The Top 7... steps to becoming a videogame snob

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Think you're hardcore? Not until you turn into an elitist jackass. We tell you how

Step 3 - You hate on anything popular

Each year, dozens - if not hundreds - of terrible half-assed games are shoveled onto store shelves and into unsuspecting customers' hands. But real gamers don't have time to complain about the crap, because we're too busy complaining about the good stuff. And if the good stuff also happens to be popular, or - God forbid - to have a mainstream focus, that nitpicking turns into a full-on dissection.

Halo? The physics aren'treally 100%accurate, you know. It sucks. Madden? The crowd isn't realistic enough. It sucks, and so do all other sports games. Grand Theft Auto? They still haven't catered to our favorite decade or our particular taste in music, and the targeting is still wonky, so it totally sucks.

The list goes on. Give us a game that's received nothing but praise and we'll spitefully come back to you with nothing but flaws.

Why? Because if the general public really digs something, we elitists - by definition - must consider ourselves above it. Deep down, we know the truth... that these games couldn't possibly sell as many copies and inspire as many sequels as they do without being pretty damn awesome. We realize that if we just dropped our holier-than-thou attitude and joined in the mass hysteria, we'd have a great time.

But then we'd be just like everyone else. And that's the videogame snob's worst nightmare. At least the we'll-buy-anything clones with no taste can't name-check really obscure stuff that we're sure must be great because so few people think so. We've still got that to separate us from the herd.