On a blogging kick here for a while ... and it will get back to this way more and more as I transition back full time to Nashville out of Beaufort ...

GameSpot featured this piece asking the editors of the site if there were only 5 games they could take with them to a deserted island, what would they be?

They give some pretty interesting answers, so you ought to check that out. Mine are:

1. Halo 2. This is a pretty simple choice. The number of hours I've spent playing Halo 2 with friends online, if I actually had access to that number, has got to be really scary. Like Michael Jackson scary. The game just doesn't get old. Easily the best first person shooter of all time, and a contender for best multiplayer game ever in any genre.

2. Baseball Mogul. The Baseball Mogul series (particularly the 2007 version) is incredibly addictive for anyone who's ever wanted to be a general manager of a baseball team. Another game that simply does not ever get old. From grabbing a critical piece of a playoff run at the trade deadline, to adding a team option or a player option for a 5th year to a big contract to a marquee player in order to get the contract negotiated, to finding out that when you signed Randy Johnson, he went and taught a couple of your double-A players his slider and made them better ... the game is really easy to grasp and hard to turn off.

3. Civilization 4. Again, a game that doesn't get old (which is a theme, cause I'm on a desert island for forever!) and is a total masterpiece. The strategy behind whether you try to win through sheer might, or try to take over the world through economic strategy or diplomatic tactics, along with the completely customizable set of game conditions, provides for infinitely many ways to play the game. The whole franchise is awesome, but Civ 4 really moves this series closer than ever to perfection.

4. The Final Fantasy series. I'm cheating here by taking an entire series instead of one game, but what a series of games we're talking about. The epic, timeless stories that these games weave have always been what has made me such a fan of them, but the gameplay on top of the story is what makes them accessible to such a large number of people across the world. Anyone who has ever completed a Final Fantasy game understands what I'm talking about here. They are definitely coming with me to this island!

5. SimCity / Metal Marines / ActRaiser / Super Mario World. Again, I'm cheating (sue me), but I've got to take all of them. These were my four favorite games (by far) on the SNES, and while most people are familiar with the first one and last one, Metal Marines and ActRaiser were two lesser-known games that I played the hell out of when I was younger. Forget that the graphics are dated with all the PS11's and XBox 36,000,000's coming out ... back in the day of Nintendo and Super Nintendo, the graphics weren't what sold games. These games were genuinely unforgettable to play and were extremely creative in how they approached storytelling and often fused different genres together in ways that hadn't been done before.

An honorable mention goes to Brain Age for Nintendo DS. There have been no shortage of people giving me weird looks as I do Sudoku puzzles and the speed-based "100 Simple Math Calculations" mini games on there while I sit on a plane waiting to leave or head back to Nashville. Incredibly fun game with a number of actually useful, intelligent mini-games to play.