The guys enter the seventh and final map, the University. Pyro specifically wanted to take this one on to avenge their loss from the last session. Pyro hates ending gaming sessions on a loss as he has previously said, so the outcome of this one is pretty obvious... once the guys get their act together, anyway.
Rainbow AAR Ep 61 - Market of Pain
The guys finish off the castle, the first map of Athena Sword, and move on to the Agora Market, the LAST map of Athena Sword. They haven't done terrorist hunt in the Market before, or at least they haven't for many years, so it feels like a new experience. Can the guys get it together and beat the map without too many losses?
Rainbow AAR Ep 60 - Repeating Mistakes
Although Pyro usually knows what he's doing, there are times he has a brain fart... or more than one, in this case. Pyro starts playing like a rookie as the guys take on the Castle in Milan stage, leaving Yoshi to do most of the work. Luckily, Yoshi has shaken off his Rainbow rust and is eager to contribute.
WYR #15: Night Dream Believer
I forgot to make a post last week, and nearly forgot this week too! But here's this week's question -- and I had to burn through about five cards to find one worth typing...
Would you rather lose your ability to dream but never have nightmares again or have colorful lucid dreams regularly but also the occasional terrible nightmare?
This might be a "grass is greener" situation for me, but I already have occasional lucid dreams, though I lack the ability to control them like some people can. But mixed in with those lucid dreams are terrible nightmares that typically are less scary than emotionally scarring. I've given the details of some of those to friends, and they're so disturbing to myself that I'm not going to detail them here.
To answer the question, I know from experience that having a nightmare drains my energy; typically I get up from a nightmare and feel like I hadn't slept at all, which is a serious problem if I'm having to go to work that day. While lucid dreams are fun, that's all they are; a good dream doesn't balance with a nightmare, in that a good dream doesn't give me extra energy to balance a nightmare's sapping of it. In other words, for me, dreaming is a lose-only proposition, so what's the point of risking it? In this case, if I have to take the bad with the mediocre, I'd rather take nothing at all, so I choose the red answer and would rather never dream at all.
Hell, for me, sleeping is an inconvenience anyway. So if I don't dream, then I'd lose total track of that time, and I'd only be concerned with recharging my energy rather than what fiction I have playing in my head for eight hours or less per night.
Would you rather lose your ability to dream but never have nightmares again or have colorful lucid dreams regularly but also the occasional terrible nightmare?
This might be a "grass is greener" situation for me, but I already have occasional lucid dreams, though I lack the ability to control them like some people can. But mixed in with those lucid dreams are terrible nightmares that typically are less scary than emotionally scarring. I've given the details of some of those to friends, and they're so disturbing to myself that I'm not going to detail them here.
To answer the question, I know from experience that having a nightmare drains my energy; typically I get up from a nightmare and feel like I hadn't slept at all, which is a serious problem if I'm having to go to work that day. While lucid dreams are fun, that's all they are; a good dream doesn't balance with a nightmare, in that a good dream doesn't give me extra energy to balance a nightmare's sapping of it. In other words, for me, dreaming is a lose-only proposition, so what's the point of risking it? In this case, if I have to take the bad with the mediocre, I'd rather take nothing at all, so I choose the red answer and would rather never dream at all.
Hell, for me, sleeping is an inconvenience anyway. So if I don't dream, then I'd lose total track of that time, and I'd only be concerned with recharging my energy rather than what fiction I have playing in my head for eight hours or less per night.
Rainbow AAR Ep 59 - Wrong Weapon, No Problem
The guys continue on to the Volcano Observatory stage, one of Pyro's favorites. Still, it's been a while since he's been there, so he forgets the exact layout and winds up taking an inappropriate weapon. He's a pro though, and he and Yoshi hit the stage with their normal, profanity-laden professionalism.
Rainbow AAR Ep 58 - Prison Sentence
Pyro and Yoshi head back to the prison level, ironically to deal with terrorists. Now that Yoshi's ladder works and he's not clipping through a wall to his death, their efforts should pay off better this time... right?
Rainbow AAR Ep 57 - 2 Wins, 1 Glitch
PyroFalkon and Yoshi start up another session of Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword. The guys begin as usual with their warm-up maps, which they make short work of. It seems this session won't result in too many tears!
On the Mend
So, you know how on Monday, I stated that I had some “gross
symptoms of the flu”? Well, that was pretty much upgraded from “gross symptoms”
to “get me into a fucking hospital NOW” a few days ago. But because I’m a man,
am uninsured, and feel I deserve it anyway, I went ahead and just stayed home
after calling off work.
And man, this has been one of the longest weeks of my life.
