I persevere in waiting. Faith is rewarded.

The engines of industry preserve me, pneumatics pumping my wasted heart, the synapses of my cryonic brain plugged into the terminal where I commit myself daily anew. Stalking digital killing fields, each playthrough brings me closer to that which was promised.

Forget about it, they laughed.It’s over. No chance of Half-Life 3 in this lifetime. Perhaps not in your lifetime, but for some of us one lifetime wasn’t acceptable. There are ways around death.

The year is 2189. This is the 13,487th time I’ll have finished the Half-Life series. and I know that Half-Life 3′s release is close.

Metallic shrieking. The roof of my derelict hovel is torn asunder. GabeN, tyrannical overlord of Valve, once pioneering game developers, now transhuman conquerors, grins at me through jagged metal.

‘Fool!’ he bellows. ‘You still believe.’

Cackling, his gargantuan mass descends on my husk as he utters the last words I’ll ever know.

‘Was it worth the weight?’

I play a lot of video games, but I fear that I have created a monster. A month before Skyward Sword was released, my wife forced (yes, forced) me to pre-order it from a certain chain with lots of yellow. I knew what was coming…

The day I picked up Skyward Sword was the day my life was bound by a strict schedule, stopping only to eat and relieve myself. I had to keep on progressing, or face my wife’s wrath. If I lost my way, I had to follow her directions. If I missed an item, I had to backtrack. Making even the slightest mistake resulted in demoralizing comments about why I could not defeat Ghirahim.

Sleep wasn’t an option, although my wife was kind enough to prop toothpicks in front of my eyes to keep me awake. After two weeks of non-stop playing, it finally ended. I was free!

Alas, that was just one of many games I have to complete. I have to go now. She’s holding up a copy of L.A Noire and I fear the worst.

My first job.

People used to ask me stupid things. Lots. So on Fridays sometimes, if I wanted a break, I’d pull the power cord to the server and close the door to my office which was superthick glass walls and door, and look ‘concerned’ while trying to ‘fix’ said server.

No one ever bothered me.

BF2 gets released.

I fix the server and rid the network of a virus/worm for three weeks straight. (read: I get in early, pull the server to maximise bandwidth, hook up my own PC, game for 12hrs behind glass, go home, game more, rinse/repeat).

Three weeks of BF2 hilarity, fully paid for. Not disturbed. Not once.

NB. Some months later, feel completely and utterly justified in the above when asked to return to office after driving an hour to my home, to ‘put paper in the photocopier’……. I did, return to the office. And filled the photocopier, printed my resignation and left.

Crawling silently through a river bed swarming with Tangos was intense enough – add the occasional flash of lightning to ruin your night vision and the thunder that masked enemy gunfire and we were all pretty on-edge. We found ourselves talking in whispers to each other. I’m sure the AI didn’t notice or care, but it was so engrossing it just felt like the right thing to do.

The rain was coming down so hard we could smell the jungle… we also got a whiff of gun smoke and realised the pergola wasn’t protecting our CRT monitors quite as well as we’d hoped. A few bits and pieces from the kitchen were rigged to catch the drips and we continued our mission…

I’d never heard such a genuine ‘aaaarrrrrhhhhh’ from a player as he was gunned down storming the farmhouse at the missions end. With the focus that only comes from being so completely absorbed, the next player just calmly clicked and reported ‘Tango down’

The next afternoon I forged a letter from my parents informing the school that I would be an hour late for school for a while due to unavoidable family commitments (pretended to be some weird fundie theist) and then I spent an hour every weekday for the next 3 weeks blissfully playing OOT before going to school.

I narrowly avoided the beating of a lifetime on at least 2 occasions when a parent came home for something they forgot, I was pretty happy on Christmas day and nobody ever realized I was already half way through the game i had “just received”.

I also have a pretty epic story regarding the week long LAN my friends and I had at Bill Murray’s house… but no one ever believes me :(

And it was a single game of worms world party.

Fort mode. Sudden Death – but no water rising. It was a zooks and nades game. All other worms: eliminated. Not only was it a duel between the last two worms but we each had one hit point left.

And both of us were standing on a single pixel or two of remaining ground. With the only viable option being a bazooka, we each fought tirelessly for hours trying to hit that one distant spot on the map. Two worms started the fight. Only one would finish.

I was a rookie at the time, only 18 and I had been left in command of a Pac gunner.

My sergeant was by my side the whole time, breathing down my neck. He gave me the creeps. But I knew I could trust him.

After 18 hours on active duty, eating white pills and chasing and being chased by ghosts, I turned to my sergeant, who was mysteriously gone.

Sarge? I said out loud. Where are you?

No Response.

