I've been thinking quite a bit recently about hype and the mental process it invokes. Specifically about hype withdrawal; lets call it Gamer Blues. That emotional crash when you've got a game you've pined for and after a few hours you start to nitpick and even wonder why you bought it at all. I've experienced it with Halo Wars and more accutely with Killzone 2. Both games I eagerly looked forward to, harrassed retail staff to sell to me early and then found my enjoyment tapering of far too quickly.

Is this feeling the result of Gamer Blues? Or are these games just not the star studded titles the exclusive reviews have promised?

I think you can break up the mental process into a few stages:

The Peak - Holy jebus this game is completely awesome, the reviews weren't kidding this game kicks ass.

Rationalising - Well it doesn't do anything new, but it just looks amazing, I'm only three levels in but I've got work tomorrow.

Questioning - Hmm, all this time I though Garza and that guy with the bandana were the same guy, weird. Why do the troops with the gas tanks on their back turn around when you shoot them? Isn't that the sort of thing they'd be trained not to do? Why do the Helghan have lightening guns and flying robots but hydraulic valves to open doors?

Bargaining - Multiplayer is where the value is, I was just playing campaign to learn the controls, and it is awesome, changing objectives, squads. Oh it crashed, and it didn't save my stats, oh well, I'll join my mates game, oh I've pinged a rank above him… damn.

Anger - Why even bother putting these f#%king electric spiders in the game? They're just annoying, die! What! I'm dead? So those barrels explode when the spider pops? Well that's just $%#^%^&#%^&$#!!! A whole area of snipers? Go and $#%^&#& a ^%&#**#.

Grief - Resident Evil 5 comes out next week and I don't have any money...

All the games media seems to have dropped their 9 out of 10 Killzone reviews and then moved on without really pointing out that, well, it's not that great. Compared too (and I know I'm hanging my balls out here) Halo 3 it doesn't have the pull or the longevity to keep people playing for years. Halo 3 hit a billion online games last week, one billion! Will people even be playing Killzone 2 this time next year with Call of Duty 6 arriving in November? Maybe not, if they don't fix the issues with multiplayer probably not.

I'm not trying to pick on the PS3 or Killzone 2. I genuinely do love both and I've had the same ill will towards Gears of War 2 which I've hardly touched. But I can’t help but wonder if I'm not just suffering a bad case of Gamer Blues over Killzone 2 or if it just isn't as crash hot as I had imagined.