This blog entry will be a bit more personal (and longer) than I usually care to get. I realize that people on the internet aren't typically concerned with the intimate details of the lives of other people on the internet. However, recent circumstances (that are not necessary to go into) have prompted me to post this essay here. It is the personal statement that, in addition to a number of other essays, is required of every applicant to medical school. There is no specific question you are required to answer for this statement, although many applicants use it as an opportunity to explain their motivations for a career in medicine. I am not looking for criticisms (constructive or otherwise) or feedback. Please do not comment with messages of good luck or 'I hope you get in!' I would simply like to know what people think:

Few people have one defining moment where they decide, in that instant, their future career path and the possible course for the rest of their lives. Until recently, I could not have claimed such a moment myself. Even as a child, I always knew that I wanted to be a physician. My father is a doctor, and a doctor's job is to help sick people. That's all I needed to know.

That, however, does not make for an interesting story. Nor does it explain or lend context to my passion for medicine. Context can be garnered from a number of experiences throughout my educational career that have gently nudged me closer to a career in the medical field. Although I didn't realize it at the time, growing up with a close family member suffering from Alzheimer's disease taught me patience and understanding. Living and visiting with AIDS patients taught me compassion. Working in an oncology practice showed me that faith can be as influential to health as traditional therapy. My experience as an EMT forced me to think and act quickly under pressure. And my current research develops the interpersonal skills necessary for long-term interaction with patients.

All of these experiences help explain why I am pursuing a career in medicine. Yet, they do not begin to describe my passion for patient care. Despite the positive images these influences have painted of our current health care system, I have also been witness to the negative impact of politics and the media on the medical profession. Doctors are hesitant to care for patients with complex medical problems due to fear of malpractice lawsuits. Many individuals can no longer afford the rising costs of health care and medications, and simple economics are beginning to have a major impact on treatment decisions. Patients are heartbroken when they learn that a new miracle drug advertised on commercials and in the news will not work for them or that their insurance company will not cover the treatment. For all of our nation's advances in health care, universal coverage for all citizens still exists only as an empty promise from campaigning politicians.

Despite these obvious shortcomings, and in part because of them, my desire to become a physician grows continually. I mentioned that, until recently, I had not experienced a moment in which my career path became clear to me. I have simply always wanted to be a physician. Earlier this year, however, my perspective changed when my father suffered a heart attack. As I sat in the emergency room waiting area listening to a cardiologist explain my father's condition to my family, I was overcome with a feeling of utter helplessness. Despite my extensive background in biology, my experience in emergency medical situations, and dealings with other patients' families, I was not prepared to be on the receiving end of the same news I had given previously on multiple occasions. My lack of the specific cardiac knowledge necessary to understand the situation was extremely frustrating and my confusion only increased my feeling of futility.

Following a successful bypass operation, my father spent six months in recovery. An extended hospital stay, medication, and therapy cost more than my father, who was fully insured, could afford. The fact that he works as a physician and Chief of Staff for the hospital at which he was treated merely add to the irony that he was forced to take out loans to pay his medical bills. If physicians cannot afford their own medical care, how can the rest of our country?

I cannot sit on the sidelines of the medical profession as insurance companies force physicians out of private practice, as prescription drug marketing campaigns turn this country into a nation of hypochondriacs, and medical bills become the leading cause of homelessness. I realize that, as a physician, my influence would of course be limited to those in my community and that I may be unable to make the sweeping reforms necessary to improve health care in this country. I would, however, be yet another member of an increasingly vocal profession that maintains patients' rights over financial gain. Whether ingrained or fueled by recent experiences, it is my dream to make a career of helping others, and medicine is the ideal route to realize that dream.

I stumbled upon GameSpot's Harmonix Phases onto iPod story tonight and was intrigued. I'm usually wary of downloading games for my iPod, since the generation cycle of the mp3 player is extremely short (I'm on my fourth iteration in six years). But the fact that Guitar Hero gurus Harmonix developed the title, plus the availability of a new (at least to me) Freezepop track to play made the decision for me.

