There's a commercial for it -- a young man confides in the powers that be (in this case, a man in a suit) that his girlfriend does not want to stop watching him play "Uncharted 2" because she thinks it's a movie. The suited man files the case under "Not a problem". She's hot of course.
I picked up Uncharted 2 yesterday and was immediately captivated.
At the outset of any new video game adventure, there's some question as to what the rules are. This is one of my favorite parts of the experience. The ruleset, the decisions the game developers made when designing the game, the quirks, bugs and other peculiarities of a new world are fascinating. There is some argument to be made that these rules are only fascinating in their rigidity and scope, or a counter argument that they can never be fascinating because of their rigidity and scope, but this discussion could only be for another post.
Immediately I discovered that, while Nate might indeed look as if he is in a hellhole of a shitty situation (in this case, attempting to escape from a train car that is teetering off of a cliff on a snowy mountain top), he is in no danger. The game cradled me in its arms as it terrified and thrilled me. But after the first few bumps in the road I knew I was safe. Grab hold of this sturdy looking pipe and it breaks free, throwing Nate against the outside of the precarious car with a crash, but there is always something else to attach to, some other sturdy handhold. I was safe.
The scenery is gorgeous, the cutscenes are pieced together as a full-length feature film would be, except I am living it. I need to live it, not being a passive creature by nature or by nurture, I cannot be still and watch. My control issues demand control of the situation. The mixture that Uncharted 2 provides is perfect. The combination of stealth and firepower is perfect. The story is engrossing.
Partners in crime: it's a tricky concept. The Artificial Intelligence necessary to shoot at you is somewhat more forgiving. When it makes a mistake the player is rewarded. When you have a sidekick and they botch it, you're disgusted. There was one time when I jumped off a building and caught a ledge, only to have Chloe jump on top of my back and knock me from the ledge and to my death. The fact that she seemed genuinely concerned by this in her cries of "NATE!" was unimpressive. I was gunning for Gold Survivor status, and I am not keen on death.
I'll beat this game. Probably before the weekend is out. If you appreciate free-running action, gunfights, and Indiana Jones type story lines, you should probably do the same, though I will not attempt to similarly restrict your timeline. 98 pts.
If there's one thing I know about 2log, it's that sport gets too much airtime. I wish there was a better celebrity news representation, or maybe finance, or human interest pieces. Something, anything but sport.
In an effort to ignore the previous sentence, I intend to do a little bit of my own sports reporting. Here's the rundown on this half-week in sport, Tuesday edition.
Saturday played host to an endurance challenge between the New York Yankees and the Angels of Los Angeles. Just between you and me, Internet, if there's one thing I hate, it's The New York Yankees and their fans. And if there's another thing I hate, it's the direct opposite, the rest of the world, who are far larger and smellier by sheer mass, and just as loud and obnoxious in decrying the well funded sports club as the fans of said sports club are renowned to be in their cheers. Let me set the record straight. I hate anything that's popular. That's not to say I'm a hipster, or anything. They look like weirdos. But imagine my chagrin when I show up to the party to hate on the popular sports team and find that everyoneelse in the knownuniverse is there. Hating the Yankees has officially lost all meaning to me. Anyway the game ended at some point apparently, but I was too drunk to notice or care. The Mets were unavailable for comment, which is just as well, because I'm pretty sure they would have just whined about how long-suffering they are and cried and honked their snotty noses on hundred dollar bills.
Sunday was a day of rest, no one played sport. The teams that did included the New York Giants and the New Orleans Saints, who squared off in the bayou for a gloopy match of fumbles and bumbles. This was a pretty painful game to watch, and I'm pretty sure it means that no one will ever bet on the Giants again, even though they are 85 feet tall and use trees as bats. Eh? What's that? I'm being told that apparently I'm thinking of a different sport. There were a lot of other games that no one played on Sunday. In the interest of speeding this up, I'll just rattle off some scores and you can work it out for yourselves. 0-0, 135-7, 14-7
Monday held shockingly another baseball game. Once again, the Yankees and Angels tried in vain to figure out who is the best team without even killing a single player. Unfortunately for me, they decided to do so on every television in the city. For a bit of back story, myself and a friend were wandering around trying to find a place to watch the New York Rangers play hockey. Yes, that is how you spell it. No, I'm not trying to say we were skipping school, shut up. It's a real sport. Bar after bar we visited and not a single one had the hockey game. I would have been fine with this of course. It's not a very popular sport (SEE?) and I recognize this. But at least give another popular sport like curling or cricket one frickin' television. No, not last night. There was one bar with no fewer than one hundred televisions. Each one tuned directly in to watch the most hated team in baseball lose to some other guys. Finally we found someone who was gracious enough to be showing the hockey game. The Rangers got trounced. It was a real shitshow. My wings were, however, delicious.
