Nine out of ten games of DOTA 2 (Hereafter: DOTA) are kind of insubstantial. This is because five of these nine are 'curb stomps' - i.e. your team or the other team simply wins by skill on one part or lack of skill on the other - and it's all over relatively quickly. The other four are less simple - it usually turns into back-and-forth until one big fuckup, then, over.
One in ten games of DOTA - again, approximately - is a beast.
I'm writing this because I just finished a 72-minute (where the average is 40-to-60) game, which was kind of odd, and kind of good, all in one.
Usually, there's kind of a feel to the flow of the game - which I may or may not have written about in the last column - where there will be a tipping point, a sudden shift where one team gains an advantage or gets a bit lucky and presses a bit. This means they will get more gold and experience, etc, and will generally have an easier time of it.
I just spent the first forty or so minutes of the last game getting stepped on.
Seriously.
Bounced around the map, getting the shit kicked out of me, trying to hold our ground against a team with slightly more co-ordination and slightly more early-game advantages than us.
It was getting really disheartening, by this point. There comes a time in a losing team where there's usually a cavalcade of blame - i.e. it has to be someone's fault, so start piling on them. We had someone on our team - someone who's a 'friend' of mine, on Steam - who wasn't having the bestest day every, playing with a character picked for them that they weren't fond of, getting kicked in the face a lot, that sort of thing. So they became kind of the whipping boy for a while, which wasn't fun.
And then, suddenly - or, more accurately, slowly then suddenly - I found myself doing a little bit better. Getting the gold I needed, getting decent items, and, bizarrely, ending up being the highest level on my team through no conscious effort.
Maybe because of this - I don't know, but hopefully - my team started to pick things up, and work at it, and everything slowly, slowly, slowly started to turn around.
We won after 72 minutes, forty of which was having our ass kicked all the way back to the base line, and it was one of those one in ten games that feels glorious.
Plus, playing as the Spectre meant you could irritate the shit out of anyone you wanted every minute and a half, so, hey, that's fun too.
Sunday 8 June 2014
Tuesday 22 April 2014
There's a distant light (#distant light#) / A forest fire burning everything in sight
Let's talk about DOTA 2 (hereafter, pedantry fans, DOTA) a bit more.
Let's talk about a couple of the Heroes - the characters you can choose as your avatar in the fightin' world - a bit more. But mostly, let's talk about the benefits of knowing the people you play with.
Timbersaw is a - and I may be wrong here, but anyway - purple goblin in a mechanised suit with a pathological hatred of plant life brought on by, apparently, trees invading his home and killing everyone there. I'm not making this up; check the link if you think I'm the insane one.
Timbersaw is very good at hitting things and, with a bit of play and a bit of skill, good at flinging himself around the map, either fucking up what's between him and a tree or getting out of trouble quicksmart.
My friend played Timbersaw for the first time this afternoon, and with the use of some guides and a couple of games' worth of experience, had mastered him by this evening. (He's like that.)
Because of this, we ended up in a Ranked Match - i.e. one where winning or losing affects a rating of how good you apparently are - with three other players, who chose characters which, with the right amount of skill (and maybe a little luck) are stone killers in their own right.
Io is a wispy-blue ball of light. (He is also, apparently, "A fundamental of the universe". Again, read the bio if you think I've gone mad.)
Io is a support hero. He has abilities tailored to healing allies and moving around the map with a quickness, along with an offensive spell handy for creep (soldier) control or, with skill, hitting enemy heroes.
I chose Io because I thought, hey, support, why not. Our team was all kinds of tanky - i.e. heroes with high health and damage - so a support might work out well.
I also chose Io because it's kind of, to be honest, fun. You can fling yourself around the map and help people out if you feel like it, and maybe cause some damage here and there - and if you survive long enough, you become a force to be reckoned with.
Eventually.
I ended up trying to support, getting my ass handed to me, and wandering off to basically do my own thing for a while to try to build up strength. I walked the earth, like Caine in Kung Fu, wandering around the jungles, killing neutral creeps (little camps of creatures) and making gold and buying items, raising my strength, dreaming of one day being useful to my team.