‘WAKA WAKA WAKA!’

It sounded like an explosion, 3 ghosts flew out of the wall towards me, but just as they were about to hit me, I dropped my biggest pill. The ghosts shat themselves and started to bail, so I took chase.

As I drove the Pac machine down the twisting hallways, chasing the ghosts, I suddenly saw my Sergeant, facing into the corner of the room. ‘Sarge?’ I called to him. Slowly he turned, as he was turning around, I realised something wasn’t right.

Instead of a normal head, hair, nose eyes etc. Sarge had a Giant red lamp shade with eyes and a wavy little mouth, all of a sudden he ran at me, I shouted in alarm and began to run, but it was no use, he was gaining on me fast, as I turned a corner I saw another ghost. I was doomed.

I turned around to accept my fate, ready to see my life flash before my eyes, but instead all I saw was GAME OVER.

Then I woke up, I had fallen asleep on my Pac-Man table after a massive gaming session. My eyes burning, my head throbbing, I looked around the darkened room to see a man with a red lamp shade on his head wearing an army uniform, staring at me.

Highlights
Racking up $100 bill in munchies.
Threatening to kill the owner for awping.
Been knocked unconcious for nipple crippling the owners girlfriend.
Seeing a guy recieve sexual favours outside the shop from one very drunk girl.
Making the gamewinning kill with a steyr on 3Hp in a comp and receiving a GPU.
…and gaming and laughing all night with mates.

True story.

(Double post, as previous one was 200+, couldnt edit/delete first, sorry!)

Highlights
Racking up $100 dollar bill in munchies and drinks
Threatening to kill the owner with an axe for awping
Been knocked unconcious for nipple crippling the owners girlfriend
Seeing a guy recieve sexual favours outside the shop from one very drunk girl
Making the gamewinning kill with steyr with only 3Hp in a competition and recieving a GPU.
…and just overall gaming and laughing all night with my mates.

True story.

I was sitting there on the loo for a good four and a half hours before the last vestiges of feeling finally left my legs. Then another hour and a half after that, before I finally toppled sideways and yanked the charger from the wall. The red rings around my eyes were matched only by the perfect oval imprinted on my behind.

Soaked to the skin, we eventually finished catching the squeaky bastards and headed inside to sit by the gas-heater and finally have a crack at collecting ALL the wumpa fruits. MANY hours into the endeavour my father walked in to stop us…

“Dad, is it just us or is the TV going funny? It’s all wobbly.”

“I dunno. It does look a bi…HOLY S**T!”

Such consternation erupted as he gazed upon the faces of his sons, expecting to see the pleasant countenances of two young boys, only to have his vision raped by the sight of two delusional, bloodshot-eyed child-devils, visibly weeping, yet who were completely unperturbed by the fact that their eyes had turned to mush and were streaming down their faces; steadfast in gaming on as we were. Playing hours unknown…

It was the final hours the planet had to spare. 26.4 hours and Dratas would no longer exist. We knew there was no way out, so we stayed inside. The ground was beginning to rumble more and more, and the urge to live life to the full was at its climax. Suddenly, drake yelled to all 7 of us saying “TO THE G-STATIONS!!!”. No one hesitated running towards their G-STATIONS as they knew it would be the last time they could have a game. “Halo: New Reach, anyone?” said Drake. Shaking with excitement, Trent spoke “Yes! For the final time!”. After Drake launched the game, there was a subtle silence during the countdown. “5…4…3…2…“ “No! The Dratas destruction counter just jumped to T-…” Drake struggled as he spoke the digits of the counter “…T-5 minutes!”. The G-STATION adjusted the playtime to 5mins: “5 minutes remaining” it said. Everyone in the room began to play like they never have before, violently mashing the keyboard so hard that the keys began to fall out. “1 Minute remaining”. The gamers began to yell. It was level 2 during the launch premiere for the new ‘Gameception’ console.

Prior to the release of Gears of War 3, my friend and I decided we’d spend the weekend attempting to finish both Gears of War games in order to be truly be prepared for the third game. After dinner, we set up in the rumpus room which involved getting the beds ready so it looked like we’d attempt to sleep. We hit up Gear of War on insane with our snacks and after dying more times than we could count we needed to play something else, something less, insane. My friend picked out Condemned 2 of all the games in my rather large collection, whilst at the Doll Factor level, a tree decided to drop a branch on the roof, scaring the hell out of me. Moving past the fear of a tree branch, we continued playing, we were hooked, and before we knew it the sun rose. With my friend’s departure approaching fast, he successfully asked to stay a second night, and after hitting up some more Gears of War followed by some movies and the first Condemned, come Sunday afternoon we’d finish both Gears of War games and both Condemned games.