The Art Of Not Asking Why

I’m playing The Beast Inside 🎮, and I’m at the point I hate the most about games such as these: running away from a monster you can’t kill but can kill you. And when you die, you have to start again from the last save point, going through the whole thing over again, giving up any progress you’ve made.

As I was rage-quitting this time (identified by mashing Alt+F4 and getting up hurriedly with a mumbled cursed in my native tongue), It occurred to me that this sad clichè game developers force on me is the real boss I have to face. Not just in this game, but in all the games of this genre.

“Heh, Maybe I should just play Alien Isolation then,” I muttered to myself, and then, rubbing my beard: “You know, this is not a bad idea…” by which I mean of course it’s a bad idea. A horrible one.

For those who haven’t heard about this game, Alien: Isolation is all about escaping a boss you can’t kill, and one of the biggest bosses as well: the Alien from the movie Alien (a Xenomorph). The Alien, which was praised for its AI in the game, has the ability to search for you by sight and sound (and smell?); it kills you in seconds if it finds you. There’s nothing you can do. The whole game is built around this principle. So, if I manage to win this game, games that only have a segment of this kind of annoyance like The Beast Inside will be a walk in the park.

Image credit: rockpapershotgun.

I decided to uninstall World of Warships again. It’s just too much of a negative experience playing multiplayer (among other things), especially when Helldivers 2 is such a good example of how to do things right.

I want to play Mass Effect (legendary edition), but the keyboard controls are a challenge. I have to play with an open browser: “How do you heal?” “How to crouch behind cover?” “How do you tell a squad member to use an ability on a given point?” feels like the game is intended for controllers.

Let me tell you about MaxiPaine11 (pretty sure that was his name), a random person I found playing this game this morning.

He was waiting for me next to a flag post in the smoldering remains of an outpost. A timer informed us that we had about 2 minutes to hold the spot until the flag would be raised. In the background, I could hear the ominous electronic robotic chipping somewhere nearby - a patrol mission, probably.

Maxi looked busy checking something on the other side of the post next to a vending machine (somehow, these always survive) when I saw them approach. I informed him on the radio, but I wasn’t sure if he got the memo because the next thing I knew, lasers were flying by my head; I leaped to a prone position, took out my sniper rifle, and looked down the scope at the big one at the back of the pack, a meanie with chainsaws for arms. I took my aim slowly, carefully, and squeezed. Well, that got their attention.

There was a THUMP sound nearby. “Democracy needs firepower!” I heard Maxi claim. Soon, I also saw what he called for - a machine gun - as he started raining bullets at the oncoming bot army. That was good; I didn’t know the guy, but his strategy complimented my sniping cautiousness just fine - BOG! I got one right in the head.

The timer ended, and the objective was met, but we had a hell of a fight ahead of us getting out of there to the extraction point. Drop ship after drop ship, the bots kept on coming faster than we could reload our weapons. Things were about to get out of hand. I had an idea. A crazy one, but this is a crazy game. I called in a minefield, focusing right behind us, missing the advancing robots entirely. I got a “?” from him in chat. That’s all he could do before I heard him scream “My leeeeegggggg!!!” as a well-aimed laser blasted it off. My situation wasn’t much better.

I told him to follow me, as I was going back, right into the mines I planted. Then I asked again, and once more, for emphasis, switching weapons to my assault rifle and aiming to his left to show him I was right behind him. He saw me standing between the mines, and then it clicked. He was following me. We rushed through my minefield (as carefully as possible) and ran into the forest, the bots right after us.

We opened a gap between us and the bot army as their fastest killing machines rushed after us right into the mines and exploded. We kept running until we found a big cliff to hide behind. I called for supplies; he called down a torrent to cover us. Good thinking. I checked our map, and well, shit, the extraction point was where the bots came from, right back through the exploding mines, or we could go around it, through what looked like a river.

I turned to him and saluted; Maxi did the same. This time, I followed him - he chose the water. On the other side, Looking ahead, right in our way, was a bot factory surrounded by many glowing evil red eyes. Maxi looked hesitant. And then I died. It happened so quickly.

