I am covering my ears while yelling "LA LA LA LA LA LA"

| Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Confession time.

I never played Diablo. I only played Diablo II a month or two ago, for a few days after some good friends suggested it. It was fun, but I hated the multi-player. I found myself perpetually lagging behind, confused, and wondering where we were going. It was just too damn fast for me.

My point is that I don't have much interest in Diablo III. Or maybe they use a 3. I don't care. Nor do I much care about Blizzard's official marketplace/auction house thingy. So my plan is to wait a few days for everyone to forget about this and find something else to complain about. My guess is that at least one female character will be wearing something that suggests the least subtle whore in the world. If they are not yet, it will happen, because that is how women dress when killing fantasy creatures. Note that there are zero recorded incidents of women killing real life dragons while modestly dressed Highly-accurate European Christian lore tells us that at least one muscle-bound male saint killed a dragon, at least proving that half of the dragon-killing appearance requirement.

In related news, my new deficit plan is this: default on 100% of all debts, at all levels of government, with the sole exception of two categories of Treasury bonds: those held by social security and those held by me which I am using to pay for graduate school. I want to go into government budgets and taxes, the very thing which may prevent me from studying them. This is why I do not believe in Karma, but instead in Irony.

And in unrelated news, I recently realized that my job involves a whole lot of time covering up flaws. Not mistakes, but flaws. My current job is home remodeling. In terms of functionality, we were done weeks ago: plumbing was in, electric was in, insulation, walls; we could have just shoved in a toilet, a sink, and a shower curtain and been finished with a fully-functional bathroom. But it would look terrible. So we use joint compound and this other stuff (it's yellow) to cover the gaps in the joints and smooth out any unevenness. Then we sand it down to get it perfectly smooth. Then primer before paining it all. Woodwork goes over that. Then caulk to hide all the joints and gaps. Then more paint because the caulk puts a white line everywhere. And all that paint has to be so damn accurate because an eighth of an inch waviness is more than enough to make the whole thing look terrible.

Maybe that has some greater philosophical meaning.

Tomorrow I'll write about Portal 2 or Civilization V. Assuming I remember to write a post and I'm not too wrapped up in playing Civ V. Preview: Portal 2 is silly and the AI is terrible at combat in Civ V.


Nils said...

The stupid AI is really a problem when playing CIV V. Sure, you will probably lose when you play at highest difficulty, because the computer cheats like there is no morning.

But when you play at a slightly lower difficulty, which can still be hard, you will all the time find enemy units at war with you that just don't attack you - even though it would be a sure win if they did.

My biggest problem with Civ V, however, is that the science advances so fast relative to the unit-creation. Sure, you can make the time go more slowly, but then so does the unit creation. There's just no way to play a relaxed game, because a little bit after you got knight you already have tanks.

And then, the most powerful way to win is no war at all. Maybe that's realistic; but it's also damn boring.

Klepsacovic said...

@Nils: I think the problem is that early on, an archer in a city can hold off a ton of enemies. With the cities having so much health and the archer protected, it can deal some pretty significant armies by itself. I'm glad that cities can shoot back, since it was pretty annoying in Civ 4 to have a single barbarian wander in and ruin the whole game from the start.

The slow unit build is probably because you don't need such big armies. There aren't stacks of doom and the ability to take partial losses in battles means that units don't die so often. I don't mind the knights-tanks problem so much, since there is actually spare gold to upgrade them.

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