Once a year, Jason Iatomasi, I, and a few friends grab every TV, Console, Monitor, Controller, and Cartridge we can carry and camp out in Jason’s living room and do nothing but play video games for 24 hours. Well, at least once a year. But when we do it in October, we do it for charity.

The charity event in question is Extra Life. It started in 2008 as an event to raise money for a children’s hospital (click here for the full story). In 2008 and 2009, the charity managed to raise $302,000 for Children’s Miracle Network hospital, no small change for two 24 hour events devoted entirely to gaming. This year, participants can choose from among many (local) beneficiaries when they sign up for the event.

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So 2009 ended with an avalanche of new and desirable titles that bury me anew every time I think I’m getting over my addiction to my last purchase. Nevertheless, I’m still able to tear myself away occasionally in an effort to feed my cat, and crack open a textbook. How, you might ask? I’d like to say that I have some measure of self-control that allows me to get far enough away from my TV that I’m physically incapable of taking a 5 hour break to level up, but the answer is nothing so noble. The fact is, my stuff is breaking at an alarming rate.

This all began months ago when I stupidly upgraded to Windows 7, accepting the word of an IT professional that, unlike Vista, the new OS would not delete my files at random. He was wrong. Not only does the random deletion thing still occur (not gaming related), iTunes no longer likes to sync with my iPhone. Sure, I can use another computer, but the games on my Dell are stranded. So my iPhone is down for the count.

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If you can’t make killing zombies fun, you can’t make anything fun.

Now, take that in context: I’m a 2nd year law student. I’m used to being surrounded by soulless, flesh-eating monsters. I also think there’s a little part of all of us that wants a release from the pressure of standing out in an overly populated world and just succeed merely by surviving. Or maybe we’re just a bunch of middle-class man-children who’ve always had too much to lose to do what we want, which is grab a shotgun and go to town on every slack-jawed, animated corpse who gets in our collective face.

Whatever the reason, there are precious few things my friends and I enjoy more than a good zombie blasting. Which is why I am appalled at the incredible let-down that has been Left 4 Dead. It wasn’t an awful game, it just wasn’t worth the money we paid for it. All we got was four characters with no distinct abilities or even personalities, 4 weapons, and no plot. Single-player mode was virtually unplayable. The only thing a change in difficulty did was make your teammates more useless.

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Don’t get me wrong, I feel really cool whenever that little notification pops up in the corner of my screen to tell me I just smashed 5 whole sets of chattering teeth. I didn’t know why I did it, or even that I was doing it, but there I sit, like a puppy who just figured out that he’ll be praised whenever he swings his paw at the bald, flat-faced figure before him. I know everybody who’s ever played the game before has done it. Hell, I did it by accident. But it feels good. Just imagine how good it’ll feel when I unlock every last achievement, even the really tough ones that nobody gets. There have to be some that nobody’s done, right? I mean, nobody I know, anyway. Right?

Wrong. I feel empty. I feel like, in the time it took to knock that arrow down with my knife, I should have learned to play the piano, or speak French, or even play a video game I haven’t long since lost interest in.

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