After finishing the glory that is Mass Effect, I’ve been a bit rudderless in my 360 gaming. Maybe I’m still sleepy. Maybe I’m still hypnotized by Mass’ halo of goodness. Or maybe it’s because it was so all-consuming, I thought I’d be playing it for the rest of my life.

At any rate, in this all-too-vulnerable state, I’ve resumed some questionable gaming habits. Even scarier, I’ve become the consumer that game publishers dream about.

I’ve become the licensed-games guy.

Reaching into a stack of games post–Mass Effect, I sifted through Project Gotham Racing 4, Overlord, Kane & Lynch, Skate…all good games that I knew I should be playing more of. But one by one, I put them down — and picked up Conan. After a few hours of that, I jumped to CSI: Hard Evidence. And after proving my investigative genius, I swung head-first into Spider-Man: Friend or Foe.

And then I wondered: “What am I doing with all this licensed schlock?”

Okay, fairness pause. These games aren’t quite schlock, and none of them truly “suck,” despite the sensational language in the blurb for this blog post. Conan (OXM rating: 6.5) features loads of gory hacking and decapitating — perfect for its universe of swords, sorcery, thievery, and rogues. CSI: Hard Evidence (OXM rating: 7.0) does a decent job of imitating its TV namesake, letting you analyze crime scenes and interact with the show’s characters. As for Spider-Man: Friend or Foe (OXM rating: 6.0), it’s clearly a kids’ game in the Lego Star Wars mold, and to its credit, it features such rarely gamed Marvel characters as The Prowler and the delectable Black Cat.

None of these games is all that great, though. And as an OXM-er who knows that, it’s hard to rationalize playing them instead of 8.0- and 9.0-level entries like Overlord and Skate — games that pretty much all of my peers would consider better 360 titles. So why did I do it? Why do I continue to play mediocre games, simply because they’re licensed games based on brands I love?

I know why: it’s because I’ll do anything to be the hero. At the end of the day, sometimes I just want to be Conan, or be Spider-Man, or be a CSI investigator. I want to be the heroes I love watching and love reading about. And if the game that lets me do that is so-so, well, odds are that 9 times out of 10, I’ll still play that game before getting to a better, non-licensed game. I won’t recommend these sub-masterpieces to anyone else, and I’ll chide myself for dabbling in their cesspooly-ness, but I’ll still saddle up to them like Bono craves rosy sunglasses.

Thankfully — by the grace of gaming gods — options like The Darkness, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and Lego Star Wars exist. Games that let me be my favorite comic-book, movie, or TV heroes while enjoying an unabashedly awesome gameplay experience. Games I can recommend to other people. Games without guilt.

Now all I need is a little willpower. The strength to put aside the Superman Returns and TMNTs of the world and embrace the good stuff. It’ll be a constant struggle, but I think I can do it.

Unless someone releases another terrible Aquaman game. Then I'm totally screwed.