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 :)