It's Tricky! - The Games I've Played

Let's just get this started right, because there is one, and only one song that should be playing for the introduction of this thing -

Def rap star? DJ Hero? Nope, the one, the only SSX.

Now, I started playing the original SSX back on ps2 at a friend's house, then a roommate had SSX tricky while at college, and then this one came out for ps3 and all of the nostalgia came back and made me want to pick it up and play it through.

SSX at it's roots is a snow boarding game. You go down the mountain, do the tricks, get boost, and win. Cross the finish line first, get the most points, and it seems pretty vanilla, but the simplicity of SSX stops there, because you see . . . SSX likes to be a little crazy.

SSX has turned your snowboard into things that have quick releases for your feet. That means that your character can kick their feet off of the board and do stupid tricks that are boarderline skateboarding and motocross moves, but a little bit more out there.

The real stupidity is that if you go off a jump and do one of these tricks when you're not spinning or flipping, the move looks crazy, but possible. Then there's the fact that you can still make your character spin and flip like a top when doing these . Then while doing all of these things are going on, you're building up your 'tricky' meter. Once it's full, Run DMC pops their iconic vocals into whatever song you're going down hill to, and all sense of normality within tricks goes out the window.

Then there are the tracks themselves. Officially they're based off of mountains in the real world, but the programers took some very liberal alterations to those mountains making the wall of China pop out of random snowboarding areas and other shenanigans. In each area, they even try to make a little challenge. In one area it's so snowy you can't see two feet in front of you, another is super icy, and one you're stupid enough to go cave snowboarding in the pitch dark. Each requires something different from you, and makes the game that much more interesting to play.

Then there's the music. SSX comes with a great list of songs that all work great when flying down the mountain, but then there's the ability that allows you to import your own music so that you can snowboard down with songs like Come Fly With Me by Sinatra (seriously, it was on my playlist for SSX).

Jumping out of helicopters, flying off cliffs, grinding on rails, and everything else that is in this game is a risky business, so SSX throws you a Prince of Persia space time rewind, and if you bail off a cliff, or make a huge mistake at the end of a long combo, you hit the rewind button and try to fix it. It comes with a cost of during races everyone else keeps racing while you're playing with space time, and during trick events, it knocks down your points, but it keeps you from having to reload the stage a billion and a half times just because you can't manage to get that one jump right the first time.

As games go, this one was easy for me to 100% offline content. Then the online content came and I wanted to punch someone EA being EA tried their best to suck money out of every micro-transaction possible. If you buy the game used (like I did) you can't get any of the money that you win in races online unless you pay for an online pass. I owned the game, I won online competitions, but I couldn't get the reward for getting first place in world wide competitions (or at least in the winning top percentages) because I bought the game used and refused to pay for the online pass.

With the one minor blip from online formula from EA and how much they try to get a dollar for just about anything extra, I like this game. It's fun, it's simple, it's addictive, and it is so over the top that you have to love it. It doesn't take itself serious, but it's still difficult at times. You can do a sextupple back flip while doing a 3,600 degree turn during it (10 rotations) while kick flipping your board, and still have a hard time with the level. Just because you're good at tricks doesn't mean you're a good racer, but just because you can come in first, doesn't mean you'll win everything. It's a fun mix of levels, a fun mix of tricks, a fun mix of characters, this is the game that is casual but challenging, but just fun to play.

I very often forget about it when talking to people about games because it's 'just' a snowboarding game. It's just a fun little game, but that's the biggest thing about it, it's a mindless, fun, game.

Clearance Bin - The Games I've Played

I've talked about the sales bins at Walmart, but another great place to pick up cheap random games is in the back corner of the electronics department of K-Mart or the computer game isle next to the books and magazines in Target.

In these corners of stores, you'll be able to find either games that they bought too many of and were expecting to be big hits or games that never took off and the store is trying to get rid of because no one has ever heard of the game, and they want to get rid of them to make room for whatever is getting released and costs $70. 

Today, I'm going to cover the games that I've picked up from those bins that aren't on my trophy list because they're old enough, ghetto enough, or both old and ghetto that they don't have trophies. With no trophies, I have no way of knowing when I played them, so I'm just dumping it here. 

Now to tell you just how random this game is, and how unknown it is- while trying to search for images or anything about the game, I couldn't find the game on Metacritic's list of ps3 FPS's. 

This game is one of those that has potential to do some really crazy and inventive things with the idea of FPS games and it went unnoticed, mainly from horrible game play, and poorly written story. 

Now, let's talk about one of the best things that came out of this game before I dive into tearing it apart as the horrible FPS that it truly is. The innovative part of this game that could be something interesting, but turned out to be nothing, was the fact that your guns, your grenades, and even general combat can change the terrain around you. You don't have cover? Shoot your gun and raise the ground around you so that you can hide behind a hill. Want the high ground to snipe from? Throw a grenade and make a pillar of rock shoot up that you can stand on. Your opponents getting the high ground on you? Shoot underneath them and make them fall as the ground disappears underneath them. 

I'm no fps player, but this is one of those mechanics that I think could lead to some really interesting tactical choices. You could do a lot with being able to alter the ground and do whatever you want with it in the heat of battle. The reality of that mechanic and the gameplay that is attached to it annoying to get through a battle, and you're more likely to treat the field like a traditional FPS than you are to abuse and use the terrain gun unless there's something really specific that you need to do. The land mechanic isn't used so much in fighting as it is in rare times that the story wants you to do something and says something along the lines of, "Hey! Remember that gun that we gave you that does that stuff? You never use it, but we're going to make it worth our production team's time making it by forcing you to use it right here."

As for story line - I can't remember it. Even with other FPS's that I've made my way through I could tell you a rough story line, but this stuck with the COD formula of not making the story line memorable enough that I cared about anything that was going on. I'm not even sure if I ever finished the whole game.

There's a reason that this was on a bargain shelf. The story was forgettable, the innovative mechanic fell short of it's potential, and it turned itself into a generic first person shooter that didn't want to make any waves or do anything new, so it turned into being something average.

Keeping it Classy

Today on keeping it classy- a coworker's story of his time in Las Vegas. 

I told him that Vegas was home for me, and then he shared a fun little story, keeping life super classy, about his 6 month stay in Las Vegas. His ex-wife had some job there where the company was paying for their housing, and he was supposed to be saving money. Skip to 48 hours in to living in Vegas and he's already doing some HEAVY drugs with people he hardly knows. 

Yup, keeping it classy today at ROI Solutions. 

