Indiana Jones and the Temple of "Oops!"

My husband and I have a video game tradition. He plays, I watch and kibitz. And, strangely enough, we both enjoy it. Most of the time.

I offer helpful hints -- "Stop letting them beat you up", "If only you could aim your guns, you'd kill more bad guys and still have ammo", and "No, go that way, the other that way, the way you need to go" being merely three of my standards.

I also spot the things he misses -- 50% of the game -- and read the walkthroughs that we almost always have to find and have with us in order to complete any game. Even the games rated E for "easy". Even on the easy levels of the E-for-easy games.

Tonight's particular challenge (I say 'tonight' but we've been playing it for over a week straight already) is "Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb", an older PS2 game we got this Christmas, because we're totally cutting edge in all things. And, the game may be older, but boy, is it eating our lunch. Well, not my lunch. My reading aloud abilities are just fine, as are my snide commenting skills and my ability to confuse by thinking there's "something in the corner" when, there is, in fact, nothing in the corner but corner. No, it's my husband's skills that are being put to the test.

There's a lot of jumping in this game. And the need for a lot of shooting. Neither of which appear to be my husband's particular video game specialities. He's all over the walking slowly parts of the game, but the jumping so as to land safely parts, not as much. Same with the shooting. He's missing with a machine gun. Many times when the bad guys are standing right in front of him. He likes to have Indy spin around and shoot at...nothing. I guess it makes it more of a challenge.

In real life, my husband's a very good shot. In video game life, he's a rank amateur. But he's better at the shooting than at the jumping. With the jumping, he's perfected saying, "I meant to do that," when he falls into the water (at least you take no damage...unless the sharks and/or crocodiles are still alive) or onto the hard ground (where you either take a ton of damage or die, depending). He's meant to get soaked and killed a lot.

But, you know, it's entertaining. Oh, sure, some of that entertainment lies in how cleverly I can find euphemisms for "you suck at this, don't you?" but still, it's fun that goes on and on and on.

At the rate we're falling down and dying, we'll be playing this game, and only this game, until next Christmas. And you just can't put a dollar value on that kind of long-lasting and cheap (when you compare money spent against the hours played) entertainment. Though my husband tries because at least that way, even if we lose at the game all the time, we still win.

I figure that, dying all the time or not, repeating the same sections over and over again or not, and taking months to finish what others did in a few days or not, the game's still better than "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".

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