V is for video games
While no one would argue against an afternoon of bicycling, basketball or skateboarding over exercise of the virtual sort, it should be stated that video games are not without merit.
As a safe, at-home diversion, few activities match video games' ability to encourage and reward imagination and develop problem-solving and spatial-reasoning skills.
Kids are easy to keep an eye on when engrossed in wholesome adventure games such as Scooby Doo! Night of 100 Frights, Fairly Odd Parents: Breakin' Da Rules and Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, and the likelihood of your child skinning a knee, chipping a tooth or breaking an arm playing Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure are extremely slight.
And just in case you hadn't heard, video games aren't just for kids anymore. The average age of a player hovers somewhere around 29. With a reported 145 million regular video-game players inhabiting America, chances are good that more grown-ups on your holiday shopping list count video games among their favorite diversions than you know.
Video games such as "Fairly Odd Parents: Breakin' Da Rules" and WWII action game "Call of Duty," make great gifts.
Exciting new titles abound this Christmas, including the epic WWII first-person action game Call of Duty, the historically based real-time strategy game Empires: Dawn of the Modern World and True Crime: Streets of L.A., which many say takes last year's gritty, no-holds-barred adventure title Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to the next level.
Games typically cost between $20 and $60. All you need to know is your giftee's genre of choice (adventure, role-playing, strategy, sports) and hardware platform (PlayStation 2, XBox, GameCube, GameBoy, etc.). When you start to see them less frequently outside the home, you'll know you made the right choice.
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