300+ Hours - The Games I've Played

On the list of games people have referred me to, and I've played just because they said it was the most awesome game ever, this is another winner. This is by far, the game that I have put the most hours into playing. I kid you not when I say I dropped 300+ hours into this game, and at that point I had to walk away and play something new because I could have kept on playing. That is how massive, and how amazing this game is, and that's why it easily makes it's way onto my favorite games that I've ever played.

When people ask me what this game is, and why I like it so much, I try to equate it to other games. The only ones out there that are anything like this (that I know of) are either XCOM or FF Tactics, but it's those games on steroids. 

For those that have never played any of these games, I'll try to simplify it down as much as I can. Imagine a video game version of chess, where you have a board of squares and a bunch of pieces on the board that you control. Your goal is to kill the other side, and each piece can do something different. You take a turn moving your pieces, and then your opponent takes a turn to move theirs. 

Now add the fact that your chess pieces can level up to level 9,999, be reborn back to level 1 so you can restart and gain even more power, have 30+ different classes they can be, have different weapons, cast spells, combo attacks with each other, have special attacks that depend entirely on which weapon that they're using, and let's not forget that depending on what square on the board you're standing on you can do different things depending on the board you're playing on. Then there's also the little fact that your weapons, armor, and gear can level up, and carry with them residents that can modify and adjust what they do as well. 

Like I said- steroids. 

The story line is interesting, and the gameplay within the storyline is cool, but this is one of those games where the story is just the start of the game, and all of the really crazy things happen in the 'post game'. 

The best part about the game is that they expect you to break it, they want you to break it, and the more you break it, the more you keep playing. But to explain it the best, let me walk you through ONE character. 

The main character of the story is Valvatorez

He's a vampire, who's been in retirement, but you help him come back out and start smacking heads together to get things organized. He starts at level 1 with the wimpiest of weapons. 

You can level him up to level 9,999 and at any point in the game or progress you can rebirth him back down to level 1 and he keeps a percentage of the stats that he had gained up to that point. This way you can go 1 to 100, rebirth down to level 1 and grind back to 100, and he'll be significantly stronger than the first time you were at lvl 100. You can do this pretty much as much as you want. Officially there's a limit to rebirths, but if you ever hit it, good job to you. 

Every time you kill someone with Valvatorez you get mana to spend in other places, like buffing up the skills that you know so that they effect bigger areas, hit harder, and all sorts of fun things like that. So grinding doesn't just give you levels, it gives you the power to be able to buff your own skills. 

Then comes your items. 

While grinding up your own levels, you have the ability to jump into ANY item in the game, and go through a dungeon that represents that item. The further you get into the dungeon, the stronger the weapon gets. And the further you get into the item, the harder the monsters get that you have to beat to get to the next level. This means that you need to level up items to go into item world, but to get those items to go deeper into an item, you need other items that you've already explored, and then typically while you're on your way through an item, leveling it up, you can find a new item that has better base stats than the item that you're in, which means that once you're done with the one you're in, you can start on the next one which will be even harder, but will make a stronger weapon, armor, accessory, or whatever else. 

And that's just for one guy, and one item. 

Then, comes the twist of rebirthing and the character world. Just like item world, you can jump into characters and modify them from the inside out, giving them skills or stats that they typically wouldn't have, and altering them even more than what you could imagine. 

With that much complexity, let's remember that you can always create your own character. Where Valvatorez will always be Valvatorez, your created character can change jobs every time that they rebirth. That way you can make a tanky swordsman who rebirths as a magician, and suddenly you have a tanky magic user. 

With that in mind, let's do some number, you have 20 human classes (each with 6 layers of classes within them, the higher the sub-class the better your stats will be) and then 19 monster classes (again with 6 sub classes each). This means that you can take your one created character, and run them through 39 different classes and never duplicate a job, and each time you do that you can go to level 9,999. 

Then there's the items. Each type of item has 40 types, and then each of those types have 3 rarities. A common item only has 40 dungeon levels, a rare has 70 dungeon levels, and legendary has 100 levels. That means that there are 40 different swords, but of those 40, there are 3 rarities of each type of those swords. 

There are 9 basic types of weapons, with 40 seperate ranks, and 3 rarities of each. And as you can see the numbers start to get very big and very diverse very quickly. But because of how big the game is, and just how much there is to do within it, instead of feeling overwhelming, it feels as though there's always something new that you can tackle or a new goal that you can set for yourself as you go. 

Admittedly, the graphics and some of the animations aren't the best quality, but instead of pumping out a high degree of quality graphics, it puts the attention on the game. Disgaea decided that they'd much rather have a deep, quality, time intensive game, rather than a flashy game that nothing new ever came out of after the first 40 hours of play, but did I mention that  you don't need to know the story line, or anything at all from any of the earlier games to understand #4

There is easily 1,000 hours worth of gameplay within this game. The story line, once finished, can be restarted in NG+, but you can also increase monster level and difficulty at any time as well, so even if you're super powered, you can NG+ with your ultimate characters and gears, amp the monsters up to the highest levels, and still feel scared for your life, just while doing the simple story line. This game is proof that you don't need high end graphics, or even super amazing audio to make a game that is playable and addicting. It knows it's audience, it caters to them, and makes an amazing turn based tactical game unlike anything else out there. 

Too Realistic - The Games I've Played

Sandbox games like Infamous are up there on games that I can stand and put some serious game time in. They allow you to run around, do whatever you want, and it's exciting from what you can do. It's great fun . . . but then there are some games like this that just try too hard and are too realistic.

This game got a LOT of hype, and part of the reason I got it was because Alicia said it was one of the few games that she had ever played back in the day, and I actually bought it for her in hopes that she would play it. There's a reason that she stopped playing, and at the same time, why I stopped playing.

There's one major reason that I stopped playing - it's a sandbox game where you can't sandbox.

Everything that you want to do, everything that you think would be fun, comes with too much real life consequences. You hardly touch a person, and cops are on you. You try to run away from them, and instead of being wimpy cops that give up fast, you're running for the next half hour.

Then comes the intros to the billions of different mini games and sub things that you have to deal with. The first 20 hours are nothing but, 'oh here's another new thing for you to do'. Fighting bare handed - tutorial. Fighting with weapon - tutorial. Shooting a gun - tutorial. Shooting a gun with a scope - tutorial. Shooting a gun from a car - tutorial. Driving a car - tutorial. Driving a boat - tutorial. Driving a helicopter - tutorial. Driving a motorcycle - tutorial. Racing a car - tutorial. Bowling - tutorial. Answering emails - tutorial. Answering text messages - tutorial.

