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mousmeAfter literally years of hemming and hawing, last weekend I decided to create a Steam account. There was a sale on Borderlands and Borderlands II, and a Twitter friend was excited about having people to play with. I figured $5 for a game was perfectly acceptable, given my current financial woes, and signed up. There followed a very frustrating hour of trying to get Steam to load, trying to get Steam to accept my money, waiting for Steam to update, and then waiting for my slow-as-molassed-uphill-in-January internet connection to actually load Borderlands II (14 hours total for 5GB or so. Ridiculous.). After that, there were updates to load. You get the idea.
There ensued a week of business bordering on insanity, and I didn't actually get to try the game until Saturday. My friend V. was very patient in the interim, then hopped online to play with me.
And then Steam informed me that I needed to change my security settings to allow it to run. Okay. Fine. I did that while V. waited again. I loaded the game, and it crashed. I loaded it again, waited with baited breath, and lo, my efforts were rewarded!
I have to say, I really like the look of the game. The intro was right up my alley: a little bit Wild West, a little bit cyberpunk, good music. And then it was time to start a game. It took several tries for me to figure out how to get me and V. into a game together, and then I still had to pick a character. Then the game started a countdown of one minute and thirty seconds for me to pick a character (there are 6 or 7) before it would pick for me, and I may have panicked a bit. I was trying to read up on all the characters, but sometimes when I clicked on one it would open a blank browser-type window and prevent me from seeing anything, and I still had five character bios to go and GAH.
Then the game quit on me. I'm still not sure what I did, but that's what happened. By then poor V. had been waiting for me for something like twenty minutes, and I was flustered and bordering on tears because I hate making people wait due to my own fucking incompetence. Did I mention she was very patient? Because she was very patient.
It took three more tries, but eventually I picked a character (a Number, for those of you who know the game), and we were off!
My character landed, half-dead, in the first scene, with a robot yelling instructions at me. That's when I realised I didn't actually know how to make my character move. A verrrrrry distant memory was kindled a few moments later (after some fruitless poking at the space bar, which makes your character jump!), and I remembered that W makes you, well, WALK. My friend V. was already sprinting ahead, but very kindly explained to me how to run. I eventually worked out some of the controls and followed her in.
My manual dexterity continues to suck, as it took me three tries at least to do everything: run, jump, walk, open things, pick up other stuff, etc. It was humbling and frustrating, but I figured at least I was making progress. V. explained more things, like how to tell whether I was at full health or had enough ammo.
We headed out on our first mission, against... uh, I don't remember what they're called. Ballywogs? Something like that. Anyway, they were big hairy monsters. Wait, I remember, Bullymongs! My friend V. nimbly leaped ahead and took down about seventy billion of them while I fumbled around trying to figure out how to aim and shoot my gun... which I somehow managed to drop during the fight. DON'T ASK ME HOW, I DON'T KNOW. Not only did I drop it, but I completely lost it, because it was no longer in my inventory.
We carried on. V. sprinted ahead, pointing out things I couldn't see and taking out enemies before I even had a chance to aim my gun, and I stumbled after her, trying not to fall (which is actually physically impossible in the game, so the fact that it took an effort on my part should tell you something.). I started getting the hang of moving around, and V. nicely let me "complete" a couple of the quests, by which I mean she killed all the things, cleared a path for me, and then I got to click on the thing that would finish the mission. It's not that she was trying to trample all over me, quite the contrary, it's that I was incredibly incompetent and couldn't keep up.
And then I died.
Luckily, in the game, death is a minor inconvenience. You just respawn at a specific point somewhere behind where you died. It took me forever to figure out where I was, but eventually I made my way back to her. She introduced me to some cool in-game mechanics (vending machines for ammo and "health," and a doohickey that lets you customize your appearance). We proceeded to chat with a fun NPC, Colonel Something-Or-Other (I am really terrible with names), and got given more assignments.
I actually learned how to shoot my gun and even took down a few Bullymongs on my own! *pats self on back* We carried on, completed a few more missions, and I got blown up a bunch by grenades thrown by (human) enemies, and that's where we ended up calling it, as we each had Real Life obligations to attend to.
