Two video games to not play to begin the spring semester

Students beware: If you are looking to achieve academic success this semester, there are a few hot games to avoid spending too many long hours with, lest you dig yourself into a big hole to start the semester.

Your grades might fall off a bit if you find yourself spending twice as much time playing games as you do studying. “I played Skyrim a lot during finals week and it took a lot of time,” said Jared Kingry, senior from Omaha, Neb., studying philosophy. “It’s hard to say if playing Skyrim had an impact on my grades because I don’t know what my grades would have looked like if I didn’t play it.”

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“The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” has more than 300-plus hours of game play, which isn’t surprising given it’s different every time you play it.

Players are given a giant and detailed fantasy world to explore at their leisure.

It’s full of mountains, caves, rivers, farms, villages and sprawling cities. Inhabiting all of that is mammoths, trolls, dragons and many more creatures.

Throughout the course of the game, players will meet and interact with other lifelike people and make choices that impact them.

Seeing the impact of all these choices, as well as progressing and making your character stronger throughout the game, can be so addicting and fun it can be easy to forget to study for that big test.

And just when you’re ready

to turn off the game, you may

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find out you can turn into a werewolf.

If you prefer to play with your friends, “Skyrim” is not your game, but “Battlefield 3” just might be.

“Battlefield 3” is a first-person shooter where players can spend hours online working cooperatively as a team, tactically completing objectives such as arming or disarming bombs or holding down vulnerable positions.

The more time players spend online, the more the game rewards them with new gadgets, weapons and weapon attachments.

Unlike a lot of shooters, in “Battlefield 3” you can bring down entire buildings with mortars, tanks and airstrikes, so the destruction in the game is more realistic than in many games.

All video games aim at trying to take up a lot of the player’s time and keep them coming back to the experience. However, “Skyrim” and “Battlefield 3” are among some of the games that do it the best.

Just remember while you’re playing these games that your grades are competing for your time too.