It is a sad time indeed to be a gamer, and one of the worst times for the affliction known as “always looking forward… itis… osis” whereby people insist on ignoring what’s about now and instead focus on what will be about in six months.

Of course, when the six months is up they just end up looking forward to the stuff coming in 2010, and so on and so forth.

The fools!

There are more than enough games around right now to get you through these painfully sunny days where you’re expected to actually move from your grotty little bedsit/parents basement.

Sod the sunshine/rain/overcast skies (delete as appropriate) – play inFamous, or Prototype, or revisit the Chronicles of Riddick and realise while it’s still great, it simply doesn’t have the spark it had on the original release.

Ignore the cries of happiness from the baying morons littering the bars around your homestead – they are lies. Instead, sit in your pants and shoot zombies with your equally-emaciated friends on Left 4 Dead. So they’re making a sequel too soon? So what – this one is out now, to play now – play it and shout at each other!

What we’re saying is – aside from the usual “avoid the outside as it’s full of tossers” thing – is that gamers as a whole need to learn to appreciate the here and now, and need to stop thinking that the best thing is just around the corner.

Titles never seem to get the appreciation they deserve on or soon after release. Instead they are hyped endlessly and looked forward to by thousands, only to be forgotten about until the inevitable retro feature a few years down the line which will ask “why didn’t we pay attention to it at the time?”

So live your life for the now, to the max – except not in that “to the max” way where you’re expected to jump off buildings into piles of flaming glass, or socialise or anything. No, we mean to the max in the sense of wearing the same pair of pants for four weeks as you attempt to finish Ikaruga on one life, and stop paying so much attention to what’s coming.

Though, to be honest, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 does have night vision goggles with the special edition… and Borderlands is looking better by the day…

THIS WEEK: As well as remembering to put the ‘THIS WEEK’ bit in, we also realised that Tales of Monkey Island is pretty darn good, and that in future we should have some faith in Telltale’s ability to… tell… tales. Anyway, back to the monkeys.

9 - A picture of Heath Ledger from his last movie - Slashfilm

8 – All the Call Of Duty: World At War bumf you could ever wish for  - Callofduty

7 - Porn’s best non-porn moments - Cracked

6 - Boy kills lizard, feeds them to bigger lizard. It’s the circle of life – BBC

5 - Man arrested for having sex with a car wash vacuum. Dad! – Altnews

4 - A man with a big guitar – I Am Bored

3 - Just looking at this has given us a heart attack – Pic

2 - How to whistle an acorn – Sciencetoymaker

1 - MONKEY ON A SEGWAY! MONKEY ON A SEGWAY!