So you think your a gamer then…
Well here are a list of facts that make or break a gamer. 50 infact so your no hardcore gamer untill you can do all 50 with your eyes closed…Just being able to play games is only the beginning.
1. Give a game a review score without ever actually playing the game
A cursory glance from 20 paces of a grainy postage stamp-sized super lo-res scanned-in screenshot pinned to the ass-feathers of a headless chicken in a sandstorm should be all you need to confidently attribute an authoritative and infallible review score to any game. It’s how professional reviewers have been doing it for years.
2. Be able to spot whether a game is running in 720p
Just by looking at it.
3. Survive with only four hours sleep (max) a night
We all abide by the ‘one more go’ mantra. It demands that we are strong in the face of severe sleep deprivation.
4. Play Wii without using the wrist strap
Or, master the art of gripping. Even newborn babies can do it.
5. Attack the weak point for massive damage
Look for the big red/yellow/orange thing. It’s normally located on an enemy’s back/ass/forehead. If a sustained assault yields unsatisfactory results, try attacking it with the last weapon you picked up. That normally works a treat.
6. Be an expert in the work of one particular developer besides Miyamoto
Support the people that make the games you love. Pick a team. Find a hero. Whether it’s an entire studio or just a single creative. Get excited about the games they make. Know their history and what they’re about. Hunt out their gameography. Get informed. We’re sure Mr Shig stuff won’t mind if some of the love gets spread around.
7. Beat a really bastard hard game on any tier of difficulty higher than Normal
Real men play on MASOCHIST!
8. Estimate remaining PSP battery life and calculate device’s lastability on journey
If you’ve gone to all the trouble of uploading an extensive selection of softcore pornography to your PSP in advance of a business trip, it can be hugely upsetting to run out of juice before you’ve even had a chance to make yourself tired in the airplane convenience.
9. Play driving games without ’steering’ the controller
Unless you’re a girl. Then you can’t help it.
10. Become unhealthily obsessed with one particular game and play only that game for six months solid
Winners don’t quit. They become addicts.
11. Instantly recognise any game being played on a TV show or in a movie
Computer Space in Jaws, Asteroid Deluxe in The Thing, Galaga in Trains, Planes and Automobiles, Centipede in Never Say Never Again, the sound-fx of Pac-Man in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off… plenty more here.
12. Easily spot at least 5 differences between any PS3 and 360 comparison shots, that are invisible to the normal human eye
You’re looking for things like lighting, texture resolution, draw distance, anything pink or slightly gay, lumps or growths etc.
13. Expertly pick the right game for the right moment
You might think your sozzled post-pub friends are having an absolute party huddled around your monitor watching you level up in World of Warcraft. But they’re not.
14. Be able to navigate to the ‘Invert? Yes/No’ option in under 5 seconds
Pause. Controller Options. Invert Yes/No. Unpause.
15. Be fluent in l337 5934k
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16. Instinctively know the location of all controller buttons and their respective numerical, alphabetical or symbol-based denominations
When playing, a real gamer never has to look at the controller. Unless it’s to check that it’s not on fire.
17. Perfectly repackage console/PC snugly back in its box, complete with Styrofoam and cable ties
Put those ninja-honed Tetris skills to good use.
18. Make in-game moral choices quickly and without flinching
Stop being such a lightweight and kill the Little Sister already. We’re pretty sure God doesn’t take make-believe evil into account when deciding who gets locked out.
19. Have a selection of “I only lost because…” excuses prepared and rehearsed in the event of defeat
Here’s a few for free: “…I couldn’t take my eyes off your lap”; …I hurt my fingers when your mum sat on them”; “…Satan told me to”; “…I was a victim of sexism” and so on.
20. Own non-gaming friends at absolutely anything
You’ve never played the game before. The pad’s missing buttons. You’ve got amoebic dysentery and you can feel a hairy-ass spider crawling across your face. So what? When you’re up against a newbie there is no excuse for anything less than comprehensive ownership.
21. Perform tea-bagging like a pro
Don’t bang away like a demented pneumatic penis. Get rhythm. Tea-bagging is an art - as our own educational video reminds us.
22. Immediately know what to dump when your inventory is full
Don’t know what to drop after the Goblin’s Cleaver of Apathy made you over encumbumbered? Stop being a massive tool and just relinquish some of the unused crap you’ve been pointlessly clinging on to for the last 30 hours.
23. Engage in the ‘Are games art?’ debate without sounding like a pretentious twat or a moronic dumbass
Find the middle-ground between this:
“I think you’ll actually find that videogames are a post-modern expression of individualism while simultaneously collectivising its digital form and manifesting as abstract interactive entertainment.”
And this:
“Art is for pussies. I just want to kill make-believe people.”
24. Always spot the ‘hidden area’
Remember: nothing screams “HIDDEN AREA!” louder than a cracked wall.
25. Gather enough tech speak to make it sound like you know how to make games better than developers themselves
“Sure, they might have nailed the anisotropic and bilinear filtering, but you can unzip me like a banana if the Cartesian coordinates and phong shading aren’t an absolute bucket of wank.” Smart sounding development speak makes you superior. This site is a good place to start.
