I'm sorry, did you not realise I'm doing this because I'm lazy?

Why? Why has gaming come to this? A whole new world of possibilities through your console and TV, and with only the need to move your fingers, yet everyone and every brand decides to jump on the moronic casual gaming motion-sensor bandwagon. Don't picture me as some fat lifeless slob because I hate those people just as much, but damn it I like my gaming because of the brilliantly small amount of physical effort I have to put in.

Gaming consoles started off with tiny controllers and simple games, and people realised this was pretty fun and expanded from there. From side scrolling to huge open worlds; all we need to do is have a little dexterity of the thumbs. And from this dexterity you can get the extremely skilled people, people who can get headshots with shotguns from 20 metres whilst jumping and turning 360 degrees in the air. Do they have to jump around and perform some incredible physical feat to do so? No, and that's the beauty of it. Nonetheless, motion-sensor gaming, in particular the little white box lurking underneath everyone's TV known as the Wii, is still a towering giant in the industry.

Oh hey! I'm like totally playing in the olympics by performing an extremely fast wanking-off action with both hands! And now I'm totally in Mortal Kombat by prancing around and punching air, getting exhausted and looking like a twat/psychotic fighting off an alter ego! Wow this is fun enough to amuse the grandparents for a good half hour, before realising that if I wanted to do some actual gaming I should have bought an Xbox or PS3...

And that's it, it SHOULDN'T be called gaming. That's endlessly swinging your arms around replicating endless things you can easily do in real life anyway, perhaps with the exceptions of Mad World and some sport ones. What's more disheartening is that from the mindblowingly huge business it makes Microsoft can't resist getting in on it too with the upcoming Project Natal, which as much as I believe breaks incredible barriers with voice and facial recognition, voice based commands and full-body-sensor gameplay, is still tinged with too much of a Wii feel and makes you think it's slightly turning away from its audience who are, for the most part, not the kind of moron that thinks the Wii is a real console. I refuse to say that the new Eyetoy is copying the Wii, as it is really a continuation of the Eyetoy for Playstation 2. It also DAMN pissed me off when the Nintendo guy said that he was 'honoured' that other brands were starting to use motion sensor when NINTENDO DIDN'T EVEN DO IT FIRST. Seeing as arcade games and even some very old plug-in-and-play games had thought of 'interact with the screen' type gaming years ago, let alone the Eyetoy, he couldn't be more wrong.

So maybe this is the future of gaming. We can watch all our glorious laziness drain away and be forgotten, only to be replaced by giggling parents and children enthusiastically turning imaginary steering wheels for Mario Kart, and weak old men accidentally flinging their controllers into their TVs whilst playing golf, eventually till everyone realises how little fun it actually is once the novelty factor wears off, resulting in this kind of gaming fades away too, and gaming will be a dead concept altogether. There, I prophesied the end of all games with Nintendo as the culprit. Even if it doesn't turn out in my fanciful way, I'm still putting my money on Nintendo ruining everything somewhere down the line.

'Realism', and how it's not Reality.

It's undeniable that one of the most attractive things to the gaming community these days is realism. Games such as Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed (above) and Bad Company show this factor being used and they've all done well. This is a fairly recent thing, at least for the last ten years or so as in the days of NES and SNES the idea of a game replicating reality was unheard of. 'But this is how we get away from all that!' everyone said. And now all we want is just to live life again, but in a virtual world were you're allowed to bugger up, and we can make ourselves as stylish and unapologetically over the top without just looking like a twat. However, something that's really got to me recently is that our idea of realism in gaming is simply... wrong.

Ok that last statement sounded a bit 'I'm right and you're wrong'. However, just think about this situation, for example. Is Gears of War realistic? The planet Sera is being devoured by a humanoid, subterranean race called the Locust who use a giant worm to sink human cities and ultimately attempt to wipe them out. Sounds far-fetched, of course, but that isn't unrealistic. This isn't happening on earth, it is fair enough that another race exists underground, and that a giant worm creature exists, there are no scientific rules stopping it happening. It's also perfectly realistic in that a shotgun will blow your enemy to bits at close range; that's what shotguns are for. Realism is NOT: 'If I was to go out into the world now, this would happen'. Realism IS: 'Things work how they should in the context, and do not do the physically impossible'. It would be unrealistic if the giant worm created a black hole by trying to sing Copacobana whilst making a bacon sandwich, and forcing the planet into a state of gravitational hilariousness. YES, HILARIOUSNESS. So this conflicts with, for example, the common view that Halo is unrealistic. Apart from the ridiculous gravity, there is no reason why there shouldn't be armour developed that can take so many bullets, or have grenades that stick to your face.

