Old Grandma Hardcore

This blog is the chronicle of my experiences with Grandma, the video-game playing queen of her age-bracket and weight class. She will beat any PS2, XBox, GameCube, etc., console game put in front of her, just like she always has. These are her stories. She is absolutely real. She lives in Cleveland.

Friday, October 21, 2005

God Damn You Games Industry, God Damn You To Hell

The industry does this to us almost every year. Shadow of Colossus is just barely out of Grandma's reach, we could drive down to Aurora right now and pick up a copy, but she has five games sitting here she wants to finish first. It is as though the rest of the world is at a different speed than we can handle! She's performing beautifully in Growlanser Generations and enjoying ever hour in front of her PS2. She's getting into The Suffering: Ties That Bind much more than I expected. Sly Cooper 3, complete with 3D glasses, has been completed by Mom and the kids, and awaits her approval. We bought Beyond Good And Evil anticipating a dry spell before November, but alas... as Modest Mouse says, "the good times are killing me." Grandma is gaming hard and I am trying to keep up!

Grandma is taking on a different character in her RPG adventures in Growlanser Generations. She is more precise and less brutal in her 10 hour a day campaigns. She still gets frustrated, she still curses the hand that fed her this glorious game every time her character dies (Vic Ireland, if you have experienced any strange pains in your legs recently it is because of voodoo. Grandma is sorry. It's okay now, though, she got past that boss last night, so it should start to heal.) It is the many facets of Grandma's character that make the woman so much fun to watch.

Victor Hugo once wrote:

"It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eye we should distinctly see this strange fact that each individual of the human species corresponds to some one of the species of the animal creation; and we should clearly recognize the truth, hardly perceived by thinkers, that, from the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are in man, and that each of them is in a man; sometimes even, several of them at a time. Animals are nothing but the forms of our virtues and vices, wandering before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls."

Case in point, my Grandma:

The Wolf - "No, no no- I want ...this guy to go to the south of these guys, then I can strike the fucker simultaneously. You pick off the weaker ones with magic and get it over with."

The Eagle - "Ahh..... I see you over there you sneaky bastard....I'll just....shoot you...with an arrow...."

The Oxen - "Hey! Tim! Guess what I did? [...what? what did you do?] I leved this dude up to 25, man. He's way beyond everything I'm facing so far."

The Vulture - "I don't even need this fucking ring, but I'm going to take it anyway. He's DEAD it's not like I feel bad about it. Fuck 'em."

The Poodle - "DIE BITCH!!! Just DIE already!!"


I get exhausted just watching her.

The Warriors is on Grandma's list, as is Shadow of Colossus and others; she's going to shelp me along with her on an exodus to Wal-Mart to see the XBox 360 later. I asked her if she was going to reserve one. "I can't afford it, there is no way I can afford it yet. I'll get one eventually, it will take some time. Watch, I'll probably get one right when the Revolution or the PS3 comes out and just get MORE aggravated!" I'm going to try to start saving so I can help her get it. "We'll see" is an answer most kids dread for the false hope in invokes, but for Grandma, that's as good an answer as any right now.

Game industry: slow down!! This is hard :)

11 Comments:

  • At 1:37 PM, Blogger Brinstar said…

    Christmas time is nearing as well, so it's only going to get worse! I wish the industry would spread out their releases throughout the year instead of throwing half a dozen play-worthy titles in the fourth quarter.

     
  • At 2:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    too many games, so little time :s

     
  • At 2:28 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Tim, what book is the Victor Hugo quote from? I thought I've read everything by Hugo but I don't remember that one.

     
  • At 2:36 PM, Blogger CtrlAltDelete said…

    anon-

    It's from Les Miserables, the unabridged version translated in English, so it may not have been in the edition you've read.

    I think it may also be found in the large version provided by the Project Gutenberg, but I'm not sure.

     
  • At 3:36 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    God, do I know what you mean. I've resolved to beat every Ratchet & Clank game before moving on to the sequel, and I have not even taken down the FIRST yet. I have Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Sly 2, Jade Empire, and Psychonauts staring at me expectantly. I'm borrowing Kingdom Hearts from a friend. I've got a World of Warcraft guild to maintain, and a friend just gave me her copy of Dragon Warrior VII (although I may quit that one soon, it just drags ON and ON and literally it was FOUR HOURS of just dicking around until the first goddammed battle, I shit you not). But yeah. I have not even gotten to PLAY half of the games I got for Christmas! AAAIGH!

    Although, I suppose too many is better than too few. Although with too few I suppose as well that I could actually get around to unlocking more hardcore things... ::sigh:: Ah, well. Such is the curse of our times. ::grin:: ::laugh::

    Take care, be well, GAME ON!

    -A!

     
  • At 4:10 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I totally agree, I always hear about the low time when no good games come out every year but thats the time to go back and get all the games you couldn't afford or where already into a game when it came out.

    The beauty in this is you can usually get the games cheaper months later.

    I for one feel I have about 2 or 3 weeks to beat “Shadow of the Colossus” before "GUN" comes out. I need to stop my day job to catch up.

     
  • At 4:46 PM, Blogger CtrlAltDelete said…

    GUN! Yes! We've been looking forward to that one!

    And King Kong!! The demos look FANTASTIC.

     
  • At 6:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I've got my eye on Worms 4: Mayhem for mi husbandito, and yes, Worms Forts sucked. I don't blame the dev for it, though: it was rushed out the door before it was ready due to Acclaim "slipping off the hook" (so to speak) before the game was finished, then another publisher coming along, snapping up the IP, and rushing the game into completion. Such is often the case in this industry.

    I see screenshots of worms with tams and tartan in Worms 4. This is heartening to me. ::grin::

    GAME ON!

    -A!

     
  • At 4:37 PM, Blogger Collin said…

    "The Poodle" heheheheheh!

     
  • At 10:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Why don't you set up a pay pal account and get people who read you blog to buy Grandma a Xbox 360?

     
  • At 3:27 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    The holidays areCheap Diablo 3 items can be approaching also, so it will be merely getting a whole lot worse! I wish the market would likely distributed the emits throughout the year as an alternative to putting half a dozen kaufen wow goldplay-worthy headings from the next one fourth.

     

Post a Comment

<< Home