Slim Loots

Well, I've been gaming when I should be writing. Shadow of Mordor and now Borderlands 2. The latter isn't even particularly exciting for my tastes, but it's new and that seems to throw me into a furious rage of obsession. The worst part is that I know it's just a temporary fling.

But the thing is that, in the back of my mind, I seem to have conditioned myself to think "Oh, this is only temporary until X happens." The problem is that, at the moment, X does not exist. If anything, it stands for "developing a routine and the subsequent self control".

When I was in school, I always had the end of a semester to look forward to. And then the end of a school year. Then the start of another one. And always, always as a purple fog lurking over my consciousness was the notion of "once I'm done with school, things are really going to change". So I finished school. And then I looked forward to finding a job. Then I looked forward to getting a car. Then a place of my own. Then a computer. And then... Here I am.

There are no more events I have planned. There's nothing to naturally look forward to, aside from the odd long weekend. And even those I tend to fill with... Filler. Games, internet. Not much else. What I'd like to fill it with: practicing an instrument, drawing, exercise, cooking, reading. And yet the filler beckons to me with an irresistible lust. Just one more quest, I tell myself, I want to see what the next phat loots are. Nevermind the fact that the last several phat loots have been on the slim side.


And thus I'm slowly but surely welcoming myself to adulthood, where you have to make your own excitement happen. Ain't nobody going to do it for me, and I'm not in a system that will provide it. As much as I love my job, I now live around the hours of 9-5, Mon-Fri. And that's a not a lot of time, and it's very easy to feel drowsy at the end of the day. But the end of the day happens five times a week. When the weekend rolls around, I'm in a marshmellow-like state where I feel sticky and bloated. Clearly I must relax, I tell myself, perhaps with some vidya games.

Do you know what my boss does? He drives to the mountains, every weekend, to hike, explore, and take photos. Do you know how many times I've done that? Absolutely never. Gotta change that. Gotta make my own excitement.

My life ain't gonna live itself. What's surprising is that I was just somehow expecting it to be a bit more intrinsically exciting for little effort. But I guess not. I guess that it's not immune to that common notion of how the things most worth having need to be worked for.

And thus I forced myself to write before bed, rather than continuing the next quest for phat loots.
-Cril

God is an Austronaut - Point Pleasant

Man o' War off the Starbord Bow

A few years ago, my brother and I created a list of movies, books, and music to play through. For whatever reasons, we felt like we had 'missed out' on a lot of the more culturally-relevant experiences and media growing up that everyone else seems to take as a staple part of merely being alive. We named this particular Google Doc "The Culture Lists". And accompanying the column of title names, there's an empty column for our ratings and comments.

Initially I'd rank titles on a scale of 1-10. I spoke with a guy at school that I really respect as an intellectual, and I asked him how he scores thing. With out a shred of hesitation, he stated "Scale of one to five, to decimal points." His sheer absoluteness sold me immediately. I like how critical it forces you to be, avoiding that 70-80% range that too many reviews seem to fall into.

In my head, I usually break it down into my reaction as if it were a movie night with friends. If a title ranked 1 and was suggested, I'd strongly argue against it and even suggest doing something else altogether if that was the only option. I'd argue against a number 2 as well, but I'd probably be on my phone through the whole movie. A number 3... I'd sigh and say, "yeah, ok."  Number 4? A movie I'd really want to  suggest. For a number five, I wouldn't even wait for it to be movie night before I told people they have to go and see it.

In essence, it's a mix of what I'd tell my friends about it and how likely I'd be to willingly see it again (or read, or play, or listen). So with this description there's something important to note: a 5 must be attainable. I don't want to live my life like one of my painfully critical professors that refuses to give an A even if they can't find anything wrong with a project. I want to have things that make me happy, and I don't want them to be absolutely rare. Something rated 5 doesn't even have to be flawless. It just has to be good for me to want to experience for the first time again and again.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag is a beautiful friggin' 5 out of 5.