Downloading the game automatically creates an iTunes playlist called Phase for you to drag and drop any track on your iPod (between 30 seconds and 30 minutes in length). Syncing your iPod with your computer will automatically update the in-game track list, which includes 7 pre-installed songs (like Freezepop's 'Pop Music is Not a Crime' or Bang Camaro's 'Nightlife Commando'). After an initial 5-10 second load time, you can choose any song to play on one of three difficulty levels by pressing the back, center, and forward buttons on the iPod click wheel in time with the music. There are also glide sections in which you roll your finger along the scroll wheel (as if you were browsing up and down in the iPod menus). The interface looks very much like the Guitar Hero on-screen guide, and the gameplay is essentially the same as previous Harmonix titles.

On the easy and medium settings, the game is fun to play, but the notes don't sync up perfectly with the music. You hit the notes at the appropriate points and you feel like you're keeping the rhythm well enough, but it lacks the essential Guitar Hero "feeling." Of course, that's moreso a product of the platform and not the development. The hard setting is more exciting, but you'll find your wrist cramping up very quickly. I imagine that, even though Phase is playable on the newest generation of iPod nanos, those with the iPod Clas.sic's tiny cousin (or large hands, for that matter) won't get the same enjoyment out of the game. The real draw to Phase is the ability to use any track in your iTunes library for fast, on-the-go entertainment when the music on your iPod just doesn't keep you entertained enough and you feel the need to do something with your hands while you listen. The game also keeps track of your high scores and note streaks for each song, adding to the replay-ability. While it's certainly not a replacement for Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or even a real hand-held game on the GBA, DS, or PSP, it's definitely worth the $5 download to give you something to do with your iPod on the bus.

Side note: I think I've figured out why I haven't written a review in ages. The vast majority of my blogs recently have been first impressions (or Fimps, if you're hip to the Trigames lingo), because that's what I seem to have time for these days. I always plan on writing reviews for these games, but I've found that my first impressions rarely change and I don't have much to say about the games beyond what's already been said.

I bought Phantom Hourglass at a Wal-Mart in the middle of nowhere on Monday night. It still baffles me how a store miles from civilization has their stock in on a Monday night when Best Buy and Toys R Us in the city are advertising their availability for Tuesday by 5PM and Wednesday by 2PM, respectively. Why is the video game industry seemingly the only entertainment medium that is this incompetent when it comes to release dates?

Anyway, I've played Phantom Hourglass for a couple of hours now and I feel like I'm the only person in the world who is not impressed. Besides the CD-i games, I've played and loved every title in the Zelda series. I'd even give those a play-through if I could. And usually, my opinion with Zelda is that more of the same is always better. But in this case, I just can't help feeling like Phantom Hourglass strays too far from the core formula in some places while remaining prohibitively familiar in others.

I wouldn't necessarily call the control scheme innovative, as it has been done before in titles like Animal Crossing to a certain degree of success. But controlling Link with the stylus is new for the Zelda series and, for the most part, works well. I find it too difficult to roll and if I miss an enemy with my sword, it rarely feels like it was my fault. The ability to take notes on your map is a great feature, but it's never implemented well. In fact, the only uses I've come across so far illustrates my overarching criticism of the game - like so many recent first party Nintendo games, Zelda has been "dumbed down" to appeal to a wider audience. It would be a misnomer to call the map sequences puzzles, as they amount to little more than reading a sign in one room, copying the image, and then walking into the next room to flip switches. There's no mental exercise involved, and the extent to which your new fairy friend offers helpful hints borders on insulting. Add to this the fact that a number of Zelda staples are missing, like heart container, map, and compass collection, and Phantom Hourglass just seems like it's trying to reach to too wide an audience.

