I’m not quite sure how this has happened. I look around my little gaming space and I can see a Vectrex, Game Cube, PS2, Xbox 360, PSP, Nintendo DS, several NGPC’s and a box of assorted handheld games. That’s not even counting the arcade cabs (four at the last count), Nuon DVD player and loft stuffed to the gills with gaming paraphernalia. I import games from the far east, I’ve pre-ordered a PS3 for no reason that I can easily fathom and I have even been known to buy games just because I feel that I ‘should’. Every major new release tempts me into the game shops with a nod, a wink and promises of videogaming bliss when I take it home. I even took the day off work to sit in a dark room and play through Halo 2 on release day. And I lugged my Xbox and projector across London to do it.

I have become a hardcore gamer.

Oops, wrong kind of Hardcore.

And I am hating every minute of it.

The only game that I have properly enjoyed on the Xbox 360 (live arcade titles notwithstanding) is, of all things, King Kong. PGR3, Perfect Dark Zero and Ridge Racer 6 have all left me cold. I’m quite enjoying Amped 3 too despite it being almost but not quite, as good as SSX Tricky. I played Oblivion obsessively for a week and haven’t touched it since - preferring the distinctly old-school thrills of Geometry Wars, Joust and Hexic.

All of those Japanese DS imports? Well, I love Catch Touch Yoshi to pieces and Meteos is the best puzzler since Tetris in my opinion. But I’d much rather have the games in English, even if it’s only a matter of translating a few rather rudimentary menu screens. Other imports have been less successful - don’t even get me started on Ouendan, a game fairly crawling in ‘hardcore’ credentials being both entirely in Japanese and stupidly and unfairly demanding of your ability to copy what you see on the screen.

Metroid Prime? Just couldn’t get on with the sod and ended up giving it away in a fit of pique.

Wonderswan? Love the machine, but why are 90% of the games available for it intense, Japanese only, text adventures?

Ico? Lovely, but I got lost.

Rez (including the sodding Trance Vibrator)? Too bloody hard.

Pro Evolution Soccer? What was I thinking!

Ikaruga? Lovely to look at, but I’ve never managed to get past the first couple of levels. I might as well have bought the DVD.

Gradius V? I’ve hated every Gradius game ever written - why did I think this would be different.

PSP? Lovely machine, currently being used solely as the worlds largest, and clumsiest, MP3 player.

Your writers PSP.

Are you spotting a trend yet? All of these games (and many others) are considered the best in their fields - and rightly so. But they're just not right for me - I don't like highly technical shooters, never have done and I'm not suddenly going to start now. Football leaves me cold at the best of times and I am, fundamentally, too lazy to have to learn a foreign language just so that I can follow a plot which almost certainly isn't that good anyway.

Yeah, there have been some successes (Gregory’s Horror Show, Halo 2) but I’m enjoying fewer and fewer games as I get closer and closer to the leading edge. I look at the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii and know, just know, that when I inevitably cave in and buy them I am going to be crushingly disappointed with the majority of the games I buy. I either won’t understand them, won’t like them, won’t be able to play them anyway or, in all likelihood, a crushing combination of all three.

So, it’s time to back away from the cutting edge of progress for a bit. A choice made, at least partially, for me by the increased cost that appears to be intricately associated with the next gen - £50 for a game, and £35 for a handheld version? Fuck right off. I need to play the games I’ve got for a bit, learn to have fun with videogames again, and then go back to the bargain bins in a years time.

I’m just staying in. I may be some time...

June 2006

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