I’ve been in a startlingly good mood recently, allowing me ample relaxation and peace of mind. The perfect mindset for gaming! Don’t get me wrong, here. Anger is always good motivation when pretending to shoot people, and a wistful, nostalgic mood might make a fantasy game all the more enrapturing, but I’ve never enjoyed a game more than when I’ve felt calm, cool, and collected.

In the spirit of happy gaming, I figured, what better way to revel than to write about a bunch of stuff that makes me gush with video game love? Scenes, moments, characters, and even some games themselves. There are some that make me remember why I turn to my console when I’m feeling a little blue. They just make me believe in gaming again.

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CS hacks are annoying. Team-killers and other players blasting shitty techno through their mics on CoD4 aren’t even mildly amusing anymore. I log onto WoW to grind some rep and think, why am I spending so much time working toward a piece of virtual gear only to grow dissatisfied with it and yearn for another piece of virtual gear, all of which is worthless, if not scorned, in the eyes of others? It feels monotonous. It feels useless. It feels boring.

What is a girl to do when her favorite source of entertainment, the pastime about which she is most passionate, just doesn’t cut it?

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I’m obsessed with simulation. From crappy Flash games to $60 Wii titles, I’ll play all of them with a goofy smile on my face. I know that almost every video game itself is a type of simulation, like shooters or some RPG’s, but I’m talking about games devoted to simulating one task. They usually lack characters and plot since they’re so concentrated on the role they seek to emulate. Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Why do you enjoy subjecting yourself to such a chore of a game?’ And then I answer myself, ‘Good question. I don’t really know.’ ‘You’re a fucking moron. Play something real.’

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Have you ever fallen in love with a game so deeply that you’d fight for it? Did you grow so attached to characters that you’d reminisce about their final appearances? Would you’ve thrown yourself in front of a bullet to have kept it from damaging your cartridge?

I’ve been there. There are games I’ve obsessed over. Sometimes it’s not an obsession so much as a resonance, a thought about it that lingers in your head after you’ve turned it off. Some games just stay with you.

One of the saddest truths is that all good things must come to an end. But occasionally that end is too bitter. Premature, even. How do we cope with the loss of our favorite games?

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Plot advancement, receiving a new weapon, even unlocking skimpy female costumes… whatever it is, when we play a video game, we need an objective. Without anything to look forward to, a game simply becomes an exercise in futility. And what better way to push us forward toward objectives than to threaten us with the hulking beast that spells out our virtual doom, the ominous Game Over? I don’t know about you, but I’m quivering in the corner over here.

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Looming over your head within the menacing dark clouds of marketing, the decision of which console to purchase taunts you. “Playstation 3!” the sky roars. “Xbox 360!” “Wiiiiiiii!” You look up, hoping maybe some light will shine through the gloomy amassment of advertisements and point you in the right direction. Instead, lightning strikes, singeing you as well as that money already burning a hole in your pocket. Well, at least that made your decision a little bit easier.

All right, all right, it’s a little morbid to believe that death is your only escape from the console wars that the gaming industry wages daily. It’s nothing new. There’s been competition in the market for video game consoles since we first picked up our controllers, and these current generation consoles have been out for years now. But every piece of gaming equipment is more expensive than ever, and I’m trying to look at prospective purchases a lot more cautiously than I used to. The most glaring reason to buy a system these days is simple: exclusives.

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