I'd seen inklings of hardcore gamery appearing in my girlfriend's repertoire. She played through Phantom Hourglass in a weekend. She was thoroughly addicted to Big Bang Mini (a shoot-em-up lite, disguised as a casual game) for awhile. She's also played both US Professor Layton games to 100% completion (minus the downloadables, for some reason).

The above examples could be labeled casual experiences or, at least, very approachable titles.

We recently bought a PS3, primarily for its capability to play Blu-Rays. Lacking a games library but wanting to screw around with this new tech, she began downloading any demo that sounded vaguely interesting. She ended up trying Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2's demo (mostly because it had the word "Ninja" in it).

She played through the demo thoroughly - both characters' demos, the co-op demo, and on both acolyte and normal difficulty. I though she might take a liking to Devil May Cry 4, but she called it, "Too basic, there aren't enough moves to memorize." She tried the first NG Sigma game demo and said it was much easier and didn't end up being as much fun because of that.

What the hell? Out of nowhere she's gone from a casual Wii Sports, Cooking Mama and Sims 3 gamer into a hardcore badass that's not content unless a move list is several pages long? I actually have the option of buying "Real" games for Christmas for her - ones I'd actually like to play as well.

That might be the best Christmas gift I've ever received.