Before reaching the denouement of “Halo 3,” Game Guy logged approximately 40 hours trying to learn Master Chief’s fate.

Ditto with “Super Smash Bros. Brawl,” if only because the game had so many brawls to choose from.

And “BioShock”? That probably amounted to 50 hours of playing time, because Game Guy loves the game so. (And because GG’s not the most skillful player around.)

Add to these numbers the other games Game Guy’s playing at the same time — probably two or three — and it becomes clear why he looks so pasty in photographs that even Dracula would ache to see the sun more often by comparison.

What’s more, he rarely consumes more than heat-and-eat meals and counts brushing his teeth as exercise, all in an effort to keep this blog fresh and somewhat interesting. At this rate, Game Guy will be dead in 18 to 24 months. (No cheering from the cheap seats, OK?)

So when The New York Times waxed long recently about the rigors — and perhaps even rigor mortis — of blogging, Game Guy just guffawed. “Try blogging and gaming, and blogging about gaming, at the same time,” he thought.

And he has been doing oodles of that. For those readers of this site who haven’t noticed, Game Guy’s also the wit and wisdom behind the blogs Talking Tech and Web Sight, two tech tomes that date back about three years in total.

That is, he used to do those blogs. A change in organization here at STLtoday.com has allowed Game Guy to push those 800-pound gorillas off his back. Some combination of those two blogs by a different author are pending.

With just one blog to feed, Game Guy figured his whole world would open up. He might even see new places, meet new people, maybe even air up the tires and start his car again for the first time since the license plates expired.

But the games just keep coming — eight or nine in the mail each week. Most of them, unfortunately, are just a waste of polycarbonate plastic substrate, but Game Guy’s greatest public service is to waste his time exploring them so you don’t have to.

Yes, it’s a tough job. Tougher than blogging, if only because the facts suggest it. Though the Times piece points to two deaths, that of writers Russell Shaw and Marc Orchant, as the newspaper’s proof of blogging’s danger, that evidence is circumstantial. Yes, they blogged a lot, but even the Times acknowledges “no official diagnosis of death by blogging” exists.

However, extreme gaming has claimed at least one life. Last fall, a 30-year-old Chinese man keeled over at a cyber cafe in Guangzhou following a non-stop gaming binge lasting three days. Authorities guestimated at the time that he died as a direct result of exhaustion from all that gaming — and maybe too much coffee.

True, the stress endemic to the deadline pressures of blogging should not be taken lightly. But just try to keep your cool with the “fog of war” mode on “Star Trek: Conquest.”