I have a few talents. Among them is the ability to completely screw up any video game I'm playing in ways no designer could ever foresee. This power came into effect back when I was testing Dark Sector, where even with a designer fuming over my shoulder, I couldn't actually move the game forward. Other noteworthy moments of this talent manifesting was the cold Sunday night when I found myself alone in a desert in Final Fantasy VII , with no money, no items and no real idea where I was supposed to go next. Or Final Fantasy VIII, where I ended up in space and couldn't figure out how to get back to Earth. Or Star Wars Galaxies, where I ended up in a space ship but couldn't actually fly it anywhere.
Sure, some of this blame must be laid at the golden clad feet of the game designers themselves. But even in nigh-perfect vidya, I can fuck it up like nobody's business.
Case in point: last night's game session in Arkham Asylum.
With no spoilerage, I can only say I had to find a certain villain. I was equipped with the tech to do this small feat, and for a while, the numbers rising in the Villain Detect-O-Meter were rising in a way that made me feel confident that I was an alpha male, that women desired me, and that I would soon add this game to the small list of those I had not only finished, but slapped around.
But then the numbers on the Detect-O-Meter didn't just drop--they disappeared. And suddenly, years of Batman lore absorption left me high and dry. "But the villain should be there!" I howled. "That's where the villain would be in the fucking comics!"
And so I started to wander, and found myself in parts of the game where I really shouldn't have been. The NPCs actually looked embarrassed to see me, muttering vague references to plot lines I hadn't experienced yet. Standing beside one Arkham employee, several awkward moments passed as I waited for him to say something plot triggery, and he just stared at me. Oh, and shuffled his feet.
After forty minutes, I just went to turn the game off. And then the screen froze.
I felt cold. I looked down at the Green Light of Fun, waiting for the Eye of Sauron to appear. My survival reflexes kicked in, and I leapt forward, turning the box before I found myself on the Microsoft Support line. Again.
I hate video games. I really do.
5 comments:
You and Dee really ought to compare notes. She has a similar power to drive *any* piece of tech into places and uses that were never imagined by the designers. I can't recall how many times she has broken software, TVs, DVD players, PCs, cable boxes....*sigh* Even the Internet is powerless against her. All this from just trying to 'use' stuff.
You know, with all your mystic abilities to wander the unrendered and unrehearsed back alleys in search of villains, it's kind of comforting to know that Arkham can still keep those of you who are 'inside' away from those of us who are 'outside'. Don't you think?
It is a rare talent CL. My mother does it at work all the time--things heretofore not possible happen to her software through some arcane series of random button presses and mouse clicks.
As for KD, let me tell you CL, one night, we were like "partying hard!" on the 360 chat line and he totally opened a warp hole to hell that deleted his game. And I mean a warp hole in the game. And it was Tetris.
It's totally true. And David kept his mike on mute for the first ten minutes of our party, totally ignoring me. So, just like real life.
I thought the picture of the microphone with a line through it meant "No Crooning Like Johnny Ray". Seemed obvious enough to me.
Get a room you two.
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