Only today am I trying for a full meal; yesterday I some plain rice, but spent
the previous 48 hours not even bothering to eat since nothing was staying in my
stomach anyway. I think I may have returned to work one day early, because I
was pretty dragging for the first half of the day. But after lunch—in this
case, a one-hour totally uncomfortable nap in my work area—I wasn’t doing too
bad. So now I’m home, I’m scraping together a meal, and I’ll have Burn Notice
to look forward to after WWE SmackDown since I totally forgot about it last
night.
Other than my Would You Rather post on my blog and some
ancillary work on WWE ’12 for IGN, I haven’t done a damn thing this week. I
feel like I’ve lost the whole week and have nothing to show for it… I don’t get
sick very often other than allergies, and when I do, it’s usually over with in
a couple days, and it’s certainly never
debilitating to the point where I can’t work on an IGN assignment. This… this
was an unpleasant first.
I guess I’m on the mend, but the timing kinda sucked,
because we had Christmas dinner today. By “we” I mean Wal-Mart, of course, this
being one of the two days they feed us. But I’m not a jerk, so I kept my ass
out of the break room; it’s bad enough I showed up at all, but as long as I
stayed in my own little corner in the very back of the store, the chance I’d
infect others was minimized. Hopefully I’ll be 100% by the time I’m on the
other side of the weekend because I’ll be seeing and old friend and don’t want
to be spreading my flu around to him either.
WYR #14: Sounds Like Pain
Sorry for this one coming so late in the day, everyone. I'm still fighting off the worst flu bug I've ever had it my life, and it's not been a pleasant experience. I won't gross you out with the symptoms, but I will say it's made finding time to sit at my computer for five straight minutes a challenge.
But hey, at least I didn't miss my personal goal of getting this post done on Wednesday! And I'm going to try to be making future WYR posts happen every week, though hopefully not so late that it can interfere with dinner like it is this week.
Okay, so... The rules of "Would You Rather" are simple. I'll present a question from this handy stack of cards I've got here. Each question has two answers, arbitrarily colored red and blue. You have to pick one answer -- you can't say "both" or "neither" -- and the most important rule is that you have to justify the answer. You don't need to give us a 5000-word essay on the subject, but merely picking an answer and not explaining why is no fun for anyone. Once you have your answer, leave a comment on the blog here, and discuss with the others who have answered if you wish!
By the way, the cards do feature some rather heavy questions, and I'm trying to avoid those. It might be fun to drop in a serious one every month or so, but there are questions here that deal with religion, politics, and so on, and that's not what the blog is for. If you guys specifically want me to feature more, I'll do so, but we're going to keep it light-hearted at first.
Okay, here were go...
Would you rather be forced to watch The Sound of Music continuously for 48 hours or drive cross-country with Barry Manilow singing on the radio the whole time?
Given that I hate musicals and saxophones, neither option here is particularly appealing. Part of me wants to do some Googling and figure out how long it takes to drive cross-country, but I'm pretty damn sure it would take longer than 48 hours.
Here's the thing though... if I'm driving, then I have other stuff I need to worry about. Other drivers, weather conditions, that dead body in my trunk; there are tons of distractions. As such, I can probably tune out Manilow and whatever noises he makes from his throat hole. Plus, you have a destination in mind, and you'll be able to see the sights.
Being forced to watch The Sound of Music for two days straight just means you're going to go insane. That's sleep deprivation working against you, and the characters will start talking to you by the time it's over with. And the only "destination" you have to look forward to is sobbing into your own pillow when your dreams are haunted by nuns and rolling hills or whatever The Sound of Music is about. Yeah yeah, I admit, I'm a philistine.
Anyway, I pick the blue answer. If nothing else, I could wear earplugs as I'm driving, which I'm sure is totally legal.
But hey, at least I didn't miss my personal goal of getting this post done on Wednesday! And I'm going to try to be making future WYR posts happen every week, though hopefully not so late that it can interfere with dinner like it is this week.
Okay, so... The rules of "Would You Rather" are simple. I'll present a question from this handy stack of cards I've got here. Each question has two answers, arbitrarily colored red and blue. You have to pick one answer -- you can't say "both" or "neither" -- and the most important rule is that you have to justify the answer. You don't need to give us a 5000-word essay on the subject, but merely picking an answer and not explaining why is no fun for anyone. Once you have your answer, leave a comment on the blog here, and discuss with the others who have answered if you wish!
By the way, the cards do feature some rather heavy questions, and I'm trying to avoid those. It might be fun to drop in a serious one every month or so, but there are questions here that deal with religion, politics, and so on, and that's not what the blog is for. If you guys specifically want me to feature more, I'll do so, but we're going to keep it light-hearted at first.
Okay, here were go...
Would you rather be forced to watch The Sound of Music continuously for 48 hours or drive cross-country with Barry Manilow singing on the radio the whole time?
Given that I hate musicals and saxophones, neither option here is particularly appealing. Part of me wants to do some Googling and figure out how long it takes to drive cross-country, but I'm pretty damn sure it would take longer than 48 hours.
