Know what would make us happier? More games that make us depressed.

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Warning:  A small splash of profanity awaits.

I had purposely made it through about 10 percent of Grand Theft Auto IV without killing a single cop. If I needed a cop car for a mission, I would just dial 911 to conveniently lure a cruiser closer and dart into one, no harm done.

Then comes “Blow Your Cover,” a relatively early mission in GTA IV. I meet up with a newer boss, Elizabeta, a hot-tempered coke and heroin supplier who’s introduced me to a dude named Playboy X. She wants us to meet up with a "buyer" for a big heroin shipment. I'll be accompanied by a severe-looking shorn-scalp biker named Johnny.

Surprise, surprise, the "buyer" is a cop looking to make a bust. This is the point in the game where you have no choice but to blow away undercover cops, along with their small army of S.W.A.T. (or as they’re called in GTA IV, N.O.O.S.E.) backups.

moscalloutIt seems as though in many cases, bringing people down brings a medium up./moscalloutSo much for my no-cops-killed streak.

I could easily turn this into a commentary on choice in games, or rather how there really is no such thing as a truly open-ended game. You're at the mercy of the game designers' vision, always.

Instead I'll just comment on how having to kill all the cops in that fate-filled GTA IV mission made me feel utterly gloomy.

Do I have some kind of heightened affinity for authority figures, leading my stomach to sway at the deaths of virtual officers? Not particularly. (No, I don't condone violence against real cops, or anyone for that matter.)

But after playing the game for a few hours straight, playing it how I thought it should be played, and becoming increasingly immersed in the world and its characters, this mission turned my expectations and my plans for GTA IV upside down. This is when it occurred me what a shitty life Niko Bellic and Roman have. And in turn it made me feel shitty. These two characters are self-sold slaves to the "American dream." And the recurring notion that things may possibly get better for either of them (typically brought up by the ridiculously optimistic Roman) makes such clusterfucks as a botched drug deal even drearier, simply because you know that things will just get worse.