You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Games

 How modern computer games make for an odd experience for anyone old enough to have played "Sonic the Hedgehog."

 The trouble with getting older is that, at any given moment, you might start telling people what “the trouble with so-and-so” is. It’s the first sign of the ageing process.

 But as I’ve cleverly got that moment out of the way from the off, I’d like to begin in earnest.

 The trouble with computer games these days is that they’re at a sort of mid-point in terms of realism, and it leaves me unhappily fence-sitting.

 I didn’t play games for years. I had a Playstation in 1996, and pretty much wore the controller down to a nub, but by the time the Playstation 2 came along, I’d moved on and outgrown video games – realistically, I was fourteen and had taken up wearing other things down to a nub.

 Since then, video games have matured, too, and now me and modern gaming are on a pretty even footing. Games have deeper plots, more involved ideas and more believable characters, and none of this is a bad thing. I might, however, have to knock gaming on the head once again, because this time around, it's all too real.

 Modern games are massive. Truly, staggeringly vast. “Red Dead Redemption”, “Far Cry 2” and the Grand Theft Auto series all take place in landscapes that would take the better part of a day to traverse on foot. And that’s exactly what’s wrong.

 Games are going for absolute realism in a way that nobody has attempted since Penn & Teller made “Desert Bus.” In Red Dead Redemption, you can ride for miles upon miles to reach a destination. Granted, there’s an option to skip straight to the end of your journey, but you won’t, because then you might miss one of the randomly-generated side missions along the way. So instead, you spend fifteen minutes with a detailed rear view of yourself galloping along on a horse, until you undergo the slightly crushing realisation that you’re playing a game that would be better titled “Horse Proctologist – Old West Edition.”

 Same with “Far Cry 2.” As a mercenary in a stunningly detailed African setting, you have to work around computer generated characters that are, I’ll admit, twice as clever as I am.

 A typical assault on the enemy involves hunkering down into the bushes, then creeping forward through the brush with agonisingly delicate movements, your eyes fixed on a lone, oblivious sentry at the roadside. You bite your lip, fearing the slightest noise will give you away; the crack of a twig, the rustle of a palm frond. You’re so close to the sentry you can smell his cigarette, watch beads of sweat on his skin, see the fabric of his shirt billowing in the hot African breeze. Wincing, you slide your machete from it’s sheath, going for the silent kill, already anticipating the hot stink of fresh blood in the balmy night air.

 Then someone wanders into the living room and asks what you’re playing, and if you want some pizza. Then the sentry turns around and machine guns you in the face. Twice. And you start again.

 Realism, in short, is in danger of going way too far. Riding a horse for miles and sneaking through foliage for hours just doesn’t seem like much fun.

 On the other hand, maybe realism just hasn’t gone far enough yet. I was in Ikea the other day, getting some stuff for work. No big deal. Two or three items. I got as far as the checkout, and due to an inspired act of shortsighted corporate twatery, there was only one till that was taking cash.

 Cash was all I had.

 There was a long, long queue.

 Resigning myself to a wait, I stood around patiently as the line crawled forwards at about the rate of a growing fingernail, surrounded by crying children because – of course – it was half-term and the kids were off school.

 After fifteen minutes of this, the woman two places ahead of me in the queue paid for her items with a credit card.

 It bears reiterating that there were probably a dozen checkouts that would have taken cards, but only one that was dealing in cash.

 At this point, if I could have opened a little drop-down window in my life and scrolled through a list of weapons, then used one of them to shatter that lady’s kneecaps, I probably would have.

 This is what videogames need to do – recreate real life in absolute, minute detail, but with fictional options thrown in.

 On paper, a game called “Ikea Shopper” sounds about as much fun as “Extreme Farm Hand” or “Virtual Ombudsman,” but think about it. A completely immersive, hyper-real simulation of your average trip to Ikea, but with the option to actually react the way you want to, which, if you’re anything like me, involves the urge to dismember the other customers by the time you’re at the first escalator.

 You could even make it more of a challenge by insisting that your in-game character can only use the items in his or her trolley. Imagine a game where you start off shopping, and eventually go completely native and start hunting the customers with crying toddlers, crawling through the vent system, lying in wait to spring out at them like “Alien” and stove their heads in with a tastefully minimalist lamp.

 It’d be brilliant.

 Or I’m just a dangerously unhinged psycho.

 Either way, video games either need to stop being so realistic, or start being so realistic that I can act out my shopping/murder fantasies.