The list NEVER stops. There's a lot in the game, and EVERY single one of them takes a tutorial to learn, and is a fickle to control. It makes the game not fun to play, it makes it something you want to turn and run away from.

Then there are the things that you'd want to do. Blow up cars, run people over, go on drive bys, do anything that you want. . . and nope, you're faced with about ten minutes of fun with doing any of those, and then cops are on your back, you're sent to jail or the hospital and the fun you were having was ruined. With that out of the way, you try to jump over to the story line of a character you don't care for, that doesn't have much of any motivations, and makes you want to rip your ears out any time he talks for more than a few seconds.

Story line has a problem all in itself. It has starting points for quests. You get into the quest, you fail it, and instead of doing the magic pop back to the start to let you restart it, you are stuck with wherever you are, getting back to the start of the quest. This isn't a problem when you're on one section of one island, but when you start to gain access to multiple parts of the city, this can require you to commute for ten minutes just to the point where you can start the quest over again. Don't do something perfect the first time? Start it all over again. Still trying to learn the controls of one of the dozens of tutorials? Too bad, start over. And then there's the quests that get you in trouble with the cops. . . you'll get stuck with the cops behind you so you have to get rid of the cops first, and THEN make your way across town to restart the entire thing all over again, and you have to pray that your car doesn't take too much damage so you don't have to find a new car and bring those cops back on your tail AGAIN.

The game map has 3 major islands as part of it.

I was a good chunk of time (over 40 hours if I remember) into the game, and I just barely scraped the part of story where you're allowed access into the central island, and I stopped it. The quests were getting to annoying to start, there were too many controls to keep track of, it took too long to get anywhere, and it was too annoying.

GTA 4 is an attempt of trying to make a game real. The problem with that, is that gamers (like myself) don't want something real. We want to have fun, to get away from life, we don't want to have to deal with stupidity and realism, we want to have fun. We want to run around, blow things up, break all of the laws, and make it fast, dirty, and fun, and GTA 4 isn't that. In a game that tells us we can do whatever we want, it sticks too hard to the real world rules and consequences. It's no longer fun, it's just a life simulator that is a bit too realistic and a bit too annoying.

I've put up with some annoying games, and I've played through them, but this is the only one that is on my bookshelf that I have started and have no desire to finish, and no intention to ever finish. It's just not fun.

No One But Me

I was going to work on my thesis tonight, but while pulling it up I saw an old story that I had started a while ago, and was sort of thinking about today, so I opened it up ands tarted to read it.

I realized something tonight, in all honesty my stories aren't going to be blockbuster stories. I don't see that happening and it's super rare for anyone to every really make it as an author, but I am happy to have them there if no one reads them but me. Honestly, one of the best nights I've had in a long time was tonight just sitting back and slow reading through some of my old stuff and enjoying it. I don't know what it was about reading my old stuff, but it was fun and relaxing.

The funny part was at the end of it I gave it up because it "wasn't moving fast enough" and all I could think about after reading it was that it was moving at just the right speed and was a good opening, I just have to rework a few things within the structure, and figure out what I want the story to be on the large scale, and then it'll work out just fine. Apparently while writing things I'm way more critical than I am when I'm reading them because I deleted the notes saying that it was going to slow and I needed to speed things up. 

At least I know that I'll always have an audience of one.

Ye Ole Timey Gundam - The Games I've Played

Again, I found myself buying a game, not because I wanted to play it, but because a friend or two said that I absolutely had to play the best game ever, and in their minds this was the best game for that time.

Here comes the catch with this game, it's a pretty solid RPG, the leveling system makes sense, the skill building is unique, and the flexibility is there so that you can do some pretty broken stuff when needed. 

You have your fireballs, your sword swinging, and what you'd expect out of an RPG . . . and then you have your super special knights - or old school gundams. 

The game goes a little something like this- hack and slash until you get to use your knight, and then use your knight and win the fight. Spoiler, later on in the game you get more than one knight that your party can use. Instead of being stupid you make it so that one character at a time uses their knight. While you're using your knight, the other characters are charging up theirs. Once your timer goes out, you switch characters and activate their knight while the first one starts to recharge. Do this until everything is dead. 

There are a few reasons why this game didn't make it into my heart and onto my favorite games lists, and they're sort of unforgivable. The first is the story, it breaks the unforgivable rule of setting up a game with the distinct intention to make a series and leaving you at a cliffhanger ending. 

Spoiler, but this is how things work out for the game. You start the game and realize that HOLY COW THERE ARE GIANT MECH KNIGHTS! This blows your mind, and you, of course, are the person who is chosen to lead with the white knight. Things get a bit bumpy, you start to piece together a small group of people that are special in their own ways, and you start to realize who the big bad is within the story. 

Your group gets to a point where they're doing pretty good, the big bad is gathering an army to start stomping heads in and taking over the country. . . and then the game ends. Right when you think things could be getting cool and interesting, it stops and pretty much says stay tuned for our next game because we might just finish the story then!

I was done with the game at that point. All of the good things that were going for it meant nothing because they did that cheesy move with cutting it off before the story was finished. There was new game +, there were extra quests and events, there was even a way for me to build my own town, but then the ending hit and I didn't want to touch any of it because they decided to not finish the story. 

If I'm going to play a game, read a book, watch a show, or anything else, I want a full start to finish story, do not start something, and then end it mid way. It doesn't matter how bad the story is, if I start it, I at least want an ending. They broke that rule, so I gave it up. I can put up with stupid games, I can't put up with stupid story telling. 

I didn't know any better - The Games I've Played

I'm going to do something a bit abnormal and hit both of these at the same time-

Now, let me explain.

I'm a sucker for a good deal. This box set was cheaper than most games on the shelf, and it came with TWO games instead of just one. I thought that if there were this many god of war games, I should give them a shot, because I had heard some semi-decent things about them while talking to people.

God of War has the potential to be everything that I want from a game. All of the problems that I've had with other games, should be fixed. Fighter games being too complex to learn, for this you only have to worry about one character and you have two buttons that you use to attack, one is light/fast attack and the other is heavy/slow. The problems I have with fighters not having a plot line? Solved! This has an angsty character, you know what you're trying to kill, and there's a reason for it.



The only problem?
CHOO CHOO!!!!

It's a hallway simulator where things occasionally get in the way and then you play a rhythm game to get rid of those things, just to get running again. Although it has a story line, and a slightly interesting one at that too, it's just not enough for me to really want to keep playing once the story is finished.

