Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Games
It’s still not too late
. . . to get your own World of Warcraft epic gear.
Here is the rest of O’Brien’s armor. I see she’s wearing the Legendary Wicked Cowl of the Dominatrix — nice. Who did you have to kill to get that one, O’Brien?
In other news . . .
Company this weekend. My MIL, SIL, SIL’s hubs, and their daughter are due to arrive any time now. I’ve been shopping and cleaning all morning.
I really hope I didn’t screw up the dates on this. I’d to do all this cleaning for nuthin.
D.
You know you play too much World of Warcraft when . . .
Your son asks, “Why are you wearing your leopard armor?”
We got some dude off the street to model those undies. Really. Some guy who just happened to be hairy like me. I mean, you don’t really think I’d put my butt up on this blog, do you?
D.
FVccing gnomes
I hate PvP.
Right now, some of you are wracking your brains because PvP sounds like computerese, but it isn’t. Not exactly. PvP = player vs. player, which you gamers knew right away, of course, but bear with me while I explain it to the non-gamers.
In World of Warcraft, you can live your entire virtual life fighting against computer-generated/controlled monsters. You need never fight human-controlled characters. Nevertheless, the game provides certain rewards for success in the PvP arenas known as battlegrounds. But there’s one problem: I suck at PvP.
I did what any logical 40-mmhmmhm-year-old man would do, given the circumstances; I let my 10-year-old do the PvP stuff for me. He’s far better at it than I will ever be. Trouble is, he made me watch, saying, “Otherwise, you’ll never learn.”
I had already spent a good long time screaming at the computer because whenever I set myself up to attack someone, someone else would Stun me, or Fear me, or Confuse me, or Whatever the Hell me, and I would stand there paralyzed or run around in a daze while the enemy clobbered me to death.
But nothing, nothing was worse than getting pwned by a band of fVccing gnomes. This is a gnome:
I’m sorry, but my life has certain rules, and these sumbitches violate both of them:
Something that comes up to my ankle should NOT be able to kick the shit out of me.
Someone that talks like a Disneyland refugee should bite the dust if I look at them crosswise.
Yeah, that’s it, those are the rules of my existence. So I’m watching my son fight these bastards, I’m not even the one holding the mouse, and I still want to punch the monitor.
By which I conclude, PvP is so not good for my mental health.
D.
Geek toy!
Major coolness for engineering geeks. Check out Armadillo Run, a virtual erector set with realistic physics. Jake ripped through the free demo in about two hours, leaving his World of Warcraft adventuring behind.
Here’s the blurb from the website:
Armadillo Run is a physics-based puzzle game. You have to build structures with the purpose of getting an armadillo to a certain point in space. There is a selection of building materials, each with different properties, which can be combined to form almost anything. The realistic physics simulation gives you the freedom to solve each level in many different ways.
Why didn’t they have stuff like this when I was a kid?
Because computers were the size of Walmarts back then, and all they could do was add, subtract, multiply, and divide — that’s why! You old fart, you.
D.
World of Warcraft ate my family
World of Warcraft is the biggest MMORPG on the planet (MMORPG = massive multiplayer online roleplaying game). When we first bought into WoW, they had a population of one million. Eighteen months later, six million people participate in WoW.
We’re three of them.
I was the first addict, but after a while I realized I could either write a novel or spend half my life in a fantasy world. I put WoW aside, but soon after that, my son took up the battle. He became distracted by Warcraft’s other attractions — Warcraft Online, in particular — but this summer, he’s back in action with his undead warlock, Khufu.
I never thought Karen would go for this stuff. She hasn’t gamed since Civilization I; most computer games give her motion sickness. But now, she’s up to level 30 or 31 with her elf hunter Mygale. (Mygale = the genus name for one of her tarantulas, if I remember correctly.)
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. With these sleepless nights I’ve been having, there’s nothing much to do but take my troll rogue SheWitch around the Arathi Highlands, killing raptors, fleshstalkers, and a variety of elementals. I’m up to level 39 and I’m one mean bitch with a poisoned dagger.
WoW has spilled over into the real world, and vice versa. Search You Tube for “World of Warcraft” and you’ll find a wealth of videos (4,340) based on WoW’s pre-packaged animation* — WoW’s version of Too Sexy, for example, or the infamous show tune, The Internet is for Porn. In China, WoW is a big enough sensation that Coca Cola references it in their commercials. Folks have had their wedding ceremonies in WoW, and the WoW creators have honored the deaths of famous gamers with in-game tombs. Recently, an in-game funeral (for a guy who died in real life — just so we’re on the same page here) was raided by a rival faction, creating quite a controversy, since funeral attendees were all unarmed.
