danger helps me run like a sissy when things turn sour because I already have a head start on everyone else. RavenTresses plays a warrior, mostly because no matter what character type she plays, she likes to wade into the middle of everyone and whoop them. This tactic of hers didn't turn out so well on her initial character, which was a healing monk, so we helpfully suggested she try something that involved wearing a little bit more than cloth.

I don't want to spoil too much of the storyline for all y'all, but from what I understand, there's these monsters that are attacking and then they blow up your home, so you get all angry and like two years later you take your party of four people to take on their entire army, and you travel the entire world to different places and get wrapped up into all sorts of drama that involves huge magical horns that don't work, and some sort of scepter that gets passed around more times than a pack of cigarettes in prison. Also, a never-ending legion of random scorpions and crayfish and lobsters are trying to stop you from completing your world conquest or what-have-you.

The cool thing about Guild Wars is that if you don't want to group up with all the 12-year-olds (not that there's anything wrong with 12-year-olds -- it's just a little awkward when you can't finish a mission because your big, burly, heroic warrior has to go because his mommy says its past his bedtime and he'll be grounded if he doesn't get off the computer right now), you can add computer-controlled henchmen to your party to fill in the gaps. Unfortunately, the programmers of Guild Wars have a sense of humor and made the most critical henchman of all -- the healer -- act all half-retarded and suicidal. The content is all instanced, which means that you have the entire quest or mission area to yourself and you don't have to worry about other people killing your monsters, taking your treasure, or training hordes of monsters all over you while you're sitting AFK, which incidentally was 90% of the fun behind Everquest.