- Having spent the first 4 years of my life suspended in a brine solution,* I have a lot in common with things that are pickled, and a lot of sympathy for them as well.
- The most unfortunate part of going to the movies is when they hose you down with that scalding butter sauce in the lobby before you go sit in your seat, dripping with butter sauce for 2 hours.*
- Pennies are undetectable from space.*
- The most diabolically evil and malintentioned flower is not the pitcher plant, it is in fact, the orchid.*
No offense, Candice, but Madonna is freakin' me out.
And another thing, Apple recently "upgraded" its browser Safari, and well, they released a bug. Now every time I open a new tab I'm presented with the sites I view the most. Problems with this bug:
What if I love looking at porn at work?
What if Candice posts a really scary picture of Madonna on the front of 2log?
Now 2 has happened. Screw you, Steve Jobs. Stop making my life so easy. Cause now you're makin' it difficult and scary.
I see this every time I open a new tab which I do 40 times a nano.
If you're one of the Apple tech support folks who reads 2log, can you please fix this? It's a really awful bug, and there's no setting that allows me to turn it off.
I recently started playing World of Warcraft again after a 3 year hiatus. Part of me is nervous about this choice, but I think I have a few real life friends that will hopefully drag me away from the computer enough, and I know I won't let my job performance slip, so we should be okay.
I'll probably talk more about the actual playing of the game over time, but I wanted to share a little window for my first post into what it's like to hit the level cap (which I did last night) and start running the late-game dungeons.
I'm going to run Naxxramas this weekend, so I was going over strategy a bit. I thought it might be fun to share. Here's a video about one of the boss battles. One thing you might want to know before watching is that people who play WoW are hilarious. Also the game itself is funny on about 1 billion levels. One level being watching 25 people run around avoiding the boss' crazy floor explosions. Because there's a lot of running around, learning to beat Heigan the Unclean is basically taking a dance lesson.
I was poking around on 2log and noticed that AdmiralMFK was offering a big-three throwdown between Chuck Norris, Danny Gans, and Gary Gygax. Of course, I had to check that shit out.
"But Mark", (I can hear you asking) "Who the hell is Chuck Norris?"
It's no secret that no one on the internet talks about Chuck Norris. He's kind of a nobody around these parts. I think he was in some movies or something.
Gary Gygax, as you probably know, is the father of tabletop games. He pretty much invented the 20-sided die, or at least catapulted (rolled?) it into popularity or at least wide (narrow) use. Okay, I'm a huge nerd, and even I have yet to play a pen and paper RPG. So maybe "popularity" and "wide use" are slightly hyperbolic terms to use.
Have you seen this phenomenon Graph Jam? Cause it's pretty cool. Anyway recently, I've started getting spam that looks like a Graph Jam, but is totally useless to anyone and has nothing to do with music or pop culture.
Since I first started using it, Google Search and I have been locked in a unique struggle. One the one hand, Google faithfully tries to return me relevant results based on my queries, and I on the other hand try to force it into returning zero results by being incomprehensible. This is useful practice; do not question that.
The score is roughly tied. Grudgingly I admit that Google Search is a worthy opponent. Without ado: to the details of the most recent sortie.
Query: quantities of soul canpeeblies Results returned: 0 My basis: Canpeeblies is a nonsense word. What was I looking for?: I wanted to convert soul to funk. Did I mean?: "quantities of soul canpeebies" No. Score: +1 to Mark
Query: a string of eleven ones 111111111111 Results returned: 32,500,000 My basis: I *thought* I'd trick GS by adding twelve ones after a clear statement that I was looking for a string of eleven. Of course GS knew I was looking for Beethoven's String Quartet #11. Gah! What was I looking for?: Beethoven's String Quartet #11 Score: +1 to Google Search
Query: AHA! It was a trick question, you unfortunate goat! The answer is "five thousand crab cakes". Results returned: 0 My basis: Trick questions, especially those involving Maryland state dishes, are impossible for Mensa members and intelligent people alike. What was I looking for?: The recipe for a good crab cake. Score: +1 to Mark
Query: Inchworms Results returned: 68,900 My basis: I was doing a bit of reading about Inchworms after finding one in the backyard. What was I looking for?: The Wikipedia article on Inchworms Did I mean?: "Inchworks! The full compiled writings of Tom Thumb." No. Score: +1 to Google Search