Like all good addicts, the three of us believe we are in control of our addiction. I’ll only play when I’m too tired to do anything else. Jake and Karen only play when our high speed internet connection is working and the house power isn’t out. We have limits.
Enough BS’ing. Time for me to do some real writing.
D.
*It’s considered a novel film genre, an emergent property of gaming known as “machinima“. Here, for example, is a machinima version of the famous courtroom scene from A Few Good Men. I think the Half Life 2 version of Tom Cruise is a better actor than the real thing, but that’s just me.
Bad Mojo: that other Kafka game
Bad Mojo hit the shelves in 1996. Karen and I, sick puppies that we were, instantly got hooked. There’s just something unspeakably special about pretending to be Gregor Samsa, you know?
Yup, that’s the premise: you’ve been magically transformed into a cockroach (by the ghost of your dead mother, no less) and you must navigate through an ultra-grungy apartment complex to learn the secrets of your existence. You must unravel your own personal mystery to become human yet again.
Despite the superficial resemblance to “The Metamorphosis,” precious little in Bad Mojo invokes the words or themes of Kafka. A Berkeley research associate rips off his lab and plans on driving to Mexico with the loot. Before he can make his getaway, his mother’s locket transforms him into a cockroach. Ultimately, Bad Mojo becomes a story of redemption, one that probably would not have sat well with Kafka.
Hmm. Perhaps I’m wrong. Ever read “In the Penal Colony”? It’s an unpleasant, nasty, violent tale of punishment and redemption. I hated it when I read it in high school, but it has stuck with me over the years. Can’t say the same for Don Quixote.
Bad Mojo has been re-released as Bad Mojo Redux (that link will take you to the video trailer, too), with more than a few extras:
A bonus DVD packs in a couple hours’ worth of extras, including a fascinating making-of documentary (with audition scenes and refreshingly honest creator interviews); developer commentary on the game’s FMV movies; concept art and storyboards; and video hints for solving the puzzles.
I’m not enough of a fanboy to pick up the Redux, but I’ve replayed it a few times, and if they release Bad Mojo 2, I’m buying.
D.
Of course it’s pointless. That’s the point.
Because every kind shout deserves a great shout-back, and because most of y’all are literary types anyway . . .
Props to YesButNoButYes (or, as I like to call them, WhoNeedsBoingBoing) for finding this cool Kafka game, Kafkamesto. Earlier this evening, I played Kafkamesto for about an hour before realizing that if I could win, it wouldn’t be a Kafka game!
But I’m too much a Type A whack job not to keep trying. I’ve already googled for a walkthrough, but the best I’ve managed is this message board.
I’m sick. Sick as Kafka.
D.
World of Warcraft ate my brain.
Surgery day for yours truly here at St. Mammon Community Hospital. This means I hustled my butt out of bed at 7, skipped my coffee, and got into the hospital by 7:20. When will I learn that it’s okay to get in a few minutes later and not skip the coffee?
For a few months now I’ve had trouble working on the novel at night. I’ve been productive on the weekends, but my evening writing has slowed to a crawl. (Oddly enough, though, I wrote “Troll Lover” mostly at night.) This annoying problem coincided with our purchase of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. I doubt this is coincidental.
WoW is an MMORPG, in case you were wondering; however, if you know what an MMORPG is, you surely don’t need to be told that World of Warcraft is one of ’em. (Okay, okay. My parents are reading this. MMORPG = massive multiplayer online role-playing game. Doesn’t that help loads?) My preferred character is She Witch, a rogue troll, but occasionally I slum with the Alliance in my other guise: Scyther, a Night Elf huntress. When you play in the Night Elves’ realm, WoW plays this dippy music that is PLAINLY a rip-off of the incidental music used in Lord of the Rings whenever those dippy elves are on screen. I’ve tried to make Scyther as butch as possible, but that’s a tough gig when you’re an elf.
Need I mention that we bought this game for my son?
Tonight the muse is as dry as a baby-powdered ass. I’m outa here. Gotta go collect mushrooms or chop off a paladin’s head . . . some damned thing.
D.