The joys of FPS and limb waving

Ok, so after weeks of repetitive silence, here’s the problem. With the gift of a PS3 came the curse of the FPS.

First-Person Shooter (FPS). A game where men relive childhood pistol fantasy and “shoot” the whats-its out of each other.

Although I’ve written curse up there, its being evil and horrific is not strictly the case. It’s very much fun actually. So much so, that I seem to be sacrificing regular activities for the sake of one… more… game. This low level addiction got me thinking. What is it actually, when it all boils down, that drives millions of men of all ages to run around on a screen to the sounds of “FRAG OUT!” or “GRENADA!”? Why is it that there are plenty of facebook groups “wittily” entitled “I lost my BF to COD lulz!!11!!11!!”?

Well it is fairly straightforward in most cases. As I mentioned above, much to their mother’s disdain, at some point or another all boys pick up their imaginary James Bond pistol and Rambo machine gun and start running around the garden yelling “RATATATATATATATAT!” or “BRRRRRRRRRRPPP!”. Its the childhood hero complex – we want to be the superstar saving the day, and as we get older, the girl. So when a machine provides an opportunity for now fully-grown boys (which is most definitely what most of us are) to run around and shoot things without actually running about we leap at the opportunity.

The childhood growth idea is only one argument however. Depending on the game, and the man, there are other factors at play in this addictive nature. Competitivity is one such thing. I’m no Olympian medal hunter, no cup-winning sportsman, hell, I’m no high-flying academic, but the thrill of attainment is something I crave. It doesn’t just apply to my gaming lifestyle, it applies to all aspects. If there were supermarket sweep-esque challenges when I did the weekly shop, you can guarantee I’d be flying round those shelves with my eye on the prize. Like I said, I’m no super-geek when it comes to academia, so when the high marks started appearing this year I was like a pig in brown stuff. FPSs provide an opportunity for us to be attainers on different levels: there’s the unlocking of equipment and ascension of skill levels, there is the team victory or top 3 free-for-all finish and then there is the unhinged joy of slowly creeping up behind that sniper that has been picking you off for AGES and gleefully dominating him with knife or unnecessary amounts of metallic slugs. It’s such thrills that have kept my eyes firmly attached to the screen over these last few weeks. I’m no expert, and I tend to find that my meagre kill to death ratio of 0.87 would make most seasoned professionals and 10 year old girls laugh, but I couldn’t care less. Because, for 10-30 minutes (depending on the game) I am back in a childhood fantasy and adult competitive tapestry, and it is great.

It’s strange that it has taken the passive act of sitting to do this, considering that I’ve had a Wii for a long time now. But the waggle has worn off, as I think it might have done for many people. All you can hear from the companies is that waving your arms in time with the screen is the next big thing and that it offers a way of being fully in tune with the games, but I really have started to find such activities tiresome. Don’t get me wrong, playing tennis in your living room after a few drinks is probably one of the funniest things you can get up to, aside playing boxing. But on a day to day playing level, such exertions are really not what I’m after. The novelty (that is most definitely what it was) has worn off. If I wanted an immersive game where my actions in the real represented my actions in a game I would go and play the damn thing. With the exception of doing it drunk, playing tennis/golf/football (WITH ARMS?!)/shooting stuff is not enhanced by me having to get off my backside and prance about in my living room. That’s what real tennis is for. Maybe Nintendo is to blame for the current poor showing on the British Tennis front, who knows. I can certainly imagine the press release. “We lost. It seems the Lithuanian’s traditional training was too much of a match for our Wii Tennis techniques. Apparently we can’t flap for 10 minutes and win a game.” I remember way back to the first week of owning a Wii, and laughing as my good friend Marc decided that Wii Bowling should now only be played by staying on the couch and waving at the screen. It still worked.

The idea of games in general is that they are enjoyable. That they immerse you in an alternate world where you are placed in otherwise unreachable situations. The FPS is one such thing. It’s fun because it provides an opportunity to live the hero life without placing yourself in the perils that such men face. I would never want to hold a real life deathmatch. But all I crave right now is one more game of sprinting around with my SCAR-H to the soundtrack of whining twelve year olds, droning clansmen and really, really annoying snipers. It’s fun.

summer holiday

I love to travel.

