I’m not dead! : You’re not fooling anyone…

Every so often I go into a spiralling freefall of apathy and loathing towards my so called hobby. I get so crushingly bored with absolutely everything that it frustrates me to the point of grinding my teeth down to bloody stumps and just selling the whole bloody lot and living a practically technology free life seems like a damn fine idea. Of course I can’t do that because I’d be strung up if I got rid of the only means of playing Singstar and Rock Band when people come round, and that my Pc would have to go due to the obscene amount of games I have on Steam and that means losing the internet and I’d probably die if I did that. So I won’t.

It’s been 6 months since I wrote about games. Paula tells me I should write more as she enjoys reading them, so there’s one person that enjoys reading my poorly paragraphed, obscenely languaged diatribes (complete with made up words) but the fact is there hasn’t been much that I’ve played that’s moved me to write about them. Even Mass Effect 1 and 2, which I adored (well, the second one, the first one was ‘alright’) didn’t prompt me to start tippy tapping away. I wrote a fucktonne of notes on it in a little book but when I did actually come to try and type them up I couldn’t because I’d written them on the train. They may as well have been in Urdu or some shit.

Only recently I’ve had Spider-man Shattered Dimensions, Colin McRae DiRT 2 (again), and Dead Rising 2, of which I only have Dead Rising 2 left, and I haven’t turned that on in about a week and half. Since the weekend I bought it in fact. Not to mention since Christmas I’ve had Lego Rock Band, Wolfenstein, Sonic And Sega All Star Racing, Bioshock 1 and 2, Yakuza 3, 3D Dot Game Heroes, Demon’s Souls not to mention a thousand XBLA and PSN games, and all the fucking Steam games I bought in the bastard summer sale (and some at the weekends because I’m fucking weak) like the Telltale All Pack, which is the 5 episodes of Tales From Monkey Isand, 5 Episodes of the Strongbad game, ALL of the Sam & Max Seasons, the Wallace and Grommit games, plus some I’ve forgotten. There’s like 25 games or something stupid. I don’t know what possessed me. Naturally, I’ve barely touched these.

That’s just a fraction of what I bought (Doom pack, anyone?) and a lot of them I have actually played but I struggle to find the words to express how hilarious and entertaining/shocking they were. Probably because I have a fucking appalling memory and never write notes about what I like or dislike about them and could probably sum them up in a couple of paragraphs. I suppose I can cross “games journalist” off my Things To Look Into To Get Out Of My Shitty Job list. I’ll not even start on the fucking Wii I bought for Tatsunoko Vs Capcom.

Now normally I have these little fits of doubt, then something will come along and I’ll be in love all over again, but this has gone on far too long. I’m finding myself woefully apathetic at the best of times, and when you’re supposed to be selling the things to the great unwashed and find yourself utterly apathetic towards it, well, it’s difficult. I pride myself on being good at my job, even if it’s only being a manager in an indie video games shop, and not being enthused by anything unnerves and worries me.

I’ve recently found my self dipping back into World Of Warcraft, raiding with friends on a Sunday in ICC10 and levelling and gearing my Shaman so we have another healer in the pool to choose from when the little voice that’s been niggling at me for a while suddenly found a megaphone, switched it on and bellowed “YOU AREN’T ACTUALLY HAVING ANY FUN. STOP PLAYING FOR THE SAKE OF PLAYING. DO SOMETHING ELSE" *krrsssshk*. It’s right, I haven’t been having fun in World Of Warcraft for the best part of, oooooooooooooooooh, 6 months? Longer? Maybe. So it’s got to the point where Cataclysm can take a long walk. The woman will get the Collector’s Edition and I’ll have my art book but I don’t think I’ll pick up the expansion.

The long and short is that my hobby seems to have become a chore, the worst kind of chore that makes me feel like I should be playing games and play them by rote and not for the enjoyment they once gave me and to be honest I feel sad about that. The one glimmer of light on the horizon is Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, purely because Criterion brought us Burnout: Paradise and are the last men standing, unloading buckshot into the faces of the Apathy Zombies that swarm my mind. The circle around them is getting smaller and if NFS:HP doesn’t spark any interest I fear all may be lost.

So yeah, this may be my last blog post for a while. Or maybe not, I don’t know. Sorry for the brain spew of nonsensical pseudo-emo claptrap and self pitying bullshit. Maybe I can use these doldrums to do something constructive and update my creative blog for a change. I suppose we’ll see.