It's a realization I've tried to avoid for a while. Every time I pick up a controller, though, the thought comes rushing back, and it becomes more difficult to dismiss each time.
It was a few nights ago, after several minutes of cursing at the TV in a semi-drunken stupor, that it hit me: I may finally suck at video games.
What? Did you think I was going to confess to being an alcoholic or something along that line? Hell no. That's a confession I'll push off for as long as possible (like when I have to explain to my neighbors why I opted not to wear pants today).
The video games issue is much more dear to me, and this realization actually carries a great amount of emotion with it.
I've been an avid gamer since Christmas Day, 1996. I forget most dates and anniversaries, but not this one, because it was the day I received my first video game console -- a Nintendo 64. When I tore off the gift wrapping and laid eyes on it for the first time, I did not fathom the degree this gaming system would change my life. As it turns out, video games would become the most significant source of joy in my life.
While other kids played sports, I played Super Smash Bros., Mario Tennis and NFL Blitz. I lacked athleticism. My brain was always my strongest organ, making me gifted in thought-processing, which is vital in most video games.
While other teenagers were out getting drunk, stoned or laid, I slaughtered aliens and killed terrorists in games like Halo and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Most of my peers in high school socialized by going to parties or dances, while I would put on a headset and "pwnd n00bs" and "teabagged" enemies with my friends over Xbox Live. This was all while we shared good laughs and fond memories from other video games and previous online gaming sessions.
These times were great for me, but life progresses, and we must keep up with it.
I went off to college for five years, earned my degree and got a job at a newspaper. As simplistic as I made those life events sound, they involved copious hours of work and mounds of stress. In most cases, I had to set my Xbox, PlayStation or N64 aside and dig into my work. I go back and think how gaming could have aided me in my most stressful moments, but I simply lacked the time to live both in a fantasy world and advance myself in the real one.
I still turn to gaming as a method of stress relief to this day, but being inconsistent with it compared to when I was a child and teenager has made me rusty. Because of this, gaming has become more frustrating than entertaining.
This is most apparent when I play online shooting games. I recently purchased Battlefield 4 for my Xbox 360, hoping that I would reinstate my title as "That guy who must've hacked the game in order to be so good."
What I found out was, if I were an actual soldier, I would've died in boot camp while trying to do push-ups. In some of the rounds, I managed to stay above a 1.00 kill ratio (equal kills and deaths). As time progressed, that ratio kept getting lower and lower until the number of my virtual bodies could fill Arlington Cemetery -- twice.
These games are meant to alleviate stress for me, and yet I found myself dropping more F-bombs than enemies. The only thing that was going up was my blood pressure.
I've been trying to find answers for this recent suck streak.
Perhaps the deciding factor in many of the rounds was my blood-alcohol level. I notice my gaming suffers when I drink, only because I'm more focused on not falling out of my chair than my kill totals.
But my online gaming performance has suffered even when I'm sober, and that's the saddening part.
In Call of Duty 4, I would end some rounds with a 35-2 kill-death score. In Battlefield, that score is usually inverted.
Some may argue Battlefield is a game that's harder to grasp because it more closely resembles actual combat than Call of Duty, which has been called an "arcade shooter," meaning the physics are slightly fudged ("Slightly fudged" is a nice way of saying you can jump from a three-story building and manage to jog laps around the map).
But having played recent Call of Duty games like Black Ops II online, I can say I end up with similar, poor results.
The question comes to my mind: Are games getting harder, or am I just getting worse?
I noticed I have a harder time seeing enemies on the screen, whereas I used to snipe a gamer across an entire map with relative ease. I know my eyesight has gotten worse over the past few years, and I seldom wear glasses to compensate for this.
My reflexes have also deteriorated. There are instances where I will have been shot about three times and not realize what's going on until my character is on the ground in a pool of his own blood.
Another factor is that I lack the patience to sit down and try to get better at these games anymore. In high school, it was common for me to dedicate six to eight hours a day playing online games to hone my skills. Today, I play fewer than two hours at a time, if that. After three or four games of a bad streak, I tend to turn the console off and turn my attention to another activity.
Maybe it's a result of aging, but one lesson I've learned is there's no reason to engage in something that only frustrates when there are so many other priorities to attend to. I live in my own apartment now with my girlfriend, which means I'm caught up in cooking or cleaning most of the time. I also have my full-time job, which eats up a good portion of my time. When I'm outside of work, I either spend the time with Cassidy, go shopping or complain on one of my blogs.
My gaming slump should not be a cause for alarm, but it is to me. As a person who has prided himself in being a gamer since a young age, I'm starting to realize I'm becoming more of an adult. Gaming cannot play a huge role in my life as it used to because there are so many other important tasks at hand.
My biggest fear is losing gaming entirely. I dread the thought of being a dad one day who goes to buy a video game for his boys and asks the store clerk, "Do you know if my kids will enjoy this 'My Little Pony: The Rainbow Warriors' game?"
I see parents like that in GameStop all the time, and they make me want to throw up: not just because of their obvious lack of gaming knowledge, but also because they have no idea what they're buying for their children.
The best example stems from a recent discussion I had with the worker installing my cable and Internet in my apartment. He mentioned that his kids game. He also stated that his sons, ages 13, 10 and 8, all play Grand Theft Auto V.
For those of you not familiar with Grand Theft Auto V, here is a synopsis of the game: drugs, whores, liquor, murder, sex, more drugs, more whores, more liquor and more murder. The cable guy told me how he is not a fan of his kids playing violent, vulgar games.
I asked, "Hopefully the 8-year-old isn't playing it, right?" He gave me a half-grin, a nervous chuckle and a look of shame.
But he asserted, "I told them, if I hear any vulgar language on that game, I'm taking it away." I assume the man is legally deaf, because in Grand Theft Auto V, every other word is f#@*.
I dropped the conversation after that, mostly because I refused to be the reason this guy went home that night and beat his kids for playing a graphic game he unknowingly bought despite the giant "M for mature" rating on the cover. But I digress, as usual.
What I'm trying to say is I can slowly feel myself disconnecting from video games and the culture that surrounds it. It's this same culture I've embraced since first grade. It's this same culture that gave me a way to connect with people even though I lacked athleticism and social skills. It's this same culture that has gotten me through stressful, difficult times in my life that I otherwise may not have been able to handle.
I know I can still game even if I suck at it, but the point of gaming is to have fun. If you take the fun out of it, all you're left with is a sad excuse of a human being shouting obscenities at an inanimate object. That would be known as a psychopath, which is something the little leprechaun and his talking pet unicorn suggest I'm not.
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