Coming out of a sickness holiday, the best kind of holiday.

You know, the polite thing to do when you're on holiday and thus have little intention in doing anything remotely like work... is to at least give a heads up to everyone that you're on holiday and thus have no intention of doing anything remotely like work. I mean, I should of posted a 'Zing! No update this week!' and I'd been fine. But I didn't, so I got to spend the rest of my holiday doing the traditional British thing...

...being ill.

Whoo. Party animal.

I mean, it's the only logical explanation. I give no heads up, so the universe smites me with the sniffles. I'm not at work, so I don;t even have the pleasure of sneezing over everyone's keyboards when they've popped out of the office. I take being Patient Zero very seriously, you know.

So, I thought for starters I should deflect blame. Well, not blame, but effort. See this guy? You should pay attention. If my complaints about multiple tabloid tactlessness and stupidity are akin to an angry man ranting incoherently in rage, this a sophisticated professor lashing down scorn with well researched ease. I mean, he actually does research, unlike the half-assed link storms I do - which always ends up taking up all my time in the formatting. Ugh. So. You should check him out, so I can stop writing.

Go away. I'm being lazy.

God, fine. I tell you about my holiday. Jesus, you're needy.

So what did I do in my free time?

Played waaaay too much video games.

You know Citra, I can't help but notice every time we see each other you shoot me full of drugs or send me on some impossible quest. Or both. Perhaps we should re-evaluate our relationship?

I started Far Cry 3 to play a dumb shooty wizz bang game, and then it surprised me by being surprising intelligent in many areas. Well, I say, I started. I brought it on Steam... and then I had to get a Uplay account to play my fucking game. Oh god. The tedium. Well fucking done Ubisoft, for wasting my god damned time. I really wanted to spend the first thirty fucking minutes of my game playing time setting up an account. The only thing more annoying than this is that I should of known better because I've already written about this shit!

Not often to I get to explore a game that looks at me quizzically and says, 'You know you just killed enough people to depopulate Luxenbourg, right? You do know, that is not really appropiate nor healthy. Er. To you. It's a given it wasn't healthy to the dead guys.' It also had an interesting take on bosses, via the means of copious drug use. Far Cry 3 is all about copious drug use, or just chemically expanding your world view in general, to get some interesting boss fights.

I know I have those Rambo exploding arrows, but come on. This shit is ridiculous.

This was much appreciated, because this is where other 'realistic' games can fall down. Like Far Cry 3, Max Payne 3 tried a relatively realistic approach to damage – much more realistic in Max Payne 3 case, admittedly, but still comparable. However, this lead to a significant problem in regard to introducing new enemies:

Max Payne 3 Game: Well done. But what's this around the corner? A NEW ENEMY TYPE OMG!

Me: I shoot him in the face with my pistol.

MP3G: ...well, okay, that basically kills him.

Me: Cool.

MP3G: Yes, well, in fairness, you don't walk away from a bullet to the head. I mean, it would be silly, otherwise, right?

Me: Sure.

MP3G: Well, you handled that fine, but here comes his mate, the brand new scary enemy type!

Me: I shoot him in the face with my pistol.

MP3G: ...and you kill him. With one shot. Huh.

Me: Yep.

MP3G: Well hold on to your butts, I got a brand new...

Me: I shoot him in the face with my pistol.

MP3G: What, again? You know what, ignore that. You're a pretty good shot, aren't ya?

Me: Not really, actually. Slow-mo. Give me a lot of wiggle room. Next?

MP3G: Look over there! DUN DUN DU...

Me: I shoot him in the face with my pistol.

MP3G: Okay, I get you. Doing the 'one shot' thing. But how about, next time, just this one time, you don't shoot the guy in the face and so have a enemy that lasts longer then a second on screen?

Me: Nah. This tactic seems pretty solid.

MP3G: Fine. Well... I got a new enemy! Wearing body armour! With an assault rifle! And a helmet! Yeah!

Me: Does the helmet cover his face?

MP3G: Well, admittedly, no, it's just a visor there, we don't have bulletproof facial armour yet and...

Me: I shoot him...

MP3G: ...in the face with your pistol?

Me: Yes.

MP3G: GOD DAMN IT.

At least this time I actually get a boss, rather than a guy with a slightly bigger gun, and once you get up to an RPG, you're sort of out. Eventually, I completed / burned out of Far Cry 3, because I hit that game game harder then a tired Chris Brown joke. Who is a terrible person. I'll have a later write up of all the intelligent things that I was grateful that it did. Also I will criticize some of the stupid things. Because.

What was left of my boundless free time turned into a love / hate relationship with FTL: Faster Than Light.

OH FUCK YOU FTL. FUCK YOU IN THE TAINT.

I love this game.

I fucking hate this game.

A resource management, random generated content, Rogue like space simulation? Count me in.

JUST STOP FUCKING MURDERING ME. FUCK. SHIT. ALL. TO HELL.

The amount of times I have ridden into a fight, full health, bristling with guns, and whoops! Enemy teleported in borders! They took out your oxygen, now look, a missile just took out you shields, small fire in the weapon room, have fun fighting back! Argh. It doesn't help that I want to play with the whole 'teleporting murderous aliens' thing but I haven't unlocked the ship to do so, and getting the amount of money / crew you need to achieve this is a crap shoot with the randomly generated maps. But I can't stop playing. Because if I do, it'll have beaten me.

Gah.

I'm going to go back to watching Sherlock, and wishing season 3 would finishing filming and air already. Hurry up and return our hobbit, Peter Jackson. We need him to make some more wearisome gay jokes at.