I've been doing a bit less blogging lately, and as I said before, that's because I'm spending more of my free time playing the latest Splinter Cell game, which is so awesome and addictive that it's just silly.

Some of my blog buddies have chided me a bit, so I figured I'd post a bit of back story.

No, I'm not a gamer. Just ask Otis. Otis is a gamer, and a darned good one at that. I will take credit, though, for at least some role in turning Otis into the noob-slaying frag machine that he is … but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

No, I am not a gamer … but I am a product of the video-game generation. I grew up with a joystick in my hand (no comments from the peanut gallery, thanks), and I've spent many of the last thirty years merrily manipulating blotches of color on TV and PC screens. It's just that I've never gotten any good at it.

When I was a grade school kid, my parents gave my sister and I an Atari 2600 for Christmas. You'd have thought we'd won the lottery. We couldn't have been happier. That same Christmas I got Foreigner's Records for Christmas, and to this day I can't here "Urgent" or "Double Vision" without feeling the overwhelming urge to play Night Driver.

Some time in the late '80's I snagged a Nintendo NES and a few games at a yardsale for $10. Another lotto win. The seller thought it was busted because the spring that held the game cartridges down and in place had snapped … and I was right in my suspicion that the problem would be easy to fix. It turned out that all I had to do was put in a game cartridge and then slide a cassette tape case on top of it and, voila! Game time.

In '93 or '94, long after I'd gone to work and moved out on my own, my mom gave me a Sega Genesis for Christmas. WOW. If the Atari and Nintendo had been like lottery wins, the Genesis was like becoming a god. I can't begin to guess the time I spent playing Sonic and Double Dragon and Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage and my favorite, the original Mortal Kombat. I've always been a natural introvert and, just like when I was a kid, I was happiest listening to rock and roll and playing games. Badly.

I didn’t get my first PC until '98 … and it came preloaded with Sim City, which I loved. But I really developed an affinity for first person shooters, and spent hours playing Doom, Doom II, Quake, and Quake II.

Then, four or five years ago, Wendy and I found ourselves owning two decent computers at once for the first time, so we got to check out LAN game play. By then, Quake III was cheap and the outstanding Q3 mod, Urban Terror, was a free download. Now, Urban Terror plays as a modified version of Quake III, but it's nothing like Quake III. Where Q3 is fast and chaotic, Urban Terror is slow and methodical. Q3 takes place in a fantasy future with exaggerated weapons and alien monsters … Urban Terror, on the other hand, takes place in our world with real weapons and human combatants. It's all about urban warfare and it is intense and extremely addictive.

Like an idiot, I invited Otis over one day to check out Urban Terror. In no time at all he was as addicted as I was, except he was immediately far better at the game than I could ever hope to be.

Quickly we fell into a pattern of playing Urban Terror almost weekly. Otis would tote his PC over to our house and we'd sit up in our rec room with he and I sitting back to back, spending hours hunched over our keyboards taking shots at each other in deserted cities and burned out buildings. Oh, it was maddening. He was so much better at it than I was, but I tried. I can't count the times I painstakingly, urgently sought the perfect vantage point from which to hide and snipe for Otis … finally finding what I thought was the perfect nest with an ideal view of the city. I'd look around, check the landscape and the weak points, and start scanning the area through my scope. Then, almost out of the corner of my eye, I'd notice Otis standing in the building across from me, where he'd been watching me for at least ten minutes. There he'd be, rifle raised and at the ready, and just as soon as I realized what I was seeing I'd hear the BANG! and, next thing I'd know, I'd be respawning in some alley somewhere. I'd say "Damn!" and Otis would cackle like a maniac and then there'd be twenty more minutes of silence as I sought out the perfect place to plan an ambush and Otis sat and silently watched me and waited for the perfect time to remove my head with a bullet.

Sometimes, Wendy would play with us, but being a female girl chick, she failed to recognize the imperative intensity with which Urban Terror should be played. Her favorite way to "enjoy" the game was to run around in broad daylight and shoot at inanimate objects. It was fairly typical for me to be slinking around in some dark building, looking for just the right window with just the right view, when I'd notice somebody jumping around in circles in a parking lot, shooting at an empty car. Martin Lawrence on another bender? Some deranged and heavily armed terrorist? No. Just my wife "playing." I'd sit there slack-jawed at my PC thinking "What is she doing?" … and just about the time I'd notice a small black blur behind a tree three blocks away I'd hear BANG! Then I'd say "Damn!" and Otis would tremble with laughter and Wendy would say "What's going on?"

A few years ago we got our kids a GameCube because of it's large library of games for little kids … and it went over well, so a couple of years later we got them an Xbox.

One day out of boredom I rented a game called Halo.

Oh.

My.

Lord.

Suddenly I understood how grown-ups could find themselves addicted to video games on modern consoles.

But that's another story.

In the next installment of "Confessions Of An Inept Video Game Addict," you'll hear our kids say "How come he keeps playing our Xbox all the time lately? And how come he sucks so bad at it?" Stay tuned as Darrell becomes Master Chief by way of Mr. Bean.

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