Hardcore Hurts

And I, fighting back every urge toward reason and common sense, settle down in front of my computer on a chill Saturday evening and dedicate the weekend to a rekindling of my hardcore.

The fact is, I''m getting up there in years. As a young gamer in my teens, and then my 20''s, I had both the stamina and the total lack of responsibility that allowed me to game ceaselessly for hours and days on end. Things are different now; I now have an "almostwife," who isn''t too shy about expressing her displeasure when she feels neglected in favour of the computer. In years past, her plaintive demands would''ve been met with something along the lines of, "Shut up, woman! This is important! I''m saving the fuckin'' galaxy here, ya know!" But these days, oddly enough, I often leap at a convenient excuse to stop gaming in order to do something else.

Strange behaviour, that.

It was the realization that perhaps my hardcore nature was being sapped by the inexorable advance of years that set me up for this weekend. I''d recently acquired a copy of Planescape: Torment on eBay, at the urging of another RPG''er friend (why I''d never played it previously, I really don''t know), and it seemed like an ideal game to rekindle the flames of my passion. I love RPGs, and I love the Infinity Engine. The opportunity to play a new IE game (aside from the Icewind Dale series, which I really have no interest in) was too great to resist.

I gear up. Full case of Coke in the fridge - check. Three packs of smokes - check. Jumbo bag of Christies Corn Nuts - check. Almostwife going to a WWE rasslin'' show - check. Oh, and one other thing - Canadians, such as I happen to be, celebrate Thanksgiving this weekend, so three solid days of nothing to do but play games - check. I was ready to rock.

Naturally, for me anyway, things didn''t start out quite as they should. As I was settling down Saturday evening for the beginning of my session, the phone rang. Should''ve taken it off the hook - missed that one on the checklist. My friends calling, wanting to know if I wanted to go out and catch The Transporter. Less of a question and more of a demand, really, and being a sucker for peer pressure, I went. Decided after the movie to go out for a beer, which quickly turned into several beers and a couple Alabama Slammers. Came home drunk and decided to play anyway - and figured out, the next day after I''d sobered up, that I was too drunk to realize that I really shouldn''t be playing PS:T while I''m drunk. Gave up around 5 am and passed out.

Sunday, the next day, went better. Had a little futzing around the house to take care of, but I managed to get started up again around 10 pm and got a solid eight hours of play in. By five in the morning, my head was rolling around on my shoulders as if my spine had turned to goo, I couldn''t see straight, and I had a vague feeling of wanting to puke. I forced myself to go for another hour, but after spending ten minutes trying to figure out why I couldn''t case Stories-Bones-Tell on my IRC buddy, it was time to quit.

Monday was the big day, the Grand Finale of my hardcore weekend. I hadn''t made as much progress with the game as I''d anticipated, so Monday I was going all-out. Started playing around three in the afternoon, stopped for leftovers at six, got back on and played until nine, took an hour break for a Quake clan match, and then got back into PS:T until 5:30 am. And at 5:30 am, I could no longer force down the question that had been threatening to break through to the surface for hours:

Why in God''s name am I doing this?

This isn''t fun. This is sick. It''s pointless. It''s almost painful. It''s like asking to be kicked in the nuts repeatedly, just to prove you can take it. I flashed back to the image of Russell Crowe in Gladiator, shouting to the crowd, "Are you not entertained?" And I wanted to scream, "FUCK NO, RUSSELL! THIS SUCKS!" My eyes hurt, I had a screaming headache, I was dizzy, and instead of standing up from my chair I would''ve been quite happy to just fall out of it. For most people, games imply fun; I''d somehow managed to twist "fun" into "lingering torture."

I''m not quite yet ready to ascribe all of this to a weakening of my gamer nature. It''s equally possible, in my mind, that it was a legitimate gaming overload, just too damned much of a good thing. Perhaps I went too far in my zeal to prove to myself that I''d not faltered in my commitment to gaming; in fact, I don''t think there''s any "perhaps" to it. It was just Too Damn Much, Man.

When it was all said and done, and the weekend had passed, and I was back to my normal, game-time-limited routine, I was briefly glad it was over. A few days later, of course, I miss that brief taste of pure gaming freedom, but at the time, I was happy to walk away from it for awhile. My desire for nothing but Planescape had warped into a desire for anything but Planescape.

There''s a moral to my story, of course, and I hope someday to understand what it is. I mean, I know what the moral is - I think - well, no, I suppose I don''t. Don''t overdo it, maybe. Which seems like pretty good advice, but like so much good advice in my life - "Don''t eat the appetizer platter" is one that leaps to mind - I''m very likely to end up ignoring it in short order. Knowing what''s good for me is easy - doing what''s good for me, well, that''s something else entirely different. I''ve come to believe that such obstinate stupidity is a major component of what it is to be hardcore. Hardcore and good sense do NOT go hand-in-hand.

Tamait''s posted a series of articles in which he discusses, in his own words, "Why We Game." Personally, I think it''s because we''re masochistic idiots.

Oh, and a related note - Planescape: Torment is a brilliant game. Very strange, may take a little bit of persistence to get into (it did for me), but well worth the effort. It''s a pretty simple RPG combat-wise, but a hell of a story and some of the best writing in an RPG I''ve ever seen. The game was hamstrung out of the gate by it''s unquestionably odd setting (and the fact that just about no-one had ever heard of Planescape) and it ended up selling like reheated shitburgers, but if you''re looking for an RPG with real meat to it, this is your puppy. It''s dirt cheap these days, too, although a bit hard to track down, which makes it even more of a bonus. And check out those voice credits - I dare you to identify even one of them without looking first.