Today I’m going to stop playing Fallout 3. Too much gray sky, too much bugs and sadness. I honestly think there isn’t a more depressing title that still moves copies. I just get filled with pity for humanity, and fatalistic thoughts of the potential for romance and empathy in the post-apocalyptic future circle the drain in my head only to be yanked down into the doodoo sewer by, and I’m not sure about this, either gravity OR the Devil. If you’re still playing it DON’T. STOP. QUIT. I’m desensitizing to life.
Okay, 10% of the game is neat, science-y philosophy: ‘What would nice people do to help the world if we didn’t have stuff?’ A neat plot and Liam Neeson nudging you along the mutant-strewn path like an English bulldog make for what is, at times, a rollicking quest to do Good in the No-Good. But 90% is opening a door to find a group of scared humans who raise a gun to your face and scream something along the lines of “What the f___ are you doing here?” I’m pretty sure that happens every 5 seconds in that game, you open a door, and another human threatens to kill you and reprimands you for exploring the game’s environment. When did we decide shut-ins wouldn’t Boo Radley people and help fix their arms and shit? I say give me New Vegas anyday. Blue sky, country music. You open a door and there’s a robot zooming around who says cool stuff like, “Hey pardner, I fixed your gun! Mind if I dance for ya?”
By anyone’s (girlfriend’s) account, video games are a significant waste of time. You’re alone, to the naked eye, just sitting there. You are exerting effort in the hopes that nothing about the world around you will have changed. It’s like one of those jobs people are paid to do that are completely pointless, like an abstinence teacher. Or the 13 guys who animated nuclear PSA cartoons for children in the 50s. Or working in media. Playing video games does nothing for no one.
But what about books. Don’t books do that? You’re not thinking about books when you say that I’m not doing anything. Let me tell you, I read books. I read the words. All of them. And nothing changes. They say my nose and ears are always growing, which is unfortunate, because my body is basically a runaway, aging train that more and more people will assume is Jewish the older I get. But when I read I learn things; especially when it’s literature. The crazy thing is when somebody tells me I play video games too much and then you ask them what they’re reading and it’s, like, The Giving Tree. For the 15th time. (“It’s my favorite!” “Doesn’t that kid end up killing the tree? Didn’t that book kill a tree to be a book?”) I try to read actual books, and I hope that leads me to games as sophisticated as my other tastes. But then me and my roommates gather around the TV and play Soul Calibur IV, and four hours of gigantic Japanese swords and gigantic Japanese failures to understand the reality of the female anatomy later I find there’s nothing sophisticated in what gets me going with the controller in my hand.
It’s the fake fighting. I just want to fight stuff. There’s a reason why there’s not a Boo Radley game. It’s because games are better when you get to be the one to break people’s arms; books make you want to fix them.