However this also reveals a huge hole in the supposed realism of our champions of lifelike gameplay, my thoughts mainly upon GTA. GTA perfects a supreme city life simulation which is undoubtedly fantastic, people move and react just how they should and cars crumple from crashes, not just smoke and explode. So how is that Niko Bellic, an ordinary man from Eastern Europe, can take about 20 bullets, only to be healed again by eating a hotdog or screwing a hooker? Perhaps this is one grey area we shouldn't expose. Gaming's no fun if all you do is die, right? Health systems should perhaps keep you as a big bullet absorber, like a cushion made of Kevlar. Call of Duty made this less of a problem with the ability to take only a couple of hits, but then Call of Duty sucks. Yes, I said it, and will explain why in other posts.

And then there is blatant evasion of realism. Assassin's Creed was a good game with an even better concept, but you try sitting on a bench in a crowded street and listening to ever word of a conversation happening 10 metres away. Even better, try out jumping from 200 feet, and landing right in a hay bale, in a wagon only just bigger than you. And you're not allowed to touch the sides of it. Now do it 100 more times, and you have to get it perfect every time. Ridiculous, right? Not at all realistic seeing as it is set during the Crusade, not during the age of the infinitely perfect acrobat ninjas.

Do not mistake me for saying that unrealism is a bad thing. Oh, no, while I like game using realism effectively, the sacrifice of it is often refreshing, and/or necessary. Even when everything, including the health/damage dilemma is sorted in games like Operation Flashpoint, I simply don't think realism should be a case for a game being good, especially when we hardly know what we mean when we say it. Now go play Abe's Odyssey, safe in the knowledge that you're playing a 100% realistic simulation of when the Mudokens will overthrow the Glukkon and Slig rule over Rupture Farms and all of Oddworld.

/b/ is for Bungie

Yes, I made this picture on Paint. Not as if anyone else has come up with the idea eh?

By now, we've all got our reasons for hating Bungie. They moved the army of whining 11 year olds from Florida from the online PC gaming community to Xbox Live, and tripled their numbers. They created the most characterless video game hero ever made, turned a fairly serious and cutting storyline into a joke and at E3 shat out that swaggering tit who presented the upcoming news and gameplay footage we'd all seen before for Halo 3: ODST whilst doing his best impression of the archetype, despite being one anyway. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Halo 3, but after 14,763th time you hear from some moron who's played at most 3 games in his life that Halo is the best game ever, you begin to loathe whoever created this monster.

Now, with the exclusion of some Tibetan monks and perhaps a few Papa New Guinean tribes, everyone has heard of /b/ and 4chan by now right? That place full of bastards which was at one point kinda funny, and then less so, and now really not? Yeah, no doubt by now the mention of a 'epic fail' or a 'shoop da woop' will make you want to tear off your ears with a pair of pliers. So WHY do Bungie feel some dumb fucking need to incorporate it into their already dull humour?

I admit, at the time of writing it is less present, but look back only a couple of months and everything on Bungie.net and all messages from Bungie recieved after a Halo 3 update HAD to include a reference to some dead meme, and not even pulled off well. It was enough to make you think that half of the /b/ community is actually just Bungie techies on their lunch break chucking in another shit photoshopped photo of the Chief and tying 'I THINK HALO IS A PRETTY COOL GUY'. Even stuff they didn't make themselves from Youtube, such as 'Top Ten Epic Fail Sticks' or something like that would constantly be posted on Bungie.net and promoted, each new time changing the last word to 'splatters' or 'headshots' etc. and showing us endless unfunny luck-based kills that are bound to happen every five games due to the physics engine. And with the biggest audience of all, MACHINIMAS. Of course 99% of it is JohnCJG's stuff, mainly Arby n' the Chief. Watch the latest 5 or so episodes and count how many memes are used. I dare you. You'll run out of fingers. I started off thinking 'oh, this must just be satire...'. That belief wore off quickly.

I suppose this was bound to happen from the beginning, I mean Bungie and 4chan have an almost identical fanbase: arrogant prepubescents, often hungry and/or pissed off from their long walk home from school. They just go so conveniently hand-in-hand, and it's just so sweet that I'm going to have to despise them both equally. Aww, now you just go off and die.