Everyone who buys a party game does so with the expectation that they'll get to play it with other people, preferably during a party. It's right there in the name. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out that way -- maybe you bought it to play with your girlfriend, but then she left you, or maybe you thought your friends liked party games, but it turns out they didn't. They just liked your girlfriend ... and stopped coming around once she stopped.

D. Anschutz/Digital Vision/Getty Images
Don't worry. Princess Peach will never leave you.

Whatever the scenario, at some point, you feel like you have to play the game by yourself, if only to justify the $60 investment. So, you sit there, rolling fake dice over a fake board with a group of a calculatedly multicultural fake people with names such as "Guillermo" and "Shaniqua." Part of you wishes you could fast-forward through all of their turns, but another part doesn't -- because the automated gameplay at least provides the illusion of company. Computer players can't abandon you or pass out after puking on your couch. Who needs real friends when you've got Shaniqua, Guillermo, and Abdullah? But then ... betrayal!

Nintendo
TU ERES UN HIJO DE PUTA, GUILLERMO. TU ERAS MI UNICO AMIGO.

Yes, now the game itself is mocking you for daring to think that you deserve friendship and happiness. And that's why I think single-player modes for party games should be banned. It's like if someone invented a way to have sex with yourself. Can you imagine how sad that would -- uhh, wait, I guess you can do that?

Huh ...

Be right back.

For instance, if you get squashed too many times by the giant boulder at the beginning of LEGO Indiana Jones, the game gets tired of your bullshit and goes to this cutscene:

Youtube
This is Indy's most undignified escape that doesn't involve kitchen appliances.

Without so much as a "would you like to skip this part, you magnificent pussy?" prompt, the game unceremoniously kicks you out of the temple and lets you continue the rest of your adventure, albeit burdened with the knowledge that the first level of a game for children was too difficult for you. I could give a hundred more examples stolen from this TV tropes page, but what inspired this entry was this:

Nintendo
The international sign for "move aside, incompetent asshole coming through."

Friggin' Bullet Bill from Mario Kart -- an item you get when you're so hopelessly behind the other players that the game automatically sends you flying, like, half a lap ahead. The usual reaction to getting an item on Mario Kart is "AWWWW, YEAH! GONNA FUCK Y'ALL UP, MOTHERFUCKERS!" (it's probably a good thing that this game doesn't have voice chat) -- but not when you get the Bullet Bill. When you're zooming past everyone without making the slightest effort, it's more like, "Sorry sorry sorry sorry. I promise I don't usually suck this much. It's just that ... well, things have been hard since Jenny left."

Nintendo
"The Animal Crossing stage theme was our song. Oh God, I miss you so much."

And then, there's the human variation of this experience: when you're playing your 20th losing match against the same person online and you can tell they're intentionally letting you win one out of pity. This is even sadder when you lose anyway, and sadder still when it's against a little kid -- something you know you'll never have because Jenny was your last chance to start a family.

Fitness games combine all the fun and excitement of gaming with the "I'm not fucking dying at 40!" panic of the overweight. You know how it is: You see that Wii Fit is on sale, and you think, "I could play video games and temporarily fend off the perpetually looming specter of death? Sign me up!" So, you buy the game and set up a workout program, thinking that maybe if you drop 20 pounds, Jenny will take you back.

Of course, you're wrong. Jenny will never take you back. She already moved in with that guy from her office: fucking Pierre, who you always hated.

Digital Vision./Photodisc/Getty Images
Saying "fucking Pierre" all the time had an unfortunate subliminal effect on Jenny.

But, also, you're never dropping those 20 pounds -- mainly because you only used the fitness game for a few days before discovering that, holy shit, doing exercise takes effort. You want to start over again, but the problem is, you programmed a three-month workout routine, and, if you pick it up now, the game will know you were sitting on your ass for the past two weeks. You'll either have to do extra work every day to make up for it, or wait until October to play the game that you bought. But then, you think: What if it could be October now? What if you set the console's calendar three months ahead to end the current workout program? You do that, promising to yourself that it's only just this once. Congratulations: You've just cheat-coded your health, you sad bastard.

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Next thing you know, it's April 2495, and you're still a fat fuck.

