The Skeptical Boffin

Am nursing a splitting headache and a cough that only manifests at mealtimes. When I first came down with it, I thought I'd caught the bug that had been circulating in the family. But it's been a couple of weeks, everyone else has recovered, and I'm still hacking up a lung every time I eat. Gak.

DOINTS

Remind me again why I play Left4Dead exclusively with friends? Oh yeah. Because of the unchecked idiot infestation in cyberspace.

I was playing a round with a friend on Easy last night (it being said friend's initiation into L4D-for-PC), and I thought I set the game to "Friends Only". Apparently not. Some random person whose handle consisted of more weird symbols than letters joined. "Okay, sure," I thought, "I guess we could use another player".... until the fucker suddenly started shooting us. This wasn't a simple case of Friendly Fire; this was a serious case of, "I'm in here to wreck your game so DIEEEEEEEE!!!!" Thankfully for us, you can't kill a fellow Survivor on Easy however hard you try, so neither of us took damage, but - god! He(?she?) left before I could find the kick button. I wish I had the pleasure of expelling them.

It's almost tragic how all courtesy and good behaviour automatically melt into thin air the moment you give people the mask of anonymity.

At times like these, the NationStates legislation necessitating licences for minors to use computers becomes much less funny and suddenly far more appealing.

GUNS

I've decided that I like Godfather II after all.

It wasn't an easy transition. In the first place, I'm more of a "shoot first, don't really bother with questions later" kind of gamer, rather than a strategist; the thought of a strategy-steeped GFII was what caused my reluctance to purchase the game in the first place. It didn't help that the graphics (when I started playing it) were ugly. Granted, they would've been acceptable three years ago, but compared with the most recent games (I need to devote a whole journal entry to Ghostbusters...), you could see it was sorely lacking. The fact that they killed off Aldo Trapani (the player's character in GFI), whom I'd grown accustomed to, in the opening sequence of the game did nothing to endear me to it. But once I got to the meat of the game - slamming people against the wall, smashing up stuff, taking wall cover and shooting enemies in the head - in other words, stuff I was actually good at - things started getting fun. A lot of the original game elements are still there - multiple weapons, execution styles, bribes, explodable safes, extortion weak points, contract killing - coupled with favours, special bonuses (like armoured cars and brass knuckles) and new "privileges" of being a Don: a crew that goes everywhere with you, whose members possess different skills; financial statements, territory management, crew management (do everything from dressing and promoting them to improving their skills, to even marking them for death!).

In Godfather I, any business you took over automatically became the Corleone's indefinitely. Not so in this game, as I learnt the hard way, from skimping on the money and posting too few guards at my first acquisition. Before the day was over, Carmine Rosato's men had declared war upon my new bakery and wrestled it back. The second fight broke out at La Maison Rouge, where I had at least posted five men; I wound up detouring to the place myself to turn the tide of the battle. Lesson learnt. Guards are good.

In retrospect, it does make sense having the game start with the player being Don, rather than some other schmuck working his way up the food chain, because there's a continuity that flows from the first game into the second. I still don't know what the hell the Don himself is doing running around the streets of New York, soliciting contract hits and extorting store owners, but hell, I don't care. It's fun. Maybe it's a little on the repetitive side, and I would've preferred a simple 2D map that was easily accessible while driving (is it too much to ask for the Mafia I-type map overlay?) rather than the snazzy zoom-in 3D one in this game - pretty, but oh so annoying when you're driving from point A to B, and suddenly forget the way - but I've no major complaints at this point.

Oh, and I'm still the worst driver on this side of New York. You'd think that, having played Mafia I two million times, I'd have at least learnt to navigate a computer car. But no, I still leave trails of fallen street lamps and dustbins and prostrate pedestrians in my wake. At least no cars have actually blown up yet.

GERMS

I was regaling my students yesterday with tales of predatory fungi that snared hapless nematodes and sucked them dry. (We were still doing Dynamic Ecosystems). It brought back fond memories of that SF-horror story I wrote back when I was in school, about a mutated strain of Arthrobotrys that predated on humans, complete with utterly cliché laboratory scenes and DNA technology. (The story was titled, appropriately - if somewhat unimaginatively - "Fungi Imperfecti"). Good times. I'd post a link to it, but really - who'd want to read it?

My cousin and I once discussed how, in a certain light, pathology of disease was beautiful. Unfortunately, it's not an opinion I've managed to convinced anyone outside the realm of science and medicine to share.

ORESTES

I recently finished my epic (for me) comic rendering of the chapter Orestes Fasting, Pylades Drunk from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. Since I'm not about to post the whole damn thing to dA, and I need a place to archive it, I might as well bung it here for the entertainment of anybody who might stumble upon it:



I don't really know why I chose to tackle that chapter (or, indeed, go beyond a single-scene rendering, as I'm apt to do). If pressed, I might grudgingly admit that it sort of saddens me how Grantaire can only reach out to Enjolras by means of the Ultimate Sacrifice, and how their reconciliation is only possible in the shadow of annihilation. Eh, it's something I just had to get out of my system.

I feel slightly guilty about making my (female) art beta cry over this, though. That's one person who isn't going to be reading Les Mis anytime soon.