Game On

I must confess to having a weakness for computer games and my thumbs can occasionally be seen waggling across the front of a PSP of an evening. I don’t own many games, but I’ve realised that for some reason a disproportionate amount of these require me to adopt the persona of a small mammal such as Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, Sly Raccoon (then there’s the variants of Ratchet & Clank: Locked & Loaded, Daxter etc.)

While Sly Raccoon is obviously a raccoon and Crash Bandicoot is obviously a bandicoot, Daxter – according to the accompanying notes – is an ‘otsel’ (a biologically impossible hybrid of an otter and a weasel) and Ratchet is some kind of space-travelling creature, clearly based on a small weaselly/ottery/bandicooty/raccoony type mammal. There seems to be a proliferation of these games which I have such a penchant for, which is a bit puzzling.

Another favourite, and not dissimilar game, is Ray-Man, who doesn’t really resemble an animal of any sort, but embarks on similar adventures in a cutesy platform cartoon land. The first time this game was suggested to me I mis-heard it as Rainman, which I remember thinking was the worst idea for a computer game ever. It’s difficult to imagine what a game about an autistic savant would entail. Counting probably. In that sense it’s probably not dissimilar to that that Brain Training rubbish that Ronan Keating and Captain Jean-Luc Picard are always telling me to buy, which looks about as entertaining as watching grass grow. Give me small mammalian cosmonauts any day.