"Rise from your grave."

Above: Got to keep on risin'

Hello! It's nice to see you again. I've been through a hell of a couple of weeks here, but I think I'm ready to get back to work. Before I do, I thought I'd share the story of what happened. Gather round.

The slogan is "Mountain skiing, minutes away," and Wachusett Mountain (the inspiration for the new horror film Frozen!) really is that convenient. It's about half an hour from my in-laws' house, so I make it a point to head out there every time my wife and I visit. It's not much of a mountain -- about a thousand feet vertical, and not too many trails. Still, it's better than anything else nearby (we have some truly embarrassing ski areas around here). I went to the mountain on January 16, which was an unusually warm day, with temperatures reaching into the mid-40s on the mountain.

I'm still learning how to snowboard, but that day I was feeling as confident as I ever had. I was taking on everything. I rode black diamonds with ease. I took a narrow side trail that's rarely open. And I did it all under control. It was feeling like a breakthrough.

But it was also very busy, thanks to the sunny day and the lack of other options in the area. My buddy and I waited sometimes 20 minutes for a lift, and sometimes the trails were so congested that I had to pull over and wait for things to clear out. Worst of all, the thousands of ski and snowboard edges were cutting up the surfaces. By mid-afternoon, as the sun disappeared behind the mountain, the runs were bumpy and choppy. My board skipped off the surface a few times. Still, I felt good.

Around 3:30, with the place in shadows and the snow starting to harden, we went back down a trail we'd done successfully a few times before. My friend is a more experienced and confident skiier than I am a rider, so he'd tend to outrun me, then stop and wait for me. He was nowhere nearby when I made a turn to my right, shifted my weight to turn back to the left, caught my back edge, and went down hard.

I knew something was wrong because of the sound more than the sensation. I heard my elbow snap like a dry branch. I ended up lying on my chest, facing downhill, with my arm sprawled out behind me. I was afraid to look, imagining my arm hanging by a flap of skin. Fortunately, I could move my fingers, so I thought it couldn't be all that bad.

A couple people stopped to help, and before long a competent and humorless ski patrol guy had arrived. He put my arm in a splint and bundled me onto the sled. On the way down, I saw my friend, who had stopped and taken off his skis (he told me later he had attempted to hike back up when I didn't appear after a few minutes).

I sat in the mountain's clinic for about 45 minutes while we called my wife to come pick me up. I was thirsty and asked for water, but the guy said no, in case I had surgery. This would be a recurring theme -- people who weren't allowed to diagnose me, but knew exactly what was happening, would make vague and dark comments about how bad it was.

"You got a doozy there, bud," said the triage nurse.

"So this is the guy with the lovely x-ray," said the nurse practitioner.

But the best was the x-ray technician. After I nearly passed out in the x-ray room, I said how thirsty I was and how badly I wanted some water, but nobody would let me have any in case I needed surgery. "Well, we'll see," she said, as she went into the other room to take the next picture. When she came back a moment later, she said, "Yeah, you're not gonna eat or drink anything."

I was in the hospital for five or six hours, and about three hours before I got any pain medication. The doctor told me he was unable to perform the necessary surgery. We went home instead. Despite all the phone calls we'd make to various doctors over the next two days, it wasn't until the following Thursday that I actually got the surgery I needed. I spent the intervening five days with my arm in a sling, popping painkillers, and feeling the bones move around every time I did.

Surgery went well, and by that weekend I felt comfortable enough to pick up a gamepad. My left hand was blown up like a balloon, and it was difficult to squeeze my fingers hard enough to press the buttons, but I made it through a couple of hours of Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, which felt like the perfect game to play at the time.

From there it's been incremental improvement every day. At this point I can move my arm around pretty well, and use my hands for most things I need them for. There are still some things I need help with, like zipping up my coat, which never ceases to be embarrassing to ask people for help with. Fortunately, my wife has been helping me without complaint. It hasn't been all bad, but certainly much worse than when I sprained my ankle.

That's the story. My apologies for the radio silence. I'm looking forward to getting back into it. Posts about No More Heroes 2 are forthcoming.

Games of the decade: Leftovers

In the course of putting together the list of my favorite games of the decade, I omitted several great games. In the spirit of inclusiveness, here are a few that I wish had been on there.

Games that barely missed the cut

Yakuza/Yakuza 2 - A phenomenal series packed with humor, pathos, and bone-crunching hits. News that Yakuza 3 is coming Stateside is welcome, indeed.

