Saturday 8 September 2012

Keep Calm & Game On

Gaming and getting older is God's own spiteful paradox. When you're young, you have all the time in the world to play games but no dinero to buy them, and when you're just a fraction of a liftime older, you're suddenly too busy with a 'real job' to be shooting insurgents 24/7.

When I lost my games virginity in the cupboard below the stairs on some shitty old console - I'm looking at you ZX Spectrum - it was the best thing in the 8-bit world.


(Pictured: A unicorn graveyard? Disease under a microscope? Urgh, 80s kids were stupid.) 

Then I got a bit older and games got older with me. I'm no longer expected to fire a block of pink at a block of white in the hope that I will win the game before the cassette warps and renders itself as useful as bacon at a Bar Mitzvah.

But then I got older still and in terms of the games out there for me, it just could not get better. Now, I can put a bullet into the online avatar of some guy sitting on his sofa in America and watch it back in glorious slow motion. Even more win, I'm now in my mid 20s and gainfully employed so I could just buy the shit out of computer games if I wanted to. I'm an adult. Hell, I could decide to not eat for a week and instead buy every Final Fantasy and appropriate console and spend the week in my pants blowing the Doritos dust off my chest while I beat the fuckers.


(Yay, adulthood!)

But here's the paradox. The older I get, the less time I have to actually spend guiding a hapless Eastern European around a faux NYC. Worse still, being an adult sucks. Suddenly people want shit from me. I gotta spend money on feeding myself, feeding my girlfriend, rent, internet, even the electricity I'm using to type this is an insatiable leech, sucking money away from computer game spending.

(Pictured: An insatiable leech)

So I've decided to being an adult about it, what with all the practice I've been forced into having by the cold indifferent passage of time. I'm going to compromise. Instead of buying into the hype and jumping on board to pre order the latest buzz game just to get different in game pre order bonuses depending which retailer you get it from, I'm going to be more picky with my game choices based on a few criteria.

Firstly - no new games. All have to be second hand. The reasons for this are twofold. Namely, it's a fucktonne cheaper and I hopefully won't get caught up in the hype of a new release and feel like I've been shafted by a game publisher's marketing team when the game turns out to be a terrible dullard.

Secondly - A game that's been out for a while has had time for the studio behind it to get their shit together and release any essential DLC to iron out any glitches. I'm an ex-WoW player and nothing makes me want to punch the day in the face more than a buggy game that was released six months too early.

I'll be reviewing older games with a more mature outlook in mind, because when you've got shit like a £40 phone bill to take care of, you need to make sure the game you buy is worth skipping a few lunches over.


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