Confessions of a game widow With a rush of big video games out in the run-up to Christmas, some people may have found they have taken second place to the console, as this woman relates. 'Back me up, we're supposed to be a team' My boyfriend is leading a double life. During daylight hours he holds down a respectable office job and makes complicated decisions. By night, he is a hardened soldier who spends his time planting bombs and capturing flags. When he's not doing that, he works as a scientist in the dangerous trouble spot known as City 17. But this is no international man of mystery. Instead, he's an online hero who gets his kicks on virtual battlefields. Yes, my man is addicted to Halo 2 and Half-Life 2. And I am a games widow. Are you a game widow or widower? Send us your comments Halo 2; Half-Life 2; Killzone; Getaway 2: Black Monday. So many pre-Christmas games releases, so little time. I should be grateful he doesn't play GTA: San Andreas, he tells me. Or Need for Speed: Underground 2. Or indeed Fifa 2005. Yet. Half-Life monologue It wasn't always like this. The living room hasn't always been a mess of cables, controllers and consoles. He kept his other life on the PC in the spare room. But then along came consoles, the broadband connection and whole new worlds opened up online. Assume the identity of Gordon Freeman in Half-Life 2 Now he sits in front of the TV for hours at a time, while exhorting his clan-mates to "get in the cave!" or "back me up, we're supposed to be a team", or exchanging grunts with American teenagers. Nor does it stop when he has prised himself away from the console. I am treated to monologues on the relative merits of his opponents ("useless"), or the "filmic" qualities of Half-Life 2. I should point out that I know how easy it is to be seduced by the winking black box in the corner, having myself had an intense yet brief infatuation with games in the past. We have reached a compromise of sorts, whereby he arranges gaming evenings with his friends only when I am out, and the rest of the time he plays only in short bursts. But it looks like his obsession is here to stay.