My team which, fact fans, basically won the game without me. While I was farming to try and get useful, they went and killed the enemies, and worked their way into the base, and basically just won.
Every now and then, I can sense what my friend is thinking.
This time, I could sense he was thinking "Will you just fucking help". By this point the game was knocking on an hour in play time, which is kind of silly. They were holding our team back, and I was just floating around the map, doing my thing, because whenever I tried to help - seriously, whenever - I got badly, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked up.
So this is dedicated to the patience of my Timbersaw-playing friend, for putting up with my inability to play support properly.
Let's talk about a couple of the Heroes - the characters you can choose as your avatar in the fightin' world - a bit more. But mostly, let's talk about the benefits of knowing the people you play with.
Timbersaw is a - and I may be wrong here, but anyway - purple goblin in a mechanised suit with a pathological hatred of plant life brought on by, apparently, trees invading his home and killing everyone there. I'm not making this up; check the link if you think I'm the insane one.
Timbersaw is very good at hitting things and, with a bit of play and a bit of skill, good at flinging himself around the map, either fucking up what's between him and a tree or getting out of trouble quicksmart.
My friend played Timbersaw for the first time this afternoon, and with the use of some guides and a couple of games' worth of experience, had mastered him by this evening. (He's like that.)
Because of this, we ended up in a Ranked Match - i.e. one where winning or losing affects a rating of how good you apparently are - with three other players, who chose characters which, with the right amount of skill (and maybe a little luck) are stone killers in their own right.
Io is a wispy-blue ball of light. (He is also, apparently, "A fundamental of the universe". Again, read the bio if you think I've gone mad.)
Io is a support hero. He has abilities tailored to healing allies and moving around the map with a quickness, along with an offensive spell handy for creep (soldier) control or, with skill, hitting enemy heroes.
I chose Io because I thought, hey, support, why not. Our team was all kinds of tanky - i.e. heroes with high health and damage - so a support might work out well.
I also chose Io because it's kind of, to be honest, fun. You can fling yourself around the map and help people out if you feel like it, and maybe cause some damage here and there - and if you survive long enough, you become a force to be reckoned with.
Eventually.
I ended up trying to support, getting my ass handed to me, and wandering off to basically do my own thing for a while to try to build up strength. I walked the earth, like Caine in Kung Fu, wandering around the jungles, killing neutral creeps (little camps of creatures) and making gold and buying items, raising my strength, dreaming of one day being useful to my team.
My team which, fact fans, basically won the game without me. While I was farming to try and get useful, they went and killed the enemies, and worked their way into the base, and basically just won.
Every now and then, I can sense what my friend is thinking.
This time, I could sense he was thinking "Will you just fucking help". By this point the game was knocking on an hour in play time, which is kind of silly. They were holding our team back, and I was just floating around the map, doing my thing, because whenever I tried to help - seriously, whenever - I got badly, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked up.
So this is dedicated to the patience of my Timbersaw-playing friend, for putting up with my inability to play support properly.
RIKI NOOB HERO LOL
I've been playing way too much DOTA 2 recently.
Way, way too much.
There comes a point in games for me where I've learnt the rules back-to-front, and can kind of almost see the workings going on behind the game engine, and can kind of predict things. This manifests itself as a very rigid structural thinking, i.e. "To win, I have to go from this step to this step to this step and if anything gets in the way I'll lose".
I first noticed this with the Civilization series. In III and IV there was this massively specific combination of world wonders to build, along with needing various resources and city-building spots and if they weren't perfect - perfect - then I had may as well give up playing there and then. In V this manifested similarly, but there was also the problem of - after a certain number of hours of aggregate gameplay - reaching a certain point and just quitting because, well, why continue?
DOTA is slightly different. And it intrigues me, not just because someone in one game described it as "the most toxic game on the internet".
Don't get me wrong. It fucking is. It's crazy on there. I can only imagine what League of Legends is like, and I'll go on imagining, because DOTA is all the toxicity I can take at the moment, thank you very much, kind sir.
