OK, so it’s not a major tragedy, but it’s still pissing me off.
Short version : Bought a new game and it doesn’t fucking work.
The game is Titanfall 2, and I am currently fighting the apparently error filled installation process because it’s totally borked.
Bought and downloaded the game via Steam. Was able to do so because Joe was super awesome enough to lend me his credit card for the day.
I gave him the cash up front, naturally. I don’t need a loan, I just need to be able to pay for things on the Internet.
Anyhow, I bought the game. It has a fantastic Steam user score plus a few of my fuzzy friends testified to its goodness.
Plus, it’s not another ISO RPG like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous, my two previous games.
As far as I know, it’s an FPS with a heavy plotline where you play as a soldier who finds an abandoned giant robot (a Titan) and team up with it to fight evil.
That’s all I know and all I need to know. The rest I will discover by playing.
Anyhow, so I bought it, downloaded, and ran it, only to have it pop open the Origin client and gives me a cute “Whoops! We guess something went wrong!” error.
The error persists through multiple re-installs. What the galloping frick?
So now I got to Google this shit. Le sigh.
I need to save that shit to my HD because it is relevant so often.
One of the solutions that worked for one Redditor involved uninstalling and reinstalling the Origin client.
Because you can’t just play a fucking game any more. You have to go through the company’s own launcher or even their own Steam-like store.
Ya know, so they can try to sell you MORE of their crap. “Well, you were dumb enough to buy ONE of our products, ergo you might be dumb enough to buy more!”.
Anyhow, I go to reinstall the Origin client and THAT fucks up.
Back to Google. I am told to install an older version of the Origin client.
I download and install THAT, and it tells me that the Origin client was superseded by the EA client when EA bought Origin.
Meaning Steam sold me a version of the game that tried to go through a client that doesn’t even fucking EXIST any more.
Which is why I am now pissed off at THEM.
I thought they were better than that. I am disappointed in you. Steam.
So I let it try to update the EA client. In doing so, it uninstalls the Origin client. Then the EA client errors and starts a manual update process in a DOS window.
Nothing’s ever fucking simple.
Then, while I am doing something else, the DOS window disappears. I assume that means it did whatever it needed to do.
But I won’t know any time soon, because now I had to uninstall and reinstall the game, and that means re-downloading it, and that will take a while.
Me, I’m going to go play games on my much more reliable tablet.
More after the break.
The damned game still doesn’t work. Grr.
A very Fruvous Christmas
The first sign that something was up was that the house began to smell a lot more interesting to Fruvous.
All kinds of new smells were wafting around. Sweet,. tantalizing smells that Fruvous loved even though they made him a little dizzy. Deep, complex, meaty smells that Fruvous thought must be what Heaven smelled like. And dense, bready smells that Fruvous didn’t like at all and daintily ignored.
The second sign that something was up is that the people started doing entertainingly weird things to the house.
Bits of paper were stuck to walls, up high where Fruvous couldn’t “investigate” them.
Shiny twinkly stuff in little strands that Fruvous was expressly told not to eat was strewn about. He turned up his little black nose at that, affronted. As if he would deign to eat something that gaudy and bizarre.
Besides, he’d nibbled a little and it was disgusting.
Then odd objects started showing up. A strange little wooden hut with dolls shaped like little people and animals was placed on the mantle of the fireplace. Little glowing lights of different colors were strewn everywhere.
Fruvous left those well alone after one burned his nose a little. But he liked watching the ones that blinked on and off from a safe distance.
And strangest of all, a tree, an entire actual tree, was brought into the big family room! He thought maybe his people had lost their minds when he saw – and smelled – that. One of those bushy, needle-y trees that stayed the same all year.
And then they dressed it up all crazy! Shiny stuff that wrapped around and around it. Little balls that hung on hooks and bobbed in a way Fruvous found mesmerizing. And lots of the little glowing lights, these ones even fancier.
But then, something Fruvous did not like at all happened : strange people in the house.
And not just outside the front door, like the man in the blue uniform and the boy with the bag of paper, who Fruvous was no longer afraid of because he knew that they could not come in to the house.
He still barked at them, of course, but just for fun.
No, these people came right in and sat down and acted liked they lived there!
Fruvous did the only thing he could do : he bolted. Ran away like he was being chased by a house. Hid in one of the many hiding places he had discovered while investigating the house and refused to come out until the strangers were gone.
That is, until one night, when the house was especially full of weird new people and Fruvous was hiding under a convenient pile of jackets and coats that had shown up on one of the beds all of a sudden, when his angel. Stacy, came to see him.
She stroked him and pet him and talked to him softly, and he melted to her touch like always. And when she picked him up and started carrying him toward the family room, he didn’t object at all, because he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that when he was with Stacy, nothing bad could ever happen to him.
She carried him into the family room, and the people there suddenly fell silent. And for the first time, Fruvous noticed that these strangers kind of looked like his people, and smelled like them too, and that helped Fruvous stay calm during the next thing.
Which was that some of the people, starting with the littlest ones, came up to Fruvous and tried to pet him. And at first, he shrank back against Stacy, not knowing what to make of this strange intrusion. But Stacy kissed the top of his head, and told him it ws okay, so, trembling slightly, he let one of them touch him.
And it turned out that they did not, in fact, want to eat him. In fact, they were quite nice to him, and soon he was surrounded by people stroking his fur and petting his head and praising and admiring him.
And as Fruvous relaxed and basked in all the attention, he decided that maybe all the weird things happening recently were a good thing after all.
And on the family room’s stereo, the following song played.
And on a more personal note, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers. May your dreams be sweet, your days happy and bright, and your nights filled with love and affection and kisses in the dark.
And I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.