26. Memorise enemy/item spawn points
Want to know how tHE dEfec8or is always smoking your ass with the rocket launcher? It’s because he’s all over the longitude and latitude of those maps, and he’s snorting up the coordinates of every spawn point and he knows exactly what it’ll spawn and he knows exactly when it’ll spawn it. It’s called dedication and that’s why tHE dEfec8or is a winner.
27. Complete unlocking/defusing mini-games first time, every time
Should be like making Einstein recite his five times table.
28. To never be suckered by game store offers pimping crappy games and shitty third party peripherals
An Hour of Victory and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty bundle for 40 notes with a TatTech controller thrown in for free is not a bargain, it’s a piss-take.
29. Be condescending, patronising and impatient when playing with non-gamers
Alternatively, feign kindness and offer to show them “how to do it”. Once you’ve got the controller, never give it back.
30. Be shit-faced drunk and still be able to rock at Guitar Hero or other popular party game
Preferably be able to keep getting more drunker while playing.
31. Bluff your way through a conversation about a retro game you never actually played
Don’t ever admit to having not played some geriatric, incontinent piece of gaming history that some rose-tinted retrosexual is eulogising. Just fudge your way through. It’s not hard: “Geoff Spectacles and the Subatomic Android Invaders on the Vic-20? Of course I played it! That was the one with the monochrome 2D graphics and beepy sound effects wasn’t it?”
32. Instantly identify enemy types by the sound they make
Don’t stop with enemies. Utilise your ears as nature intended and recognise weapons, vehicles, power-ups, score multipliers… anything at all with the amazing power of hearing.
33. Confidently guess what a developer’s secret project/unannounced title is
If all else fails, predict Shenmue 3.
34. Passionately champion at least one obscure game that nobody has ever heard of and win it some new fans
Ever heard of Warriors of Elysia? It’s the long overdue sequel to Bikini Karate Babes. We’re sure it’s going to be awesome.
35. Get the highest possible rank/medal/award in any tutorial level
Tutorial levels are weak and pathetic. An insult to proper gamers, they’re a monumental mismatch on the same scale as a bare-knuckles brawl to the death between Chuck Norris and Barbara Bush.
36. Know which elemental attack will be most effective against an enemy
Water>Fire. It’s not exactly rocket surgery.
37. Master the art of reloading
Don’t ever let your gun get caught with its pants down. It’s humiliating.
38. To simultaneously perform other important life tasks while playing
Multi-tasking is the cornerstone of every real gamers’ brain. You should be able to eat pizza, guzzle coffee, fill in a job application, build a house of cards AND successfully evade a six-star wanted level in GTA IV all at the same time.
39. Skip every cut-scene and still understand what’s going on
No matter how convoluted the machinations and exposition, when it boils down to it you’re basically just trying to beat the baddies.
40. Identify boss battle attack patterns in under 20 seconds
Lunge. Lunge. Guard. Burrow into ground/disappear/become temporarily invincible. Emerge from ground/reappear/stop being invincible. Charge special attack. Release special attack. Expose weak spot in a tactically foolish and totally unnecessary manner <Player strikes> Repeat until dead.
41. To know everything about the game without ever having to consult instruction manuals
Apart from a few semantics and trivialities, once you’ve read one instruction manual, you’ve pretty much read them all.
42. Argue effectively in a gaming Internet forum
At the most basic level this entails typing “HAVE YOU ACTUALLY PLAYED THE GAME!?” over and over and over until the foul dealer of scurrilous mistruths slinks away like the miserable dog that he is.
43. Well developed bladder control
You’re not going to get to level 70 by taking a piss break every three hours.
44. Condense even the most convoluted control system into easy-to-manage verbal instructions
“Basically, move the sticks and press X”
45. Always know the best spots for camping
So you can root them out or dig in deep, depending on your mood.
46. Memorise important cheat codes for fast fingered employment at a moments notice
If you can’t remember Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A then you weren’t there.
47. Have at least one game that you are unbeatable at
Take the time to master a game. Play it with your eyes closed. Learn every pattern, every combo, every counter, every weak-spot. But don’t brag about it. Just casually lure people into your virtual domain. Toy with them. Give them false hope. Maybe even let them win a couple of times and say something all humble and wimpy like: “Gee, you really got me. Well played.” Then bring the real noise and let the shunting commence. Their humiliation will feel rudely satisfying.
48. Be like Rainman when converting Microsoft/Wii points
It’s the ultimate geek party trick. If you can calculate that 190,608 Microsoft points is $2,381.65 without even flinching then you will get chicks. Believe us. Mental arithmetic makes ladies hot.
49. Read the back-of-box blurb and decipher it into ‘What It Actually Means’
“State-of-the-art 3D environments and characters” = “We done some graphics”. More here.
50. Know when NOT to talk about gaming
“Sure, as maps go if you’ve got a competent team together then Crossfire can be pretty badass, but Wetworks is off-the-hook when you’re gunning solo. Oh yeah, sorry to hear about your entire family getting killed with the bird flu. Must be a real bummer. So… you wanna play some COD?”
Answere these honestly, and be sure to post your score! (See comments link below)
