So, not only is Dragon Age: Inquisition coming out
sometime soon-ish, Arkham Knight has
been announced, to be released just after my birthday. Now, since I’m not
allowed to buy any new games under these stupid rules, if somebody doesn’t get
me that as a present, I may die.
Really. It’s a very serious concern for me at this point. I’m not one of those
people who can sit back and wait for a game to depreciate before buying it. Did
Harry Potter fans wait a few months before buying Deathly Hallows? Of
course not, because that would have made them stupid.
I’ve been super slack for the
last couple of weeks (read: months). I haven’t been playing any games. And it’s
not because real life was getting in the way or anything – it just felt like
even lifting up my hands was a massive difficulty. Instead I’ve been lying on
the couch, surrounded by junk food, shoving away a dog that really wants to eat
said junk food, and insisting that Bill play the first three Spyro games while I watch. I may have
also started replaying Spyro 3 myself
since the fourth one was eating my soul.
But I finally finished another
game!
Portal
Status: Complete.
Reason for not finishing earlier: Got stuck on Test 18. And it
wasn’t because I couldn’t figure out what to do, I just lacked the mouse
coordination to make it happen.
Comments: I know, I was super late to the Portal party. Everybody played it before me, and I had the
Internet, so I knew all the damn cake quotes. I started playing this one in
2011 or ’12, made a ton of progress despite constant flailing and no use of a
walkthrough, and then just gave up because I couldn’t handle momentum-based
puzzles. Probably because apart from TF2, I don’t actually play that many games
on computer, having been raised almost solely on consoles. I’m not very good at
computer controls. Using two hands on the one controller is easy, but one hand
controlling the mouse and the other controlling the keyboard? That’s like
patting your head and rubbing your stomach, only instead of patting, it’s
reading a Fifty Shades sex scene
without laughing.
That might sound stupid, because
you think playing computer games is the most natural thing your hands do, but
keep in mind I used to cry whenever I got behind the wheel of a manual car. And
that wasn’t all that long ago. Doing multiple things with several hands and/or
feet is hard for me.
Anyway, after getting stuck in
Test Chamber 18, I quit for two or three years. Last year, on an evening I had
to myself, I figured that I knew enough about how Portal went to enjoy Portal 2,
and surely by that point my coordination would have improved a little. So I
played that for about six hours until two in the morning, and I had a grand old
time… until I got stuck on a puzzle involving the red speedy paint. So I didn’t
play that for several months.
Today at lunchtime, with a rare
spike in my motivation, I loaded up Portal
2 to get past that red speedy paint. I figured, my intelligence at two in
the afternoon must surely outweigh my intelligence at two in the morning, so
maybe I’d find it easy this time. Somehow, that turned out to be correct and I
busted through two puzzles.
Unfortunately, Portal 2 seems to have made enemies with
my computer while I’ve been avoiding it: the game crashed on me four times in
the space of those two puzzles.
Bugger.
With a bit of resentment, I
instead turned to original Portal. I
hadn’t forgotten that stupid momentum puzzle I was stuck on, and I suspected
that I’d rage quit after a few attempts.
Or… I’d get through it on the
first attempt, and have only mild difficulty with the rest of the game.
It was a pleasant surprise,
really. Apparently between the ages of twenty and twenty-three I’ve managed to
get smarter or more dextrous. There were a couple of moments when I started
wistfully fantasising about walkthroughs, but I resisted the urge. Granted, I
can’t remember at all if I used a walkthrough in any of the first eighteen
levels, but I consider this an independent victory with no one to thank or
congratulate but me.
Don’t hold your applause. Please.
I like being applauded.
