I have found my latest piece of video-gaming addiction.

You all know what that feeling is -
When you have your hands and fingers working the controls and buttons in perfect unison with your eyes and the images on the screen move and zip and the sounds zap and ping just the way you planned them..
And that feeling hits your brain -
That electric tickle that traps the rest of your cerebral cortex in the moment and you know you have found it:

Video game bliss.

The type of bliss that video games were created for.
The type of bliss that matches you against the machine.
The type of bliss that matches you against the countdown clock.
The type of bliss that matches you against impossible odds but you know - you can just see it - the way out.
The type of bliss that motivates you top best your previous score. Again.
The type of bliss that makes you spill another two dollars worth of quarters into the machine.
The type of bliss that makes you hit the Restart button one more time.
The type of bliss that lets moments, then minutes then hours pass by.
The type of bliss that video games were created for.

Pixeljunk Racers: 2nd Lap is the current producer of my present video game bliss.

Not complicated at all, the game is a top-down, slot car racer where you control only the speed of your car and which of the four lanes your car travels in around the race tracks.
There are dozens of modes, and they all boil down to some simple mechanics: speed, passing cars, not crashing into said cars, a time limit, turbo boosts and survival. 
Rinse and repeat.

The game is very similar to the game my brother used to love, the arcade classic Super Sprint.
I think the controls in Pixeljunk Racer: 2nd Lap are easier to handle - your car always move in the correct direction around the track and your job is to make sure it doesn't ram into any other cars.

Another kick of this game is that all of the scores by all of the players for all of the modes are able to be uploaded to the PlayStation Network.
This feature allows you to immediately see where your best score in each mode ranks in the entire universe of Pixeljunk Racer racers.
Burn your initials into this game immediately and all over the world for everyone to see.
There is even an overall Driver Score kept for you that factors in your ranking in all of the available events - so not only are you ranked in each individual event, you are ranked as an overall Pixeljunk Racer: 2nd Lap racer.

The game is repetitive.
So is Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Asteroids and Galaga.
The modes are similar.
So are the different modes of Space Invaders, Asteroids and Missile Command.
It is pretty much the same game over and over.
So is Space Invaders, Asteroids, Missile Command and Galaga (Galaxian, anyone?).
....but can you handle it?

The game is only downloadable and is only available from PllayStation Network.
Normal price is $9.99. 
That's almost 40 quarters. 

You can handle that.


Game trailer.
Official PSN site.