Thanks for the comment - I've been chewing it over the past day or two. In this case I'd have to argue that I'm not really experiencing either game any deeper than I was when I was 25 hours into them. I love them both to pieces, but I conceptually tapped them out quite some time ago. And while they're fun, and while I'd agree with you that pure games often are more fun than their narrative counterparts, I would still say that I long for the less fun, but richer character and story-based worlds, worlds that provoke and inspire, rather than simply mindlessly reward me for mechanically plotting squares on a grid.

I fully realize that pure games can hold their own over great stretches of time, and if I spent a year just playing Go or chess, under the right conditions I might just find that perfect gaming year you're talking about. But that's not the case with Rock Band or Picross.

While I previously said I treating them more like an exercise, it might almost be viewed more as a compulsory bad habit. The days when I'd felt forced to play something, I'd fall back on them, a lazy, routine fiddling that brought slight reward but whose greater joy diminished a long time ago and the time spent with it would be better spent elsewhere. Or maybe I'm just over-analyzing my play. I suppose we'll see in the next gamelog, eh?