My next couple complaints are, admittedly, a matter of personal preference. I consider myself to be pretty open to most gaming experiences or genres, but there are two aspects of game design that I absolutely despise: working against a timer and stealth sequences. In some games, certainly those designed around a countdown like Marble Madness, Exit, or most puzzle games, working against a clock can add appropriate suspense. But if I'm playing my DS, I don't want suspense. I want to relax. On the same note, if I wanted to play a stealth game, I'd pick up Metal Gear or Tom Clancy. The stealth sequences have always been my least favorite aspect of the Zelda series, because I don't feel that they are ever implemented well or really serve a purpose. I don't enjoy trial-and-error gameplay where you have to continually die or get caught in order to progress. Punishment just isn't fun. So you can imagine that, in a game like Phantom Hourglass, where you are forced to repeatedly play the exact same levels using these two mechanics, I would be less than pleased.

Obviously, I'm still going to finish the game. And I imagine my opinion of it will get better as I get further. But I just can't shake the feeling that Nintendo has begun to let their recent success sink in a bit too much and are riding on their own coattails. While still fun, recent games like Mario Party 8, WarioWare Smooth Moves, and even Metroid Prime 3 have been disappointing for a variety of reasons, many of which apply to Phantom Hourglass as well. And it was clear from their recent E3 conference that their target audience has drastically shifted. As a lifelong fan of the company that introduced me to video games twenty years ago, I can't help but feel a little slighted.

I've played through the first four hours of Eternal Sonata (to the neglect of BioShock and Metroid Prime), and I'm honestly not sure what to make of it. While the graphics are not technically amazing, the art style is beautiful and Chopin's music fits very well with the story and themes. The cutscenes are entertaining (and, at times, educational), but there are far too many of them. This is perhaps the result of an extremely linear story, but the first few hours of the game weigh much more heavily on plot progression than they do on gameplay.

The gameplay, however, is Eternal Sonata's saving grace. While you are severely limited in the amount of exploration and decision-making, the game's battle system is entirely engaging and addictive. The real-time turn-based hybrid is best described as a merging of the free-roaming, button mashing of the Tales of... series and the slow, strategic battles of early Final Fantasy titles. So, while the biggest decision you'll be making on the map screen is whether to go right or left at one of the numerous forks that ultimately double back on themselves anyway, the battle system lends itself to nearly infinite combinations of attacks and strategies.

Voice acting is done relatively well, which is essential for a game that could just as easily have been an animated movie rather than an Xbox 360 title. My major complaint, though, is Polka. To me, having an adult voice a child protagonist by seemingly inhaling helium before recording each line evokes that painful sensation of nails screeching down a chalkboard.

With very little intitial reward, limited character customization, and virtually no achievements to speak of (they're all secret, presumably based on plot progression), it looks like an impeccable story and addictive battle system are going to need to keep my interest.

Dear scientist dudes,

I recently came across an article on CNN.com in which you make the Earth-shattering discovery that men want hot women. You further proceed to blow my mind with shocking revelations, including, but not limited to, the following:

1. Men base their dating decisions mostly on physical attractiveness.
2. Men are much less choosy than women.
3. Women are aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men.

As I slowly recovered from the intense burst of knowledge that your well-spent research dollars have produced, I began to think. Now, I'm not sure if you're aware, but I remember hearing about something a few years back. What was it again? I can't recall. Oh, yes. Cancer. There's this thing called cancer, and I hear it's pretty bad. Now, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure some people would appreciate you guys finding a way to fix that. Do you think you could take some time off from unraveling the vast mystery surrounding common sense and get working on that whole disease problem? Thank you so much.

Your biggest fan,
The rest of mankind

It's going to be a very expensive holiday season. Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, Heavenly Sword, and Smash Bros. are just the top of a very long list of titles that will be keeping me busy until well into 2008. In an effort to save money, I bought BioShock and decided to play that exclusively until I completed the entire game before purchasing another one. Turns out that idea didn't last too long, as I finally caved in and bought Metroid Prime 3 last night. Here are my impressions of both games:

