I = triumph

There was a disappointing lack of a drum roll. There were no masses waiting in hushed anticipation. There was no post-final interview with Ant and Dec, no follow ups on the talk show circuit and, crushingly, no thumbs up from Chuck Norris*. But all of these things are but follies, because I - living the work + no play = dull boy dream - have managed to complete a videogame for the first time in actual years.

Hey, Call of Duty 4! Not looking so tough now, are ya?

It's not been through lack of trying - I would have completed Halo if my iBook didn't start having seizures whenever more than, say, two enemies appeared on screen. KotOR would be in the books if the aforementioned iBook hadn't literally screamed when an entirely superfluous flying whale appeared on the Jedi Academy planet.

It's at that point that I realised that a three year-old iBook G4 probably wasn't the best choice as a gaming platform.

There are, of course, others.New Super Mario Brothers remains unfinished because I suck at Mario games, Phantom Hourglass would be seeing progress during my commute, if I didn't walk to work, Heavenly Sword would be done if there was actually a game I wanted to play in between the cutscenes.

So I managed to find the time, over the past week or so, to complete COD4's singleplayer (stop laughing at the back). It took me a while to reacquaint myself with a console FPS - after playing a lot of Fifa 08 and Okami and not a lot inbetween - but soon enough I was pop'n'shooting with the best of them. At which point I got executed.

And then killed in a nuclear explosion.

This was after completing the missions. What happens if you fail? You die? Where's my damn carrot?

What was genuinely weird about the experience was the vague guilt I felt when storming ahead of the rest of my squad into room full of enemies, even if it was what I was supposed to do. That, and spending three quarters of the game being called Soap by my CO.

But now it's over, and I am full of win. Just not online - I am truly horrific at multiplayer...

* What is it Mike Huckabee has that I don't, exactly?