fembotbeck

For less than the price of a cup of coffee, you can make a crazy Japanese man's dream come true. 
 
I <3 Swery so much.  He's worth a half-caf, no foam, skinny, vanilla latte to me.

Cheerwine is the only (seriously) thing I miss about NC.

Aww man, I've already bought *and* played it.  But I don't regret paying full price.  It was very much worth it.

"That's how the world works, Becks.  Things glow when you can interact with them."
 
It is summertime in the Valley of the Sun.  This now being the fifth year I have spent in part or in whole in the desert, I have acclimated to the point that I now reach for a sweater when the thermometer dips to 88 degrees Fahrenheit.  Those blessedly cool days are far away though, and in an effort to keep this month's electric bill below $300 for our little apartment, my roommate has moved his computer into our living/dining room, on the opposite side of the sofa from my "office".
 
As I write this, it is Sunday morning, and I am at work.  Across the room, Raven the Wonder Roommate is lugubriously working his way through some previously unattempted FPS (I am going to assume it is FarCry 2 because he keeps complaining that he is out of malaria medication).  When I turned around to see exactly what he was whinging about, he was in the process of entering a ramshackle hovel where a friendly NPC was seated on what can only be described from across the room as a tanning bed.
 
"What are you talking about?" Raven asked in that familiar, "My roommate is a girl and clearly cannot be allowed to play games" tone.
"The dude you were just talking to.  Why is he sitting on a tanning bed?"
"That's a cot."
"Then why is it glowing?  I assume it's not radioactive."
"That's how the world works, Becks," He explained.  "Things glow when you can interact with them."
 
And that's when it hit me.  In the world of gaming, instinct don't mean shit, yo.  If the cot didn't radiate, you'd possibly never realize you could use it to rest.  If there weren't one shiny lever in a row of rusted ones, you'd possibly not think to pull any of them.  If not for a lamp hanging above that particular door, or a bell that goes 'ding' when there's something to look at or a friendly NPC leading you to one particular spot, how would you ever solve the puzzle before you?
 
Now, my first reaction is to point an accusatory finger at the modern gaming industry, with their fancy high resolution graphics and open world designs.  Sure, when you've got layers and layers of background and set design, it could be difficult, even frustrating to accomplish anything, such as figuring out which palm tree the key to that conspicious speedboat I need to cross this random body of water is hanging from.  Let's make it a little bit taller, a little bit brighter.  Really pop.  Because unlike real life, you can't go chopping down every palm tree until you find the bloody key (or can build a raft).  Which would have been my first choice, honestly.
 
But then my old fashioned, text-based-adventure loving self begrudgingly had to admit that the pre-everything games I loved so much really weren't any different.  Sure, there were no blatant audio/visual clues, but the same ends were reached through selective description.  You're walking through a forest.  You're walking through a forest.  You're walking through a forest, there is a tree here.  Why here?  Is this the only tree in the Great Treeless Forest of No Trees Beside this One?  Hmm, maybe I should inspect it.  Oh look, a plot device!
 
All of this leads me to the conclusion that we members of the past generation or two have really been conditioned to look without seeing.  The next time you visit a public restroom, count how many diagrams and sets of instructions you find.  As if shitting weren't something each of us has done since Day 1.  Our coffee cups warn us that hot beverages are hot, and our blow driers have tags to keep us from using them in the shower.  Even the soda cup on my desk has an illustration reminding me to throw it in the trash.  Are we really that far gone that our instincts have been reduced to a series of Pavlovian responses?  Will our grandchildren be forced to wear a monitor when they go swimming to remind them that they cannot breathe under water, or set their watches for mealtimes so they don't starve to death?  Maybe our clothes, dishes and houses will clean themselves, so that no one runs the risk of ever sleeping through a laundry day again.
 
And all the important things in life will glow.

It makes me a little sad that this *isn't* a real movie.

We've all been there.  Caught in a sticky situation we know it's too late to talk ourselves out of.  At the tail end of a date that could have gone much, much better had you played things just slightly differently.  Facing a difficult challenge that would be much less intimidating if only you had the option to save your game. 
 
I know that, for as much as I try to live a life without regrets, I do find myself wondering just how different things would be if I hadn't sent that drunk text message to an ex, or if I had taken that promotion instead of quitting my job and running away to England or Seattle or Phoenix (you think I would have learned my lesson at least once).   Hell, even recently I've been thinking that maybe if I got up just a little earlier this past 6 months and did yoga instead of heading straight to work, I might not be quite the embarrassment to the female form as I am today.  And every so often I wish I had a magic save button, just for the piece of mind in knowing there was a do-over in my future, in case I really make a mess of things.
  
Sometimes it's a smack in the face that we live in the real world, and meatspace doesn't offer such securities. 

This has been on my mind a lot recently.  I'll spare you the gory details, save to say that with both my love life and professional career in rapid decline, the ability to stop, review and start over would be invaluable.  But it would also cheapen the whole deal.  What's the point in living if you know you can always go back and change the outcome?  Where is the adventure in that? 
 
I think that is the feature I like most about LA Noire; the lack of gratuitous saves.  Once you have committed to a task, a line of questioning, an accusation, that's it, right or wrong.  It doesn't matter if you're missing a vital piece of evidence and you know exactly where to find it.  It doesn't matter if guilt is written all over the suspect's face.  When you hear those chimes telling you you've fucked up, that's it.  It's like life.  You face the consequences.  Granted, the consequences are minimal (oh no, I only earned 2 stars on that case.  How will I ever be "Distinguished" now?) but they are still there.  Okay, you can always quit and restart, but it means doing all the leg work over again.  Collecting data, examining clues and going through lines and lines of interrogation.  Sure, in the grand scheme of things, that's nothing.  But when you have the attention span of a Mayfly, retracing steps and repeating unskippable dialogue is the ultimate form of torture. 
 
Still, it is a good torture.  It reminds me that you can't always cheat failure.  And that is a lesson I forget all too frequently.

Wow, anybody who gets that defensive, especially when there really haven't been any accusations directed at them, it makes me think they have *something* to defend.

Part of me feels a little shallow.  Even the slightest bit guilty.  Fortunately I have a bottle of Johnny Walker Green Label to deal with that.

Is it just my imagination, or is Spike Spiegel standing in the rain, smoking a cigarette and talking about dreaming?