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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Many gamers have their preferred method of getting their digital entertainment fix. Quite a few are blessed to have the means to be quite eclectic in their collections.

Myself? I just can’t do consoles.

Personally, I’d rather spend a good portion of my paycheck on a new, decked-out PC gaming and graphics design rig. At least I can multitask its usage into both entertainment as well as marketable products for my clients.

Fuck that $500 Xbox. And its extra controllers for more multiplayer fun. And the hard drive for downloadable content. And the downloadable content that costs extra. And the XBL fee.

It’s not paying me back.

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One of the most horrible, frustrating and agonizing enemies of gamers these days isn’t a boss.

It isn’t pixelated, doesn’t have HP, has no corporeal form, and it is invincible. It strikes without warning, especially just at the moment you engage in combat, and the result of its onslaught is usually death.

It speaks to gamers in the harshest tongue, more hideous than that of Mordor. It says, “You have been disconnected.”

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We’ve come a long way since Snake—or have we?

Almost everyone has a cell phone, and those who do usually grow bored of their stock features. I mean, really, how many times can you play that Bejeweled demo while sitting in your dentist’s waiting room before you start yanking out your own teeth?

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I don’t like console to PC ports of video games.

You’ve probably played one or two, maybe even lived to tell the tale. You probably dislike them, too. Recently, Resident Evil 4 had a port by Ubisoft that was so horrible players couldn’t even play the purchased game without downloading mouse hacks to straighten up the awkward aim and messy controls. I don’t know about you, but I like to be able to play the games I buy right out of the package after a short install—not after hours scouring the internet for fixes upon finding Ubisoft’s homepage link to the hot fix dead. I also like to be able to use my mouse when playing a game involving shooting in real time. Somehow, while transferring it from the Gamecube and PS2 to the computer, Ubisoft managed to completely deface one of the best games of this decade almost two years after its initial release.

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Princesses. For the most part, they’re nothing but trophy wives for video game protagonists; vapid and spineless pieces of admittedly hot meat. 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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