It's what I have tagged in my head as Left 4 Dead symptom, although it's probably been noticeable in other games other time, and it comes from putting a group of people together and expecting them to work in harmony or unison.
Or, in the case of DOTA, in Russian.
But anyway.
So you have five people on your team, who you will never meet, or even likely speak to, again. And you have a simple goal; level up, get money, break the enemy Towers and then raze their Ancient across three lanes. In each lane, waves of disposable 'creeps' - little soldiers, mostly melee fighters but also some ranged - spawn at regular intervals and fight to the death, thereby highlighting the inherent futility of war, or somesuch. Enemy creeps dying near you means experience, experience means levels and new skills, etcetera, because if you've played any kind of RPG you know the dance steps for that one. Getting the last hit on creeps gets you cash, which buys you items, which help you in various ways.
Then there's the opposing team who, naturally, you have to try to kill at every opportunity.
And this is where I've started to see the scratching below the surface, because there are times when, no matter what you do, it will all start to go horribly wrong. It can be as simple as someone getting killed once or twice too early in the game, which leads to someone else having a bit of extra cash to upgrade their items, which makes them a little better, and then it all snowballs from there somewhat.
And then people start complaining like you wouldn't believe.
Die too early or accidentally? NOOB FEEDER.
Don't get the kill in when you should? NUB HERO.
Run off instead of suicidally attacking every hero in their team while your team slumbers in the grave, ready to respawn?
NOOB NOOB NOOB.
Maybe one in ten matches is an actual contest of skill between equally-balanced teams, that will go more than forty minutes and won't end in tears, recriminations and sweet, sweet name-calling.
And yet it's addictive. Because that flow of the game - the way you can sense how things are going - is powerful, in a way, because you want to try to change it, to make the Great Energy Magnet flow your way, and your team's way.
And then one of your team throws themselves suicidally towards the enemy repeatedly, giving them more experience and points, because they're obviously a FILTHY NOOB CASUAL, and...
Fun, though. Addictive, too. But still...
Way, way too much.
There comes a point in games for me where I've learnt the rules back-to-front, and can kind of almost see the workings going on behind the game engine, and can kind of predict things. This manifests itself as a very rigid structural thinking, i.e. "To win, I have to go from this step to this step to this step and if anything gets in the way I'll lose".
I first noticed this with the Civilization series. In III and IV there was this massively specific combination of world wonders to build, along with needing various resources and city-building spots and if they weren't perfect - perfect - then I had may as well give up playing there and then. In V this manifested similarly, but there was also the problem of - after a certain number of hours of aggregate gameplay - reaching a certain point and just quitting because, well, why continue?
DOTA is slightly different. And it intrigues me, not just because someone in one game described it as "the most toxic game on the internet".
Don't get me wrong. It fucking is. It's crazy on there. I can only imagine what League of Legends is like, and I'll go on imagining, because DOTA is all the toxicity I can take at the moment, thank you very much, kind sir.
It's what I have tagged in my head as Left 4 Dead symptom, although it's probably been noticeable in other games other time, and it comes from putting a group of people together and expecting them to work in harmony or unison.
Or, in the case of DOTA, in Russian.
But anyway.
So you have five people on your team, who you will never meet, or even likely speak to, again. And you have a simple goal; level up, get money, break the enemy Towers and then raze their Ancient across three lanes. In each lane, waves of disposable 'creeps' - little soldiers, mostly melee fighters but also some ranged - spawn at regular intervals and fight to the death, thereby highlighting the inherent futility of war, or somesuch. Enemy creeps dying near you means experience, experience means levels and new skills, etcetera, because if you've played any kind of RPG you know the dance steps for that one. Getting the last hit on creeps gets you cash, which buys you items, which help you in various ways.
Then there's the opposing team who, naturally, you have to try to kill at every opportunity.
And this is where I've started to see the scratching below the surface, because there are times when, no matter what you do, it will all start to go horribly wrong. It can be as simple as someone getting killed once or twice too early in the game, which leads to someone else having a bit of extra cash to upgrade their items, which makes them a little better, and then it all snowballs from there somewhat.
And then people start complaining like you wouldn't believe.
Die too early or accidentally? NOOB FEEDER.
