This weekend I've been engaging in all manner of gun battles, horse riding, lassoing and card game chicanery as well as an encounter with a man in a top hat who may well have been the devil himself.
Okay, before you call the police and/or mental health on me, I have been playing Red Dead Redemption, a cowboy sandbox game from the publishers of Grand Theft Auto.
While like GTA it's an open world sandbox sort of game with a mission-led storyline, it's unlike GTA in one very important way: GTA is all about being a generally horrible criminal who thinks nothing about running through the streets in his underwear, beating strangers with a disturbing purple sex toy found in the local police department locker room (note to those who never played GTA San Andreas: You can actually do this and it is hilariously funny no matter what grown-ups say). Red Dead Redemption, on the other hand, deliberately puts you in situations where you can choose to be nasty or nice. Do you save the passing stagecoach from the banditos, or do you shoot out the driver yourself and split the loot? Decisions, decisions...
Except that for me, there is no decision. I don't know what it is about games where you're given a choice to be nasty or nice, but I always wind up being horribly, sickeningly nice (if you ignore the fact that in video games "being nice" generally means "Only slaughter bad guys"). The strange thing is I do it begrudgingly. I don't enjoy being nice to all and sundry, solving the problems of a million whining digital losers. When someone comes rushing out of nowhere begging me to get back their wagon that some so-and-so has ligged off with, in real life I'm going "Oh for pity's sake! Do I have to do everything around here! I was going to ride into town and play blackjack!", but sure enough I go racing out there after the wagon and bring it back to the wagonless whiner, although it should be pointed out that I don't even bother to disarm the wagon thief. They'd hang you for stealing a horse in the Old West, so stealing two horses and a bit of wood with wheels on is definitely punishable by arbitrary numbers of gunshot wounds upside the head.
Worse still, the evil, evil games designers have added a feature that passers-by will often greet you with a cheery hello. This wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't added a button command to let you say hello back. Imagine what that does to someone who only manages to not say thank-you to vending machines through sheer effort of will! I'm racing along the road and some simp says "Hi there, Mr badass gunslinger, sir!" and I find myself having to slap on the horse-brakes, spin round and chase them down just so I don't seem rude to software!
Anyway, that's what's been eating up my weekend: Being the reluctant hero in computer games that'd let me be the villain if I wanted.
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