For those of you who don't already know, I spent the majority of last week in a hospital bed. Something about internal bleeding and intestinal hemorrhaging ... honestly, I wasn't paying much attention. It did, however, give me a chance to reflect on my life, and in my state of near-delirious contemplation, I learned a few things. Today, I would like to share them with you:

• 1) Nurses do not appreciate patients who ask for "hits" of their medication, or refer to it as "Mr. Brownstone".
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• 2) If you ever get sick, having Zach Braff in your Blackberry will not help you in any way. How I hate Zach Braff!
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• 3) What the modern world sees as "emo", patients in a hospital see as "the angel of death come to offer them a final, sweet embrace".
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• 4) I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue ...
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• 5) The only socially acceptable time to wet yourself is when you have the plausible deniability of a head full of dilaudid and at least two tubes jammed in your torso.
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• 6) As the elderly approach death, they do not become kinder, nor do they accept their fate. They will kick you in the neck if you get in their way, and if you fall asleep too near to them, they will drain your precious lifeblood to sustain their newfound lich-ian existence.
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• 7) Paris Hilton may be going to jail, but somehow, I just don't care.
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• 8) Hospital chaplains are a lot like regular priests, only instead of molesting children, they spend their days consoling the dying and offering support to those going through the worst imaginable pain. Actually, they're way better than regular priests!

Everyone who wasn't dying this week played video games. What eventful lives they lead ... 

Orcist:
This week, I've been playing 007 and Super Smash Brothers for the ol' 64, multi-player madness done right.
 
I've also been working on my campaign in FIFA '06, and before you all start whining about how its an EA Sports game, let it be known that you guys can dingle my bajingoes for all I care. But seriously, by shortening the game length, individual matches are pretty soothing. I can play 3 or 4 really quickly without getting bored. It's a great procrastinator.

Dick McVengeance:
EB Games had a 75% off PSX games sale, and so I'm now playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 3, Street Sk8r (it sucks ass), and The Red Star, since Sir Linde got me hooked on the idea for it. Odin Sphere will be arriving shortly, and so I am excited.

Nex:
Since that whole thing about almost dying wasn't a joke, and the damn ER won't let my lappy through the firewall to play WoW, I spent all week playing Pokemon Diamond. I've grown as close to my Piplup as a grown man can, and now my only fear is that one day he'll inevitably leave the nest.

Rev Anthony:
Replaying Half-Life 2 and Episode One, along with a helping of King Kong (I like it, no matter what anyone says) and Red Star, which I'd be enjoying a lot more were it not for the fact that I suck at it.

Savant:
I've been going back to playing some classics on both console and the PC. Among my line up is my hands-down favorite game of all-time; Final Fantasy III for the SNES. Also on my plate is a burning hunger to frag again in Quake II. Myself and a few others are looking to get a few rounds in.

Jim Sterling:
Way, way too much Samurai Warriors 2. I swore off Koei games a while ago but I can't stop myself. I'm one of those weird 2% of gamers that have this obsession with the Dynasty/Samurai Warriors titles and buy them all even though they're almost the same damn game. I can tell the difference, Goddamnit!

I also bought Elebits (renamed Eledees here in the UK) on a disgusting impulse buy. It's ... mind numbing, but not without its charms I suppose. Way, way too many annoyances. Doors need to stay the hell open when I tell them to.

Nick Chester:
I played this awesome game called Halo 3. It's the beta version of the multiplayer game, and as far as I can tell, it's drastically different than the previous two games.

From what I've played, Halo 3 is essentially a "Destructoid Team Meeting" simulator where you listen to Ron "Greybush" Workman yells (but not at you) things like:

"Summa ... Summa ... get in here. What the f**k, Summa?", "I'm out smoking a cigarette and there's a God damned possum on my porch f**king a skunk," and my personal favorite "God damn it, Cheapy D. I've sent you an invite, you bastard. Hold on ... what the f**k is wrong now? How come I can't invite Cheapy D? Okay, I'm going to try again. Cheapy, did you get my invite? Oh man, what happened? Okay, let's play. Hold on."

Ron Workman:
I agreed with what Nick said. Halo 3 has been the win. Angus, Ageiusie, Angle... Whatever that wing game is, I have been playing it also. I did try the legend of Soltare (Soul Tar) and it should unlock all achievements if you have the patience to make it through one game. Orcist tried to touch my adult area when I was sleeping. A special shout out, goes out to everyone that helped get Roncore up to number 8 on www.360voice.com. That is a pretty damn cool honor to have. Out of over 6 million gamertags, mine is one of the top 10 most popular. Oh yeah, did I mention Halo 3?

hushgush:
My time has been pretty evenly distributed over the following:

Aegis Wing: "Grim, get in here" mode
Crackdown: Linde and Topher squeal with delight at the mayhem mode
and the Ron Workman Yelling multiplayer beta.

Grim:
I've been playing the Halo 3 beta like crazy and still can't figure out why the game insists on giving you a bad game type so that you are forced to veto it, but then it gives you an even worse game type which you can't veto.

I was also lucky enough to play this brand new game called Aegis Wing: Advanced Menu Simulator. The point of the game is to try to join game invites, only to find out that you can't have more than two people in a room. All you can really do is go through the menus, read some text, and listen to the background music. It was an enchanting experience that I won't soon forget.

Final Score: Deadly Towers

Gameboi:
When not getting owned on the Halo 3 beta, I was busy revisiting such PS2 classics such as Jak and Daxter, and Maximo. Sadly, my Wii hasn't seen much action lately (take that as you may).

David Houghton:
I've had a quick dabble in Ouendan 2, and it does not disappoint in any way. It's even harder than the first one, and it's even got a cover of the Monkey theme tune on the track listing. This is a very good thing.

Other than that I've been FPSing quite a bit, getting back into practice on Metroid Prime: Hunters and rediscovering the delightfully OTT joys of Duke Nukem 3D through a high res version I found. Properly mapped to a keyboard and mouse it's a surprisingly slick and nicely designed little game, with some suspicious similarities to Half Life in places (and it came out 2 years before).

Do you ever get the feeling that you're permanently trapped in the shadow of your forefathers? Huh? Wha? No ... just forget it. What have you guys been playing?