For my father's birthday, I bought him an Xbox 360. This was probably the worst decision of my life. I must've been abducted by aliens and had all my neo-cortex removed, including the part which held the devastating memories of how terrible he is at video games. And not just terrible. I mean a noob gamer mixed with an impatient/angry gamer mixed with someone who thinks that it's all for young people and that I'm withholding information from him simply because I want to see him suffer endlessly finding his way out of the proverbial paper bag!

Since the only games it came with were Kinect enabled, I lent him Fable 2 (because apparently finding his hand and holding it up without activating the Kinect menu and then promptly quitting the entire Xbox 360 was too difficult). Thinking he'd be okay with it (I mean the reason I disliked that game was purely because it was far simpler than the first game) I left it at that. Now I'm literally getting calls at 10pm, and even one at midnight, asking for advice with the game. He went through the entire first few days only pressing one button, and despite not being able to do most things, refused to press any others in case he killed any more villagers. Which he does. Often. Because apparently the B button is in the wrong place.

I tell him there are hints at the top of the screen, but he swears he cannot see them. Despite sitting mere feet away. Things got especially testy when he was helping a store owner clear his store of beetles during the tutorial, and accidentally knocked over a barrel which (due to a glitch) trapped him between the wall, a box and the barrel. Refusing to break it (God forbid you lose karma!!) he literally sat there for 10 minutes waiting for something to happen, unable to move, simply staring at the screen and cursing what a terrible game Fable 2 was. If there wasn't a massive glowing trail leading to the next objective, I'm sure he'd wander around the same area endlessly until he begged me to release him.

I've tried assimilating him with gaming in the past - Half-Life 2 saw him rage quit (yes, my non gamer dad began rage-quitting before rage-quitting was probably commonplace!) before he even found a weapon. Halo saw him set the difficulty to easy and still die every few minutes. Wipeout literally saw him destroy our controllers with his button mashing (and he wonders why his vehicles continually move on their own and slam into walls!). And he restarted Morrowind only a few quests out from finishing the story because he saved right when a hard enemy was on him and he literally cannot use the Look and Move joysticks at once, so died instantly every time. No game has truly worked, except the first Fable game.

So as I write now, I'm sitting at his house "assisting him" in his ventures. He's currently spamming the entire populous of Albion with emotional actions, so every few seconds I hear some villager say in an incredibly annoying voice "Oooo! How lovely!" or "More more more!" It's as if he is simply doing it to piss me off or to boost his ego so far that he doesn't need to complete the game.

A family friend wants us to join his Battlefield 3 clan and play online with him. He goaded my dad into buying the game, but neither person is connected to LIVE yet, so the storm is still brewing. I just can't wait to see the reaction when they both inevitably get told they're newbs by some snotty ten year old who's balls haven't dropped yet. And I'll probably bear the brunt of the blame, for not teaching well enough or going slow enough. Thus the eternal hell will continue and not only will I have to deal with my dad's gaming prowess, but also have my entire squad filled with people who will sit at spawn waiting for the attackers. Lest they deplete our entire respawn count between them alone...

So next time you have a relative or parent or friend who you think would benefit from an online gaming experience, don't. Just don't. Take caution from my tale and tell them to stick to board games and cards or adopt some twelve year old just so they can then bother THEM with questions.