Video Game Appreciation 101 (III): On Instructions and Necessary Antisocial Behavior

This time, let’s talk briefly about pain management before moving on to today’s lesson. For this first part of the class, you’ll need a hammer and a hand. Yours, specifically, so you should have two. One-handed gamers are excused from this part of the lesson (unless you can hold a hammer in your prosthetic hand or have a friend who won’t mind lending a hand). Now, on the count of three, raise the hammer and hit your free hand… oh, somewhere around the thumb is fine. Not too hard, now.

Ready? One, Two, Three!

Oops.

As you can probably guess, most of you didn’t actually hit your hands. This is indeed a wise thing. Those of you who did are in a lot of pain and probably wondering why the other 99 percent of the class isn’t joining you curled up in a ball under their seats…

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Spike TV’s American Diggers: The Curse Of The Dummy’s Boom…

Yikes. So are we as a nation THAT hard up for cash that we’d ring up a company run by an ex-pro wrestler turned “artifact recovery expert” to carefully (allegedly) dig and scrape out our land for any historical relics that, even though they SHOULD go into a museum, we can pawn for much-needed cash? Minus whatever fee (and cut of the loot) the company gets and whatever rights we sign away to be on the show? Apparently so. Wait, what? They’ve been around since 2005 and even have a magazine as well?  Who reads magazines about this stuff these days (and are there Goldline ads in them)?

My head hurts now. Of course, I’ll be doing what I usually do with “reality” TV – give it a wide berth and let those who want to dig it, do so.  Nevertheless, I’d not be surprised at all to see an ad for the show that starts off with some rockin’ theme and a beefy voice saying “Where my Diggers at?!”

Feh, where’s Indiana Jones when you nee… No, wait… er, Where’s Lara Croft when y.. Um… er… aha! Where’s Arne Saknussemm when you need him? (I had to pick SOMEONE that you guys had to look up who hasn’t been turned into a pop culture icon yet… in this century, at least)…

Game Appreciation 101 (II): Learn To Love Ambiguity (Or Else)…

Yes, this post contains spoilers (but not the ones you probably think).

Not every game is going to have a happy “Hollywood” ending, class. Get over it. Not every single story wraps up nicely and neatly at the climax with the heroes walking off into the sunset with evil burning to death in some car that just flew through a guardrail as the villain tried to make good his (or her, or its) escape.Sometimes it’s boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy never finds girl again. But that’s not always a bad thing if it’s done right and even better, YOU get why it was done in the first place.

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