Here's the thing though... if I'm driving, then I have other stuff I need to worry about. Other drivers, weather conditions, that dead body in my trunk; there are tons of distractions. As such, I can probably tune out Manilow and whatever noises he makes from his throat hole. Plus, you have a destination in mind, and you'll be able to see the sights.
Being forced to watch The Sound of Music for two days straight just means you're going to go insane. That's sleep deprivation working against you, and the characters will start talking to you by the time it's over with. And the only "destination" you have to look forward to is sobbing into your own pillow when your dreams are haunted by nuns and rolling hills or whatever The Sound of Music is about. Yeah yeah, I admit, I'm a philistine.
Anyway, I pick the blue answer. If nothing else, I could wear earplugs as I'm driving, which I'm sure is totally legal.
Lunatics? Or Just Plain Stupidity?
I’m not the superstitious sort, but we had a full moon on
Saturday, and some weirdness was in full force yesterday. At Wal-Mart, we had a
lady pass out from a seizure near the milk cases, and not ten minutes later we
had two guys fighting over who would buy the last pair of some model of shoes.
(Winner: someone else, since both of them got the consolation prize of a
lifetime of family shame.) Hours later, the fire alarms activated for no reason—twice—bringing
forth Xenia’s finest and firefighters to waste their time milling about the
store. Then as I went home, I wound up injuring my left leg; when I woke up
this morning, my left calf suffered what was easily the worst pain I’ve ever dealt
with in my entire life. Throw in a flu bug, and it’s been one hell of a weekend…
The upshot is, given my gross and embarrassing symptoms of my flu, I just might
lose some weight this holiday season.
Trying to get back to normal here, but I’m pretty tired and
mostly just want to sleep, so naturally this is the week WWE decides to do a
three-hour special. I’m not feeling much creative energy, so my recap will probably be a
bare-bones one without my usual blathering, for better or worse depending on
how much I entertain you personally.
Saints Done
You know how I was so
super into Saints Row: The Third a
few weeks ago that Rick had to title the
recap to humor my obsession? Well, now that the IGN Entertainment wiki
guide is done (which you can find by clicking here, and it’s
damn near my best piece of work ever), I’m done with the game… and I’m not
going to touch it again for six months.
I’ve mentioned before that the hardest part of guide writing is not the effort it takes to be creative and entertaining while being instructive, but doing all that when you don’t want to. And man, doing Saints Row: The Third has been time-consuming. I’ve been having to play it all day, every day, for the last two weeks. Mostly because, in order to make the guide awesome—and it’s getting heavy traffic on IGN, so I needed to make it awesome—I had to take screenshots… which I neglected to do the first time through. So, operating on orders from IGN, I had to play through the game AGAIN as fast as humanly possible, when basically every brain cell was screaming at me to be doing something else. (Zimos is hilarious since he speaks only in Auto-Tune, but you can only hear the same joke so many times.)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not whining about the job. Hell, playing games and writing about them, for a paycheck? Ain’t no better job in the world, guys. But it’s still a job, and I was still shooting people in Saints Row when I really, really, just wanted to be social with my friends or, you know, go out for tacos. So now I’m resenting the game, and I don’t want to think about it for a long, long time.
But it’s done, and it’s become an awesome guide, especially the part where I start channeling my Online Onslaught writing style on IGN, which was fairly surreal. But the next one will interest you guys too, since it’s for WWE ’12! Custom wrestlers are made, modes have been explored, and now I just need to start playing with Road To WrestleMania and get to writin’!
I’ve mentioned before that the hardest part of guide writing is not the effort it takes to be creative and entertaining while being instructive, but doing all that when you don’t want to. And man, doing Saints Row: The Third has been time-consuming. I’ve been having to play it all day, every day, for the last two weeks. Mostly because, in order to make the guide awesome—and it’s getting heavy traffic on IGN, so I needed to make it awesome—I had to take screenshots… which I neglected to do the first time through. So, operating on orders from IGN, I had to play through the game AGAIN as fast as humanly possible, when basically every brain cell was screaming at me to be doing something else. (Zimos is hilarious since he speaks only in Auto-Tune, but you can only hear the same joke so many times.)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not whining about the job. Hell, playing games and writing about them, for a paycheck? Ain’t no better job in the world, guys. But it’s still a job, and I was still shooting people in Saints Row when I really, really, just wanted to be social with my friends or, you know, go out for tacos. So now I’m resenting the game, and I don’t want to think about it for a long, long time.
But it’s done, and it’s become an awesome guide, especially the part where I start channeling my Online Onslaught writing style on IGN, which was fairly surreal. But the next one will interest you guys too, since it’s for WWE ’12! Custom wrestlers are made, modes have been explored, and now I just need to start playing with Road To WrestleMania and get to writin’!
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