More evidence that I'm old

I'm not as young as I once was. My rapidly-aging self has a hard time keeping up with action games these days. Not that I've ever been really good at games. In the old days, I used to have to pull my younger brother in to get past particularly tricky parts of games. Of course, that never worked out that well, because the parts that followed were usually harder, but no matter.

Basically, I suck at aiming. I can really only do it semi-well with a mouse. Since the things they have you aim at are usually shooting back at you, shooters can be pretty stressful for me.

I just finished playing the excellent Mass Effect 2. That game sort of plays like a shooter, except for the vital ability to pause the game mid-fight to assess the situation and set up your powers to fire off when you unpause. The fights are still action-y, but they were much more laid back because you can always stop and figure out what all is going on. Fallout 3 had a really similar system, except that after you queued up your shots, you got to watch your character make heads explode in sweet slow motion.

I just got done replaying the first hour or so of Bioshock. This one's also a shooter, but no pausing and heavy on the atmosphere. Way, way more stressful. I don't think I've really come close to dying yet, and even if you do die, there's handy resurrection stations set up all over, so you just pop up again like a Buddhist on speed (with guns). So death, not so much something to worry about, yet not being able to stop and look around during fights makes all the difference.

I could play Mass Effect for hours at a time and end up pretty relaxed. Bioshock, I find myself feeling pretty tense after I'm done. I think I need to figure out that getting killed ain't so bad. Also need more ways to make heads explode.