The gameplay in BioShock is great. I started playing on easy because I knew i'd want to go through it again later and save all of the Little Sisters. Before I started playing, the biggest praise I'd heard was that the atmosphere is so believable, you actually think you're in a failed underwater utopia. And, for the most part, you do. The water effects are amazing, the city feels like it used to thrive, and you can never really tell if the voices you're hearing are real or imagined. The problem with establishing such a great sense of realism and atmosphere, though, is that every little problem or hitch stands out like a sore thumb. I'm only a few hours into the game, but so far every enemy looks and fights exactly the same. They wander around until they notice you there, and then they run straight up to you and attack. Once they're dead, their bodies twitch and turn, but not in any sort of believable fashion. And, while I understand that Gene Banks are a necessary gameplay mechanism to restrict your character's abilities, I just don't buy their placement in a sci-fi utopia. If you inject some substance that alters your DNA, you cannot then remove and deposit that substance in what can only be described as a genetic ATM. Of course, these are all very minor gripes with an otherwise impeccable game. I don't believe it's worthy of the average it's getting on GameRankings, but I would certainly put it on my list of the best games of 2007.

The only thing that pulled me away from BioShock was my intense desire to dust of my Wii, which hasn't seen any action since Super Paper Mario. I downloaded Super Metroid, and I'm having a blast replaying it for a few minutes at a time. If only the classic controller was wireless...

Against my better judgment, I went out and bought Metroid Prime 3 last night. I'm not exactly sure when this happened, but sometime in the recent past, my neighborhood went video game crazy. Metroid (and BioShock, for that matter) was sold out everywhere except Circuit City. I can only attribute Circuit City's stock to that store intensely repugnant odor that gives anyone who dares enter for more than 15 minutes at a time a nasty headache.

Anyway, I'm about an hour into Metroid Prime, and I love it. I didn't think I would go for the control scheme, but I may end up liking it better than dual-analog control. It plays much more like an FPS than the previous two Prime games, and so far it seems much more linear as well. Which, in all honesty, is fine by me. I don't mind exploring and backtracking in 2D games, but for some reason that third dimension throws me through a loop and I can't navigate my way around at all. It's also a big plus that you don't go through the typical Metroid cliche of losing all of your abilities at the very beginning of the game. That's usually such a tease. It's nice to see voice acting in a first party Nintendo game, and the graphics and art style are amazing, but they should never attempt to show human faces in Metroid (or any game, for that matter). It's not realistic enough to be believable, yet just capable enough to be creepy. My only disappointment so far is the title theme. The original Metroid Prime theme is still my favorite. There seems to be some sort of friend voucher system, but I haven't looked into it. I just want to get home and play...

...Medicine and science are great and all, but I think I may have missed my calling in life.

So, this post isn't actually about Rock Band. It's about Guitar Hero. But Robot Guitar Hero sounds a bit silly, no? Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of rap music. In fact, I very rarely use the phrase 'rap music,' because to me it's more like saying a bunch of words really fast with some overly repetetive beat in the background. (By the way, I think that sentence just put me into a very elite group of crotchety old people who want those damn kids to get off our lawns.) Apparently, Kanye West has a new single called Stronger, which "borrows" heavily from a Daft Punk track called Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. And while I can't stand Kanye West (moreso because of his obnoxious arrogance than his music), I'm a huge fan of Daft Punk.

So I was listening to Daft Punk on the way home from work yesterday, when I realized that they would make an awesome addition to Guitar Hero. Specifically, Robot Rock from their Human After All album would be a blast to play. Keeping in mind that I know absolutely nothing about music, I think it has an amazing drum intro that would be perfect for Rock Band, but the lack of vocals on the track make it better suited for Guitar Hero. The above link goes to a YouTube video for the song, but I don't think it plays the actual music video. I'm sure you could find a sample of it easily. If I had to compare the track to something already included in Guitar Hero, I'd say it's most like the two Freezepop tracks, which also happen to be my favorite songs from both games. Heck, I might even pay 500 Microsoft points for some downloadable Daft Punk....... Nah. That's crazy.

