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.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Grandma meets Big Daddy

I picked up a copy of BioShock Tuesday afternoon for Grandma, much to the ire of the poor soul behind me in line who heard the clerk say the depressingly cheerful phrase "you got the last one!" to that grinning jackass in front of him. She immediately dived into the thing (no pun intended) cranking the exquisite audio to a point where I now hear the preemptive whistling sound of an approaching sentry bot in my sleep.

From the start, it became clear to Grandma that 2K Games had read her mind to search for all her necessary components:

1. A clear map
2. Subtitles
3. Frequent health and ammo pickups
4. Terrifying fucking enemies
5. Hilarious fucking enemies
6. Evil children
7. Potato Chips

Now, I've been working quite a lot lately and haven't found the time to play the game myself- but according to Grandma one can write an entire GameFAQs-like walkthrough by typing two little words:

PRESS "RIGHT"

The game has a handy dandy little 'goal tips' feature that tells you exactly what you need to do. Prima Games is going to have to find a hell of a lot of artwork to fill the rest of the 105 pages, but essentially- that's all you need to know! Getting through it is another story. It's not just some simple tour through of a beautiful environment; it's goddamn challenging. I've heard Grandma say many things some folks wouldn't expect their grandmothers to say, so I'm pretty much immune to surprise and awe anymore.

That was until this morning when she told me "goddammit, I can't hack worth SHIT."

It's just not a sentence that suited Grandma. If she ever uses "pwned" or "l33t" in casual conversation I may have to rethink things a bit.

Anyway! She's playing BioShock and from the looks of things, she'll be playing it for awhile.

Now on to the postcards: Here are two of our favorites right now.

First up is from Gamer Named Tim who sent Grandma an awesome, early welcome into the BioShock realm. This one was somewhat curious to our postman as well, but an arm-drill usually raises eyebrows with federal employees these days.


Second is from miltownkid, who sent Grandma a little somethin' somethin' rights about here:
Why is this particular card so awesome? Because we all get to fucking see the thing get sent! Right here:



You guys are alright :)

Now some folks were asking us about deadlines for the giveaway and such so here we go: The deadline for postcards is September 21st, 2007. That's closer than you think, so send them right away! Yes, the drawing is completely open to international readers so you can send a card too. The winner gets a valid card worth 12 months of Xbox Live Gold. Rock on. We'll make a video of Grandma randomly choosing the winning postcard at the end of the contest, and we're posting the coolest postcards as they come in each week. You can put whatever the hell you want on the card, or nothing at all for that matter, as long as it has your name and address so we know where to send the Xbox Live goodness.

If you want to send her a postcard, send it to:

One Year Xbox Live Gold Subscription Giveaway Thing
c/o Barbara St. Hilaire (aka Old Grandma Hardcore)
PO Box 553
Mantua, OH 44255


Game on!

13 Comments:

  • At 5:20 AM, Blogger Gamer Named Tim said…

    My postcard got into a blog post! Yay! Ask Grandma if she's trying the hacking only on safes. Safes are the toughest things to hack (Well, at least for the first 3-6 hours of the game... I haven't got to the end yet, so I can't say for sure), so if she's only trying to tackle those, yeah, they're kind of a bitch. A good way to tell how hard a hack is going to be is by looking at the "buyout" price. If it's closer to $100 than it is to $1 then, yeah that's gonna be hard. Also, as you progress, you get "Tonics" that allow you to slow down the water flow and other cool shit while hacking.

    I hope that helped, and until next time...

    Game On!

     
  • At 7:07 AM, Blogger Jess said…

    We picked up Bioshock too and yeah, it's pretty sick!

     
  • At 7:30 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I'm so glad to hear that BioShock is much better than the other game you recently played (The Darkness, wasn't it?) Those postcards are awesome and if I had XBox Live, I'd enter the competition for sure. As it is, I'll just have to keep on sending letters and stuff for the hell of it. :-)
    Game on!
    Jen (dontgiveahoot)

     
  • At 8:45 AM, Blogger Klopzi said…

    I'm loving BioShock as well, but here's a question:

    Do you think the game's been made too easy when there is no consequence for dying?

    Last night, I managed to take out five Big Daddies and I managed to die about 30 times in the process. However, other than the tedium of retracing my steps back to the place of my demise, there were no penalties incurred.

    I love the fact that I don't have to try all that hard to beat the game, but I was wondering what a hardcore gamer like Grandma thinks about this.

     
  • At 9:53 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Bioshock sounds awesome. Wasn't it supposed to come out on the PS3 at one point? Or is that just my imagination?

     
  • At 9:58 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Yeah, Bioshock kicks ass. I just beat Peach Wilkins and went to Arcadia, and I destroyed about 5 Big Daddies, harvesting Little Sisters as I go. The map is really really good, but if you want to find all the Audio Diaries, and I am looking for them all, it is not much help, of course, but then I explore every nook and cranny, and search every corpse.

    The Reserach Camera is nice, and I love snapping photos of stuff before I kill it. I have yet to invent something, but I am close. I plan on picking up Two Worlds soon, and I am also playing Persona 3, but Bioshock is my primary obsession at the moment.

     
  • At 8:16 PM, Blogger Sarah said…

    BioShock fuck yeah! Glad grandma got a copy and love her list of favorites.

    I only got to play BioShock for a few days before I had to come up to Seattle for PAX today. And on the train trip I thought "I miss BioShock."

    Provide more updates on grandma's progress with BioShock! Also has she heard about the new Growlanser game being announced?

     
  • At 5:35 PM, Blogger Unknown said…

    I had no idea BioShock was out until I went to your blog and saw it saying you were playing. The second I saw this blog I ran to the video store and surprisingly, they had almost 20 copies of this game! So I picked one up and brought it home. But I got sidetracked for 3 days and never got around to playing it. I just started playing it and I can't stop. If I don't beat it, I'm probably gunna buy it. Also, I heard there was like 3 ending. Is this true? If so, I will buy it even if I beat it once :D Glad to hear you like BioShock!

    Game on! (always wanted to say that)

     
  • At 9:30 AM, Blogger pika23 said…

    Yeah, as soon as i get a 360, im gettin Bioshock as well...it seems awesome!

    I hope Grandma is feeling better...apparently rotator cuff injuries are quite common among the older generations..my grandma is 73 and hers is out of whack as we speak...its like its fused or something..i dunno. Anywho..keep on going grandma...we all love ya!

     
  • At 12:01 PM, Blogger Unknown said…

    The card made it! That's FRESH! That's like the first thing I've mailed in... 10 years? Man, I been on the LA trip and have barely gotten internet access let alone play Bioshock. I can't WAIT to give a Big Daddy the dark side of my pimp hand.

    GAME ON!

     
  • At 8:59 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Gamers from Poland loves OGHC !

    GAME ON GRANDMA!!

     
  • At 1:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Thanks for this nice post.

     
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