Don't get the kill in when you should? NUB HERO.
Run off instead of suicidally attacking every hero in their team while your team slumbers in the grave, ready to respawn?
NOOB NOOB NOOB.
Maybe one in ten matches is an actual contest of skill between equally-balanced teams, that will go more than forty minutes and won't end in tears, recriminations and sweet, sweet name-calling.
And yet it's addictive. Because that flow of the game - the way you can sense how things are going - is powerful, in a way, because you want to try to change it, to make the Great Energy Magnet flow your way, and your team's way.
And then one of your team throws themselves suicidally towards the enemy repeatedly, giving them more experience and points, because they're obviously a FILTHY NOOB CASUAL, and...
Fun, though. Addictive, too. But still...
Thursday 18 July 2013
Keying into the Addiction Centre
Things got a little silly with the Steam Trading Cards last night.
The thing is; Steam Trading Cards are de facto silly, right out of the (virtual) box.
For the uninitiated - lucky you - Steam is an online store that allows you to buy and download games directly to your computer. Thanks to Steam, I haven't actually bought a game physically for, I would say, at least four years.
This is fine and dandy; Steam provides a good service, keeps your games patched and up-to-date and, of course, there's the Summer Sale.
The Trading Cards, however, seem a little too odd.
Certain games allow for Card Drops, wherein if you play for a certain amount of time you'll receive a trading card. These cards form sets, and you can either sell them - for what seems to be a uniform almost 10p per card - or collect them to make a set. If you complete a set, you get three rewards; a custom emoticon for chat, a background for your profile and, currently, a trading card for the Summer Sale set.
You also get Experience Points for your profile, which increase your Steam Level.
Now, you can never get enough cards from card drops to finish a set. So you have the choice; either you can buy them from the community marketplace, or trade for them.
Last night, I got suckered in. I blame Reus for blasting my addiction centres right open; but I ended up completing the Summer Sale badge twice, the Civilization 5 badge three times and even...
... Gasp...
Made the schoolboy error of completing the Civilization 5 Foil Card set.
(Foil Cards are like normal cards, just at about 50p instead of 10p.)
So I levelled up a few times, and now have badges and a thing I can put on my profile page to make it look more unique and a few custom emoticons and backgrounds and...
It's entirely pointless. It's randomly generated flair, as in:
Oh, it was fun at the time. But I spent money on that that could have been spent on, say, Food. Even, maybe, given the sale, Games.
My profile does look kind of shiny now, though...
The thing is; Steam Trading Cards are de facto silly, right out of the (virtual) box.
For the uninitiated - lucky you - Steam is an online store that allows you to buy and download games directly to your computer. Thanks to Steam, I haven't actually bought a game physically for, I would say, at least four years.
This is fine and dandy; Steam provides a good service, keeps your games patched and up-to-date and, of course, there's the Summer Sale.
The Trading Cards, however, seem a little too odd.
Certain games allow for Card Drops, wherein if you play for a certain amount of time you'll receive a trading card. These cards form sets, and you can either sell them - for what seems to be a uniform almost 10p per card - or collect them to make a set. If you complete a set, you get three rewards; a custom emoticon for chat, a background for your profile and, currently, a trading card for the Summer Sale set.
You also get Experience Points for your profile, which increase your Steam Level.
Now, you can never get enough cards from card drops to finish a set. So you have the choice; either you can buy them from the community marketplace, or trade for them.
Last night, I got suckered in. I blame Reus for blasting my addiction centres right open; but I ended up completing the Summer Sale badge twice, the Civilization 5 badge three times and even...
... Gasp...
Made the schoolboy error of completing the Civilization 5 Foil Card set.
(Foil Cards are like normal cards, just at about 50p instead of 10p.)
So I levelled up a few times, and now have badges and a thing I can put on my profile page to make it look more unique and a few custom emoticons and backgrounds and...
It's entirely pointless. It's randomly generated flair, as in:
Oh, it was fun at the time. But I spent money on that that could have been spent on, say, Food. Even, maybe, given the sale, Games.
My profile does look kind of shiny now, though...
