Category Archives: Games

Panic

It all hit me at once last night. The stark reality of what I’m doing. Picking up and leaving a perfectly good situation. Traveling toward the unknown with no way to know if I can make anything of myself.  I just started figuring out how to be me and now I’m turning the world upside down. It grips my heart with cold icy fingers. This might be the high point in my life.  I could be hurtling along the downward slope to my demise on the West Coast.  I don’t understand why I do this to myself.

Fortunately, I have a xanex script.  I slept off the worst of the panic attack and spent the rest of today dealing with this knot of nauseating stress in my stomach.  Moving things helped.  Not having furniture makes all of the boxes look much smaller.  Thanks to early training at Tetris I can visualize most of the car packing experience.  I have the speakers, head unit, and record player in one corner.  The records make a good line.  Three rectangle suitcases.  CPU, 2 monitors and accessories.  The rest is just towels and boxes in alternating stacks.  Like cement between bricks.
Then, the drive.  I’m stuck on this Grand Canyon idea based on the idea of scenic.  I’d rather drive for 45 hours than try to make it in 34 and get stuck at the pass.  Stopping could be irreversible.  And I have a flight out of Seattle scheduled for January 30th.  I haven’t planned any going away party yet.  I don’t want to make it that real.  But I know I have to go.  If I was gonna quit, it would have been yesterday.

 

 

Child of Light

This game is beautifully crafted.  The watercolor-like scenery and low-gravity flow of movement lends an airy, relaxed feeling.  The music composed primarily of piano and minimal arrangement supports the easy-going feeling.  Playing on casual seems like the only real option because the interactive play control is painfully slow.

Of course, this is just the tutorial.  The battles are a mix of meters and turn-based actions.  Interactive enough to keep my attention but lackadaisical enough to avoid pressure.  This little girl carries a big sword and her leveling system encourages me to use it.

Plot is pretty cute so far.  Little princess falls into a mysterious slumber.  She’s trapped in a mystical dreamland that Tim Burton might create for Bethesda.  There’s a blue teardrop that aides the redheaded protagonist with advice and ambient lighting.  On my Surface, controlling the mouse-based bugger is awkward.  When I’m settled in my new place I’ll have my old gaming desktop set up.  Can’t wait.

Spilled

Last night I put a dream to rest.  Continue reading Spilled

First 15

If you like to play games, check out this web series.

Deep down, we all love games in some respect but it’s easy to get lost in the frills of lights, color, marketing! From sports jerseys to quarters in a pool table, money spent on fun is often intrinsically linked to a game in some way.  And money is only the surface cost of the recreational aids we choose.  There’s the time and energy devoted to pastimes once considered only for “kids”.  When MMORPGs emerged, full-grown adults lost jobs due to the siren’s call of DING.  Games make us feel rewarded and satisfied with ourselves.  Tangible goals and achievements used to brighten the barren landscape of daily living.

Most of what I understand of gaming as an industry is tempered through the lens of Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade, an unconventional think tank of creativity and marketing based in Redmond, WA.  Tycho’s way of phrasing things generally blows my mind about once or twice a year, on average. He provides consistently incisive perspectives that target the human element of gaming and amplify it for effect.  Tycho, joined by his heterosexual life partner Gabe, also regularly appears in a PATV series called First 15 which I directed you to earlier.

Video games come in so many different formats it’s hard to like them all and yet Penny Arcade manages to play all the fields. Marketers of the marketers, they provide an environment that filters through all the nonsense and reduces all gaming to the fundamental question – is is fun?  From innocent, easy games developed to help children with learning disabilities communicate are weighed on the same scale as the most recent megacorporate flagship release part IV.  It’s a refreshing oasis in a world that is literally dedicated to horsing around.

If you don’t believe me, just watch this one video.  It’s the First 15 for Crypt of the Necrodancer – a game I would never even glance at before but now I’m interested in playing.  During the video you get to watch Gabe face something he admittedly sucks at and by the end he’s at least given it a fair chance.  It blows my mind to watch human nature unfold like that.  At the end, Gabe an Tycho summarize their opinions thusly:

“I think that’s something from a nightmare realm” – Gabe

“I want to invest some time in playing co-op by myself.” -Tycho

And yet the game itself is not crucified for not pleasing everybody.  And trust me, some of the games they play are put on a cross and left to die – justly.