I got done with the first one, and had no urge or desire to try it on hard, or to do any of the optional quests. Why would I? Do I get anything new? No. Does anything change on my character? No. Is there any benefit to wasting my time on those things in game? Not at all.

Then I popped in the second game.

Know what is poor writing and poor development? Writing your first story and making your character quite literally a god. . . and then trying to make a series off of that now that he's already become a deity. Within the first few minutes of the game it takes an act of epic proportion to strip you of all of the cool stuff you picked up on your first trip to ascension, and the rest of the game is you trying to get it back. You then get it back, and the game stops, setting it up for a third game that I refuse to touch because it's going to be the exact same thing.

That brings me to the main problem that I have with all action games like God of War. I didn't know it at the time, but they're all the same. Run around, smash things apart, get a tool, beat a boss. Rinse and repeat that process until the developers are bored and can't come up with anything else to give you from any other mythical source within their story line, and then end the game where you don't have to use any of the toys that you just spent an entire game gathering. 

For example, god of war 2 gives you a nifty little upgrades like a huge hammer, nunchuks of doom, and even a good ol' fashion sword. You spend all your points to get the upgrades so you can press your two buttons more to deal a bit more damage, and then the final boss shows up and you. . . don't have to use them at all.

Now, I've seen some games where you try to challenge yourself by not using the upgrades or nerfing yourself against the game because it makes it more challenging (I'm looking at you no sphere grid FFX gamers!) but this isn't a challenge, it's simply how you play the game. The final areas are just as hard if you swap between weapons and use all of the tools that were given to you throughout the game as if you just stick to your swords attached to chains. The upgrades do nothing to make the game easier, they just give you a new way for Kratos to spin around and slash things to little pieces.

Remember in Mortal Combat, how you'd have fatalities and finishers?

It used to be a big deal if one of your friends knew the combination to make their fighter do a huge finishing move where blood and guts flew everywhere. God of War thinks that was fun, but a little too hard, so they took all difficulty away from finishing a major monster. First, you do your normal attacks, square, square, square, triangle, square, square, square, triangle. Then when you've finally spammed that enough times and the monster's health is somewhat low a gigantic circle (just like the one on your controller) will appear above their head. All you have to do is not be asleep, and hit the circle button. BAM! You're doing some crazy finishing move. No need to do any inputs, no need to worry about if your timing was right, just hit the circle button and finish a monster in the exact same fatality way every time that you run into them. The first time you do one of these finishers is powerful and memorable and you find yourself trying to point at the screen to say, "did you just see what I just did?" and then in the next few hours of gameplay, you find yourself doing that exact same thing every time you fight that monster, and it's no longer a cool finisher, it's just a way to move monsters off of the screen because if you don't do the right button input there's no other way to kill the stuff that gets in your way.

The difficulty of God of War (1 and 2) isn't found in the gameplay, it's found in fake difficulty. The only way the game gets hard is that you have to face more monsters, or that you don't get health for a while. Oh, you want a challenge? Okay, then we'll just multiply the damage this monster can take and deal by three, and if you really want a challenge we'll make you fight two of them instead of just one. 

The first game, worth a playthrough for a slightly interesting story and a character that is a pretty big BA. The second game, don't waste your time on it unless you played the first and found yourself itching for more to the point where you did everything on the hardest difficulty and just couldn't stop. There's nothing special about the second, there's no real story progression, and in fact the story just takes a back seat to Kratos trying to find the next new toy that he gets to carry around to kill more things in a flashy way. No matter what, be prepared to fight the same monsters over, and over, and over again with the only difference between one room and the next being how many you get to smash to bits. If you're looking for some mindless senseless violence (which is not a bad thing), then you've found the right place.

Tales of Destiny 2

This is not a game that I've played yet, but it just got on my bookshelf. 

Tales of ____ games are great. They're interesting and inventive, and they're the sort of thing that put a different spin on the typical RPG story because they're one of those few games that you can play multiplayer in an RPG game. It's really crazy. Now, as part of the series, one of the very first that I was ever exposed to was Tales of Destiny 2. 

Now the silly part about this, go check on Amazon just how much a game of Tales of Destiny on PS1 costs. I just got it for free. 

Thank you friend that has a crazy wife that made him get rid of it!

Job Hunting

Today's flavor of bored, is trying to figgure out how to look like I'm working, while in fact doing anything BUT working. Some idiot at work today decided that they were going to pirate entire TV shows while at work. NBC got in touch with my job, and now there's a strict, 'no anything but work on your computer' rule. Luckily email is part of that, so I'm playing around with trying to see if I can email submissions onto the blog.

That's right, blogger is so dedicated to me slacking off while I should be doing work, that it's going to allow me to write in a window, hit send, and then have that email published as part of the blog. This is just the test of the entire program, so we'll see if it works or not. 

So a few days ago I mentioned on Facebook that I was getting my resume together and that fromt aht I was going to be hunting for a job. People were nice and said their congrats and good wishes my way, and then there was one, who will remained unnamed that said that he had a job offer for me, and that I'd be able to get it because it has benefits, and pays well, and was a great job. 

Now, I won't go into full details of our history with this friend, but let's just say it's checkered. 

I ask him what the job is, and it turns out to be. . . A CALL CENTER! Here's a rough transcription of how that conversation went. 

Him - "Yeah, it's a great job. It's got full benefits and is a really good atmosphere. You'll love it!"

Me - "Okay, what is it?"

Him - "It's a call center."

Me - "I already do that."

Him - "But you don't do sales."

Me - "I don't do that right now, I do data collection."

Him - "It's a great job, I just got it a few weeks ago, and I know that they're hiring."

Me - "I'm looking for something more in my field. I'm about to graduate with my masters, I want to be able to use it in some way or another."

Him - "Oh. Okay. Good luck with that."

Seriously?! You see that a 28 year old that is finishing up his graduate program is starting to look for a job and your first thought is CALL CENTER!? You have got to be kidding me. Thanks, but no thanks. 

Button Masher - The Games I've Played

Once upon a time, I had a friend who introduced me to Marvel Vs Capcom 2, and I thought it was amazing. Given, it was his game and I was no good at it because I had never played a fighter in any serious way, but I thought that the gameplay, the graphics, and the arcade feel of the entire thing was just amazing. That meant that when I saw #3 come out, and I had the opportunity to buy it, I had to give it a shot to finally be able to put in the time and give fighters a chance.

