A PSA for the Drunken Gamer
Ack….blurp….fuzzy navel….oh my aching spleen….tequila makes the heart grow rancid. Ugh….
When you’re staring at a screen that continues to slowly spin clockwise, gaming becomes a greater challenge than simply, “Why, oh why won’t that damn mushroom die!!” Drinking and gaming is, for lack of a better word, flustering. Not frustrating really, because you tend to care little about your overall goal and lean more towards screaming at NPCs and then laughing about their names (Epona?! More like… eBONER..HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *cough* *sputter* *puke*). Your eyes blink out of rhythm, trying to regain focus, knowing that if you go to bed now, you will be useless the next day. You must finish your game. You must….finish…*hurp*
The most fun I ever had drinking and gaming was playing GTA: Vice City. (Spoiler alert…well, not really. Seriously, if you haven’t at least played this game by now, you need to rethink your life.) In GTA:VC, there is a mission in which you are trying to save your alcoholic army buddy (voiced by Gary Busey) who just blew his arm off playing with bombs in a drunken stupor (and it was at this that I laughed the hardest). You get him into the backseat of his Patriot (GTA version Hummer) and attempt to drive, all the while the fumes from his hyper-alcoholic beverage are wafting into your nose sufficiently getting ole’ Tommy wrecked behind the wheel. From here you must drive him to the hospital under the virtual influence. The controls have been altered to fit this occasion; overcompensating at each turn, having to fight to keep the car straight, the screen moving slightly off it’s axis, and adding that touch of reality that no one would admit to REALLY knowing about (you know who you are…). Add to this, a fifth of Jameson for yourself and you have yourself the most unbeatable level in the history of video games.
Gravity, having taken hold of your brain, is slowly pulling it in five directions at once (most of them down). It then begins to demand that you to fall to the left, yet the game makes you go right. You begin to fall to the right, and then the game switches up and goes left. At one point, you realize that your head is physically moving with the meandering of the car you are supposedly driving, which is to your benefit due to the fact that the game-derived stimulation to your consciousness is keeping you from mindlessly drooling on yourself. And then there are cars, pedestrians, and police who, contrary to basic courtesy, are trying to hit you with their cars making it difficult to get to where you’re trying to go. And you think to yourself, “All I’m trying to do is save my friend, dude. So why are those damn cops tryin’ to stop me? I’m being noble….fuckin’ up your nobility. Heh, noble. Noble, mobile, probalthatsoundsfunny *crash*. Aw crap, dude! I fell over!! Did you see that shit, man?!?” And so on….
Once you’ve regained focus on the game, you realize that you’ve been driving into the same building for five minutes, there’s a pedestrian under your car, and now you’re on fire. The car explodes in a fireball that effectively blows your mind, and then the booze in you switches gears from fun-happy drunk to maudlin despair. “Man, fuck this game!” you exclaim, chucking the controller at the TV. At this point, a small revolution is beginning in your stomach and you begin to sweat. You make a break for the bathroom and you reach the toilet just in time to miss it entirely and puke on the floor anyway.
Some may call this a “bad day”. I call it “Tuesday”. Despite the obvious downside and inevitable lack of girlfriend that this can/will cause, there is a therapeutic value of knocking back a few and then plugging yourself in. State of Emergency is one title perfectly suited for this task. Once you get yourself good and drunk, grab a couple of cheat codes (CheatCodeCentral.com is my preference), particularly the one for unlimited ammo, and you have yourself the makings of a virtual massacre that should help stabilize your nerves from the onslaught of the ugly and pointless world around you. For example: let’s say that “Tuesday” turned out also to be the last day of your relationship. A bottle of Old Harper and SOE can calm your homicidal rage by drowning it in bodies as you pour tens of thousands of bullets into a rapidly regenerating crowd of screaming idiots just ACHING to be mowed down like the mindless sheep that they are. Better even than that, is breaking out your old copy of the Sims, and creating 8 identical copies of your ex, putting them in a house with no windows or doors, and making them live together. When you’re done torturing the hateful hounds of hell, buy the most expensive stove and watch all of them BURN!!!
This may sound completely insane, and you’d be right, but if you are the type to drink your problems away because of the stress they cause, why not take your aggression out on a population that is NOT REAL. Think about it. You feel like killing, well, go ahead! Pop in any of the Grand Theft Autos and slay until your thumbs fall off. You get the drunken rage out of your system, and get to play video games for hours on end to boot; a pixilated bloodbath left in your wake. Once you are comfortable doing this, try lessening the booze intake while upping your gaming time. Soon, you could find yourself a sober, healthier you. Let gaming be your drug of choice, and never forget, that if truly have troubles drinking and gaming, three weeks with Pilotwings 64 is will clear you right up. I guarantee, walking will be impossible after that.
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Satan’s trousers, are we all drunks here?