XCOM 1.5

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is something I only noticed vicariously.  I got more excited about Starcraft II and the Tomb Raider reboots.  I also picked up Civilization V around 2012, another addiction of mine.  My husband-at-the-time kept trying to tell me how much I’d like the XCOM games but it wasn’t until I met Jerry at PAX this past September that I took any notice of the game.  The very next weekend it was on sale for a pittance and I indulged myself with a new vidyah game.  At this point I enjoy XCOM: Enemy Within more than Terraria… where I’ve logged 400+ hours with no regret.  Continue reading XCOM 1.5

Coming Out

I announced to a room full of strangers that I’m now a bisexual. Despite the flippant nature of my storytelling, I’ve wrestled with my attraction to women for quite a long time. Around 26 I figured that if I’m attracted to women, I would have noticed by then. So I wrote off my few trysts with girls as an occasional indulgence, like country music – fun sometimes, but nothing I’d introduce to my friends.

That was all before Carly.  Last week I fell into an impromptu Cards Against Humanity game.  Not my usual cup of tea, I joined a table of friends and strangers to whittle my time free time away.  My friend Tiffany is exceptional at inviting new people to join our reindeer games, so the starting table was me, Tiff, Tyler, Daniel, Bobby and six girls in their early 20s.  I expected some interesting results between the two factions.

The six girls introduced themselves.  All I distinctly remember is Amber, Carly, Jennifer (Jessica) and three other names that end in I’s or Y’s.  They were there to go see the 3rd Eye Blind concert across the street.  I’m still not sure what genre of music that is.  Judging by these girls, it’s not something I’d wait in line for.  Regardless, they established a reason to leave before even sitting down.  I didn’t expect a single one of them to last longer than 5 minutes.

The game started and each hand was met with varying results.  For those that don’t know, CAH is a game where one person reads a phrase and everyone submits an answer to finish the thought.  The person with the phrase then chooses the best answer.  Some cards are really gross or offensive while others could be logical answers to the phrase.  The chooser’s sense of humor has a real effect on the game and who “wins” each round.

My sense of humor tends toward the incredibly dark, so I especially expected this group of women to cringe at my choices.  Little did I know, the females at my table are more than they seem.  Carly and the friend next to her not only appreciated my humor but also chose my answers as the best.  I’m as shocked as you are.

You see, Carly is a thin, 21-year old blonde chick with a beautiful face and sexy curves.  She, and her friends, are a spitting image of the girls I went to high school with.  She looks like someone that just pledged a sorority as a legacy.  This gorgeous woman that could have her pick of the litter made it clear to everybody that her choice was me.  She repeatedly dropped hints that she’s a lesbian and that I’m her type.

I was so shocked I couldn’t speak.  I blushed and giggled and whispered to Tiffany how much I wanted to go for it.  I’d never had a woman that looks like THAT show interest in ME.  My entire stance on sexuality was challenged by the hot blonde sitting across the table.  At some point, we even devolved into to a game of Truth or Dare where Tiffany dared me to kiss her.

She was ready before I was.  Without even thinking my tongue was in her mouth and hers in mine.  I put my hand behind her head and immediately realized why anyone would ever want long hair.  She smelled like an exotic flower and tasted like spring water.  I would have kept going if she hadn’t stopped.  Deep in my chest I felt that spark that makes me want more.  I recognized a part of me that wanted to take her behind closed doors and do what it takes to make her moan.  I’m pretty certain she could reciprocate.

In the world today, I know it’s not a big deal for one girl to kiss another.  But in my world, where I’ve been consistently abused by the women I get anywhere close to – this is earth-shaking.  I can confidently admit to myself (and anyone that asks) that I’m attracted to women.  Apparently, I’m just very picky.

Nothing to Say Here

Awake.

Vast expanse of page, time.

Fun had before.
Fun yet to come.

Not much to say about it.

I did install X-COM, however.

See ya on the flip side.

Rote

My generation is behaviorally trained to remember things accurately. We believe what we see. Whether it’s numbers, facts, words, formulas, compositions, or every Kevin Bacon movie ever made – we recite, we feel accomplished.  I personally think this goes back to scantron-era testing.  But I’m an outlier, so my perspective is akimbo.  Continue reading Rote

Infinifactory

The PAX Indie Megabooth is like a block party in a hallway. Bodies flowing through arteries made of thin orange tape. Deposits of smartphone users and looky-loos congesting the aisles. So. Many. Booths. In that environment I discovered myself as a gamer.
Continue reading Infinifactory