The Swamp Giant Is Under Attack
Thanks to that mystical unicorn of retail, the Steam Summer Sale, I picked up Reus a couple of days ago.
It is simultaneously one of the most addictive games and one of the most frustrating experiences I've had in gaming in recent years.
Quick sidebar, though; we're, what, five days into the Summer Sale? I've yet to see anything that really makes me say "Oh, let me spend money I don't have on that because it's slightly cheaper! Please!"
Maybe they're saving up big deals and bargains for later.
Anyway.
Reus is very addictive because, at the core, it's a resource management game. You use your four gods to place different types of tiles and then place resources to attract humans who, as humans will do, build villages. As these villages grow, they start projects which, if completed, produce ambassadors you can then use to upgrade your giants' abilities, and they can then go back and upgrade the resources, in theory.
So it's a slow uptick uptick uptick of resources from not great up to splendiferous, and the projects get more and more difficult along the way but, in theory, the rewards get a little better, too.
You may notice the repetition of in theory. This is because while the resource management side is fun, the resource upgrades are only unlocked if you complete a certain number of achievements - which are actually 'unlocks' in the game, no less - which give you access to the next tier.
This is fine in principle, I guess, but it means you have to go back and play through again and again and meet certain arbitrary, difficult or just annoying victory conditions in order to make the game a more rounded experience. Currently I have to create a village with six 'war markers', which means that the village has to be filled with cantankerous assholes who will declare war on, well, anybody, and win, and carry home the war marker. This isn't necessarily a problem - because the humans in Reus are cantankerous assholes anyway- but that village, as far as I understand it, then has to survive until the end of game time.
Given that to get a village up to the level that would require you'd probably have to play the 120-minute mode, this means that once they're all up and cantankerous you then have to either protect the warmongering idiots or stop them from going to war by placing either things that provoke Awe or animals that create Danger. However, after six victories, I can't really see a village suddenly backing down in the face of bears.
So I've played it for... Way too long, given that I only bought it a few days ago, and I've enjoyed the experience, but the Mandatory Replay aspect is really annoying. The only other thing I can think of is juking the system by creating a world, saving it at a certain point then going back and altering aspects to provoke the outcomes the Unlocks need, but that seems a bit... silly.
The sad thing - well, slightly sad - is that I do want to see the higher-level outcomes, and build the absolutely massive requirement-having buildings that I'm guessing you can only build with the highest level Unlocks. But the prospect of playing through, probably, at least another six hours of world-building to satisfy the absurdly specific requirements just seems like muss, fuss and bother right now.
It is simultaneously one of the most addictive games and one of the most frustrating experiences I've had in gaming in recent years.
Quick sidebar, though; we're, what, five days into the Summer Sale? I've yet to see anything that really makes me say "Oh, let me spend money I don't have on that because it's slightly cheaper! Please!"
Maybe they're saving up big deals and bargains for later.
Anyway.
Reus is very addictive because, at the core, it's a resource management game. You use your four gods to place different types of tiles and then place resources to attract humans who, as humans will do, build villages. As these villages grow, they start projects which, if completed, produce ambassadors you can then use to upgrade your giants' abilities, and they can then go back and upgrade the resources, in theory.
So it's a slow uptick uptick uptick of resources from not great up to splendiferous, and the projects get more and more difficult along the way but, in theory, the rewards get a little better, too.
You may notice the repetition of in theory. This is because while the resource management side is fun, the resource upgrades are only unlocked if you complete a certain number of achievements - which are actually 'unlocks' in the game, no less - which give you access to the next tier.
This is fine in principle, I guess, but it means you have to go back and play through again and again and meet certain arbitrary, difficult or just annoying victory conditions in order to make the game a more rounded experience. Currently I have to create a village with six 'war markers', which means that the village has to be filled with cantankerous assholes who will declare war on, well, anybody, and win, and carry home the war marker. This isn't necessarily a problem - because the humans in Reus are cantankerous assholes anyway- but that village, as far as I understand it, then has to survive until the end of game time.
