A Druid's Duel: Surrender

Some things are over before they start, but most are just over before they end. It's dizzying to circle a drain, ever more the slower it flows, as we wonder what we could have done, should have done, might still do. Yet the die was cast in our first few moves, when all we saw was a world of possibility. So we flap and flail, douse and bail, because playing out the string seems the sporting thing, and eventually our only option. The hardest things to acknowledge are often the most obvious. But our capacity for reinvention is always vaster than it feels, just as our time in which to do it is always shorter than it seems. Try again?

Thanks to Voodoo32.dll for documenting the journey to defeat.

A Druid's Duel

Dust, an Elysian Tale: You speak to me. Please stop.

I don't tend to take much stock in things I hear from talking rabbits, and haven't been able or interested to follow the plot of a tale told in Japstrionics since Akira, but Dust was a rodent I could relate to.

For I, too, contain a rage capable of immolating all injustice with a thousand rapid blows.

For I, too, contain an empathy capable of effacing all efforts with duty and guilt.

And for I, too, am inseparable from a high-pitched chorus always buzzing in my ear.

Also we both wish we were Princess Gwendolyn.

thanks to Dosala1 for capturing the game's best moment so well.

Dust: an Elysian Tale

Thomas Was Alone: Tell me something pretty

I tell myself that the boxes I stare at all day matter. Everyone does it. We are what we do, after all, and who wants to be pointless? Telling stories is part of what of separates us from the beasts and bots. Or at least that's part of the story we tell ourselves. Our loyalty to these stories is limitless, which is what makes it so painful when they end, but our capacity to create new ones also knows no bounds, which is what keeps us going.  

Thanks to SMlt 117 for seeing what I couldn't, and to Mike Bithell and David Housden for this amazing experience. 

Thomas Was Alone

Risk of Rain: Be here now

The stimuli we surround ourselves with is easily turned off, but what about the thoughts in our heads? Some days it seems I can't stop replaying the same scenarios to their unsatisfactory end, always just a step behind where they began. I miss so much this way, mind astray from the pleasures of today. And it's not them- it's me. Standing still is death, but the crowd carried with you cannot be escaped. All we can change is ourselves. Get stronger, and hold tight to whatever helps you through. Because it really does just get more difficult.

Risk of Rain

And thanks to freakhunter for the screenshot. I'm dead long before this shit happens.

Osmos: this too shall pass

Worlds turn, men survey what's theirs to burn, ants make war and die, cells multiply, mutate, divide; everything is in motion, but not always at speeds we can perceive.

Floating in directions forged by others foregone, heaved off and hurled into a void of possibilities, none of us are on equal footing, but all adrift.

Entropy is everywhere, but disorder opportune. The insignificant become part of something bigger, as the insurmountable erodes. Tipping points are reached in drops, but fall down like torrents of rain.

Like a watched pot boiling or dead man walking, combustion equalizes each side of our equations, but renders everything inert. Some things take time.

Osmos

Plants vs Zombies: Suffering slings and arrows for someone else's outrageous fortune

Giving is little more than an empty gesture unless it hurts, so there is no offering greater than ourselves. Be it for money, love or patience, freedom, fulfillment or station, everything worth having costs at least a pound of flesh. And that's the thing about giving of ourselves- there's only so much to go around. Heeding a call to arms is honorable, and getting called an honor, but make sure to distinguish between that which serves a higher purpose, and that which serves a higher pay grade.

Plants vs. Zombies: style vs. substance

You won't hear me say this often- in fact you've never heard me say this: It's not what you say, but how you say it. Not what you do, but how you do it.

You won't hear me say this cliche again, because I resent everything it implies. I resent the idea that truth could matter less than presentation, or that the facts could have less bearing on a situation than the audience they're presented to. I resent that I should have to check for wrinkles before checking my work, or give someone whose already wasting my time another five seconds of it so that I might focus myself on telling them to fuck off without displaying emotion.

But mostly I resent it because it's true.

