Why Guild Wars 2 is a big methadone-inspired no no

Living in fear of a crippling addiction is something that until around 8 years ago, only heroin users and heavy drinkers had to deal with.

And this guy, but I refuse to count sex with countless beauties as a crippling addiction. Maybe awesomeness. Can awesomeness be crippling?

But now, we live in a post World of Warcraft world. I want full disclosure. I was addicted as fuck to World of Warcraft.

I used to play an undead mage in vanilla wow. His name was Archancellor and my girlfriend would mercilessly rip into me for playing. 

Nah, just kidding, she wouldn't even look at me if I brought WoW up.

The characters I played evolved through each expansion pack to a warrior tank, then a paladin and finally a priest.

I was basically the ManBearPig of Azeroth.

I ended at Cataclysm. Why? Well, the game had got boring as hell, sure. But the thumbnail sized bedsores I actually had actually on my bum from sitting for hours at a time grinding boars was also a pretty big signal that I should probably get up and do something with my life like climb a mountain or whatever it is tampon adverts tell me is a good way to meet chicks. 

Like learn jazz flute at the beach, I guess.

So why am I offloading this now? Five words: Motherfucking Guild Wars 2, baby (shuddup, motherfucking totally is one word because in this blog I am God). That game looks like it has got it going on. 

The reason WoW is so much more engrossing than anything the Xbox 360 has ever thrown at me is not because it has just enough carrots and sticks (I just need one more token to get that sweet axe!) to keep players glued.

It was the community element. Sure you can spend your day shouting racist, homophobic rants at 13 year olds over Xbox Live, but on WoW you can form meaningful relationships with strangers online.

Pictured: Less meaningful but I'm willing to see where it goes.

So why does this freak me out about GW2? Well, let's see what IGN says about it: 

You expect to see only fields of grazing deer and idle monsters but when you turn the corner, there’s chaos. Crowds crush together, jumping around and blasting spells and swinging huge weapons. You join in, and though all possibility for any real coordination is lost in the frenzy, a sense of community, of belonging, solidifies as everyone strives to destroy a shared target.

Fuck me, that sounds incredible! Hook that shit straight to my veins and let me belong too. Justify me! 

I nearly went and Dishonored myself

I was totally prepared to ditch my mantra and buy Dishonored on pre order of all things. Because fuck self discipline mantras. 

But now the hot blonde at the bar promising so much that was Dishonored has turned out to be a big gross bearded woman in the grim light of day.

In researching this article, I found a weirdly large amount of celebrities shopped to have beards, which is hot, I guess?

I ask myself, is that what I want? To sleep with a gross bearded lady? No. That is absolutely not what I want. By this logic (shuddup, it totally is logic) I don't want Dishonored. 

So what fills this hole? Motherfuckin' zombies, baby. That's what fills this hole. I freakin' love zombies. In a few weeks, I'm going to hang out with a bunch of like-minded people in an industrial estate near Birmingham to shoot actors dressed up as zombies with airsoft guns because fuck actors. 

This is the cleanest thing I could get from google imaging "fuck actors".

It's obvious then, right? There's only one game to fill that hole. Get over here Dead Rising 2, you little snuggle bunny. 

On paper this game looks bad-ass. Running round and putting shit together and cutting zombies up with that put together shit. Cool, brah. 

But I've been around, I've seen things. I've played Evil Dead Regeneration on the PS2. That game sucked balls, only made worse because I love the films, and looks a lot like Dead Rising. You're a lone guy, running round, cutting zombies up with shit. And it was hella repetitive. 

And I'm scared, alright. I'm afraid. I can't take it if Dead Rising is the same level of bullshit over and over again. 

But, at just ten quid in my local store, including store credit from swapping in the rape themed Resident Evil 5, I'm gunna do it. I'm going to go cheap on this and ignore Dishonored for just a little while longer.

I'm also guna wear my red striped shirt. Bitches love red striped shirts.

Keep Calm & Game On

Gaming and getting older is God's own spiteful paradox. When you're young, you have all the time in the world to play games but no dinero to buy them, and when you're just a fraction of a liftime older, you're suddenly too busy with a 'real job' to be shooting insurgents 24/7.

When I lost my games virginity in the cupboard below the stairs on some shitty old console - I'm looking at you ZX Spectrum - it was the best thing in the 8-bit world.

(Pictured: A unicorn graveyard? Disease under a microscope? Urgh, 80s kids were stupid.) 

Then I got a bit older and games got older with me. I'm no longer expected to fire a block of pink at a block of white in the hope that I will win the game before the cassette warps and renders itself as useful as bacon at a Bar Mitzvah.

But then I got older still and in terms of the games out there for me, it just could not get better. Now, I can put a bullet into the online avatar of some guy sitting on his sofa in America and watch it back in glorious slow motion. Even more win, I'm now in my mid 20s and gainfully employed so I could just buy the shit out of computer games if I wanted to. I'm an adult. Hell, I could decide to not eat for a week and instead buy every Final Fantasy and appropriate console and spend the week in my pants blowing the Doritos dust off my chest while I beat the fuckers.

(Yay, adulthood!)

But here's the paradox. The older I get, the less time I have to actually spend guiding a hapless Eastern European around a faux NYC. Worse still, being an adult sucks. Suddenly people want shit from me. I gotta spend money on feeding myself, feeding my girlfriend, rent, internet, even the electricity I'm using to type this is an insatiable leech, sucking money away from computer game spending.

(Pictured: An insatiable leech)

So I've decided to being an adult about it, what with all the practice I've been forced into having by the cold indifferent passage of time. I'm going to compromise. Instead of buying into the hype and jumping on board to pre order the latest buzz game just to get different in game pre order bonuses depending which retailer you get it from, I'm going to be more picky with my game choices based on a few criteria.

Firstly - no new games. All have to be second hand. The reasons for this are twofold. Namely, it's a fucktonne cheaper and I hopefully won't get caught up in the hype of a new release and feel like I've been shafted by a game publisher's marketing team when the game turns out to be a terrible dullard.

Secondly - A game that's been out for a while has had time for the studio behind it to get their shit together and release any essential DLC to iron out any glitches. I'm an ex-WoW player and nothing makes me want to punch the day in the face more than a buggy game that was released six months too early.

I'll be reviewing older games with a more mature outlook in mind, because when you've got shit like a £40 phone bill to take care of, you need to make sure the game you buy is worth skipping a few lunches over.