V. maintains that she really enjoyed playing with me and even wants to play again. So I'm trying not to doubt her word or listen to my inner voice which keeps telling me I held her back and must have been the most frustrating asshole to play with ever. After all, if she'd hated it, she wouldn't have invited me to play again, right? Right.
So that's the story of Phnee Tries to Play First Person Shooters. Possibly not as hilarious as it seemed to me when I started writing it. ;)
There ensued a week of business bordering on insanity, and I didn't actually get to try the game until Saturday. My friend V. was very patient in the interim, then hopped online to play with me.
And then Steam informed me that I needed to change my security settings to allow it to run. Okay. Fine. I did that while V. waited again. I loaded the game, and it crashed. I loaded it again, waited with baited breath, and lo, my efforts were rewarded!
I have to say, I really like the look of the game. The intro was right up my alley: a little bit Wild West, a little bit cyberpunk, good music. And then it was time to start a game. It took several tries for me to figure out how to get me and V. into a game together, and then I still had to pick a character. Then the game started a countdown of one minute and thirty seconds for me to pick a character (there are 6 or 7) before it would pick for me, and I may have panicked a bit. I was trying to read up on all the characters, but sometimes when I clicked on one it would open a blank browser-type window and prevent me from seeing anything, and I still had five character bios to go and GAH.
Then the game quit on me. I'm still not sure what I did, but that's what happened. By then poor V. had been waiting for me for something like twenty minutes, and I was flustered and bordering on tears because I hate making people wait due to my own fucking incompetence. Did I mention she was very patient? Because she was very patient.
It took three more tries, but eventually I picked a character (a Number, for those of you who know the game), and we were off!
My character landed, half-dead, in the first scene, with a robot yelling instructions at me. That's when I realised I didn't actually know how to make my character move. A verrrrrry distant memory was kindled a few moments later (after some fruitless poking at the space bar, which makes your character jump!), and I remembered that W makes you, well, WALK. My friend V. was already sprinting ahead, but very kindly explained to me how to run. I eventually worked out some of the controls and followed her in.
My manual dexterity continues to suck, as it took me three tries at least to do everything: run, jump, walk, open things, pick up other stuff, etc. It was humbling and frustrating, but I figured at least I was making progress. V. explained more things, like how to tell whether I was at full health or had enough ammo.
We headed out on our first mission, against... uh, I don't remember what they're called. Ballywogs? Something like that. Anyway, they were big hairy monsters. Wait, I remember, Bullymongs! My friend V. nimbly leaped ahead and took down about seventy billion of them while I fumbled around trying to figure out how to aim and shoot my gun... which I somehow managed to drop during the fight. DON'T ASK ME HOW, I DON'T KNOW. Not only did I drop it, but I completely lost it, because it was no longer in my inventory.
We carried on. V. sprinted ahead, pointing out things I couldn't see and taking out enemies before I even had a chance to aim my gun, and I stumbled after her, trying not to fall (which is actually physically impossible in the game, so the fact that it took an effort on my part should tell you something.). I started getting the hang of moving around, and V. nicely let me "complete" a couple of the quests, by which I mean she killed all the things, cleared a path for me, and then I got to click on the thing that would finish the mission. It's not that she was trying to trample all over me, quite the contrary, it's that I was incredibly incompetent and couldn't keep up.
And then I died.
Luckily, in the game, death is a minor inconvenience. You just respawn at a specific point somewhere behind where you died. It took me forever to figure out where I was, but eventually I made my way back to her. She introduced me to some cool in-game mechanics (vending machines for ammo and "health," and a doohickey that lets you customize your appearance). We proceeded to chat with a fun NPC, Colonel Something-Or-Other (I am really terrible with names), and got given more assignments.
I actually learned how to shoot my gun and even took down a few Bullymongs on my own! *pats self on back* We carried on, completed a few more missions, and I got blown up a bunch by grenades thrown by (human) enemies, and that's where we ended up calling it, as we each had Real Life obligations to attend to.
V. maintains that she really enjoyed playing with me and even wants to play again. So I'm trying not to doubt her word or listen to my inner voice which keeps telling me I held her back and must have been the most frustrating asshole to play with ever. After all, if she'd hated it, she wouldn't have invited me to play again, right? Right.
So that's the story of Phnee Tries to Play First Person Shooters. Possibly not as hilarious as it seemed to me when I started writing it. ;)
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