Yes, games are great. Trouble is, they've become so sophisticated, some are no longer content to provide simple fun, and instead aim to immerse you in a world of their own devising - and not always in a good way.

Earlier this year I played a game called Condemned, in which you had to trudge around a dingy underworld desperately fighting off psychotic tramps using virtually anything that came to hand: planks, crowbars, shovels, you name it. Between scuffles, you had to collect dead birds and bits of old tin. I soon gave up, not because the game was rubbish, but because I was too depressed to continue.

And now there's Call of Duty 3, a first-person shooter which takes the mournful contemplation and harrowing violence of Saving Private Ryan, and applies it to a video game. "Brings you closer than ever to the fury of combat," screams the back cover, and it isn't bloody kidding. Previously, the closest I've ever been to the fury of combat is wrestling with a tough-to-open ketchup sachet in a motorway service station. Now I've got the second world war in my living room.

Press "start" and you're plunged headlong into a bedlam of gunfire and screaming, replicated in HD visuals and 5.1 surround sound. You're firing wildly in the vague direction of Nazis, out of your mind with terror, while battle explodes all around you. It's enough to make Donald Rumsfeld as stiff as a flagpole.

For extra immersion, the game simulates blurred vision and tinnitus whenever a blast goes off at close range. When you're injured, the controller vibrates in your hand, imitating a faltering heartbeat. And when you inevitably drop dead, the screen pretentiously displays a sombre quote about war, such as "All wars are fought for money - Socrates", presumably because a simple "Game Over" might appear somehow disrespectful, what with the second world war being a real event that killed millions and all that.

But don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it should be banned or put on a high shelf where humankind can't reach it. I'm saying it's a good thing. Because eventually I realised the experience of playing it was so relentlessly horrible, I'd rather go and do the washing up, just for some harmless escapism.

That proved so relaxing, I wiped the oven clean too. Later I might do some paperwork I've been putting off. The war was too real for my liking. I'm a deserter now, and real life is paradise. Hooray for pixels.

Ignopedia

Presenting an exciting first in interactive technology! The Ignopedia is the world's first* paper-and-ink encyclopaedia. Unlike Wikipedia, which is created by hundreds of users, the Ignopedia is written entirely by a single sub-par human with little or no awareness of the facts - building week by week, entry by entry, into a uniquely unreliable resource. *apart from all the other ones

Marketing

Marketing is the art of associating products with ideas to bamboozle consumers. For example, a commercial in which a supermodel drinks piss from a thimble will lead ugly viewers to follow suit - which is good news for you because you've got a warehouse of thimbles and an endless supply of piss, and bad news for anyone who hoped the smoking ban might leave the nation's pubs smelling fresher.

People in marketing often talk about the "personality" of a given product. A biscuit might be "reassuring and sensual"; a brand of shoe may exhibit "anarchic yet inquisitive" tendencies. Marketers have built their worldview on such thinking, despite it being precisely the sort of babble a madman might come up with following years alone in an isolated cottage, during which time he falls in love with a fork and decides the lightbulbs are conspiring against him.

Sadly, the analogy ends here, for while madmen are rewarded with straitjackets and medication, marketers receive six-figure salaries and round-the-clock sexual favours from people 200 times prettier than the prettiest person you've ever seen, even fleetingly, even from afar or in a magazine.

TV go home

Television listings from the soon-to-be-present

Improvement Macht Frei

9.30 pm, Channel 4

Militant proactive makeover show in which disappointing dumpy proles are abducted at knifepoint and flown to a secret offshore gulag to be taught how to eat, dress and behave, by a crack team of middle-class superiorists armed with handcuffs, batons, choke-leads and Tasers. This week: when Martin's daydream about cheeseburgers is discovered during the daily mind-probe session, the team nail him to a cross in the main plaza and beat him with clubs until his kidneys explode, leaving his bloated cadaver to slowly rot in the cold winter sunshine as a warning to others of his revolting, unsophisticated kind.

· Music by Lily Allen and Keane

· Producer: Ivan Plapp

· Subtitles ... 888

Corporate nausea

Your nominations for nauseating, over-friendly, self-consciously "wacky" corporate blah continue to pour in. Gavin Haynes nominates purple eCouriers delivery vans (which sport slogans such as "I used to be a purple zebra" and "Does my bum look big in this?").

Special thanks to Bruno Davey, who sent a link to a jaw-dropping YouTube video in which two Bank of America employees sing U2's One, with the lyrics changed to celebrate the glory of credit cards (www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qAuqq1LFnU). Even if you hate U2 as much as I do, this feels like sacrilege.

Keep 'em coming: charlie.brooker@ theguardian.com