That’s Life

Battled it out with my son in The Game of Life, and accrued over $350,000 before I even got married (which has to be some kind of house record–  the tornado sent me back to start and I discovered uranium twice, plus I got an inheritance)–  only to have him STEAL $200,000 of it away from me through a double act of Revenge.  I got even, though:  after he beat me to Millionare Acres, I won the game on that lame-ass Millionaire Tycoon rule, by betting everything I had on #4 and hitting it when I spun.

What?

The Son King

Jack (assessing the diplomatic status of the city-state of Tyre):  It says they’re Hostile.

Ace: That doesn’t mean they’re hostile to you.  They’re hostile to everyone.

Jack: I am everyone.

Ace: Oh ho!  (laughs) L’état, c’est moi, huh?

Playing The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Jack:  [squints at rail map with indications of moving enemies]  “Nnnnnh…  That may not end well.”

[pushes Save Game button]

—

Ace:  “I’m not gonna blow the whistle.  Screw the whistle!  You want a hero who knows how to blow the whistle, or you want a hero who knows how to blow it up??”

The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Drawing the path the boomerang takes with a stylus! And on a freeze-framed screen, no less!

Today’s kids have it so easy. :D

The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker

It’s Going Around

Wow…  Never heard the Economic Advisor on Civ 5 use the phrase “pissed off” before…

Well, Yes

“She speaks English!”

–Jack, on being addressed by Queen Elizabeth I in the diplomacy screen of Civilization 5

Still Alive

She’s baaaaaaaaaack…

Parenting

It’s good for Jack to be able to kick around Ahnonay with Dragonia and I.  Just as long as we make it back to Sealand for dinner, and a reasonable bedtime.

Goodnight, Lucky

The virtual world of There shut down last week.  (Great name;  hell on one’s syntax, I realize as I type.)  I had an avatar within it, although that was something I never mentioned in this space;  I was logging into it frequently for a little while, then stopped because of the real life events associated with the death of my father, and because I began to feel very keenly the absence of my closer friends from Myst Online: Uru Live, most of whom had gone to Second Life.  But I always enjoyed the time I spent there.   It had certain conventions that appealed to me, ones that I felt made it more accessible and appealing than SL, at least in the short term.  I’m sorry to see it go.

I logged in one last time before the shutdown, after almost a year and a half of absence, for what most people would consider a very strange reason.  My avatar within the world, you see, had owned a dog:  a sort of comical, Muppet-looking golden retriever named “Lucky”.  I had been intermittently troubled over the time of my absence by the idea that Lucky was somehow continuing to have an existence apart from me, and was alone there;  waiting faithfully for me to return, yet not having any idea that I never intended to.   The thought of him going to whatever his final reward was locked in that state was too much, so essentially, I went back to say goodbye.  I rezzed him out of his doghouse, let him run around and played with him, petted him, fed him a few treats I still had left in my inventory (while I drank a mug of spiced coffee I still had left likewise.)  I had intended to Delete him myself, but there was no way to do that;  my only option was to “return” him to There Central, receiving in exchange a fraction of the purchase price I had paid for him, which felt unspeakably tawdry.  So at the end, I just petted him again, and put him back in his doghouse, and told myself that he was asleep, and content.

You’re laughing.  I know you are.  (Or maybe just shaking your head.)  Why?  Are you sure that you’re any more real than he is?

Who’ll come to see you the day before the world ends?  And who will remember you the day after it does?

Surety

Ace:  (unleashes barrage at hostile plant in Metroid Prime)

Jack:  He’s dead.  He’s dead!

Ace:  (switches to Thermal Visor) Not until he’s cold and dead.  (pumps bullets into the fading heat signature)

Spore: 42

Ordinarily I would put this on the Spore page, but:  after many different approaches, endless speculation and over a year of on-and-off playing, Jack and I finally managed to reach the center of the galaxy this weekend.  (The triumphant creatures who took the honors were those self-same Purple Shifters I mentioned earlier.)  And boy, was it worth it!  Because when we got there Read the rest of this entry »

Return to Crapopolis

For some time now, and with no obvious provocation, Jack has been pulling video games off the shelf that we haven’t touched in ages and booting them up again.  On some level I find this troubling, as it suggests to me that maybe he’s bored, and I should be doing more to engage him in ways that don’t involve a screen.  But in other ways it seems completely natural, as the majority of them are games that I wound up playing in whole or in part for him while he cheered me on, because he didn’t have the patience and coordination to play them alone.  So now he’s looking at them with a fresh eye:  remembering what they involved, and having the satisfaction of testing them with his current, more highly developed skills.

The irony of this is that most of these same games are utter pieces of crap.  One in particular, the Monsters, Inc. PS2 game, is in a dead-heat tie with Earthworld from the Atari 2600 for the title of The Worst Video Game I’ve Ever Played.  I cursed my way silently through every wretched, repetitive, suck-shit level of it, trying to smile for Jack’s sake, because he loved it so much, and praying that I could just get to some kind of screen that said THE END so we could claim that we finished it and I’d never have to turn the damn thing on again.  And now here he is, gladly revisiting it, voluntarily!

I do hope we finally finish Ico someday, though, before the PS2 burns out like the Xbox did.  It was originally reviewed by the now defunct Electronic Gaming Monthly as taking about 10 hours to complete.  We’ve been working on it for– three?  four years?…

Spore: Over 5 Billion Served

Did something truly awful last night while conducting my star-spanning race of Purple Shifters along the arm of the galaxy where Fortune stranded them.  After terraforming my two-zillionth rock into a paradisiacal wonderland (I’m fond of cooling down inner orbit planets in binary systems;  it makes for some spectacular sunrises), it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what would happen if you used those same terraforming tools in reverse, on a planet that was already habitable.  And, um…  occupied.  So I dropped into orbit above a T3 planet with a pre-spacefaring civilization, trained my Heat Ray on it until the climate destabilized, then watched in horrified fascination as the entire ecosystem collapsed tier by tier.   In the end, after every last plant and animal had gone extinct, about 60% of the planetary crust returned to a molten state, consuming all the charred, ashen remains of the now-lifeless cities in one giant slow-broiling conflagration of bubbling death.

Presumably that wouldn’t work on another spacefaring species, since colonies can survive quite nicely on T-Zero worlds (although in theory it should always work on a homeworld, where the cities have no advanced technological insulation.)   Also not sure whether any attempt to manipulate the T-rating of another species’ planet would automatically result in a local declaration of war.  Seems logical that it would.  But then again, you could be trying to improve the T-rating for them.  And they’re always calling you up whining and trying to get you stop all their eco-disasters.  That certainly counts as manipulation.

It’s also not quite as quick and impressive as just hitting the offending species with a planet buster and blowing their whole freaking world to Kingdom Come.  But it’s way cheaper, and infinitely more demoralizing for them.  You know, if you spend your time considering that sort of thing.

Spore: First Contact

We actually spoke to the Grox for the first time last night…