I like to laugh because life is a dynamic experience and it can’t rain all the time. Nor can a man or woman or transgender individual laugh constantly either, because you would edge closer and closer to insanity in the eyes of everyone around you, especially if you were, IDK, at the vet putting the family dog to sleep forever. While I favour giggling over glowering, there are times and places whence a lad such as I need court the grim of drawing breath (please forgive me, I’m reading A Song of Ice and Fire right now and I can’t stop talking like a halberd).

Have you ever taken a particular interest in a game that is, at base, really not that good and in fact pretty awful? I know some of you have, you Alpha Protocol-loving goons (AMBLE TOWARDS MY PERSON, BROTHERS). The reasons for this are strange but powerful, like whatever passes for Tyrion’s sex appeal. Something beyond the dodgy mechanics and screaming imperfection calls to your gamer’s soul, or maybe even beyond that too. There is a unique setting at play, or characters that speak louder than what follows before and after them, or a particular sheen of fantasy rarely – if ever – explored by the “brown” and “military” status quo.

All three of those things apply to one of my most enduring and troubled romances in vidya. You see, I love Clive Barker’s Jericho.

Toby doesn’t know anybody, and nobody he knows does either. So who is playing this game that sells by the billions? Where are they?

I’m fascinated by the moral quandaries as often posed by games now. More specifically, the bad choice. I always bet on black. Always.

I love to cringe, but it’s more about: How far is this game gonna let me go? Really? It’s a game, surely it won’t be that far. Nasty surprises all. So far I’ve managed to put myself in some stupidly uncomfortable places. I worked negligently hard to get Heavy Rain’s worst ending. It was worth it. That has got to be the most depressing and confronting finale of your own devising I’ve ever seen go down in gameland.

I don’t want to spoil it but Ethan, y’know, he doesn’t find that kid. No one does. And Ethan, he can’t live with that.

What I find surprising is that most if not every single gamefriend I’ve talked to about this never bets on black. Ever.

Sometimes when you do anything a lot you can start to get jaded and everything seemingly sucks. Say, writing about games. How’s that for a first world problem? “I play games and earn money for it. This is awful.” It’s like anything, though. If you ate bacon all day every day you would hate bacon. [...]

If FPS games have taught me anything, it’s that you always shoot first, shoot some more, and then keep shooting until everyone and everything has been shot. We expect that from games like this. We have for years and years now. Occasionally there will be the option to not shoot; to approach your target(s) in a more considered or subtle way. It’s always a clear and present line between force and subterfuge, maybe diplomacy too.

The choice is yours, so make it quickly before someone notices you and we default to shooting first, shooting some more and continually shooting until everyone and everything has been shot.

I was shocked to realise that this isn’t the way the world actually works during wartime.

Dear Kim,

Even though this completely legitimate open letter has most likely been penned from the perspective of an American person, I must thank you. I must thank you for readying your weapons of mass nuclear destruction for pointage at my home. Let me explain, and tell you a little bit about myself in the process. I’m middle-aged and pale and probably male, and I have a great job. It’s a great job but also a frustrating one at times. I help make video games.

17 minutes is a long time to sit and watch somebody else play some Battlefield 4, but it’s Battlefield 4 so we all did it. The guy or gal playing it was definitely human (maybe too much), there were definitely some dramatic things that happened (I yawned really loud), and it was definitely believable if you prefix “believable” with “un.”

Toby explains that the natural yin to the shooter yang is the RPG — and sometimes we need a good dose of difference to wash away the over-indulgence.

Dead Space 3 is not the clucking fuster its preamble suggested it might be. A lot of its more contentious ideas work on a few levels. The Bench is cool. A lot of the creations that come out of it are redundant, but you can have fun with it and fun is good. Shooting at other guys with guns isn’t that bad, either. They don’t take up much… spaaace and for the most part, it’s pretty close to the Marker the whole way through (which is saying something. This game is impressively long).

Co-op was the big one, though. Having another gun at your back just doesn’t seem very conducive to crapping your space suit. And, you know, it’s not.

I have played and finished the new Tomb Raider. There. I said it.

 I was one of those lucky so-and-so’s tasked with writing ‘er up somewhere, and if one thing dawns on you when you yourself go a-Lara’ing, it’ll be this: Hot damn there is a lot of shooting in this game. And brutal shotgun-to-the-face finishing moves. Oh she looks like Bambi now, but she is soon as unlikely a mass murderer as Nate Drake. Those two should just date. More than any other game I’ve played of late, the distinction between Tomb Raider’s modest array of cannons is sharp enough that you work out what you like and what works for you pretty quick. Shotgun to the face.

It got my thinking about how I best like to dispatch digital people and creatures, and how.

Because I try not to be mean even when someone is being mean to me, let us just say that Aliens: Colonial Marines is somewhat… divisive. In that it has divided the patience of many an expectant fan. You can’t win ‘em all, although some people like it. That is cool for them and their happiness is my happiness.

More people do not, though. Metacritic collate-paints a fairly unflattering picture, and I must admit that after less than ten minutes with it I had the same impulse that I’m sure lots of other peoples did: I just wanted to find Randy Pitchford and ask him why.