girlofprey

So. I think I've had a pretty successful Halloween so far. Video games seem to love doing Halloween content - I guess because so many of them are American-based, and Americans love it so. But also the latest Fatal Frame game was released yesterday, which is a series I have been interested in for probably over a decade - this is the first time they've released a localised (English language) version while I've had a console I could play it on. Sidenote: I love my Wii U. So basically I've spent my night wandering around a (fake) forest trying to find missing girls while ghosts try to fuck me up. ( Tw for slight mention of suicide )

Before that, I was playing Grand Theft Auto multiplayer. I tried multiplayer last weekend - I didn't mention that. It's alright? Not as bad as I thought it would be. I thought as soon as I got into a conflict with anyone - which is sort of the point of multiplayer, to face off against each other - I would just be getting a flood of abusive messages, and it would be miserable. But none of that happened. It probably helped that it was Grand Theft Auto, and people sort of expect everyone to behave badly and fight for no reason - more than a few people ran me over with their cars. And I didn't have a headset on, so I couldn't hear what anyone was saying. But it was okay, and I do see the fun in it, a little. But - the whole point of GTA online is sort of to do jobs for people, and rank up, and get better gear and outfits and do better jobs. By 'jobs' I mean missions, and for missions you really need to be co-operative - that's where a headset would come in handy, and the fact I don't want to talk to anyone and reveal I'm a woman, because I hear that turns out badly a lot of the time, might be a problem. I did one mission with a random team - we had one life, in case anyone died, and if anyone died again it was game over, everyone failed. I died twice. And when I came out of the mission, EVERYONE who had been in the session with me - not just in the mission, but on the server - had left except me. Which means everyone I was on the job with quit, but also EVERYONE ELSE, and I know it had nothing to do with my failure at a mission, but it did feel a little like everyone had quit out of shame. So. Multiplayer is okay. But probably better when you can be co-operative with it, and since I still don't have any friends who play videogames - who'll stick with you even if you fail a bit - that's something I still can't really do. Which might be a bit of a problem, going forward.

BUT. Multiplayer can also be fucking annoying, as I found out tonight. GTA online is doing a Halloween event - they've dropped some new clothes items, and cars, and I popped in to check it out. They didn't have as much as I thought they would, but it was still fun. And there was a new game type, Slasher. An opening came up while I was online, and I thought what the hell? Halloween fun.

The way the game worked was that one person got to be a 'Slasher' with a shotgun, and the other people in the game were victims without weapons, and they had to hide from the Slasher in a dark building. If they survived 3 minutes, they got shotguns of their own, and could go have it out with the Slasher. I won the first round. I probably shouldn't have done, the Slasher totally found me, but didn't deign to see me, so whatever, I won. The next round I got to be the Slasher. I also won. I was a great Slasher. I think all my years of loving slash really helped me out. The third round - I was doing okay in, and then my TV suddenly asked me if I wanted to turn it off because it'd been on for a few hours now, and while I was clicking 'no for fuck's sake' one of the other people punched me to death. So that person was the Slasher in round 3, and I might have killed them, but I forgot how to punch at the last minute and died. And then - just some serious bullshit. They got someone from the group of victims to go round with a flashlight, finding and pointing out other victims so the Slasher could kill them. And because the person who won a round got to be the Slasher the next round, that person was ALWAYS the Slasher, and their friend was always helping them. I assume they were friends - they had basically the same username, and they were both rank 900, which isn't a thing. The highest ranked people I've seen on GTA were about 135 - they don't give you Achievements for getting above rank 100. So, hackers probably. Hackers ruining the fucking game, and there was nothing we could do, because there were two of them, and they had a shotgun and aslfjaslkfjkl. The first time they both found me I did nothing, because there were two of them, and one of them had a flashlight (the only object victims were allowed), so I just thought 'oh, it's other victims, do they want safety in numbers?'. Then I died. It just went on and on, and what was the point, except for them to get the most experience and money they could (everyone gets some for participating, but the winner gets considerably more)? I ended up leaving, for unrelated reasons - I thought the game was going to be short, but instead there were 5 sessions of 6 rounds each between 3 and 6 minutes long, ain't nobody got time for that, my pizza was getting cold. But the game took the time to inform me that if I left the Slasher activity, I would be marked slightly as a Bad Sport. ME. So yeah. Multiplayer games do involve people, and people are incredibly annoying, and sometimes it makes the game almost completely unenjoyable. My single-player games never do me like this.

