I had a similar realisation back in the days when I was playing Counterstrike. I had installed some sort of skin for the M249 (the machine gun), not sure what it was, but it felt pretty bad ass. For people not familiar with Counterstrike: the machine gun was a rather gimmicky weapon. It had a huge magazine (100 rounds) but was unwieldy and inaccurate, so not much used.
And there I was holding this bad ass gun in my hand and going RAMPAGE through the map. I just thought I was holding an über-gun in my hand and felt invincible. And in these rounds, I really was.
I'm not sure where I was going with this anecdote. Maybe that bad ass skins make you a better player...
Nice article, had a good read!
Greets
Schepp himself