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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I have a confession to make. I haven’t owned a console for six years.

Yes. I know. It defies belief.

The reason for my lack is simple to explain: I was hopping the Atlantic on a regular basis, zipping between the USA and Europe, with only a rucksack of belongings. I had a PS2 memory card, and the games I managed to play (Resident Evil 4, Kingdom Hearts, Silent Hill 3, FF6 and FFX, Devil May Cry) I managed only in short stints at friends houses. Beating a game was rare, and often spanned years of on-off gaming sessions. I very quickly fell out of the console gaming loop.

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I recently upgraded computers. As a college student, a laptop made the most sense; as much as I would like an amped out desktop system, going balls to the wall with the latest card and processor, I needed something portable. I needed something light.

But I’m also a gamer, so I couldn’t get an Apple. I didn’t feel like having to tweak my system and manipulate it simply to run Counter-strike, or Hellgate: London.

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