Man, not only do I not have my ducks in a row, I don’t think I have two ducks in the same province right now.
I feel very, very scattered right now. I am having a hard time concentrating on the screen. My mind keeps wandering off on tangents like a bored child at some boring adult type event.
So, me as a preschooler, basically. I did that a lot.
Kind of inconsiderate of me, looking back, but when you are a young child, your parents are gods, and the idea that something you do could hurt them in some abstract way doesn’t necessarily occur to you.
By abstract, I mean in a non-obvious way. Obviously, you know that if you hit them or said something mean to them it would hurt them,
But worrying them by doing something that isn’t scary to you seems like it is, quite frankly, more their problem than yours.
I mean, I got why they were upset with me when they finally found me (usually talking to the scariest looking adult around) after I wandered off.
But everything seemed okay now, so really, what’s the big deal?
Little kids are pricks, is what I am saying. Even pretty nice little kids like I was who loved animals and felt bad for people in soap operas.
Anyhow, back to the subject…. shit. I don’t have one.
Oh wait, yes I do, it’s how scatterbrained and incoherent I feel.
Weird that I somehow forgot all about that,
Oh right, all those games
Oh right, I bought one of those crazy packs of like 20 games for 4 bucks recently.
Might as well record some quick impressions of some of the games while I still remember the damned things.
Dungeons 2. The premise is that you’re an evil demonic villain type building dungeons and stocking them with traps and monsters in order to protect you from the hordes of annoying heroic types who seem to think you exist solely to provide them with fodder for their quests for fame, glory, and experience points.
Oh, and loot. Boy do they love loot.
And while the game has a very amusing evil-type narrator with a posh British voice and a snarky attitude, I did not get very far into the game before realizing it was not, in fact, my cup of tea. At least, not at the moment.
Perhaps I will be more in the mood for that kind of RTS-ish gameplay some other time.
King’s Bounty : Dark Side. And speaking of evil (ish), in this game you are a servant of the Dark working to free your people from the forces of Light who have run amok and slaughtered your innocent (ish) demons, devils, and ghouls in their mad quest to destroy the Dark and shatter the balance forever.
And that’s terrible idea. For what is Light without Darkness to illuminate?
I’ve played two other games in the King’s Bounty franchise before. They are well made RPGs with turn-based combat. They are a lot like the Heroes of Might and Magic franchise but with much better story and world-building elements.
This one seems fun. Odd that I ended up with two “you are evil” games, although in this one, you’re only evil-ish. The forces of Light are total bastards and cruel zealots and you and your allies are more goth than actually evil.
Which I enjoy immensely.
Who says Dark has to mean evil?
More after the break,
Somewhere in deep space
Somewhere in deep space, the Great Column awoke.
All along its height, points of articulation flexed slightly, cracking the crust of micrometeorite dust that had formed on joints over the millennia.
Inside the Great Column, everything and everyone the Capacithons had ever know shook too. Things fell off high perches and shattered on the floor. Dust left undisturbed for hundreds of generations filled the air.
The insectoid Capcithons felt the walls, floors, and ceilings of their universe move for the very first time, and this was so bizarre and upsetting and incomprehensible to them that, as one, the millions of them who called the Column their home wrung and worried their delicate hands, and their antennae vibrated in sheer terror.
Blind chaos reigned for several long heavy seconds, and then every Eldest remembered their training, and drew themselves up onto only their hindmost legs, and skreed the scree none of them ever thought they would ever hear, let alone make.
Instantly, the twitterings, chirps, and squeals of consternation stopped as if their power had been cut, and every Eldest[1] turned to their Brood, and told them thus :
“Lo, my Children, it is Time and we are Chosen! Rejoice, for we are blessed by fate to be the ones who will prepare the way for the Energy which soon will arrive! Go to your Station! Fulfill your Purpose! Rejoice, because the Blessed Day is here!”.
And after a few moments of stunned yet solemn silence, the halls, tunnels, corridors, chambers, galleries, and alcoves of the Column burst into furious activity. The humming of flapping wings was so intense it it made some citizens bob and weave in midair.
But their sense of purpose was undimmed. Every one of them had trained their entire lives for this moment without ever believing it would come, but now that their training was activated, they were as single-minded and focused as their hive-dwelling ancestors had been when they smelled a foe.
Channel Guardians polished their Channels until they gleamed with efficiency. Conduit Masters tested and adjusted their Conduits till they clicked between positions as smoothly and precisely as if they were part of the same animal. Most sacred of all, the Chiplords verified that every single microchip in the vast brain of the Column was behaving exactly as specifications said they should, and replaced any that did not.
These and the dozens of other specialized groups set to work with an intensely focused fury, determined to make their Eldest proud and terrified of failing their Brood.
And throughout the Column, the Bulwarks lined the corridors to make sure that overexcited and confused citizens made it directly to their Stations.
Thus, within a handful of minutes, the Great Column went from Dormant to Primed then to Ready for the first time in recorded history.
And then the Energy arrived, and with it the Song that was so ineffably beautiful that many of the Capacithons passed directly into a state of stunned bliss from which they would not recover for many days.
And they rejoiced, because via the Song they knew that they had done well.
And such was the power of the experience that not a single one out of the millions of bug-people thought to ask themselves. “What now?”.
They would soon find out.
Good. Because I have no idea either.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.
[[1]] And perhaps, in their deepest thoraxes, some of the Eldest thought, “Oh no! Why now? Why us? Why of all the generations does it have to be us?”. But if so, they never told anybody about it. “