Is it perfect? Hell no. A lot of the characters, while written well, didn't quite seem to have enough presence in the story. The standard AC plot (both in the future and past) seems to be getting... Diluted or inconsequential. You can tell the writers are stretching it out and padding it as far as they can to accomodate yearly releases. For the record, I hate hate series that do this. The suck all the wind out of a story just because they're making money and want to continue making money until they run the franchise into the ground. Makes the storytelling gutless and unfocused.

And aside from that... It was too easy. There wasn't much of a challenge to it and the stakes for failure were pretty low. While some of the sea-faring mechanics were good (wind gusts, rogue waves), they could've made it a lot more technical and rewarding. For the most part, you just point the ship in the direction you want to go.

 I also wish there was more endless sandbox-type gameplay so that there could be more to do. The game felt kinda short -- once the story is done and the main upgrades have been unlocked, there's nothing really to do but sailing around, aimlessly blowing stuff up.

Now let me add, though, that so far I've logged ~60 hours over the past three weeks. I don't think there have been many other single player, story-driven games that keep me entertained for that long. It is a damn good game.

It's criminally gorgeous. Sun rises, sunsets, beautiful moonlit seas. Light passing through the waves, pods of dolphins swimming along side, and morning hazes that give way to ruthless storms. Many, many great vistas that feature tiny islands and inlets to explore and caves to plunder. Royal convoys pop up that you chase down through the fog, while your crew sings a haunting shanty.

Pirate hunters that chase you down, as a result of smashing the convoy. The first time I encountered those guys and tried to outrun them for some time, I had a bit of a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid moment. Who are those guys? The tension and uncertainty was fantastic.

The naval combat was also great. Broadsides, chase cannons, fire barrels, ramming... AND BOARDING. Whoo boy. Nothing like beating a ship all to hell, then coming alongside to swing across and beat the enemy crew to take the vessel for yourself. Pure, beautiful chaos.

But back to my main issue: I want to play it MORE. Imagine this:

Total ship customization. Choosing the hull type, armour treatment, types of cannons. Not just "Level 1, Level 2, Level 3" like they did, but "long range with low armour penetration" or "short range with large splash damage". Types of ammo. Types of sails. Different configurations that let you fine tune for speed or maneuverability. Let me make the ship my ship.

Then create factions and territories to fight over. Create fleets. Let me acquire (buy or capture) ships, select captains based on their personality traits, and create formations and sail into battle. Give me the opportunity to really build an outpost to house my fleet, with trading posts and accommodations and larger docks.

Let me do trading. Proper trading, where goods are worth more at one post than another. At some, they're even contraband, so I need to create a small schooner to scoot around a harbour patrol in the dead of night to offload my cargo and make a handsome profit to pay tribute to another privateer faction that'll sail into battle with us to take a key trading port. And when I sail up through the middle of the enemy fleet to storm the Admiral's ship, let other ships try to counter-board mine, so I take one ship and then have to retake my own.

This would be a completely different game, and I think it'd be an unrealistic expectation from a developer that already made something brilliant. But if I were to break my own rules of rating, this game could've been a solid 6.5/5.

All I'm trying to say is that this game is so great that I wish I had something to build towards so that I could keep playing.

In the mean time, though, I can enable the cheats to set the sea conditions to constantly rough and send endless pirate hunters after me. Then I can turn off the in-game music and play some Pirates of the Carribbean in iTunes. And the result is joy. 5 out of 5 joy.
-Cril

One man to trike the bell
High-O! cume roll me over
One man to trike the bell
High-O! cume roll me over

Two men to man the wheel
High-O! cume roll me over
Two men to man the wheel
High-O! cume roll me over

Three men, to gallant braces
High-O! cume roll me over
Three men, to gallant braces
High-O! cume roll me over

Four men to furl t'garns'ls
High-O! cume roll me over
Four men to furl t'garns'ls
High-O! cume roll me over 

Five men to bunt-a-bo
High-O! cume roll me over
Five men to bunt-a-bo
High-O! cume roll me over

Black Flack Sea Shanties - Hi-Ho Come Roll Me Over

Hello? Hello. From Libya, I Think.

