There is something over the years that I have grown to despise, an invisible force which with growing frequency and maliciousness interposes itself between me and my beloved mistress, Gaming. I say that Gaming is my mistress because I think my first love has always been the Internet itself, and Gaming is secondary to that, but by a margin so slim as to be almost indistinguishable. So I cheat on the Internet with Gaming, and sometimes, by some arcane and Faustian bargain I manage to get both in bed at the same time, the aftermath of which is generally nights of relentless mouse clicking, kinky keyboard maneuvers and my beard becoming a wholly sentient being unto itself, at which point it strangles me into unconsciousness. As of late, however, the Internet has become a jealous beast and keeps me from my beloved jewel, my delicious Zombie Queen: Gaming.

I've been a member of a community based on a visual chat program since 1996, at which time I was roughly 7 years old, this program has sadly been with me the larger portion of my life. Said community is tight-knit, obviously, as early adopters dwindled and what once were roaring fires of conversation dwindled to sad little candles distressed by the slightest gust. Most of these people I've known for seven full years or more, which of course on the Internet is like saying that I have known them since the Beginning of Time Immemorial. I can easily say that they are my best friends in the world, and so becomes my problem. Year by year it's become harder to tear myself away from said program to play games, generally if it wasn't on the PC I gave it a cursory play and inevitably forgot entirely about the game. Obviously the games I play the most then are on the PC and online, ones that I can play with a host of friends, but the inertia to just sitting down and playing games extends beyond the times when I'm embroiled in conversation.

It quite honestly feels like a lack of passion about the games I'm preparing to play is keeping me at bay. I know these are excellent games, I can feel it in my bones and precious head meats that I'll enjoy myself, but I just CANNOT play them. Maybe something's just broken in me.

It's troubling, especially in light of the deluge of fantastic games we had in 2007, I simply haven't had the time or the will to play even half of my purchases. I recently managed to break the drought by buying Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core, a series which I'd followed for ages, but had never gotten around to playing. I was not disappointed in the least. Immediately, I fell back into my old obsession with 2D fighters, still deep-seated from when I used to go to the local arcade and play Primal Rage (Fuck Yeah Vertigo),



Mortal Kombat II (SUB-ZERO), and the like. It's a good feeling to break a drought, but it's an entirely worse feeling to go back to being a man unquenched in Ozymandias' desert. Aside from the occasional GGXX and TF2 , I haven't quite been able to touch other games yet, so Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Mass Effect, Bioshock, NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams and others lay by the wayside, waiting to be played.

Has anyone else had to grapple with that deadly force, Gaming Inertia?