J is for Jail: Usually, jails are portrayed as a place where baddies go to comfortably continue running their criminal empires. A place where tough guys respectfully nod at each other as they lift massive weights, surrounded by their 'crew'.
The reality of jail? You are trapped inside a small room with a scumbag, despised by every normal member of society. And to put the cherry on top, you have to regularly take a shower whilst a violent gentleman with minimal teeth appraises your buttocks. Not good, neighbour.
K is for...Karate? I don't even like beat 'em ups, so I'll ignore this letter just in case I can't think of anything else.
L is for Life: Yes, I know life in video games has all the good/bad bits exaggerated and amplified, as the reality of it is a bit tedious. Nobody wants to eat/go to the toilet/get a haircut and all that drudge in a video game, at least not as often as real life requires.
In real life you have to grow up, go to school, get a job...everybody has to. Nobody is exempt from this miserable progression, nobody gets to skip a part and go off shouting at dragons. Games need to put a few more unavoidable, repetitive chores into the mix. Like hoovering the stairs or changing the bedding, say. That sort of thing. And filling in forms.
M is for Mummies: I don't mean the proud parent of a newborn baby, silly! I mean the bandaged-up, musty old super-aggro chav that is the stereotypical Egyptian-style mummy!
In games, mummies have supernatural strength, tend to have some sort of magical ability and are able to still be as enraged and unreasonable as a spilled-pint steroid enthusiast in a packed beer garden! Even after thousands of years sealed inside a stone coffin! Amazing.
Imagine my surprise, then, as I visited my first mummy exhibit in a museum somewhere. All I saw was some stupid eyes painted onto what looked like a shop-window mannequin covered in dirty old wallpaper. Rubbish! And despite how blasphemous and loud my taunts were, I wasn't even cursed or covered in a swarm of beetles!
All that happened was an old security chap politely inquired if I was a mental...which was MORE THAN PHARAOH given the circumstances! You like that? Yeah, you do.
N is for Night: Night time in gaming usually means stealth missions, vampires or a little bit of light necromancy in a local cave. So in general some pretty dark & exciting stuff.
Night in real life? Moths/Daddy-long-legs occasionally scaring the wife, having to sometimes get up and visit the toilet, and the odd weirdo mucking about in the back street near a skip. Boring.
O was going to be for Originality, but that's a subject for a better writer than me, someone with an actual articulate opinion on the topic, and a better understanding of the subject. Not me, then.
P is for Punch-ups: I've never been in a fist-fight, thankfully, but I've witnessed a couple. And in games punch-ups tend to be very tidy. Almost turn-based, even. All very choreographed and that.
The real-life brawls which I have seen have started with some shoving, one or two wild swings and then they descended into a grunting, hate-filled cuddle that rolled about in all the little bits of glass and tab-ends which littered the filthy pub carpet. Strictly Come Scrapping it wasn't, Son.
Q is for Quests: Right, I am going to give you a quest right now. I want you to find a hidden cave in Devon, but the only way you can gain entry is by using a unique key which is at the bottom of Lake Windermere, inside a half-buried casket. Go. Go on, fetch. What are you waiting for?
What's that? You want a MAP?? And a quest marker on the map?? And quick-travel?? And the necessary training to scour the bottom of a freezing cold lake for the treasure??
And you don't know which way Devon is??...
See? Quests in games are always too easy. All on a plate. Outrageous, even. They are so stupidly easy that even the local nutter arrested for yelling at the mummies in the museum could do them.
R is for Robots: Robots in games are usually awesome. Robots in real life are crap. They don't look like hot women, they don't have combat skills and you will be hard pressed to form a brotherly bond with one.
All they do is weld Nissans together, man. Call me when you can at least threaten me.
(OK, I know if I went down a Nissan production line I'd be killed by the robots.)
S is for Soldiers: Soldiers in games are always elite one-man-army types, capable of carrying huge amounts of equipment over huge distances, and murdering huge numbers of enemies with their huge guns and huge hugeness.
Where is the unwilling coward? The chap who would prefer to be a chef? The woman that would rather not drive into a minefield, if there is a longer but safer route available? The pilot that wants to leave some incompetent fool behind so he can go home to his husband? Shame on you, games.
T is for Throwing: Throwing things in real life is hard. It makes you tired. You don't get a handy visual thingy appear before your eyes in real life, helping you judge elevation, power etc. No.
You just sort of chuck things hoping for the best, either too hard so it goes sailing over your target, or too weak,shallow and wristy so it lands about two metres away from you. LIKE A GIRL THROW.
U is for...Oh I don't know, I tried. Udders? Umbrellas? Underwear? Ugandans?
V is for Voice Acting: Despite what wordy people desperate for games to be seen as art will tell you, the standard of most acting in gaming is shockingly bad. Really, really awful.
Although it has led to some properly funny stuff, actually. Here, watch the following video for...
Thirty five minutes! Good grief. I'd edit it but as you know by now, I'm too thick. So here:
Did you watch it all? Nah, didn't think so. Maybe watch it in instalments? Oh, do what you want.
W is for Women: Games hate and under-represent women. They are either bouncy-breasted combat whores or...bouncy breasted combat whores. The end.
Oh, or they are weakling kids needing protection from a masculine figure. BIG MAN are we?
X is for X-ray vision: What else!
Look, if you really had X-ray vision, wouldn't you just see through the entire planet all the time, thus rendering it useless & a massive hindrance? You wouldn't be able to pick to which degree your vision penetrates objects, would you? Any physicists reading this care to shed some light?
Y is for something beginning with Y that I haven't thought of: Something something something! And something, something something Y something something something. Something? Y? Something!
Something something something Y something. Something. Y.
Z is for Zoo: I remember how very cooperative and lovely the inmates where when I used to play Zoo Tycoon. They did predictable things at predictable times, and bred when I commanded them to. All was simple and well regimented. Real zoos? Pff.
Real zoos are junk, man. All the animals stink, and they hide most of the time. What's the point of taking a pocket full of small change to pelt the heads of the gorillas with if they insist on hiding in their not-even-got-SkyTV rubbish little sheds? I had to buy a Mars bar at the motorway services to get that change you c***.
Well, we've reached the end. And thank Dog, it couldn't come soon enough.
I hated every moment of this, I will never do it ever again. It was like being blind in one eye for four hours! Just kidding, it was worse than that. Thanks for enduring it with me, honey.
Next weekend: Something else of diminishing quality!
GL & HF!
