How To: Play Video Games

We’re constantly told videogames are the frontier of entertainment, the epitome of fun and a frequent showcase of what’s possible with today’s technology.  None of this is true: gaming is the single most self inflated, backwards pastime on the planet, so self absorbed in its own pretencious importance, too concerned with bigging itself up to notice that it has single handedly managed to remain exactly the same as it was in 1981.  Except in 3D.

Take the start screen; the attractive window dressing that finally greets the weary gamer after already thoughtfully making him sit through ten minutes of unskippable title screens necessary for physics engines and audio compression tech the average joypad hero had neither any interest in or any concept of what all the flashy logos could possibly pertain to.  It’s nonsense, we’ve already waited for you to install, to load, to present to us the entire cast list of your ridiculously bloated endeavour, and you’ve now got the audacity to wait for us?  And you want me to press a specific button to prove it?

And once you’ve settled in, made a sandwich, eaten it, gone off to the bakers and watched him bake the bread from scratch, overnight, chances are your new game is ready for you.  Your console, a 512 bit, 4 Gigabobbins super monster is not without a sense of humour though: press start, and you’ll be greeted with those two words every gamer has grown up to hate ever since the ZX Spectrum wheezed into life.  Now Loading.  Yes, you’ve already waited for hell to freeze over, but now you can wait another few seconds whilst your console loads the bloody menu screen.  It’ll be in whizzy 3D with loads of polygonal footballers running around a pixel perfect representation of Wembley, so it’ll be worth it.  And that’s just the racing games.

Most menus systems are designed to instantly trigger deep-seated Pavlovian senses:  scroll down to Settings, choose Controls, Invert Y-Axis.  If those three options aren’t there, in that order, cold sweats and a nasty runny tummy follow immediately as the gamer realises that he’ll have to contend with pressing the right stick in the wrong direction for the entire length of the game – either that or never look up, accelerate or pass the ball under his feet, ping it off the linesman and headbut a member of the opposite team.  Of course, Y-Axis controls can normally be found once the game has started in a ‘handy’ initiation process, but unless you’re the Master Chief you won’t care.

And then you’ve got to select a difficulty level.  Seriously, in nearly 30 years of gaming I’ve always picked Easy.  Always.  Life’s far too short to worry about having to retry a section more than once, and if you’re expecting me to have to think about more than a single button for Super Mega Fireball Kick you’re mistaking me with someone with far more time on their hands.  And besides, every time I accidentally select Medium the bloody game will tell me about five minutes in that I’m not good enough.  Forget ID Cards, just inject a chip into my arm that says ‘Ninja Dog’ and let the console pick it up for me.  I’m not embarassed, I just don’t relish coming last every damned lap.

But soon you’ll be into the game, after a few more loading screens, of course.  Games are all different, but somehow manage to all be exactly the same: square is always reload, even if you’re not carrying a gun; X is always jump and the triggers are always the wrong way around.  You’ll probably find an option to change them hidden away next to the one that lets you make the game so dark it’s impossible to see anything and the one that lets you Tweet your every movement to your ever decreasing Twitter followership.  But panic not, the game will see best to guide you through a thirty minute introduction, whereby it’ll teach you every single move in the game and explaining your vast arsenal of nuclear weaponry before dumping you at the real beginning with nothing but a pencil for defence.

When you’ve played a game for more than an hour it’ll be time to play something else, or eat some pizza.  When you do this, remember that your in-game character will need to find a typewriter, a crystal, a magnifying glass and dash through the pit-lane three times to be able to save their progress in a vague attempt to make the whole process somewhat relevant to the game.  Fail to do this and it’ll be back to the introduction the next time, the game blissfully unaware that you’ve already spent the best part of an evening warming up.  Gamestation’s second hand section is chock full of typewriter-savers, such is the apathy greeted by gamers on a second attempt at the risible first level.

Ultimately, though, and assuming you’re playing on easy, you’ll complete the game.  You’ll only have half the Trophies and an Achievement score of 15, but you’ll have sat through more credits and a desperate attempt to sell you a sequel, and for most, that’s ample excuse to try the multiplayer mode, which will quickly show you that easy mode is no substitute for 12 year old gaming addicts with language issues. Once you realise that you’ll never progress further up the ranks than ‘Tea Boy’ you’ll switch off multiplayer never to try it again.

Once you’ve Googled that physics engine, then, it’s time to trade in your game and buy something equally rubbish for more money that you’d have spent if you’d just bought both of them for cash in the first place.  All trade-ins lose you money, even if you walk away quids in, so the best bet is to take the thing down to a car boot sale and swap it with some old grandma for that ZX Spectrum I mentioned.  I guarantee it’s really all the same.

This article is satire.