Sep 19, 2007

a Far Cry from the details...

My Aunt wants the details. Emily got super sick, laid around for most of Saturday, then by Sunday was eating us out of house and home, ready to wash her VW... I'm not sure what details my Aunt is looking for, though we believe it was a 24 or 48 (or 36 even) hour bug.

I know I am not a details guy, but when those details include anything remotely connected to vomit, phlegm, or any other bodily liquid-like substance, you can rest assured that you will get NO details from me. Just because I can clean it up does not mean I want to talk about it... Call me the Exxon (as in Juan Valdez) of the household...


As you've read (assuming you are a regular reader, and if not, then welcome aboard!), I have been playing Far Cry lately on my PC. I freely and openly "admit" to finding cheat codes to help get me through the game. When I play a game, my goal is to play through and get the story without having to restart a billion times. Sorry, but getting killed 5, 10, 50, 231 times is not my idea of having fun in a game. So, I go out, find the cheat codes, and then play the game as if I were NOT using them. So, my character has unlimited ammo and can never be "killed." Does that detract from the storyline of the game, or the playability, or the RE-playability? Not in my book. In fact, I will often try things I might not have otherwise because I know I can without repercussions. In fact, that is WHY cheat codes were invented. Programmers made them up so they could test levels, actions, etc without having to worry about "surviving" their own game to get to the testing point.

I am saying all of this because I played quite a bit of the game tonight, and since it tells you how many times you WOULD HAVE died had you not been cheating, I saw my tally reach somewhere around 25 before I quit for the night. Now, that is not 25 times in the same place, that is over the course of that particular segment. Still, Far Cry only saves the game at certain "checkpoints," so I would have had to restart at places that were started way before I would have been killed. 25 times? Where is the FUN in that? The first few times, maybe. But after a while, I know I would get so frustrated that I would eventually quit playing altogether. What is the point in that?

So, I played tonight, and I cheated. And because I was not getting ripped to shreds, I actually got to appreciate some of the scenery, dialogue, and action that I would have been too frustrated to enjoy otherwise.

Cheaters never win... Unless they're playing a video game. :-)

(Afterthought: I do NOT condone cheating in multiplayer games unless all players are using the same cheats. Using cheats to get the "upper hand" on other online players really is cheating, in the true sense of the word.)


I found my checkbook today after work. You didn't know it was missing, did you? Well, since sometime this summer (actually, it was during the Hot Springs Tech Institute, but the exact dates escape me), I had lost my checkbook. I searched my truck, called the hotel, tore the house apart, and nothing. Today after work, I open the driver door, and peeking out from under the side of the seat is my checkbook. I looked there, I really did. Oh well, I'm just glad it didn't walk off somewhere waiting for someone to write checks. :-)



We watched last week's "Deal or no Deal" tonight (and we will watch THIS week's at some point). I thought it was pretty cool to have Trump on there, and the surprise of having a busload of the woman's friends come in from NYC. Of course, the best part was Trump writing a check to the woman's son for $25,000.

My minimum "walk out of there" offer is $200,000. Anything less would be uncivilized (sorry - old commercial playing in my head there). So, if I had been in her shoes, I would have done exactly what she did. Once the big money is gone, you just go ahead and play it out. At that point, what have you to lose, really? So, she walked out with $25 and her son got $25000... Not bad at all...

No comments:

Post a Comment