... and the Sorcerer's Stone. Yep. I'm a little late to the party. I never really saw myself reading the books, because I always assumed they'd be a little insulting (having been written for children), and I haven't had time to read a book for pleasure in what must be years. I went to see Order of the Phoenix last Monday and, on an impulse, picked up a copy of Sorcerer's Stone that had been sitting on my bookshelf for years. There's usually some down time at work while we have patients in the MRI scanner, and, until now, I'd used that time to study. With the MCAT over, I need something else to do. I started reading yesterday and ended up finishing the book by the time I went to bed.

I enjoyed it, and will probably end up reading the rest of the books at some point, but I honestly don't understand the mass hysteria that comes with every new release. Our nation's kids aren't exactly known for their passion for reading. Television, movies, and games are pretty much all we hear about as reasons for why, by 2010, it's expected that 75% of Americans will be overweight. I'll never understand why parents and educators consider reading for pleasure a legitimate use of time while games and television are considered a waste. They all require you to be stationary for long periods of time, aren't particularly social activities, and the argument can certainly be made for which, if any, of these forms of entertainment might actually be educational.

Anyway, I think I've strayed a little off topic. I liked the book. It was fun and easy to read without insulting the intelligence of the reader. But in the end, I still feel as though I'm reading a children's book. It's entertaining, sure, but it's hardly the work of literary masterpiece you'd expect given the hype. My college roommate had to read the Sorcerer's Stone in his high school AP English course. I'm not sure whether that's a sad commentary on the state of our education system or simply the quality of modern novels. Either way, I suppose if anything good comes of the Harry Potter franchise, it might as well be encouraging this country to read.

Closing random thought: I wonder if literary fans or book clubs get as upset over the sales of trashy romance novels as we get over the sales of movie licensed shovelware?

I'm going to start off by admitting that there are times when I'm not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. And I'm going to say how thankful I am that the AMA decided against making video game addiction a legitimate disease. If it were a real sickness, I may as well be on my death bed.

That being said, I just spent $500+ that I don't have on a PlayStation 3. The half-baked price drop that isn't even a real price drop kinda threw me through a loop. I'd really prefer 80GB over 60GB, and who wouldn't want a free copy of Motorstorm (which, by the way, should always be pronounced without the first 'r,' because it's just more awesome that way)? But, with limited space in my entertainment center and a PS2 that looks like crap on my HDTV, backwards compatability was also a big deal-breaker for me. I can always upgrade the internal HDD on my own, but I can't put the Emotion Engine back in a PS3. Plus, I still have a huge backlog of PS2 titles I want to play - which works out well, since I won't be able to afford any new PS3 games for quite some time.

I picked up a copy of Ridge Racer, because it was really the only launch game I had any interest in playing. It's a great game, but something doesn't feel right about a racing game without rumble. I downloaded a few PSN titles also: WipeOut and Crash Bandicoot to play on my PSP, flOw, and Super Stardust HD. flOw is an interesting curiosity that's entertaining at first, but functions better as a screen saver than an actual game. I'm enjoying Super Stardust HD much more than I ever did Geometry Wars, because I'm actually not terrible at it and the music is strangely hypnotic.

The interface is functional and minimalistic. Nothing like the 360's vibrant blade system. I guess it does the job, but I'll be happy when Sony lets you use your own backgrounds like they do on the PSP. I've had trouble getting the networking to work. Just like the 360, everything worked after the initial setup, but then the next time I turned the system on, it wouldn't recognize any of the files on my computer. The same goes for all of the memory card slots. I've filled them with photos and videos, but the PS3 thinks the cards are empty. The PSN store is organized well and anyone familiar with iTunes will enjoy it. I just wish there was more content on there. I also tried out the Folding@Home project, although I really don't see myself participating too often. I can't really afford to leave my PS3 on idle if I'm not playing a game or watching a movie. And for someone who is actually fairly familiar with the process of protein folding, the whole interface/explanation of how the process works just seems a little patronizing or unnecessary. Although, again, the idle screen does make a nice screensaver.

In the end, I'm glad I jumped on the bandwagon when I did. My PS3 will function as my PS2 for quite some time, but at least this way I don't feel like I paid $600 to buy a gimped version of the launch machine.