Life imitates art

My name is John Brown and I’m gameaholic.

I feel the need to come clean about how my preoccupation with my gaming has genuinely and deeply affected my real-life goals and desires.

Now, I’m not talking here about the sleazier and somewhat questionable ‘games made me do it’ headlines we have come to despair at, this is a much more tangible and costly side effect!

I WANT a Japanese tuner! The desire to own a Nissan Skyline GT-R34 has become a real and true  aspiration for me.

Those who know me will be somewhat shocked to hear this, they will know that my opinion has always been that cars simply have two too many wheels and too much metal. Acceleration figures touted for supercars were passe as even my two and a half grand CBR600 could knock them sideways and Disney’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster’ with it’s breathtaking take off left me bored (there’s a picture to prove it somewhere).

The only thing I can pin down my change of position too is gaming! I’m totally engaged by the styling, the options, the power and the skill which is used to deliver things of admiration and, in some cases, yes beauty. I found ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’ thrilling and exciting in it’s technical execution and this has also served to feed my new found lust for such a beast.

The root of it all though has to be Need for Speed: Carbon – not the most high quality starting point, I’ll give you that, but it’s the strangest things which catalyse you. I’m not sure where or how this will end to be honest, but I’d dearly love to at least have a go! Perhaps it’ll just be ‘one of those things’ and will pass with time, but someone once said that about gaming and also about motorbikes and I’m still rabid about both!

It seems to be true that as we grow older we don’t grow up, our toys simply become more expensive! But in addition to the real-life target of a GT-R I’m also becoming pre-occupied with games in this sub-genre. I bought (with my own money!) Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights and Midnight Club Los Angeles because they let me tweak my dream cars with body kits, pearlescent paint jobs and performance mods. I have NFS: Undercover on my “To be purchased SOON” list and I genuinely felt a sense of loss when I lost one of my – oh so beautiful – creations during a pink-slip race. Am I slipping into some obscure circle of hell lettered with Burberry caps, signet rings and Vauxhall Novas with lots of noise but no real ‘go’? I sincerely hope not!

In truth, the games are just games but they’re feeding my built-in desire for something different, something that little bit special – and it’s not a Vauxhall Nova!