BACK IN BUSINESS
by sweep
Sweep is back, bitches! And he's on fucking FIRE Whats goin' on giantbomb! Today I got my router for my student house down in Bournemouth where I have just started university. I have been here a week and I have been out on the lash... every night? For 8 days straight. I spent £250 on alcohol. So tonight i'm going to take a chill pill and update my beautiful blog. Chasin' tail is hard work... I...
Sweep is back, bitches!
And he's on fucking FIRE
Whats goin' on giantbomb! Today I got my router for my student house down in Bournemouth where I have just started university. I have been here a week and I have been out on the lash... every night? For 8 days straight. I spent £250 on alcohol. So tonight i'm going to take a chill pill and update my beautiful blog. Chasin' tail is hard work...
I take it everyone is getting the same "MTU" error message when trying to sign into XBL because of this fall update whassiname, so I still cant refresh my trigger fingers, but I decided to spend my daylight hours over the last week playing Grand Theft Auto 4 - hunting down Pidgeons and taking my buddies bowling. I am now on 86% complete - all the cop missions done, all the races, all the hellicopter stuff - I've just been blazing through the Achievements. And this is one thing I wanted to talk about to day.
What have you achieved?
In my crusade on internet stupidity I remember saying in a previous blog that Achievements should be about pride - not about abstract numbers stuck onto your gamer tag. GTA4 is a great game. I have a strong sense of pride in my gaming abilities in Liberty City, which can be seen reflected in my achievement points. When implimented well, achievements can be a great way to draw attention to sections of the game which otherwise may have been ignored - or providing inspiration to experiment with new game mechanics. I really appreciated the excuse to hop back into my SuperGT and cruise around blasting fools and perfecting my reverse-driveby-getaway. Achievements gave me exactly the excuse I needed (if any) to revisit GTA4 and I'm glad I did, because that game is still awesome.If someone can jump to safety in the Epilogue on COD4 then that person gets respect. (I'm looking at you Torb. I have tried for hours and I cant get up the damn stairs). But someone who derives purpose from 1000 cheap points for mashing B button in Avatar:The Last Airbender is kind of pathetic. I have made my feelings on this kind of behaviour clear, and it translates to Wiki Points, Forum Posts or anything else you internet kids get all competitive over. As Neil Strauss wrote in The Game:
"It was a completely pointless ambition, with no practical application whatsoever. But if you sit the average male down in front of anything halfway intriguing and explain to him that it has a system of rankings that he can get better at over time, he'll become obsessed."
Achievement points are not a healthy obsession.
ANYWAYS
Enough of me telling you to live your lives - There's bloggin' to be done!The Bomb Should Have A Face
Considering i'm a "friend of the show" (does the show have any enemies?) I think I should just shout out some respect to the BSHAF crew for another great community podcast. I finally listened to it and it cracked me up. If any of you guys find yourself with an empty slot (heaven forbid) I would love to be a special guest on the show. Or even just a normal guest. Any kind of guest.Anyways thanks again for the free blog plug, (haha "blog plug").
There some other stuff
I wanted to talk about but I'm going to sleep on it before I post it up in here. I'm going to be on the IRC tonight so set me some knowledge in there.LOVE goes out to everyone in the Bomb Shelter
Thanks For Your Patience, and Thanks For Reading
Sweep