The bots were everywhere. Maxi didn’t waste time and ran for cover before calling in reinforcement, which was me, of course, as another patriotic solider: “Democracy has landed!” I claimed as I got out of my capsule, right into the depth of an intense fight. We were surrounded. bots from behind, bot-camp ahead, and water that would slow us down to a crawl to the side. It was time to call for additional help, so I shot an SOS beacon to the side. “Thanks,” he managed to voice-prompt me; “Affirmative,” I responded.

But additional reinforcement never came. After many deaths and limbs lost, we managed to get to the extraction spot and escape by the skin of our teeth. This was medium?? Apparently, it was. I saluted Maxi one more time and told him I’ll be back later. Democracy might never sleep, but it does get hungry. Hopefully, I’ll run into Maxi again. Or Someone else, who knows. Every time is a new adventure.

Gamespot went to Poland and interviewed the people at CD Project Red about Cyberpunk. This is an eye-opening clip (about 30 minutes long) exploring how a gaming studio returned from the abyss of shame to the spotlights.

This was the week of the analog journal 📓, and I discovered two unexpected benefits.

First, writing by hand is much slower than typing, and if I want my handwriting to be decipherable, I need to slow down even more. This means writing much less. Because I write only a few paragraphs, they need to mean more. This is a good exercise for my hyper-brain, forcing it to slow down and think about what I have to say.

Second, There’s no editing, no spellchecking, no revising. This means that when I close the journal, I’m done. No going back to it to add stuff or edit later. This is a sense of closure that is missing from a digital journal.

On the wiki, I updated my Micro.blog page . It includes more of the philosophy of Micro.blog (the way I see it) with an illustration.

I wanted to create a short video for Lillihub, a new Micro.blog client, but it didn’t come out as good as I wanted. I’ll probably make a page in the wiki for it.

Another exciting addition is computer games 🎮 reviews on my blog. For this, I use Backlogg. The games page is broken for now; I need to improve my knowledge of Backlogg and get all the parts working. Nevertheless, I’m excited to include these reviews. I spend plenty of time on games, and reviewing them as I review movies makes sense.

Sorry for littering… I found a video game review site, backloggd (inspired by letterboxd), which allows RSS feed. This means I can use it to review games and post to my blog. Still working out some of the issues.

On my Gaming PC, I renamed World of Warship’s desktop shortcut to Sad Addiction. That’s a good summary of what I think about this game.

It is a solid, tactical, and balanced game for the most part. Each ship class you choose plays differently, and there are differences between different ships of the same class. You can upgrade and add special weapons and tactical bonuses to your ships, choose different captains, and more. Technically, the game is stable, the servers rarely lag, and the graphics are excellent. And, being a Wargaming game, it’s also free to pick up and play.

Here comes the but.

Being a multiplayer online game, your fun from it depends mostly on who you play with. Unfortunately, this usually means bad experiences are more common than good ones, at a ratio of about 3:1. What’s worse, the developers understand most of their gamers are teenage hornballs (or at least they act like ones) and target that constantly. Game updates are explained in video clips presented by sexualized women. Avatars are anime and even hentai-oriented characters. Many in-game events emphasize stuff from Megadeath to Transformers. So yes bro, there’s no surprise that the gaming experience often feels like a bad high school reunion.

On the technical side, the game includes huge patches every month or so, with 70% of things you won’t care about (Sailor Moon captains anyone?) or won’t affect your gameplay directly (a ship that costs 60 US dollars). There are also other questionable practices, like an annoying Windows system notification that warns you if you switch away from the game to a different program for a minute or a broken reporting system that colors your name in the game pink (Oh no! Not pink! What would friends say?!) for the most idiotic things, like choosing to play a plane carrier, since some players hate this class of ship so much they report you if you play them.

Since I already commented on the price of some of the ships: the game is free, yes, but that means Wargaming will do whatever it can to get you to buy stuff. A premium account, a season pass, a ship with an advantage in the game, etc. In fact, if you play this game long enough and get to high-tier ships, it becomes nearly impossible to progress without spending at least a little bit of money to move up.

So, if this review reads more like a vent, it’s because it is. I love the game, and I hate the game.