Given that to get a village up to the level that would require you'd probably have to play the 120-minute mode, this means that once they're all up and cantankerous you then have to either protect the warmongering idiots or stop them from going to war by placing either things that provoke Awe or animals that create Danger. However, after six victories, I can't really see a village suddenly backing down in the face of bears.
So I've played it for... Way too long, given that I only bought it a few days ago, and I've enjoyed the experience, but the Mandatory Replay aspect is really annoying. The only other thing I can think of is juking the system by creating a world, saving it at a certain point then going back and altering aspects to provoke the outcomes the Unlocks need, but that seems a bit... silly.
The sad thing - well, slightly sad - is that I do want to see the higher-level outcomes, and build the absolutely massive requirement-having buildings that I'm guessing you can only build with the highest level Unlocks. But the prospect of playing through, probably, at least another six hours of world-building to satisfy the absurdly specific requirements just seems like muss, fuss and bother right now.
Thursday 20 June 2013
"I feel like I'm in an Eastern European Creche"
According to Steam, I've played Team Fortress 2 for one hundred and thirty-eight hours.
Imagine what you could do with that time. Build something, do something for someone, be creative, rescue kittens from trees; one hundred and thirty-eight hours is a lot of kittens.
This is the price of being a gamer, I think.
Now, don't get me wrong - that 138 hours is spread over a period of around four years, so it comes out as less than an hour a week on average - although considering that the game was uninstalled for a while there (and I only re-installed it recently because of the Steam Trading Cards hullabaloo) there's some wonky averaging going on.
I blow hot and cold when it comes to playing TF2; it tends to be either an intensely satisfying quick-play experience, or a massively frustrating fuckaround. The first of these instances comes about when you have, say, half an hour or even - gasp - a full hour to play, and you can just tool around, doing the whole boombangabang boombangabang (ooh what you do to me) thing.
The second half tends to arise from team misbalancing, which is always slightly entertaining if you're on the overpowered end of the wonk, but if you're wonky on the underpowered team you may as well stand on top of a building hitting (g) until someone shoots you.
This article's heading comes from a quote from yesterday's playing time. I have recently joined the 1990s by getting a headset with a microphone - soon, no doubt, I'll be getting really into Kazaa and Darude - and while the primary usage for this has been using Skype - because, hey, I'm all about the decade-old VOIP software - I've discovered, too, that you can talk to people on TF2 while you're playing.
The primary motivation for doing this is to annoy the friend I play with.
TF2 players are an interesting bunch, because it's very rare you find a server where people are actually using the voice-chat functionality with any kind of regularity, mainly because people tend to not want their a-killing and a-capturing spoiled by listening to random voices from the ether a-chattering.
Yesterday, however, we ended up on a server where a couple of people were back-and-forthing, and I discovered - what with my new technology and everything - that I could interject.
Now, here's a crucial tip if you plan on doing this yourself; if you talk, don't look at the replies people type, and vice-versa. It's usually insults. Maybe one in ten is someone engaging with what people are saying, but that only makes it more confusing.
Of course, people talking encourages more people talking, until suddenly it's just a humble-jumble of glottlestops and vowel sounds which, as my friend said, 'must be what going mad feels like'.
Or, as an unremembered other player typed, 'like being in an Eastern European creche' (as two of the other 'voice contributors' had wild and crazy accents).
But TF2 continues to be a source of amusement, if an occasionally frustrating one. Except now I can talk.
Tremble, world.
Imagine what you could do with that time. Build something, do something for someone, be creative, rescue kittens from trees; one hundred and thirty-eight hours is a lot of kittens.
This is the price of being a gamer, I think.
Now, don't get me wrong - that 138 hours is spread over a period of around four years, so it comes out as less than an hour a week on average - although considering that the game was uninstalled for a while there (and I only re-installed it recently because of the Steam Trading Cards hullabaloo) there's some wonky averaging going on.
I blow hot and cold when it comes to playing TF2; it tends to be either an intensely satisfying quick-play experience, or a massively frustrating fuckaround. The first of these instances comes about when you have, say, half an hour or even - gasp - a full hour to play, and you can just tool around, doing the whole boombangabang boombangabang (ooh what you do to me) thing.