Speaking of which, my other fave game of the moment is Assassin's Creed: Syndicate. I wasn't sure I'd like an Assassin's Creed game - I tried the fourth one and didn't think much of it - but this was about gang warfare in Victorian London, and they put a female character in it, after swearing last year they couldn't have a female option in multiplayer because the separate animations would be impossible to fit in the game. And I love her. And the main male character. We get twins, and the focus is sort of a little more on the man, Jacob - he's very much the one interested in having a gang, and his sister Evie doesn't care. But you can play it however you want, and they're both great. I was worried they'd make Evie like a stern, uptight person, especially when they said she liked science and was a bit more restrained than Jacob - not necessarily a bad thing, but those types of descriptions tend to mean (female) characters are a bit 'hands off', and hands off isn't really what you want in the main character for an action game. So I thought they make Evie stern and nagging, and Jacob smarmy and annoying. But no, they're both great. And it's really fun to play. So I'm enjoying it. But they've made a real point of the fact they've got Jack The Ripper DLC coming out - they've put it on the box, and already promised it to anyone who buys a Season Pass for all the future stuff for the game they're going to bring out. So it's probably already done, and I'm really surprised they didn't launch it for Halloween. I mean, the main game's only been out a week, but it's what I would have done. Ah well.

So yeah. Games. Halloween. I love them.

This is probably the funniest thing I've seen all week (for some background, this is the original trailer for the game, and gives a better idea of what it's about):



I was at jekesta's last week playing with her puppy Rita, and yesterday I ended up chasing around a dog that had got out from it's owner's garden, and I think that was one too many dog adventures because last night I dreamed about finding another dog that had gotten away from it's owner, and I really wanted to keep it but I knew mum and dad wouldn't let me have it in the house, and also - as sometimes happens - I knew I was dreaming and the dog wasn't real. She was golden brown and sort of short and stocky - I don't know about dog breeds and also she was imaginary - and called Aeren. Also the owner either didn't care or was a cult leader, so she was better off with me. But it turned out she wasn't real. So there we go.

The dog thing yesterday was basically that I was walking into town, hoping to go to the cinema, and this dog just came pelting down our road towards me, obviously not with anyone. Our road is a big main road, that leads down to the A1, so it's no place for a dog to be on its own, and it was only a little terrier. And I could see it had a dog collar on with a tag, so it was obviously someone's pet. So I ended up trying to call it over to see if I could get its address or a phone number, and then calling the dog warden. And then the owner turned up, asking if I'd seen a dog, and he managed to get it back on a leash. It turned out he only lived a few doors down the road, and the dog had escaped a couple of times before, because there was a bitch in heat somewhere in the neighbourhood and he hadn't had his (male) dog fixed because "he didn't believe in it". This dog apparently just kept finding escape routes out of their garden because it was so desperate to get to this bitch, and when it escaped he just gave it half an hour before even looking for it, so it would be tired and less likely to run off again when he found it. Frankly I think he deserved his dog running off a little bit, but he did seem to take pause when I said I'd seen it running across the main road and, at one point, directly down the middle of another one. Still, at least I know where he lives now in case I see it running free again.

I was going to take at some point about how Assassin's Creed: Black Flag simultaneously amuses and irritates me, but at the moment irritation is winning out, and I don't have the energy. Coronation Street on Friday, on the other hand, had a scene of someone fancying David, David kicking in a door, and David then rescuing a child. It did very well.