This is an incredible week, personally, for games. I'm not a part of the MW2 insanity, but I'm happy for those who are getting what's obviously a great game.

I was already excited for NSMBWii, which I will be getting for Christmas, and then I found out that Braid is being released for the PSN. I know I'm much behind those who have played on XBLA, but who really cares? A puzzle/platformer with beautiful art and a good story; what could be better?

Not better but just as good is the news that Vagrant Story is popping up on PSN this week as well. I wish I didn't have a busy weekend, because I would love to be able to sit down all weekend and go back and forth between those games.

Of course, I'm still in the middle of playing inFamous.

I still have Muramasa, Dragon Age, Uncharted 2 and Borderlands on my list of things to purchase, so the next few months are going to be filled with great gaming.

Now, those of you that have chosen to read the blog entry are probably asking yourselves: "Is this guy mental?".

Not really, but when you are doing yard work and it's taking a long time, your mind tends to wander. At least mine does. In the nearly two hours it took me to clean the leaves from our front yard this morning, I had a lot of time to think. Being that I'm an avid gamer, and I had spent the first few hours of the day playing inFamous, the thought occurred to me that as tedious leaf blowing can be, someone could turn it into a game.

What kind of game could it be? Two genres immediately came to mind: FPS and puzzle. The first is obvious. You are holding an object that makes a lot of noise and looks a lot like a gun (my first analogy was the BFG or lightning gun from Quake). With two hands you have the power to throw air forward and show those leaves who's boss. Push them any way you wish. Of course, physics becomes very important when blowing leaves. Each leaf has it's own weight, size, and after yesterday's rain, moisture collected on them. That would take a lot of advances computing. You could level up your leaf blower for greater air, a lager blowing radius, or perhaps a little flame thrower. Your melee weapon would be the rake, for those large piles that may blow back at you.

The other genre, puzzle, seems a bit more feasible. You are given a certain time period to clean a selected area of the yard. Bonus points are given if you don't miss any leaves. Here too you could add powerups along the same line as the FPS powerups above. At higher levels, wind would be added to blow the leaves back in your face.

I don't have the computing programming skills to do anything like this, but I think given the right person with a lot of creativity, it could be fun. There are a lot of games out there based on daily chores aren't there? I'm looking at you Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing.

I don't want my blog to become a "SW term of the week" sort of thing, but after getting into several threads today that involved discussion of milkage, I thought I'd put my personal spin on it.

There seems to be a fine line between milkage and the continuing release of games in a particular franchise. Some of the franchises that could fall into each of these categories include Sonic, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Halo, Prince of Persia, Guitar Hero, Rock Band and all yearly sports games.

I believe that the music games are truly milkage. This has mainly to do with volume of release. There is another Rock Band or Guitar Hero game being release every other month it seems, based on a new band, or a new direct sequel. There are new sings released every week for these games (for a price of course). It's certain these games are very popular and are of good quality, however, is the sheer volume really necessary? I have Guitar Hero World Tour with a large number of song to play, why would I go ahead and purchase GH5?

Games such as Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Halo and Prince of Persia are spread out enough timewise that I don't think they fall under the milkage category. In addition, these franchises have undergone significant evolution of the years, including the transition from 2D to 3D and have done it successfully. The games released in these franchises are of high quality and are well received.

Sonic. Oh Sonic. Well I suppose I should say "Oh Sega". Such a promising start for a franchises back in the Genesis days, Sonic along with Mario were the gold standard for platforming, each with it's own style and fun. Sonic games continue to be released, rather frequently I might add, but the quality... well there is no quality, except perhaps for the graphics. The gameplay of recent iterations have been utter crap, and the lack of quality for me pushes Sonic into the milkage category.

Is there a true definition of "milkage"? Most likely not. It joins "hardcore", "casual", "gamer" and other as terms that are thrown around gaming website without any clear meaning to them. I could offer my own spin on those, and perhaps I will but that could be a much bigger mouthful than I'm willing to take right now.