The second half tends to arise from team misbalancing, which is always slightly entertaining if you're on the overpowered end of the wonk, but if you're wonky on the underpowered team you may as well stand on top of a building hitting (g) until someone shoots you.
This article's heading comes from a quote from yesterday's playing time. I have recently joined the 1990s by getting a headset with a microphone - soon, no doubt, I'll be getting really into Kazaa and Darude - and while the primary usage for this has been using Skype - because, hey, I'm all about the decade-old VOIP software - I've discovered, too, that you can talk to people on TF2 while you're playing.
The primary motivation for doing this is to annoy the friend I play with.
TF2 players are an interesting bunch, because it's very rare you find a server where people are actually using the voice-chat functionality with any kind of regularity, mainly because people tend to not want their a-killing and a-capturing spoiled by listening to random voices from the ether a-chattering.
Yesterday, however, we ended up on a server where a couple of people were back-and-forthing, and I discovered - what with my new technology and everything - that I could interject.
Now, here's a crucial tip if you plan on doing this yourself; if you talk, don't look at the replies people type, and vice-versa. It's usually insults. Maybe one in ten is someone engaging with what people are saying, but that only makes it more confusing.
Of course, people talking encourages more people talking, until suddenly it's just a humble-jumble of glottlestops and vowel sounds which, as my friend said, 'must be what going mad feels like'.
Or, as an unremembered other player typed, 'like being in an Eastern European creche' (as two of the other 'voice contributors' had wild and crazy accents).
But TF2 continues to be a source of amusement, if an occasionally frustrating one. Except now I can talk.
Tremble, world.
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
I've never tried addictive narcotics. Boring, I know.
But at the moment I kind of feel like a cold-turkey withdrawal-symptom feeling person being genially taunted.
Which is why I'm glad I put some money into the Glitch soundtrack.
I miss Glitch. I know I'm not alone in this - the Facebook group is comforting, in that way - and we have, apparently, just passed the six-month 'anniversary' of the decommissioning of that exotic online experience.
When along come updates from the soundtrack, which kind of bring it all back in one handy-dandy sledgehammer between the eyes, except that it's a sledgehammer between the eyes that makes me smile.
To adopt the Julius Caesar model of public address; I come to bury Glitch, not to praise it.
This is not because praise is unwarranted, or unnecessary, or unneeded, because it would be all of those things. Better minds than mine eloquently express their grief about it regularly. And although Glitch was a singular experience - even if it was absolutely preposterous - it doesn't need any more praise, because the giants alone know I've already done my purple-prose emotional outburst on this blog alone back from the end of days.
But when I say 'bury', I should clarify; all I mean is that I think it's a shame to have this blog title registered and not to be using it, so I'm going to be writing about videah gamez here for a while.
And every now and then, I think, I'll talk about Glitch, too, because, as they say, what is not forgotten is never truly lost, don'tcha know.
But at the moment I kind of feel like a cold-turkey withdrawal-symptom feeling person being genially taunted.
Which is why I'm glad I put some money into the Glitch soundtrack.
I miss Glitch. I know I'm not alone in this - the Facebook group is comforting, in that way - and we have, apparently, just passed the six-month 'anniversary' of the decommissioning of that exotic online experience.
When along come updates from the soundtrack, which kind of bring it all back in one handy-dandy sledgehammer between the eyes, except that it's a sledgehammer between the eyes that makes me smile.
To adopt the Julius Caesar model of public address; I come to bury Glitch, not to praise it.
This is not because praise is unwarranted, or unnecessary, or unneeded, because it would be all of those things. Better minds than mine eloquently express their grief about it regularly. And although Glitch was a singular experience - even if it was absolutely preposterous - it doesn't need any more praise, because the giants alone know I've already done my purple-prose emotional outburst on this blog alone back from the end of days.
But when I say 'bury', I should clarify; all I mean is that I think it's a shame to have this blog title registered and not to be using it, so I'm going to be writing about videah gamez here for a while.
And every now and then, I think, I'll talk about Glitch, too, because, as they say, what is not forgotten is never truly lost, don'tcha know.
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