Like a virgin

Last night I expanded my nerd universe by a thousand fold. You know I'm an avid gamer, but I've always stuck just to RPG's. And puzzle games. Oh, and versus fighting games. But that's it.

Yesterday, though, I took a plunge and tried a whole new genre: first person shooter. Holy f*ckin' crap, people. SO AWESOME.

The general consensus is that a lot of women don't like first-person shooters. I'm too lazy to look up any statistics for this, but I've seen lots of articles speculating on why this is the case. Theories range from inherent male bias in game design, to the "fact" that women are worse at spatial relations than men. (Note to my readers: even if this is true, never bring it up around me, unless you want to test my spatial perception in terms of my ability to punch you in the face.)

Anyway, I know why I never played first-person shooters: I sucked at them. No one likes to play a game that is too challenging. If you die fifty times in the first level, it's no fun. But a couple of people pointed out to me that I play Oblivion in first person, which does require a fair amount of hand-eye coordination and camera control. So I thought I'd give some shooters a try.

I went into GameSpot after work yesterday and picked up a used copy of BioShock. This accomplished two objectives. First, I saved a couple of bucks. Second, I got a huge ego boost by impressing the clerk because I knew Gore Verbinski might make a movie version. Seriously, I think I'm his dream girl now. He had nice sideburns.

ANYWAY. Getting off track here. Point is, the game was awesome. I had to force myself to stop playing after an hour. It was not at all as difficult as I remember and I had no trouble with the camera or aiming or any of that stuff. And the graphics also totally fascinated my mom, who plunked herself down on the floor next to me and watched me play for like, 45 minutes.

So, in conclusion, I had a great time sitting in my parents' basement playing BioShock with my mother. Don't you wish you were me?