I quickly learned, that nope, not worth it.

Now, part of fighters that make them so fun is playing against friends. You can only do so much with a computer, so that's problem number one- I have no one to play against. The chances of me playing against a friend were slim to none, and to grab my wife and tell her non-gamer mind to deal with the counter combos, the areal combos, and everything else this game provides, just wasn't going to happen. That left me with the computer and trying to learn what all of the combos were, how to perform them, and what the dozens of characters each did.

It wasn't worth it.

The depth of this game is amazing. Each character has a field of inputs and button controls that turn them into blurs of light and damage. There is so much strategy and counter picking and difficulty within making a team and their set up, that it starts to get very overwhelming very quickly, and then there is the simple fact that it takes forever to learn, and the characters that you might love to play with, in the long run might not be worth it to learn. Let's take a 'for example'.

For example- Morrigan.

Throw back to MvC2 where my team was her and Iron Man and their ults would wipe the screen of any and everything that got in their way. Who needs to learn how to aim, when you can just back up into a corner, press a few buttons and people start pulling out weapons that are four times the size of their body to destroy the opponent?

The "simple" set of commands to Morrigan start and end with this-

Now, the problem with this is that first, the game doesn't write this out for you and tell you that X is what hard attack is, SQ is light attack, or whatever the button configurations are, they just tell you what type of button you need to hit, and then it's your job to figure out where that type of button is assigned on your controller.

Then comes the question of timing, you might know the input for a move, but if you do it too fast, it won't register, or if you do it to slow, you'll do something wrong. Again, more practicing.

Then come the actual combinations that are above and beyond what that little sheet of commands tells you about-

So, then you finally learn all of this stuff, and then go back to 'story' mode, just to learn that the computer is a cheating bastard and that you'll never keep up.

The music- great.
The graphics- amazing.
The depth of each character and the entire idea of the fighter game- it's there in full force.

To be absolutely clear, this isn't a bad game. It fits the genre that it's in, and does it in really good style. The problem lies not in the game, but within me and if I like the genre. Just like I know that some strategy games (like FF tactics) or some hardcore roleplaying games (like Skyrim) aren't everyone's cups of tea, this game was my reminder that fighters just aren't for me. I don't like them. There's no story, there's no real characters, it's just a test of button mashing for me, and that's no fun.

If you like fighters, and you like learning button combinations for 100 hit combos that juggle your friends in the air for an entire health bar worth of fun, then this is the game for you. If you know how to do technical interrupts and block at ridiculous speeds, then you're in the right place. If you're looking for something that involves a story, plot, or anything like progression within your characters, you're in the wrong place.  This game caters to a very specific audience (which I am not a part of) and I can't knock it for making something for that audience and being offended when I'm not head over heels in love with it. It wasn't made for me, and I'm aware of that. I don't need to love every single game that is ever produced. I would much rather have companies create genre specific games that are targeted and made for a specific audience instead of some of the stuff that is on this list that tries to be everything but nothing, all at the same time, just so that it can target more people and make a few extra bucks.

Blah

Everything is stacking up on me lately.

I need to find a job, but my resume isn't finished.
I need to do homework, but I need to write more.
I need to live, but I don't have time to sleep.

It's starting to get really hectic in my life, and what makes it even worse is taht my job is actually starting to act like a job which means that I'm going to have to work at work for the next little bit. Don't expect as long of posts, or as often becuase I've got stuff to do, and most of that stuff has little, if nothing, to do with me rambling on here about video games that I've played or whatever else I manage to get out.

In good news though, Alicia has started to help me hunt for jobs, and it makes me a whole lot less freaked out about the entire situation when I see just how many opportunities there are for me to get into a job, and what makes it even better is the fact that I am well qualified to get those jobs. That's part of the other good news, thanks to ROI, I can say that I have two years experience as an in house eitor because both Brett and Stephanie have used me to edit scripts and small stuff, and that totally counts. Add on some 'freelance writing' and 'freelance editing' for New Haven, and I'm golden.

Now I just have to get the work done and finish up this thesis, and pass these classes. At least I know where I'm headed with my thesis. I was a bit worried there, but I made it past the icky middle, and now I'm on the down hill resolution for the rest of it because I've set up the tracks and now the train just has to ride in until the end.

Procrastination is bad though, tonight I think I could have doubled my word count, if I would have only stayed away from facebook (which I hate and think is pointless) Imgur (which is another waste of time because I'm already up to date on the most recent pictures and posts) and this blog. . . (which is totally not a waste of time or me trying to run away from writing and focusing on something else, nope, not at all).

The Internet Has Ruined Me

Today, I was trying to help my daughter, Addison, try to spell her name with magnetic letters, and we were short one 'd'. I found myself saying, "Addison, we need a 'D'. You need a 'D'." and then finding myself giggling to myself about what I had just said.

The internet has ruined me.

That awkward moment when. . .

. . . it's 12:30 at night (or the morning depending on who you ask, but I call it night because the sun is still down, and I haven't gone to sleep yet) and you're still wearing a face mask even though there's been no reason to wear it for the past two, almost three, hours.

I wasn't feeling that good, and was visiting family who is going through chemotherapy so their immune system is shot, so just to be cautious I wore a face mask around them. They went to sleep, I stayed up working on homework, and it wasn't until I got up to get a drink that I realized that I still had my face mask on.

I can only imagine just how weird I must have looked. Headphones on listening to di.fm/hardcore, typing furiously on assignments for my classes, fuzzy blanket keeping my legs warm, and a medical face mask on. Sort of happy that everyone was asleep or gone so that no one would have to see that weird mix of freak.

Throwback

It's a throwback to an older post that I put on here, but I think it was better put together by this person than what I managed to do-

The post was titled, "videogames can teach you some pretty valuable lessons" - http://imgur.com/gallery/PCh9m Not all of them were as great of lessons as this, but considering I've ranted about this on this blog, I thought I might as well repost this one.

More Zombies, In Space! - The Games I've Played

We had Resident Evil, which was supposed to be a survival horror game, and it wasn't so much survival and not exactly horrifying.

Then we had Dead Rising, which killed a lot of zombies, but wasn't what you'd expect when you think about zombie infestation.

Finally, there was Dead Space. The shocking part about this game- I didn't buy it, Alicia got it for me.

Dead Space is a freaky, jump out of your skin, sort of game. It's survival horror, how survival horror needs to feel. You never feel safe, you're constantly looking for anything that might keep you alive or a handful of ammo so that you can fight things off, and the monsters, oh the monsters are amazing.