Which is horrendously unfair at the moment, what with me not being able to afford it. However wishful thinking about travel often allows me a chance to collect my thoughts on previous trips, and some of the happy memories they bring. I could decorate my life by fantastic travels.

My younger days were filled with trips to camp sites and villas in the friendly neighbouring country. We camped, caravanned and homed these trips across France, from Bordeaux to Paris, Nantes to… well Paris. We stuck to the coast mainly, with one visit near the capital. Each trip was different and of course, what with being a child at the time, each trip was amazing in its own right. Each had memories that have stuck with me endlessly. So… Thought I’d relate a few

One time, we stayed in a converted barn/cottage set in the middle of nowhere. I’m talking back lanes and bushels nowhere. It was perfect in that upon face value, there was absolutely nothing there of interest to a child. The first few moments were spent reading or playing with well travelled toys, until our imagination yawned at its awakening and started up. This then led to an almighty grasshopper hunt. The place was surrounded by them, and upon my brother’s insistence that they were aliens on the prowl, we began to gather them. Perhaps we had some kind of interrogation planned, I don’t recall. I do recall the fact that the things wouldn’t stay still. If they did, it was just to secrete some yellow fluid that led to screams of “He’s POOING on me!” (we were clean kiddies both in vocabulary and hygiene). We actually managed to gather quite a sum of the little excrement producers, which was awesome until tea time came, and we had to leave them there (apparently bringing grasshoppers to the table is frowned upon) and all of them were rude enough to disappear by the time we returned.

Another memory had no poignancy till later in life, when I actually got to an age to recognise the importance of it. We visited Monet’s garden, whilst still being of primary (US: elementary) school age. Sadly, at this age, the level of importance of an artist’s garden to me, computer crazed young’un was quite low. So I spent most of the time in that garden just wandering unaware of the scenes I was taking in. Although, now, I have to say doing that was fantastic, because now all I have is this child’s memory of wandering past the different scenes and thinking they were pretty for being pretty, rather than painstaking recreations of a masterpiece. I appreciated the garden for being a garden, rather than artwork.

Nope. I can’t maintain that with a straight face. I was walking around that place thinking “GET. ME. OUT.” I was a true grumble-some wart. I do remember thinking that the pond looked pretty cool though. And I remember those all too famous images like they’re the prints on my fingers.

I got older, and then the holidays took a sportier turn. One such holiday was spent sailing for the duration. We’d sail literally all day, in little Topaz dinghies. They were fab. It got to the point that we were so competent at the sailing, that we were becoming fearless, allowing the wind to tip our light boats to angles that had the tutors screaming for us to turn into the wind. Put in their perspective, watching an 11 and a 12 year old sitting in a tipping boat probably didn’t seem like the safest prospect. We loved it though. One of my brothers and I continued to sail for the next few years or so, leading to many more notable memories, including such as the day my brother destroyed his mast in a storm and the day we teamed up to beat a bunch of veteran sailors in a race, yet argue the entire time. Good times.

Older still, and now at an age where travelling alone had been feasible for a while, mother dove in the deep end and took my brothers and I, along with plus 1s / friends to another french camp resort. Two gems here, the cameraderie of a bunch of young adults given a certain amount of freedom, and the hilarity of doing this on a family campsite. Quite immaturely of  course, we forget that children are sleeping yada-yada on the way back from an evening’s drinking of the notable delicacy “Bigfoot” (a rum, beer and secret-crazy-french stuff mix) leading to a pitiful attempt at french on my part saying we had no idea etc to security and better still, leading to my youngest brother hiding underneath a caravan for an entire hour. Literallly. We were sat playing UNO! for ages, until he storms in, breathless, acclaiming (with some pride) “I did it! I hid under a caravan! He never saw me!” Well done dear brother.

There are more, so when they come to mind, I’ll pop them up on here into the “holiday” category.

As in, I’ll categorise my holidays until I’m rich enough to have another