And yet I love them all. While I could go on forever about almost every genre, I've chosen to focus on a few in particular; the ones that I'm most disappointed in. Ah yes, where to begin...

FPSs: Oh shit.



I grew up with the Doom series. It was the first game series I ever actually played on my own, and, because I suck massive donkey balls, it was thusly the first game series I cheated at. Of course, I quickly learned that using my newly found cheat codes in other games did not necessarily aid me as I wished them to - Heretic gave me a big fat weapons wedgie the first time I tried all weapons, and just flat out murdered me when I attempted God mode. So I was forced to play through without God mode, and truly enjoyed it. As soon as multiplayer became a reality with Duke Nukem 3D, my life changed forever.



I spent hours making new maps and networking the 486s together. I was a true addict by the age of about 12. Of course, counterstrike hit shortly thereafter, with Unreal Tournament not far behind, and it became more and more apparent that I just wasn't getting any better - but the fun factor of the game never went down. With the birth of good console gaming I discovered Halo and Call of Duty, and enjoyed it even more...again, never got good. You know the idiot on the team that consistently gets between 5 and 10 kills but is killed about 10-15 times, thusly cancelling out their own score? Yeah. That's me. But I don't give a fuck. There's something satisfying about running around shooting my friends in the FACE. FPSs will always be my first videogame experience, stealing my virginity with a BFG.

RPGs make me their bitch.

Final Fantasy VIII was the first RPG I played that I felt like I knew what the fuck was going on. And I'd played a few before that; the Breath of Fire series, III and IV in particular, took up a lot of my free time as a kid - but that doesn't mean I knew what the fuck was happening. The other month, in fact, I had a nightmare involving me stumbling across a fairy village that was full of fairy corpses - and they were blaming ME for not checking in on them. Don't even get me going on leveling up or getting final weapons. I cannot count how manytimes I tried to get Lulu's final bullshit sigil or whatever in FFX. Dodging 200 lightning bolts? No thank you. And I couldn't tell you what the actual storyline of any of the final fantasies actually is. Oh, I thought I had it pinned with FFVIII, too. Thought I had the story all worked out...



...and I suddenly realised I was in SPACE, chasing a little pixelated DOT with my analogue stick and NOTHING MADE SENSE ANYMORE. Back to square one. I suck at keeping up with these bloody games.



The issue is that I don't have the patience for RPGs, yet I love the fact that they take me forever to beat - I can play them for hours and hours and even though I'm doing the same fucking thing over and over, I love that the storyline progresses, the characters grow, the battles get harder. I suck at strategically choosing who to give materia to or which summons to assign - and don't even get me STARTED on the job systems, I have NO ability to hone my characters properly. The fact that they started making characters really HOT helps...it's like they know people like me will keep playing just for the chance that there might be another Rikku buttshot...

RTS/RTTs/Sim Games make my brain feel fuzzy.



Force Commander and Command and Conquer stole quite a few hours of my childhood, as did Simcity, which I group in with RTS/RTT types. Not because I replayed them, but rather because it would take me days to complete a mission. I'm not sure what it is, but I've never built up the ability to be strategic in my planning. I get caught up in the moment - blame Attention Deficit Disorder - and suddenly I'm being bombarded by Nazis or Jedi or some shit. While I'm playing at building a road in the shape of the word "PENISLOL" in my SimCity, Godzilla is quietly sneaking around in the water unseen, ready to fuck my city up something fierce. Almost ANYTHING that allows me to create things exactly the way I want them but requires extreme tactical comprehension inevitably crushes me in a fury of SUCKAGE. I sort of like it in a weird way. Anyone that has played an RTS, especially something like a Sim game, can attest to the addictive qualities of the hellspawnish things. It's like I turn into a total masochist, relishing the moments of creation - and getting some weird satisfaction out of seeing it fall. Huh. Destructoid? Remind me to never have children, or to attend planning classes or something before I create a life and bring it into this world. Thanks.


Action/Adventure games fool me into thinking I don't suck.



This upsets me. The Zelda series had me tricked for quite a few years. I honestly thought I was halfway decent at Ocarina of Time - I remember beating it over and over again, so I MUST have been good at it, right? HAH. It took me AN ENTIRE WEEK to get past Dark Link the first time I played that game. SEVEN DAYS. HELLO. And when I went back later and played it, I had looked up the secrets of how to beat him, only because I remember being SO FRUSTRATED as a kid.



And I have a deep dark secret: I've never finished Super Mario Bros 3. Never. I'm so monumentally horrible at it that I've never actually been able to beat it all the way through. Why am I even admitting this to you?! I'm just going to stop talking, I've only just realised how ridiculously terribad I'm making myself sound. Thank God we're on the internet and you can't actually see me.

In short, I suck.

And if it weren't for the internets, I'd suck even harder. Once computers were hooked up to the tubes and I was able to access user created walkthroughs, videogames started making more sense to me, and I got a liiiiitle bit better at them. But not much. It's confirmation for me, though, that even those who are BRUTAL at videogames like myself can appreciate them for being incredibly fun, and never let it get them down. As long as they're not horribly judged for it, that is. But you'd never judge me based on my lack of skill in videogames...right guys?

<3

*No caption necessary.