This week, this is how we roll!

Pray for craps

I feel like there exists a kind of cryptic correlation between the game’s main protagonist and the overall quality of a title. A poorly written, unexceptional hero often foreshadows a poorly written, easily forgettable story, and if the developers fail to deliver something as basic as a decent plot, then, well – what can you expect from the gameplay, right? The examples are indeed many, and they go:

• The Sims, where the protagonist was always an impersonation of me, so clearly nothing worked out like it should, and everything led to a calamity almost as awful as the day I was born;
• Fallout 4, where I felt as if I were the hero (thanks, FPP), so shooting felt terrible, and it was a terrible experience in general;
• Watch Dogs, where a group of protagonists – namely Hype and Preorders – settled on forming a jointed one, and he went down in history known as The Great Disappointment;

to name just a few. Clearly, nothing good can come from rolling out feeble leading characters one after another. Nothing except for crap, that is.

It’s the mods that allow fixing up poor protagonist-dependent mechanics.

So trust me, when I say I smell something sh#tty in the air, I mean it, and the entirety of my gaming knowledge™ means it. And since it’s a bad omen, we pray, and when we pray, we make the danger go away, and lame protagonists become our prayers’ prey. And sadly, I must say – Prey betrayed us.

You can assume the form of a roll of toilet paper there. And it’s an actual feature.

I’ll be off preordering I am Bread 2. That way, at least I know what I’m signing up for.

Howard thou?

Toddally great? Well, it can be better. How so? Thought you were never going to ask:

• See that mountain over there? Yeah, you can climb it. And it’s going to be legen… I used to do it, too, but then, with the entire arrow thing, you know how it goes… dary!
• See your childhood memories looming in the distance? You can revisit them. Definitely. It’s only $39.99, and the pleasure – priceless. You’ll also need a base game. Come on, that’s just another $29.99, you can do it. Everybody knows happiness comes at a price, and I would pay even more if I knew I could then meet a bunch of folks I have no recollection of spoiling my personal experience via the in-game chat. Adventure! Wait, what is it again? No cash? Don’t be ridiculous, steal it from your mother. Just put that bucket over her head and it’s done. Trust me, I know.

It just works.

• When one of our games makes up for a shelter for the entire population of hardcore mobile gamers, and the other one is ascending from filthy 3D Wasteland to the fourth, noble virtual dimension in no time, we don’t just stop. Instead, we go even further, we cross all the boundaries and cut a deal with the Japanese, so that they can reach the summit of that mountain-san, too. And then we say even more beautiful words, and make more beautiful statements, and everything is just great, and you are glad we do it, and we are glad you anticipate it, and would you kindly check out already, for my throat got seriously sore? Thanks.

Better now? Like a feather, huh? Well, no need to thank me – you asked for it!

How a delay turned me into a decent guy

Day 1: I’ve successfully gotten past the Pentagon defenses, with only their firewall bothering me along the way. When things got too hot, I reached out to Canada, and these folks from the North charged me $18 for using one of the coolest spying devices to come out of their prototype zone. Well, at least the one that receives spectacular feedback. I needed that feedback to know if I were doing a good job incapacitating Pentagon’s wifi hotspots. And mate, they’re all cold now, eh.

Day 2: Managed to drag the big news that hinged past the horizon into broad daylight, and everybody still thinks it were the Dutch. For a minute, with the complex algorithms overlapping each other, it felt like I were getting into the Danger Zone, or the Killzone, if you like. But once again, for a hacker like me, there ain’t no oppression – for I’m the oppressor – and progress, while an abstract term to others, comes naturally to me.

‘What he did with hacking as a boy… was crossing all the lines.’

Day 3: I spent the past 24 hours in a mine. Not in an actual dungeon, though. It was rather a datamine, so I became a dataminer, and did what dataminers usually do – mined data. And boy, I mined so hard, I smuggled a Smuggler out and watched him fall into The Headlines Sea along with his pal the Fallen. That’s where stepping into the mine of my skills leads to.

Finally, after 72 hours, I could finally present my hacking/gaming machine with a real challenge, as Nier: Automata was finally released for PC. It was delayed by 3 days (unbelievable) ‘cause of all the crazy piracy stuff going around.

Darn pirates and hackers I despise.