Don't get me wrong: Making a video game do something it's not supposed to do can be a great feeling. I remember when I figured out you could play Street Fighter II without the energy bars and the timer by entering and quitting the options menu 27 times in a row -- I felt like a goddamn master hacker. Sure, I "figured it out" by reading the instructions in a kids' magazine, but still. This was some Angelina Jolie in Hackers shit right here.

Capcom
I was a little disappointed that Chun-Li wasn't as naked as the kids' magazine promised, though.

Cheating in a video game can feel great. Cheating in a fitness game, on the other hand, is basically just cheating yourself, and it just leads to crying over your controller as you realize how low you've sank. Or, uh, so I've heard.

Note: Since this entry was conceived, Wii Fit U has been updated to let you cancel your workout goal without waiting months. However, I'm still keeping it because, ehhhh, it's my article. Thank you for understanding, or eat a turd if you don't.

Modern consoles have brought an unprecedented level of customization to gaming, to the point where we can now create and play as digital avatars that look exactly like our real selves (if we were all dickless dwarfs with orbs instead of hands). But, seriously, it's pretty cool. The only downside: It's gradually turning our consoles into virtual graveyards.

For instance, when the Nintendo Wii came out in 2006, everyone and their grandparents got one -- literally, since this thing was huge with old people. But, the problem with old people, as you might know, is that they aren't terribly durable. This means that there are now Wii owners who run the risk of being randomly bumping into their dead nanas and grandpas every time they play Wii Sports, which is kinda terrifying.

Nintendo
Especially when they still humiliate you at tennis.

This can be even more painful when it happens with people who aren't dead, but might as well be, because you just saw on Facebook that she's now engaged to fucking Pierre, even though they've only been dating for six-and-a-half months, and he isn't even friends with her parents, which you know because you are. Or whatever. It could be a friend who drifted away, but has an X-Box avatar that still shows up in Uno Rush, or an old roommate who still lives with you in Tomodachi Life, or Jenny's avatar playing the bass on "Rock Lobster" in Rock Band 3. "Rock Lobster" was your back-up song.

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Jenny had terrible taste in music.

Of course, you could always delete your grandparents' Mii characters after they die, but then you'd feel like you're losing them to fucking Pierre all over again. I mean, to the ... Grim Reaper. Yeah. Deleting their avatars would mean never seeing them again, and you're not ready for that yet -- after all, they could always come to their senses, dump the Grim Reaper, and go back to you. Shut up. That could totally happen.

But, more so than that, the saddest part of gaming is not trying something over and over again, even though you're doomed. Nope, it's ...

Or, I should say, the first one that broke me. Like with human flesh, once you've had a taste of asking Google how to finish a game, you'll eventually come back to it, because you are now less of a person than before. It's even worse now with YouTube, where you can watch how someone completed any part of any game that exists. Keep dying at the same spot on an action game? Ehh, I'll just see how a 9 year old from Armenia got past it.

Nintendo
Oh, you have jump over the pit.

Of course, when it's a Mario game, you don't even need YouTube because (as Mr. Iannone once again pointed out) this feature now comes built into the games. While this makes me deeply sad about the current state of our youth, perhaps it's for the best, because every gamer knows, if you go to YouTube, you're inevitably gonna end up wandering into Jenny's inactive account -- the tiny profile picture is the most recent photo of her you have access to since she blocked you on Facebook for accidentally "liking" 37 of her vacation pictures at 5 a.m. on a Tuesday. You scroll through her old comments because reading those "lols" and "lmaos" is the closest thing to hearing her laughter you'll ever experience. You watch each of her favorited videos over and over, clutching to every small hint for the elaborate coded message that says she still has feelings for you.

Girl, I'm still as Rock as a Lobster for you.

In the end, the greatest puzzle is the human heart, and there isn't a GameFAQs tutorial on how to solve it. Or, at least, the search function isn't bringing it up so far. I'll keep trying for a few more hours and let you know if I find anything.

Maxwell Yezpitelok is doing fine. He has a Twitter and a comic and all. If anyone asks, tell him or her that he's doing fine and didn't look like he had been crying. And you saw him with a blonde with huuuuge boobs.

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For more from Maxwell, check out The 25 Most Misleadingly Titled Games For The Game Boy and 5 Artists Killed for Comics Beyond 'Charlie Hebdo'.