Great Games You Won't Be Allowed to Play

The gamers in the forums were drooling over Crysis the other day, which is the latest in a string of "Next Big Thing" games. We gamers always have one of those at the center of our conversations, a too-awesome-to-be-true game that's always JUUUUUST over the horizon. Once it arrives, we believe, it will crash down onto the gaming world like the fist of God.

As pretty as the above pic is, a still image doesn't really do it justice. If the below video isn't a complete hoax, then the level of immersion with Crysis appears to be beyond anything you've experienced:

There's a point about two minutes into that video where, if you don't feel a sudden warmth spreading in your chest, then you do not have the heart of a gamer, my friend.

It starts with that tank, the one that comes roaring toward the fragile-looking shed you've unwisely chosen to take cover in. The tank meets that building and just runs that shit over, spilling hunks of wood and tin like matchsticks. It's so satisfying to watch, it makes you want to buy the game just so you can find a tank and just drive around crushing virtual buildings all weekend. Though the guy mowing down an entire jungle with a minigun was nice, too.

Do you want it? Well, too bad.

To play Crysis on the "recommended" settings, you need:

Processor - Intel Core 2 DUO @ 2.2GHz

Memory - 2GB RAM

GPU - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS/640 or similar

Sure, you may meet the first two requirements, if you just bought your computer in the last couple of months. That last thing on the list? The video card? It's about $400. Yep, that part alone costs more than a whole XBox 360.

Now, if you're not currently a gamer and you'd like to get in on the Crysis action from scratch, a new computer that can run it (according to the Dell website) will cost $2,639. So, adding in the game itself plus shipping or tax, and you're up around the $2,800 mark.

Holy shit. That's an XBox 360 and 40 games. That's a Wii and 51 games.

I don't begrudge anyone their expensive hobbies; golfers spend thousands on their clubs and I've sunk five grand into the huge speakers in the back of my El Camino. But, even if you're REALLY into gaming, isn't that starting to stretch your fun-per-dollar pretty thin? It seems you could do a lot more with three grand. Just off the top of my head, you could:

• Pay a shady doctor $3,000 to replace your left arm with a flamethrower.
• Put 3,000 boxes of Jello powder into your pool. Or, your neighbor's pool.
• Pay MMA fighter Randy Couture to pick a fight with you in front of your girlfriend at a bar, then let you throw him through a plate glass window.
• Bribe the grizzly bear handlers at the zoo to shoot the animal full of sedatives, at which point you "accidentally" fall into its pen. Let the local news cameras show up just in time to capture you wrestling the bear into submission on live TV.
• Buy a cell phone jammer. You know, for when you go to the movies.
• Rent a chimpanzee and a set of little surgical scrubs for it to wear. Splatter some blood on him and chase him through a waiting room full of weeping families.
• Pay for six months of sessions with a therapist, and tell him you're having paranoid fantasies. Then, just as you're having your breakthrough, hire six guys in dark suits to burst into the office, throw you screaming into a black van and speed away.
• Pay a woman to have sex with you.

You know, I just realized that every single one of those is illegal in most states. So, maybe that's the attraction for the high end gamers, that it's the most fun they can have without winding up in jail. Well, go to it, then. If any of you out there wind up with Crysis and the hardware to run it, let me know. I'll come over. It'll take both of us to play it anyway, since as of next week my left arm will be a flamethrower.