Unlike your typical zombies, a shot in the head don't slow these guys down, you have to chop off their limbs. The best part about them you chop off their legs, they still crawl towards you, you chop off their arms, they're still running. These monsters take a beating, and still keep running straight at you ready to rip your head off. They might not be the most diverse of monsters within the game, but you are afraid of them whenever they show up and try to eat you alive.

Then there comes the amazing HUD within the game. First off, there's no way to pause. If you go into a map menu, or anything like that, the game is still going on around you. That means that if you're stupid and check your gear in the wrong place, you can get attacked midway through checking which way you're supposed to go. Everything is shown in a holographic display in front of you, and that's even how you can see your ammo count on whatever weapon you're using, and instead of a health bar randomly put in a corner, it's built into your suit so you can see exactly where you stand, and it makes sense within the world.

Then there is the main character. He is part of the reason that it makes sense, and the game isn't as bad as some of the others within the genre. The thing about Issac is that he's normal.

He doesn't have arms the size of my waist, his head is normally sized, he doesn't have any special characteristics, he doesn't have gun training, he doesn't have a secret military background, he's just a normal engineer stuck in a really bad situation. And on that note, he doesn't have typical guns. He's stuck with whatever he can find in the ship that he's stuck on. You don't get your handgun and rocket launcher, you get construction tools like a plasma cutter, and a hacksaw that Issac decides to make some modifications to to work as space zombie dismemberment devices.

The environment is spot on, the pacing is amazing, the story line is a bit confusing but makes sense at the end of the day, and it is (most importantly) scary. It doesn't have anything that it doesn't need, and what it does have works perfectly for the game. It also didn't help that the majority of my time playing this (and all of my other games) is that I play it typically very late at night when people are asleep. Although the later games within the series sold out just a bit, the start of the series started with a bang and deserves a playthrough for anyone even slightly interested in survival horror games because it's a good restart of a new series with a fresh look at the genre.

Writer's Insomnia

It's a thing.

I don't know what it is, but lately I can't sleep. Not because I'm not sleepy, but because I want/need to get up and write.

It's frustrating because I write and then nothing amazing comes out, but I just feel like I need to write. Last night I stayed up writing like that until almost 3 in the morning and then I still tossed and turned when I went to bed. Let's just hope it finishes when I get done with this story (finally got past the scene I was worried about and things just got interesting so I blame the story for getting me past the boring section and making me want to write more).

8 Bit on Next Gen- The Games I've Plaed

This next game has gotten some attention already on this blog because of just how annoying it is. Again, it falls into the category of a game that a friend told me that I just had to play because of how great it was.

It wasn't.

From start to finish, it took me about two and a half years for me to go from opening screen to closing credits. Not because I was playing it solid for two years, but because I gave up on it and threw it on the bookshelf, and only finished the game when I got on a trip to try to at least finish some of the games that I hadn't finished.

Let me have that sink in, it took me two and a half years for me to get bored enough, and OCD enough, to finally put the game back into the console and finish the game.

If I was a gamer way back in the day, and the ps3 wasn't my first system that I ever owned, and had I played any of the early Zelda games, this game most likely would have meant a whole lot more to me than it actually did. It's an old school Zelda 8 bit game. . . but in 3d with HD graphics. . . and also satirizing the old school Zelda games at the same time.

Because I've beat up this game before on this blog, I'm going to try to leave this one short and sweet. If you liked old school Zelda, then you're going to like this game. If you don't like old school Zelda, or have never played it, avoid this game. This is fan service to those Zelda players, and almost inaccessible to anyone else. Not worth the time or headache, unless it's already on your bookshelf and you want to say that you've at least played every game on your bookshelf from start to finish.

More Zombies - The Games I've Played

Again, on the list of games that people told me that were too awesome to pass up, we find ourselves with yet another zombie outbreak. This time, instead of being stuck in Africa with the flesh eating mindless hordes, we're stuck in Reno.

Some people say that it's Vegas, but let's be honest here, coming from Vegas, nothing this small and this cheesy would ever show up in Vegas. If you only used down town, completely avoided the strip, you might be able to call this Vegas; or if you used a quarter of the strip, and disregarded the rest of the town, you might be able to call this Vegas, but it's easier to just call it Reno.

The story? You're a dude that kills zombies for an American Gladiator's rip off TV show where they set up different ways to kill zombies by the hundreds.

Someone gets stupid and lets the zombie's loose and the shopping mall/ casino gets completly infected. You take your daughter to a safe house in the mall and realize that you're the one that people are blaming for the infestation. You don't take lightly to this, so for the rest of the game you're running around trying to save people, not get killed, making money to buy anti-zombie drugs for your infected daughter, and trying to prove that you're not the bad guy.

Now, the problem/fun with this game is that ANYTHING can be used as a weapon, and your natural skills of putting two completely unrelated items together to make a crazy weapon are on par with Macgyver. 

And then, let us not forget that you have the option to try on anything in the entire game. You want to slaughter zombies in daisy dukes while wielding a lightsaber? This is the game for you! You want to mow down the undead horde while in a onesie? We can do that too. The outfits do nothing more than aesthetic changes, but the options you have are really, really, odd and diverse.

The problem with this game? For being so over the top and not serious about a lot of the game play, and allowing you the ability to just kill thousands on thousands of zombies, wait for them to respawn, and then kill a few thousand more, all while covering the world in blood and guts- it gets really picky if you don't do certain things. It gives you the freedom to do whatever you want, and the playground to do it in, but then it slaps you on the wrist for having fun in the playground that you're in. You have innocents that you have to save, you have story line that you have to progress, your daughter has to get drugs or else she'll turn into a zombie, and you have to pick if you're going to have fun, or if you're going to go through the game, because you can rarely do both.

The other frustrating thing about this, is that you can new game + (restart the game with all of your levels, bonuses, and materials) at any point in the story. If a boss if giving you problems, just go to NG+ and start over again, save all of the people, get to the boss, and you'll be over leveled so it'll be super simple. The annoying part about this is that the game doesn't tell you that some bosses or people should not be worried about until you're on NG+2 or 3 or even 4, and they put these people early on in the game. The problem comes with you wanting to save the day, but unable to do that because you're under leveled and under geared.