Ratchet and Clank (series) - I feel like a lot of people overlook how great this series is, given that Insomniac delivers a fun, visually pleasing game every year like clockwork. That's not easy to do. I'm sorry that I also overlooked it in this list. Tough omission.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - With a terrific single-player campaign and best-in-class multiplayer, or so they tell me, I left this one off mostly out of spite for the sequel. But it is still terrific.

Games that wouldn't have missed the cut if I hadn't forgotten them

Left 4 Dead - An unforgivable omission, and a total brainfart on my end. I love this game. I feel bad. Actually, several times I thought about what to write in the blurb before realizing that I hadn't actually put it anywhere on the list. Dumb.

Fairway Solitaire - Mainstream bias may have hurt Fairway Solitaire here. I just plum forgot about it. But I can't recommend it highly enough.

Games that seem like they might have made the cut if I'd ever played them

Silent Hill 2 - I've enjoyed other Silent Hill games, and tales of sexual repression and self-loathing are always a good time.

Eternal Darkness - Before Denis Dyack lost his marbles.

Beyond Good and Evil - It's so well regarded in certain circles, I feel like I'm missing something big by not having played this.

Deus Ex - I played the demo. It seemed okay.

A New Taxonomy of Gamers: Know Thyself

This is the last in an 11-part series. To start from the beginning, read part one: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Games." Or read the previous post, "Tying It All Together."

Employing this new taxonomy, we're able to discuss games without resorting to a simplistic rubric in which games either suck or rule. And we're able to see gamers as a lot more than simply hardcore or casual. Instead of talking past each other when we're coming at games from fundamentally different perspectives, we'll be able to seek common ground and at least disagree with one another from a place of understanding.

Again, I'm not suggesting that we simply slap labels on people and let that take the place of constructive dialogue, especially because nobody is likely to fit neatly into one category or another. In particular, Premium and Wholesale Players aren't necessarily in separate groups as much as they are points along a continuum. Thinking seriously about your own inclinations can give new focus to what you like and why.

For myself, I'm predominantly a Tourist. To the extent that I have any Skill traits, Completism ranks high above Perfectionism. On the value scale, I'm more of a Premium Player than a Wholesale Player. Now that I know this, it explains a lot about myself that I had never been able to concretize before -- like why I preferred Ratchet and Clank Future to Super Mario Galaxy.

Ratchet and Clank is almost all Tourist events: fairly rudimentary combat, lots of jokes and well-produced cutscenes, and unique platforming elements from one world to the next. The Completist aspect consists of searching for hidden golden bolts and the secret components of a weapon schematic, but these parts are fully optional. Powering up each of Ratchet's individual weapons is also a Completist factor, but because this happens as a result of simply playing through the game, it's a side benefit to the Tourist. Perfectionism doesn't really factor in.

Super Mario Galaxy, on the other hand, is primarily Completist and secondarily Tourist. It's close, which is why I did enjoy the game quite a bit. But I could never quite shake the feeling that I wasn't loving it as much as I should have. The reason is that collecting stars is the objective of the game, and experiencing all those wonderful galaxies supports that aim. You don't have to collect all the stars, but to advance through the main story you do have to revisit the same places over and over and pick up most of them.

On the value tip, Ratchet was fairly short, and although there was some optional content (like the battle arena rounds), for the most part it was a linear, narrative game. That fits it comfortably on the Premium end of the scale. Mario Galaxy is similarly short for the main game, but since collecting about half the stars is optional, that puts it on the Wholesale side of the divide. As before, it's not so much that Mario is fully one kind of game or another -- it's that the parts of it to which I responded most strongly were usually not the most salient ones.

This isn't to say that I fully eschew Perfectionist games, either. Some games, like and Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry, are so difficult that they require the rigorous effort a Perfectionist craves. These games also have so much to offer my Tourist nature that I play them as a Perfectionist without even realizing it. That doesn't mean I achieve an S ranking -- or even care to -- just that it takes a greater level of effort to beat these games than I'd ordinary be willing to commit.

None of what I've written here is intended to be the final word. In fact, I hope it's only the first step toward a broader and more constructive gaming conversation. There's much more to be said, and probably better than I've said it. I'll consider this series successful not if people adopt the terms I've suggested, but if it inspires anybody to think more critically about the way they play. That's the critical next step for games to achieve cultural relevance.

I cede the floor to you, readers. What are your thoughts?