Absent friends: Diablo 2

It’s the fourth hour of my gaming session. For the entirety of my evening, I have been hacking a bunch of monsters to bits with my axe, looting their corpses, then reloading and killing the same monsters all over again. I am hitting the Council for Charms, and if I don’t dick about, I can [...]

Fun non-gaming activities: talking filth to your girlfriend’s sister

Oh, hi! Nice to have you back!
As a recent non-gamer, I’ve tried hard to fill my time with productive, creative and above all fun pastimes, and last night I think I excelled myself. And who better to share my experience with than the entire world? So sit back, relax, and learn how to accidentally subject [...]

Dubious Reviews: Haze

So you’ve given up gaming. Trouble is, you write for a damn gaming site, and you’re obligated to provide people with reviews. What a pickle.
But hold on! You’re a clever fellow, and modern games are pretty self-explanatory. Surely you can work out the plot of a game by looking at the screenshots, take educated [...]

Companion Cube: A Love Story

When you’re giving up an addiction, the important thing is to do something creative every day. You’ve got to feel as if you’re filling the void in your life with worthwhile activities; stuff that will help you grow as a person, and show your addiction that you’ve got balls and you mean fucking business.
And that’s [...]

Giving Up Gaming Part 1: Cold Turkey Genocide

OK. Let’s do this. If I’m going to quit gaming forever, I need a plan of attack. There are two classic ways of quitting any addiction: gradually cutting down, or going cold turkey. When I gave up smoking, I chose the former, and it seemed to work ok; I started on 20 Marlboro a day, [...]

Level 1: Training Stage

Hello there.
I’m Tim Cameron, a struggling musician and freelance writer for www.cracked.com.
A couple of months ago, I decided to quit gaming forever. The epiphany came some weeks after I went to New York on a romantic mission to meet a girl whom I had only ever spoken to online. She turned out to be the [...]