Features// Girl Gamer Falls Out of Love With A Hero

I might have felt a bit girly getting on my soap box about this, but defended by a very opportune Radio 4 programme and an aging psychologist, I feel suitably supported in my notions on the importance of connection to one’s character. Or, marginally less pretentiously, I want my character to look like I want them to, not how a drunk and/or blind designer ends up designing it, splashing three pixels together at ten to six on a Friday night. The more of a bond you get with your character the more it affects your brain, sparking the same parts as if you were doing it in real life. Strange then that GH, a pretty safe game compared to FPSs or even role-plays, would have chosen such a remarkably unlovable – no – detestable selection of ugly, ill-picked unlikely rockstars that I end up thinking Johnny Tourettes would be a more entertaining and pleasant option.

It also seems rather pointless (and I’m promising you here that I will only expand on selected points from my two page list of gripes) slogging away at the career to have a truck load of money which is of no use. I bought all the songs before I even got to the first boss battle (out of a colossal, err, two). I don’t really care about the guitar I play with. I want to choose hair, shoes and tattoos! Then preferably drinks, drugs and hookers too. Like Vince Noir maintains, being in a band isn’t about the music or rehearsing – it’s about the look!

Despite the numerous things I hate about this game, I had a relatively successful meet playing it, and one of my friends who’d never played any rhythm action games before has persuaded her bloke to buy it her for Christmas; so perhaps I’m just jaded, bitter and, let’s face it, haunted by past memories. I think the most important thing for me now is to stop seeing myself as a heroin addict stuck on a depressing and clinically approved course of methadone and perhaps revise it as the last bottle of alcohol at a party: nasty, cheap, sickening; but you’re just grateful it’s there at all.