A confession

I’ve been a bad, bad man. I should be punished. I’ve been involved on nasty, sordid, filthy acts that I wouldn’t normally admit to.

You might be a little confused by this confession. Perhaps a more high-profile scenario will help you understand. See the guy on the left? That’s Hugh Grant. Celebrated English fop, bumbling fool, stuttering idiot. The American’s just love the stereotype of the British he portrays and he’s built a fairly solid career out of it. Fair play to the guy. And that woman he’s with? That’s his ex girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley. Generally regarded as a bit of alright and certainly not unattractive in the populist media definition of the term. All in all, Hugh’s doing alright.

But who’s this? This is Divine Brown. She is not a glamourous hollywood actress, she’s a prostitute. For some reason Hugh decided free rumpy with glam Liz wasn’t what he wanted that night and he sought the pay-for-play services of Ms. Brown. Unfortunately for Hugh, he got rumbled and it all got rather public and messy. When the news broke, your typical bacon sandwich eating, van driving guy would say “Huh? Why’d he want to go after something cheap and nasty when he’s got that stunna Hurley keeping his bed warm at night??”. And, on the whole, the rest of us would wonder the same thing.

But I understand Hugh. I can now see where he’s coming from. No, my marriage isn’t over. I’m talking in gaming terms (of course). I’ve got heaps of triple-A titles in my collection, I’ve been playing Katamari Damacy for a few days, I’ve got Half-Life 2 on my hard disk. I’ve got my Liz Hurley games – but I’ve been inextricably drawn to slumming it with the Divine Browns of the gaming world. I feel no shame in enjoying Burnout: Revenge. It’s a fine racing game coming from a solid pedigree of racers. It offers cheap thrills and guilty pleasures. Who can ask for more?

But, my friends, that’s only scratching the surface. On my memory card you can find saves for such indecently low-brow stuff such as Evil Dead Regeneration and Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. Yes, I admit it! I’m playing these games and I’m LIKING IT. They’re trashy, they’re dirty, they’re the two-bit hookers that hang around in the darker alleys of Gaming Boulevard USA. But goddamnit, eating caviar everyday gets boring. Every now and again I need the rough, nasty, cheap, sordid, guilty pleasures of playing shamlessly tacky games that speak to the superficial gamer in me. The gamer that delights in seeing blood spraying across the screen whilst using rag-doll physics to depict the dismemberment of the monster I’ve just thrown onto some conveniently placed spikes. The gamer that doesn’t care for well-structured storylines or quality voice acting so long as the explosions are pretty and I can double-jump and do easy combos.

I don’t care, I’m shameless. I’m the toff that’s been eating the finest food for months on end and got bored the incessant blandness of high quality five-course meals and table manners. Like all of us, I wanted a cheap thrill, I wanted the guilty pleasure and the delight in slumming it with the plebs and low lifes. There’s a need that cannot be fulfilled by quality and class and that need has been growing in me for some time.

I want my gaming Pot Noodle and, by god, I’m getting it!