I can enjoy a good single player game as much as the next gamer. In fact, being by myself can sometimes be cathartic. But only sometimes.

Having an added interactive personality or two to spice up the time you spend with your favorite pixels? Why, who could resist? Friends, and people in general, make gaming multidimensional. They point out things you may have missed, spend joyous hours entertaining you, share the journey of your characters from one point to another, and make you feel like not so much of a geeky gamer freak because hey – you’ve got friends who play too, so spending twenty hours a week or more on an activity atypical to most people in society isn’t quite so lonely an affair.

My personal favorite? Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions on Ventrilo during PvP combat.

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I like to try to get to know my competition. Get into their heads, figure out their personalities–size up the competition if you will. It’s an important pre-game ritual. I’ll look over gamercards, avatars, character choices, and most importantly, their names. Sometimes, I find genuinely creative and interesting names.

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Are you bored with your job? Perhaps you’re tired of taking orders from someone you hate? Or maybe you don’t even have a job at all? Regardless of your situation, if you want work, I have great news, dear reader! Our inbox has recently been inundated with requests for people to fill some out of the ordinary job positions.

You’d just better act quickly before they’re gone!

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Princesses. For the most part, they’re nothing but trophy wives for video game protagonists; vapid and spineless girls akin to supermodels. Many, aside from their glowing cardboard cut-out personalities, are also great at providing little or no help in sticky situations that they frequently get themselves into. Furthermore, after risking life and limb for these harlots, the biggest reward you get is a peck on the cheek. Well, okay, sometimes, you also get some sickeningly cute giggle or a bat of an eyelash. Sometimes. That’s if you can manage to behave.

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Dialogue. You can find it in any game. Whether they are seen or read, every game has quotes; some are memorable, some are easily forgotten. Maybe we experience it while obliterating our friends on XBL, or while we’re being chased by ghouls down a dark hallway with only a baseball bat for defense. Sometimes it waits, hidden in the depths of a game’s menus, quests, inventories, narration–or as easter eggs to be discovered and enjoyed. Any gamer who has ever laughed, wanted to break things, or felt their heartstrings being tugged at while enjoying a particular game was most likely influenced by a demonstration of superb writing.

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It’s such a tease when games are scrapped as they near completion—kings and queens of delays and ill-fated cancellations. So many games are completely different than their alphas and betas; other games never even hit the shelf in one piece. There are a lot of regrets as a gamer when this happens, though who can say if it’s mourning the game or just our lack of control and input into the industry.

I can say, however, that if we had our way, we’d all have played Starcraft: Ghost four years ago and Parasite Eve 3 wouldn’t be released as a cellphone game.

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