I think it’s safe to say everyone here loves games. I for one love them with a passion, there is not a day that goes by without me at least thinking about games. But that’s not to say that loving them has always been easy, there have been times when I just had to sit back and evaluate this hobby of ours and see if it was worth continuing down this path. These are the moments that almost made me quit gaming, some of them were confusing, some of them were embarrassing, and some of them scarred me for life. Of course gaming came out on top in the end, but like a skier who broke their leg in an accident, I found it hard to take the plunge and push myself down the mountain again. Once I did I remembered why I love games but those moments still stuck with me. These are the moments that made me question gaming.

Resident Evil: The first zombie.

This was the first time in my life I questioned games, up until this point it had been nothing but kid friendly plumbers and blue hedgehogs. I was going to sleep over at my friend’s house and we had decided to rent out a game, after hearing my brothers friends raving about Resident Evil we thought we’d give it a shot. We played trough the game, unaware of the horrible dialogue we were hearing, and all was well..... until we got to the first zombie. That thing scared the hell out of us. We just looked at each other and turned the console off, and we took the game out of ps1 just to be sure it wouldn’t get us in our sleep (because in our young minds that made sense).


This still sends shivers down my spine.

In the morning we decided it was safe to play again because it was bright outside and therefore the game couldn’t get us......... we made it as far as the dog jumping through the window. That first zombie terrified me so much that I was honestly too afraid to play another resident evil until 5.

Celebrity Deathmatch: The Game.

Remember my brother and his friends I mentioned in the last entry? Well they didn’t grow up to be the biggest successes in the world, but they did give me access to a lot of games over the years. You see, every once in a while they would buy a game then go to my brothers room to play it, and after smoking copious amounts of illegal substances they would leave the house completely forgetting they had bought a game, leaving me the opportunity to scavenge it like some kind gaming racoon. One such game was Celebrity Deathmatch: The Game.


Detrimental to your health.

This game was so bad it actually made me sick, physically sick! Honest to God, I’m not even joking when I say that this game was so utterly rubbish that it gave me severe stomach cramps. It was a stupid, puerile, unenjoyable piece of filth. You’d think that a game where you can play as Mr.T and beat Tommy Lee to death would have some kind of camp value, but no, there is no fun to be had....... only pain. It made me question games in that I thought I may never be able to enjoy them again on a mental or physical level. Fortunately this was not the case, it was just this one atrocious, appalling, repulsive game.

Final Fantasy X: The laughing scene.

I bought Final Fantasy X for my shiny new ps2 thinking I was about to experience something incredible, “Final Fantasy X!” I thought to myself “They always have the best stories, and the best characters, and now this one has voices”. Now don’t get me wrong, FFX is a perfectly fine game, not my favourite of the series, but still quite good. Everything up to that point was OK (except blitzball), but that scene was excruciating, it was just embarrassing to watch.


Won’t somebody please stop the laughing!?

“This is it?” I thought “This is the astonishing next-gen experience that that will define a generation?” I considered that if this was the best games had to offer then maybe I was done. I sat there and gritted my teeth through five unskippable minutes of Tidus screaming AHH HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW!!!!! Luckily when my ears stopped bleeding I continued to play and found the game to be worth my while. But that one incredibly awkward moment nearly pushed me over the edge.


Metal Gear Solid 2: pretty much the whole last quarter.

My train of thought during the last quarter of Metal Gear Solid 2 went something like this.

Oh my God what’s going on the president just grabbed my crotch and then told me to shoot him then Otacon said that he slept with his stepmother while his dad committed suicide and now I’m naked running around Arsenal Gear and the Colonel told me to turn of the console then Rose said that she’s pregnant in a robot voice and then disappeared and then Snake said that he had infinite ammo is his bandana and now I’m fighting twenty Metal Gear Rays and now they’re all crazy so Solidus is killing them with his robot tentacles and Ocelot shot Fortune and now Liquid is coming out of his arm and shooting bombs at us and diving off in a giant robot and Snake is chasing him and we’re crashing into the roof of Federal Hall and Solidus says he killed my parents and the Colonel and Rose have been shouting at me and calling me stupid for about twenty minutes now and I’ve killed Solidus in a sword fight and Snake is giving me a confusing speech about reality and Rose is in the crowd somehow and she’s not being mean anymore and Otacon says the Patriots have all been dead for a hundred years and I DON’T WANNA PLAY GAMES ANYMORE!!!


WHAT IS HAPPENING!?!?

And that’s about it. When a skier breaks his leg he may find it hard to take the plunge and push himself down the mountain again but once he does he remembers why he loved it in the first place. Thankfully none of these moments were enough to make me stop for good and I couldn’t be happier that I kept gaming for many reasons (including destructiod).

P.S. I’ve noticed that a lot of my recent blogs have included Resident Evil, Final Fantasy or Metal Gear. Please bear with me as I’m fairly sure this is just a coincidence and they just happened to fit into the topics I chose...... either that or I’m a one trick horse and everything I write will go down because all I ever do is talk about the same games.