chapter 23: beowulf's fight with grendel's mother. Why not just say: “DO YOU WANT PORN? OF YOURSELF?” Some much-needed light relief is provided by the Modesty: Bottom options, which allow you to swap the blurred genitalia with everything from a shamrock to a fried egg.Vessel in the hand of god. Body: Modesty seems such a needlessly coquettish title now. If that wasn’t enough, you can choose the size of the nipples. Then an option to Show Nipples unblurs the nipples. Then I open a section entitled Body: Modesty, which has options to Force Underwear (another potential Blink-182 title), allowing your boss to have pants or not, albeit with naughty bits blurred. By the time I get to the option of an Oscar Pistorius leg blade I am starting to feel overwhelmed.

Again, the range of choice is ridiculous. I know I am firmly ensconced in middle age with 2.5 adult children, but I cannot resist going for 100 in the groin, which must be the name of a Blink-182 B-side. He said there has never been character creation like it. Then my son told me if I really wanted to fulfil my virtual face and body fantasy wishes, I should try the new Saints Row Boss Factory. I go for the mullet, and I liked this new redneck me.

If the point of video games is to let you step into an alternate world and live a reality you will never get to experience in real life, then allowing me to play a character with fully functioning follicles is the apex of escapism. Both represent the opposite of what my meagre hairline offers the world in real life. I pushed the in-game head thatch to the very limits of wish-fulfilment: a fro, or a mullet. So, I gave myself the hair I have always dreamed of. And he is a psychopath who pulls people’s teeth out. I shave it close because if I let it grow for a month, I’d look like Trevor from Grand Theft Auto 5. It was OK back in the early 90s but then it retreated like a politician’s principles as I got older. I gave myself the thinnest pair of lips available and tried to replicate my golfball face by selecting the “minimal chin” option. I went for the same eyes and nose as I have in real life: tiny piggy eyes and a nose that sticks up and flares out. Anything just short of translucent, basically. So I went for the palest, least healthy skin tone the game offered me. Red Dead Redemption 2 may have recreated every hair on its horses in 700bn megapixels of detail, but none of those hairs, or horses, looked Scottish.

There hasn’t been a game made yet that can give you that level of dermatological complexity. Middle-aged Scottish skin tone is almost bluey-white until you get angry, stressed or exposed to the sun, in which case it turns bright red. I was challenged from the very first option: skin tone. I recently tried to create a middle-aged mini-me in Far Cry 5.

Fifa 19 creation master