I just received a package in the mail from The_Jack and inside was the most delightfully wrapped present:
550 cord used instead of ribbon! Isn't that amazing? He even managed to make it curl. It's pretty AND it's practical.
Gentlemen, if you have a tactical lady in your life, do this for her. She'll be impressed. Likewise, ladies, do this for your menfolk: they'll appreciate the practical nature of it and you'll have less garbage to throw away afterwards!
The buzzing of the overhead lights is a persistent bug in my ear, and rather a bit of a distraction. My two mates share a nervous glance, and check their gear. DJ Scully adjusts that ridiculous balaclava and checks the tank on the flamethrower he salvaged from the last outbreak site, and Foster strings a crossbow bolt with shaking fingers. Two of our number dead in the last encounter, one before that. Who knows how many elsewhere in London falling every minute, torn to shreds and eaten by these cannibalistic monstrosities. I thumb a few shells into my shotgun and check the sights.
And then they're on us. Scully and I working as one: him setting the little fleshy ones ablaze, weakening their stretched flesh as the buckshot tears gaping holes in them two and three at a time. They keep coming, and we keep mowing them down, almost in a bloody trance, a dance of carnage. Then my heart drops, and the spell is broken, as I hear the roar of a chainsaw and a sick chuckle just underneath it. One of the big, nasty ones has gotten loose. A Scrake. Chainsaw for a hand, and looking for all the world like Hell's own surgeon general. Foster takes one look and cracks. He loses it and sprays the Scrake down with flames. It laughs from behind that stained surgical mask and charges him. The chainsaw bites deep and comes out the other side. Foster's screaming through his gas mask until he goes limp. The monster lowers his arm, shaking him off the chainsaw. We make eye contact, and I swear my heart stops.
The air rushes past my ear with a loud, low THWUP as the crossbow bolt connects, splitting the Scrake's head open. He drops to his knees, the chainsaw chewing its way through two of the little ones before choking to a stop. I nod at Foster, slip another few shells in, and bring the shotgun up again.
"F-MINUS SO FAR, FREAKS! TRY HARDER!"
So sometime in the last week, the latest Call of Duty game came out, and I completely cannot be arsed to worry about it. 100,000 12 year olds are questioning the virtue of each others mums and each others sexualities as they quickscope and noscope and other such abuses of perfectly good marksman's rifles. The series has become so popular that in some circles it's not even considered gaming anymore, it's become its own thing. So I'm not going to spend any more time on that topic. I think there's enough I could probably write another entire essay reflecting on the good times I've had earlier on in the series.
Instead, I'm going to offer a different point of view on online shooters and a recommendation. I really hate competitive shooters. Sometimes I'm really good at them, sometimes I'm really bad at them, but after an hour or two I'm just not having fun anymore. Even the ones that I know are really good, like Team Fortress 2, just get old and frustrating quickly for me. Cooperative modes, though, that's what I really enjoy. Be it a cooperative campaign like Left 4 Dead or Borderlands, or a horde mode like Mass Effect 3's or the Transformers: Cybertron series are just loads of fun for me.
The one I'm going to recommend today has probably gotten more hours out of me than any multiplayer game to date. Killing Floor, from Tripwire Interactive, is a PC-exclusive game built on an aging version of the Unreal Engine, on a shoestring budget, with little to no publicity. What it does have is a lot of imagination, a dedicated development team, and a lot of love crafted into it. The guys making this game are the type to go to a gun range and know a weapon inside and out before crafting a digital representation of it.
Killing Floor was released way back in 2009 as on official version of a much older mod for Unreal Tournament 2004. The development team has periodically released more content by way of maps, characters, and weapons, each time making sure not to release something that would split the community like the map packs that Call of Duty releases for almost as much as this game costs at full price. And the community has rewarded them. Over 3 years later (which is an eternity in multiplayer games), the community is still strong and surprisingly friendly. For the most part, new players are even welcome, as long as they're willing to learn how to overcome that early learning curve.
It's a deceptively simple formula. You pick a character, join a server, select a specialization (perk), and kill monsters. Between each wave you hit up a trader who sells you weapons, armor, and ammo, and after the final wave you face a big, badass monster. The storyline is one sentence long. Horzine's medical experiments have gone horribly wrong and overrun London. Slow moving hordes of disgusting creatures come at you relentlessly until they're all dead or you've been overrun. It sounds dumb. It sounds simple. It sounds shallow and not terribly immersive but Steam tells me I've done this for 614 hours, and I picked this game up on sale for $5 I can't remember how long ago.
Next time you think about jumping into one of those big, crowded, hostile online environments full of screaming teenagers, take a step back and try something different. You might find a long-term investment in a game like this. Gunnies especially will enjoy this, as you'll be hard-pressed to find a game that has better gunplay (without going into Tripwire's other major release, WWII sim Red Orchestra 2).
Killing Floor is available on Steam, and for shamefully cheap during their upcoming holiday sales.
There's this app (called What Would I Say?, cleverly enough) on Ze Facenbooken that scours your previous posts and assembles bits of them into amusing selections of word salad. Since I haven't been feeling chatty or creative lately, let's try phoning in a blog post!
Sometimes I get the feeling that this is what a lot of my readers hear when I try to explain something:
It needs it up, but please do like removing that what might happen to make me started on the road and shouldn't try. Just take off the spread is that same earlier conversation, but on a pirate but a JPop/Heavy Metal from Team Fortress 2 Me God billboard during the Jewish high holy days, and give me to believe?
I found this hilarious for reasons I can't explain.
That's a matter of heat/shrapnel. Even with all those things at which I'm not a feminist.
Tamara, Brigid, The_Jack -- this explains SO MUCH.
Indiana, or In the Daleks manage to accomplish anything.
Yeah, they're called "My friends".
Hmm. Well, you've told I can walk into psychopathic cannibal murderrapists.
Sometimes I look at all the stuff I've written about ponies, and roleplaying games, and everything that isn't political, and I think Why am I doing this? In ten years this won't matter. What matters is making a difference today, and I can only do that by trying to make the world a better place.
Then I spend a few hours reading political blogs, and I become burdened with a soul-crushing weariness about the world in general. And that's just from becoming informed about what's happening in our world. It makes me wonder What kind of miserable thing would I become if I had to deal with all this crap on a daily, professional basis?
That's when I positively RUN back to ponies and games. It isn't that I don't pay attention to what happens in the world; it's that if I had to write about that constantly, I'd find no joy in life whatsoever. And this blog, aside from the occasional spleen-venting, is about me trying to find joy in what interests me and sharing that with others.
Maybe what I write here will have no lasting difference on the world. So be it; I'd rather be non-notable and happy than influential and miserable.
1. My shooting range, which was supposed to reopen "sometime mid-November," is now saying "We hope to reopen Tuesday Nov. 26." Kindly note the use of the word "hope". Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I firmly believe that hope has no place in any kind of logistical planning: If you have to resort to "hoping" you will open at such-and-such a date, clearly you're being run by incompetents. Either get it done on time, or admit that you have no clue and just leave it open-ended by saying "It gets done when it gets done." Continually pushing back the date does not fill me with confidence.
As an aside, who wants to bet that this will be done before Christmas? I've got even money that it won't be finished before the first of the year.
2. All the raffle winners have been matched up with all the donors. While I cannot state with authority that everything is in the mail (heck, I still have to get down to the P.O. to mail out the three prizes I have in my possession), I think it's safe to say that all winners should receive their prizes before the end of the month. If December rolls around and you haven't received your winnings, please contact me and I will immediately work to fix it.
Erin Palette is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
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