Then comes the problem of creating items. You pick up a horde of items while walking around, and there are some things that you know you can duct tape together to make something awesome, but the list is so long you don't know all of them, so you just have to start guessing. A propane tank and nails makes an IED shrapnel device- makes sense, a flashlight and precious gems make a lightsaber- WHAT? The combos rarely make sense, and you never know if the made item will actually be awesome, or if it'll just get you in more trouble than it's worth making. For example, there are some really sick, disturbing items - but they're completely useless and a sledge hammer works about 90 times better.

In fact, I'll ruin it right now. If you want to do the story line, and you want to beat the game, there's one, and only one, combo that you need to know, sledge hammer + axe.

And then, to make sure that you stay alive, you need a few coffee creamers (amazing healing) and then a painkiller cocktail (there's a few ways to mix them, but the easiest way is to just double up on whiskey, coffee, or vodka in a blender) and those will make it so you only take half health for a minute.

With a handful of defilers, two or three creamers, and one or two painkillers, you can walk through the story line without any problem, and the major problem comes from making it to everything in time because there's a lot of running and traveling through infected zombies. The easiest way to get through them is to just run.

If you want a game where you can slaughter zombies in some really crazy ways, you've come to the right place. If you're looking for anything more than hilarious ways to kill zombies, and outfits to kill them in, you're going to have a hard time with this game because everything else seems to have gotten the back seat compared to the main focus of killing zombies. Just don't forget that you're going to be forced into the annoying part of the game, because the game is on a timer and you have to do what it wants, even if you are having fun running through zombies with MMA gloves with steak knives strapped onto the fists doing your best impression of Wolverine.

ZOMBIES! - The Game's I've Played

This was a birthday present from one of my friends because they said it was the best game ever. It is also part of the reason that my 'no series games without checking with the earlier numbers' rule came into effect.

It's a simple game, there's zombies in Africa - you kill them.

The only thing that it sort of forgets to tell you if you're a new player (like I was) was why in the world you should care about anyone. They seem to all know each other. They've apparently met before, and they know exactly how strong each other are and respect each other for that, but then I show up and I don't know if Wesker is just a Nero- Matrix fan boy or what's going on with him.

As a person who was expecting the best game ever. . . I didn't quite get it.

What I got was a chapter based, over the shoulder, third person shooter. You can't even say that it was a puzzle game or survival horror because the puzzles all went along this line- oh no, there's a funky shaped hole that requires you to get a funky shaped key! You'd then look around for half a minute and go, 'oh look a funky shaped object that might fit in the key hole thingy!' and bam, the puzzle is solved.

As for the survival and horror, not so much. There was never a moment that I can remember being on the edge of my seat, praying that nothing jumped out at me, counting my ammo down to the last bit so that I could survive just another second. I just kept on shooting, living, and if I made a stupid mistake I'd get eaten by a zombie, and then respawn and not make that mistake again.

It really wasn't 'fun' because I didn't know what was going on, and there wasn't anything that could save the story (like amazing graphics, or amazing gameplay). Once done I went back and played a few levels quite a bit to farm them to try to unlock a few things. Even with the extra playthroughs, I can still look back at this game and not tell you a single thing about the story line.

I know at one point I had to fight some blond chick who I think was the main character's old partner, but having never played any of the previous Resident Evil's, I can't say. I also know that the big bad at the end of the game was Wesker. . . but what he had to do with any of the rest of the story is a mystery to me.

There was a significant amount of racial profiling, and doing some pretty racist stuff from the game developers in their portrayal of Africa; mindless loin-cloth wearing African zombies and what not.

One thing that I don't get is why people were freaking about the AI companion that you're stuck with. She's annoying, but she's not as great as what people make her out to be. Maybe it was, again, comparing against previous games AI, but that should never be the judge for anything. It should never be okay to say, 'well in the previous story/game. . .' each one needs to be a great thing all by itself. If they need to be compared together, then make/sell/market them together. You don't get to make one at a time and then try to tie them all together just so you can make an extra buck, and you can't say that just because the previous ones were really bad in one thing like AI, that this one is amazing, just because the AI doesn't suck as much.

 The only other thing that was notable from the game, was the lack of color. Part of the reason that I wasn't a huge fan of the graphics was that it just all seemed to be covered in a thick layer of grey/brown dirt. Everything seemed dull and lifeless. It's Africa, there's color there. There's a whole world of color, but it seemed to blur together with no difference between one thing and the next. Everything seems to want to be the same color as your shirt or your arms. Just look at the picture below, the majority of his surroundings are REALLY similar to what is on his body. It's like he was the color palate for the entire game, and if it didn't show up on him, then they weren't going to use it. Even the sky is the funky color of his pants.

All in all, I don't get why the game is called RESIDENT evil any more. It used to be back in the day that it was based around a single RESIDENT (the mansion) and even after that, the chaos was at least stuck to the RESIDENTal areas where people were living around the mansion. Now, we're all the way in Africa chopping our way through the savanah, and you're still trying to tell me that it's going to stick with the title Resident Evil? I get it, it's a brand, and you're trying to save customers just on the name alone, but at least think about what you're naming your product before you release it. I'm just looking forward to NBA2k20 where it's a baseball simulator.


If I knew the story, and I knew who everyone was, I'm pretty sure that I would have enjoyed this installment of the series, but because I didn't know what was going on, and it was essential to know what happened before to understand the entire game, it became more of a chore to work through the story line, than it was something that I looked forward to because of just how confusing and lost I got at points. I'm okay with having questions and not catching everything, but this just got out of hand. Great game if you know the series, not a great game to start the series with.
The worst part- we're not done with bad suggestions from friends quite yet. We've got a few more to go before I take a bit of control over my gaming choices. 

Cold Call

Had to write a short story (5-10 pages) for my film and lit course. Not quite sure where he's going with it, but popped out this one to work on for the project. Here's seeing what shenanigans I can get myself into with talking about call center calls.

Adam Walters

Professor Parbst

ENG 531

4 April 2013

Cold Call

“Hello Mr. Watts, my name is Paul R. I’m calling with your local internet provider; and we’re providing a limited time deal for interested customers like yourself who are looking for a faster, more reliable, and cheaper option for their internet service.”

With a quick, “Not interested,” Mr. Watts hung up on Marcus.  

With a few mouse clicks his computer was calling up the next number on his contacts list. There was no time for breaks after getting yelled at by the strangers he called, no time to even think about lunch, and everything had to be focused on sales. Sale the product, get the paycheck, survive another week. Most people that worked at the center stayed around to make three checks and then were out the door to a better job that didn’t drive them insane. To keep his sanity, and his job that gave him a paycheck, Marcus had started to use fake names when talking to people. Paul R(evere) didn’t seem to be doing that well at sales, so he went back to trying out a few others to see how well they’d do at selling internet services.

