I want to buy a game system. I used to really enjoy them, back in the day. My last system was the original Playstation. I owned about 5 games and only ever played 2. Prior to that I had the NES, SNES, Sega, I even owned a 3DO and Jaguar for a while. I see the commercials for today’s games and I really want to run out and buy one. My friends all seem to have different recommendations: the Wii, PS3 and of course XBOX 360. When Halo 3 came out I participated in the carnage at Nick’s place.
Let me rephrase that, I was the carnage at Nick’s place. I have fairly decent hand-eye coordination and I am not completely without shooting skills, yet I was ass raped by everyone in the room. I always seemed to pick up the worst possible weapons, didn’t know how to activate the neat little gizmos in the game and seemed to be permanently fixed in Steve’s gunsight. Nick was the gentlest lover in the house, encouraging me to “just relax and it will make sense the more you do it.” I felt like a teenage girl giving my first blowjob. Needless to say I was embarrassed and self-conscious the whole time trying to get my hands in the right place on the controller, moving slowly back and forth trying to avoid the blast, but inevitably getting it right in the throat. After a few hours I decided it was better to let someone more experienced take over and I stumbled out of the dark and into the light of day.
I felt cheap and used. It wasn’t the first time, but I didn’t enjoy it as much this time. I didn’t want to blame Nick because he’s a great friend and he was so supportive. I really wanted to sue Bill Gates and Microsoft for creating the environment that saw my digitized body sodomized by so many so often.
My first experience has traumatized me somewhat. I’m not sure that going out and spending near to one thousand dollars to repeat that experience is really a good idea. Am I too old, or too far removed to be able to get back into the game? Am I alone in this experience? Maybe the games on the PS3 are easier to jump into? The Wii? Is there some kind of a hotline I can call?