Any smart gamer is wary of titles that tout gimmicks or graphics, because these things are so often substituted for actual gameplay. Take Breakdown, or Mirror's Edge, for instance. But in Plants vs. Zombies, the presentation is so top notch that anything lacking in gameplay, namely difficulty, is easily overlooked.

It won't matter that no new plants you get will be better than a chomper, or that new zombies keep falling for old strategies- you'll just want to see what they come up with next.

Perhaps it says more about Resident Evil 5 than it does about Plants vs. Zombies, but I was playing the former before Doomeru gave me the latter, and I haven't picked it up again since. Poor Sheva has had no one to waste my herbs on for weeks.

An "executive coach" has been scolding me for explaining the stupidity of my corporate co-workers to them for the last two months, and someone I admire very much has told me many times that "no one hears you when you scream," but it took the casual infectiousness of Plants vs. Zombies for the lesson to take root.

When, over the Thanksgiving holiday, some middle management hack tried to make his problems mine, and in turn a lot of other people who didn't need his shit, my previous reaction would have been to run across the hall and gnaw his brains out.

Instead, I went home and wrote a three-page memo that calmly let the facts speak for themselves. The facts have always been on my side, but it didn't matter until I put bullet points next to them, and erased the expletives.

Anyway, life is just as fucked up as ever, but this game has helped me feel a little bit more in-control. It's also extra gratifying to be playing it on my work computer. Score one for personal growth and casual gaming.

Until next week, my fellow zombies.



- Zombie Cucumber

Piss away your Monday morning with the Zombatar! It's viral!

Shufflepuck Cafe: Where no one knows my name

We all need a break once in a while, and I'm long overdue. I've burned the candle from so many ends you'd think I was into wax play. But I guess it's like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer- it feels so good when you stop. Constant in the darkness, where's that at? If you want me I'll be in the bar...With this alien guy...playing air hockey...

Life and Death: If it hadn't have been you it would have been someone else.

Sometimes people don't tell you things because it's incomprehensible to them that you wouldn't already know. Likewise, sometimes people don't ask seemingly stupid questions because it's incomprehensible to them that someone else wouldn't have already asked. Both these assumptions would be sensible if common sense was something we not only all had in common but all used. It isn't. So speak up.

Multiple Ending Syndrome

I’ve hit a console gaming brick wall of late, so I’ve turned to my trusty XP partition to do a little hardcore PC gaming. I’ve been spending time with some old favorites, System Shock 2, Outcast, and Freespace 2. Running with the Open Freespace Project’s enhancements FS2 looks awesome, but even without the extras this was always a great, polished game. Given the chatter on reddit+destructoid lately, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to highlight my favorite part of the game’s main campaign. Apologies for the spoilers.

Frakkin' Cylo- um, I mean Shivans!

The final mission of FS2 is a two-parter, where you and a few squads are working to escort a cap ship to jump node. This takes some work but once done waves of new Shivan ships jump in and you are left to fight it out. You discover a nearby star has gone supernova and the blast wave is heading your way. If you make it back to the jump node you escape, if you don’t you’re fried. Either way you get a cool ending that acknowledges your heroic efforts and alludes to a future, final conflict with the Shivans.

Now, lots of games have multiple endings, but what sets FS2 apart is that the way the game ends is performance-based. As open-ended as Deus Ex was, seeing the different endings amounted to saving your game, choosing from a conversation tree, then loading and picking the other ones. KOTOR did the same thing. Throughout the FS2 campaign you can win missions without meeting all your goals and the plotline acknowledges it, so it is fitting that the finale works in this context.

Get out! Get outta there!

I strongly encourage anyone who’s at all interested in flight sims to check out Freespace 2. You can buy it from Good Old Games for $5.99, grab a joystick, and install the enhancements. Go to hard-light.net to find support and mods, including the entire Freespace 1 campaign. After that, check out Beyond the Red Line, a Battlestar Galactica standalone total conversion.