Four days ago I got a phone call. From Libya (or so my call display informed me). Overstricken with curiosity, I answered the phone to say, "uh, hello?" The person on the other end replied with "hello". In all my excitement, I replied with "hello." He responded, "hello." By now the spell was just starting to wear off, and I managed to ask, "Can I help you?". He responded, "hello", and in a spirit absolutely opposite to the meaning of that word, he hung up. I should mention that I think he was saying "hello", because he was slightly muffled and seemed to have an accent.

Over the next few days, I was called about twenty times between two different Libyan numbers. I didn't manage to answer, because I was either away from my phone or it was between 5-3am (when I decidedly had other things I'd rather be doing, or rather, not doing). Actually, at one point I had become determined to answer one of those early morning calls and went to bed with the ringer turned up. When the inevitable call came, between the second ring and me just grabbing my phone, the caller hung up. Odd.

Nevertheless, with my sense of curiosity piqued I kept a sharp eye on my phone, and managed to pick up yesterday afternoon while at work. Not only did I manage to say the obligatory "hello", but I also managed a "this is Chris speaking." What followed was a mix of Arabian-sounding dialogue and polite and apologetic Canadian replies such as, "sorry, I only speak English" and "you might have the wrong number". We went back and forth 3-4 times, with him replying in a decidedly un-English language. Eventually hung up. Odd, indeed.

Then early this afternoon I got call #24 (this had all started four days ago). Before I answered I already had Google up. I said hello, he said something foreign, I said I only spoke English, he said something foreign and there was a bit of shuffling and another voice in the background. Just as I had finished typing in "how to say i don't speak arabic in arabic" into the search box with one hand, a deep accented voice came on asking if he could speak with Salab. I informed him that I thought he had the wrong number. He assured me that, no, he'd spoken with Salab two days ago on the same number he was calling now. As is tradition in Canuck-ese culture, I apologized and told him that I don't know Salab.

"Well f*ck you, you f*cking motherf*cker. Tell that Salab motherf*cker that he's f*cked. F*ck you and f*ck him, you motherf*cking motherf*ckers. F*ck you." Click.

At this point I found myself wondering if I had perhaps inadvertently filled a shoddy bomb casing with used pinball machine parts, and instead used the plutonium to power my Porsche 944 (because, Lord knows, the parts aren't expensive enough already).

Needless to say, his reaction to me not knowing and/or being Salab caught me off guard. That's not to mention that it felt like speaking with a twelve year old who only knows one-and-a-half swear words and discovered he can spout them without any restraint to strangers on the telephone.

I told my coworkers of what just happened, and they said I should phone my carrier to make sure my number isn't somehow being used in a scam and to file a police report in case I might get caught up in some weird gang business. That left me feeling a bit spooked.

My carrier said to just block the number and let them know if the calls persist. After rolling their eyes so hard I could hear it through the phone, the police agent told me that there's nothing they can do unless a specific threat was made, and that I should just block the number.

I haven't blocked the number yet... I suspect there won't be any more calls, and I won't lie. I'm a leetle beet curious to know what all this is about. If there are more calls, yeah, I'll block it. I'll probably find out in the morning.

It's all a bit out of left field. But here it is, written-down and date stamped. I have the suspicion that neither the police or my carrier made any sort of official note/record of what I told them, so even though I don't think much will happen, it can't hurt to jot it down just in case.

And to the NSA/CSA/FBI/CIA/whoever is crawling the interwebs these days looking for terrist threats, no, that bit about the pinball machine parts and plutonium is from Back to the Future. I suggest you give it a watch -- it's a great set of movies.
-Cril

I'm in the phone booth, it's the one across the hall
If you don't answer, I'll just ring it off the wall
I know he's there, but I just had to call
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone

Blondie - Hanging on the Telephone