Steve J, Walt D, Teddy R, and even Jesus C. (with a spanish accent so it wasn’t too obvious) all failed to grab the attention of strangers getting interrupted while watching the five o'clock news and getting ready for dinner. Marcus tried different accents with generic names. He worked through a lisp, a southern drawl, a spanish accent, and even dared to use his rough asian accent, and every single person clicked the line, and most of them didn’t even wait for him to finish his first sentence.

Another name popped up on his screen, the tone buzzed in his headset that the number was being dialed, and Marcus was faced with another call to meet the quota. 10 calls an hour was acceptable, but only if you had a few sales. 15 an hour meant he was doing well but sort of slacking, and 20 an hour was typical and expected by Andrea, his boss. Ms. Winchester was just another number that he had to call so that he could have a paycheck.

“Hello Ms. Winchester, my name is Albert E. I’m calling with your local internet provider; and we’re providing a limited time deal for interested customers like yourself who are looking for a faster, more reliable, and cheaper option for their internet service.”

“Einy!? They got you too?” Ms. Winchester muffled a small sob. “Albert, you were doing relatively so well, and now? This? I always knew you shouldn’t be hanging out with Oppenheimer. Just look at what he’s done to your life.”

This was nothing new for Marcus. Doing cold calls is the social equivalent of living in the sewers. Everyone knows you can be rude to a telemarketer. Everyone. Marcus did what any jaded ‘customer service representative’ learned how to do after the first few days of being on the phones, not pay attention. “Yes m’am, and this week we are offering up to a 30% rate reduction for a wireless router and six month contract, this has been able to save some customers up to thirty dollars a month.”

“Okay, listen closely. If you are being held against your will I need you to clear your throat. If your captors might be listening, just give me something, because I will help you Einy. Modern slavery is no joke!”

“Ma’m would you be interested in this program or not?” If ignoring the problem wasn’t an option, being direct usually did the trick.

“Whoa! Hold on there Einy. Sorry, I was just joking. I thought you were playing around with your name, no need to get rude. Having a rough day are we?”

Normally Marcus would have moved the conversation back to the sale. If there was one thing that Andrea knew, it was how to chant ‘always be closing’ at every meeting or conversation that she had with Marcus or anyone that worked at the center. He was pretty sure that it was the only thing that she had learned when she opened up one book twenty years ago about how to sale. “Rough year more like it.”

“Girl trouble?”

If only it could be just a girl that made him have a rough moment. A girl, and any of the problems that she could cause, even the craziest of girls, would have been prefered. “All of life trouble.”

“Ouch. Managing to keep your head above water at least?”

“Barely.” Marcus took a breath thinking about everything that had been thrown his way in the past year, the bills that were starting to pile up, and just how little sleep he’d been able to get with trying to work two and a half jobs. “I’m alive, so I’ve got that going for me.”

“That’s your version of a good day? Being able to eat and breath is what makes your day?”

“When your health is the best you’ve got, you’re happy to have it.”

“Oh, give me a break Einy, there has to be something out there that you’ve got going for you. You’ve got a job at least, right? And you’re talking to me. Trust me, I don’t let chumps talk to me, so you’ve got that one too.”

“Jobs aren’t hard to get, I’ve got them by the handful. Jobs that aren’t painful to go to and make you have people yell at you and treat you like that fly who keeps flying around the room, but just won’t die, those are hard to get.”

“It can’t be that bad, can it? What’s the worst thing that someone has ever said to you?”

“The worst?”

“Yeah, the most offensive thing. It couldn’t be as bad as what you’re making it.”

The pile that he could pick from was a big one, but Marcus knew exactly which guy was by far the worst person he had ever talked to on the phone. “I had a guy threaten to kill me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t even like he hung up on me, or even swore at me a few times and then hung up, he went crazy. He went into detail, like how he would reverse track the number that I had dialed from, find out which company it belonged to, wait outside my job, and then kill me in the parking lot by mowing me over with his truck. He even said that he hopped that the hit wouldn’t kill me so that he could drag my body under his truck for a few miles.” It was by far his worst call, but the weirdest part about it for him was that he had just told a stranger about it over the phone like it was just another day at work. Make some calls, get the sales, and get threatened to be dragged under a truck until you die. Just another day at work.

“Wow, you need a drink,” she paused for a second to consider her options, “No, I’m going to buy you a drink. What area code are you in?”

Marcus double checked the area code he was calling on his screen, it was one state over, about a four hour drive. “Not the same area code as you, but close enough.”

“Good, because I’m pretty sure that if you weren’t close I’d be screwed. Most bars I know of don’t deliver. When was the last time you had a night out? It’s been too long since you’ve smiled.”

“I smile.”

“Right, and your real name is Albert.”

“No, I totally smile. Whenever I start a call I make sure that I’m smiling because my boss swears that people on the phone can hear the difference between when you’re smiling and when you’re not even if it’s just a phone call.”

“Your boss is a tool.”

“She’s a girl.”

“Girls can be tools. That’s not just a guy thing. Women everywhere fought for equal rights, so we can be called tools too. So about that drink and the night out that you needed, like, two months ago.”

“I don’t drink, so it hasn’t been ever since I’ve had a night out.”

“There’s a big difference between having a fun night out, and a fun night drinking. You can still have a good night without being drunk. I’m sure that you’ve had at least one night in your entire life that you could say was fun. Right? Even if it was when you were ten and you finally got to stay up and watch a TV show, you’ve had at least one fun night.”

“I guess.”

“And now you need to have another one. This weekend, meet me at the park that’s across the street from the police station, and we’ll get you to smile.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not into that. I’m not going to meet up with a stranger like that.”

“It’s across the street from the police. Bring your rape whistle, if I do anything funky they’ll be there. You know that you need a night out, or at least a dinner with someone like me.”

“Someone like you?”

“Yeah, someone like me. It’s a deal then? Saturday six-ish at the park?”

“Fine, I’ll be there.”

“And we’re not going to do that lame rom-com stuff of bringing a solitary rose or reading a victorian romance novel; bring the biggest bag of cereal you can find so I’ll know who you are. I’ll be the one walking around with a brand new 4,000 piece puzzle.”

“Cereal? A puzzle?”

“Hey, no complaining Einy. Worst case scenario where we can’t find anything else to do, we can have some good clean fun putting together the puzzle. I’ll see you there at six. Bye Einy!”

“Goodbye Ms. Winchester.”