Category: Pretty ladies

The story so far

Let’s get this straight right away: I don’t always have the best judgement of when something’s a good idea, and when it not. But neither do you, so shut up.

Over the last couple weeks, Talking Time has been all abuzz about rougelikes. For any that might not know, roguelikes are games that are like a really old game called Rogue. Distilled down to their base elements, they are games that feature randomly-generated dungeons and make you start back from zero every time you’re killed. Most are on the PC, with Nethack being the big fish in that pool, and Chunsoft’s Mystery Dungeon series has carved out a pretty well-renowned name for itself as far as console editions go. Spelunky is a side-scrolling action variant on the normally turn-based RPG nature of the genre.

The kids at TT have always been into roguelikes, because Parish (our fearless leader) told them to. Lately, the mania has resurfaced because of a ROM hack, of all things.

Continue reading The story so far

What? I have a blog?

You know what sucks? Finding a house. It’s not really a terrible process but it sucks up so much of your free time… Actually it’s not that bad, but between that and wedding stuff and work it’s very hard to make time for stupid things like maintaining a blog. I don’t even really have that much on my mind lately, so it’s not like I have a need to blog that is going unsatisfied.

Anyway. You ever heard of Lana Del Rey? I hadn’t, but for the duration of January, my Xbox decided that I really needed to know about her and what a great singer she is. Generally I don’t listen to my Xbox’s music recommendations, but worst case scenario, I’d be GISing a pretty girl. It was from that subsequent Google search that I learned she had a song called “Video Games” so okay. This is going well, might as well look into it. Also the word “sexpot” comes up a lot, but that is irrelevant.

I also learned from the Google search that she had recently “bombed” on SNL, and that the internet was making a really big deal of it. So while I’d never heard of her, she was known to people who hate comedy.

I continued to take my curiosity to YouTube, because it seemed like the quickest way to get the deal on this chick. The first song that came up was “Blue Jeans” and I listened about halfway through the song before I clicked back and loaded up the “Video Games” video. That one lasted until about the two-thirds mark before I closed the browser window.

Lana Del Rey’s music strategy is apparently to make it as unbearably boring as she possibly can. Adele, despite all the hype around her, is boring as fuck, but at least she sounds like she’s interested in the songs she’s singing. Lana, on the other hand, seems to be boring herself to death and sounds like she’d rather be stuffing her arm in a meat grinder than recording a song. I don’t know if she’s just purposely trying to act aloof, if that’s going to be her thing, but it certainly doesn’t make me care about her music. I suppose it beats being another Gaga. Don’t misunderstand me here, because I don’t think slower, more somber songs are bad. I like dark, artsy stuff, but it has to be done right. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is one of my favourite Beatles songs. Matthew Good’s Hospital Music is an amazingly deep album. Lana Del Rey just fails to interest me at all.

Normally I would just brush an artist like this aside and completely forget they exist, but the fact that that she called a song “Video Games” makes me semi-involved. Actually, it doesn’t involve me at all, but it’s something I want to ramble on about. So this song is dreary and boring and just not fun at all. Unless this is a song about Tom Clancy video games, that’s really the opposite of how it should be. Actually it’s not really about video games at all, it’s just a word she ends a few verses with. And an easy way to bait nerds like me into paying attention.

Regardless of whether the song is actually about video games though, I feel like a song called “Video Games” should be fun.  You know, like video games. It’s a legitimate reason to use chiptunes. Though it would be unfair to blame the actual music here. It’s not bad, and I probably wouldn’t mind listening to it if it weren’t overshadowed by the insufferable vocal track. Video games are fun, they are there to entertain, to help people forget their woes for a while and have a good time. This song is exactly the opposite of that. Yeah, I guess there are boring and depressing games, but they generally are not good games.

Speaking of YouTube, the video is pretty stupid too. Actually, so is the video for “Blue Jeans.” They’re both dumb viral/hipster mash-ups of other people’s home videos, with little bits of Lana making pouty faces spliced in. I mean, I’m not sure if they’re actually real people’s video bits that have been collaged together. They could absolutely be staged. But the fact of the matter is that the videos are completely unrelated to anything and only serve to bore me even harder.

Her Wikipedia page makes it sound like Del Rey put the videos together on her own. Given the amateurish quality (and blatant egotism), I could believe that. The only times collages aren’t stupid are when children make them (because it’s cute) and when somebody makes one that’s actually meaningful. These videos aren’t meaningful: they’re just random clips hastily slapped together. No relation, no progression, no reasonable deeper meaning. It’s just stupid hipster garbage.

So the music and videos are all absolute hipster fodder (except now that she’s getting popular, the hipsters won’t have anything to do with her), but Lana herself… not at all. She’s still a far cry from trash like Britney, but she’s got a fairly mainstream popstar look to her. And that’s just not acceptable. If you’re going to act like a hipster, look like a hipster. Get you some thick black glasses, a bad haircut, and a goofy hat at least. Probably a year-round scarf would be a good idea too. Or, better yet, just stop making lame-ass hipster songs.

So yeah, if this thing seems detached and poorly written, it’s because I was trying to stretch my thoughts too thin. I really just wanted to complain about a couple boring songs. And hipsters. I’ve been reading too many long, thoughtful blogs, and have forgottent that my sweet spot is more in concise, to-the-point writing. Also I haven’t blogged in like forever. Give me a damn break.

TE @ C4

It’s gotta be… weeks now since I went to Central Canadian Comic Con. It was cool, I must say. Though I guess I’m not as much of a nerd as I thought it was because it was (local) Nerd Mecca and I wasn’t super-psyched about it. Oh well. I took a few (blurry) pictures while I was there. Everything from Minecraft to papercraft, and even one ass that did not belong in that costume. Actually I took a few pictures of those, but I figured one is enough to prove my point and deleted the rest. Be thankful. There’s an alternate universe where this post is all pictures of asses that shouldn’t be seen by human eyes.

         

         

              

         

         

              

              

         

Dead Island

I’ve recently been spending large chunks of my weekends on Dead Island, and I’ve got pretty mixed feelings about it. For the tl;dr crowd: I like it, and I’m pretty sure that if you like Fallout 3 you’ll find much to enjoy here.

The big thing about Dead Island is that I don’t play first-person shooters very often, but Techland somehow managed to take the handful of recent FPSs that I have played and mash them all together. I haven’t played enough of Fallout 3 (about 25 hours?), and I haven’t seen any more than the cover of New Vegas, but they were quite clearly the base inspiration for Dead Island. It’s an FPS set in a big open(ish) world, where you have to scrounge stuff from everywhere to survive.

Missions are doled out one at a time to further the story, but you can strike out on your own and do as you please (this is how I spent my time with Fallout 3). Along the way, you’ll likely meet up with some people who will give you sidequests. Some will just be crazy and try to kill you. I only encountered only a single homicidal human in the first third of the game, but they become a little more common as you go along.

Like Fallout, your weapons will decay with use and become useless. Well, mostly useless. You can still beat zombies with your blunted cleaver, but it does barely any damage and any special effects (like fire or electricity) are lost. You can repair them for a fee, upgrade them for a few more bucks, and modify weapons to give them special traits once you have the proper blueprints and parts. Armor does not exist though, which is good and bad. Good because you don’t have to constantly stop to repair or find replacements; bad because a handful of zombies can tear your fleshy hide apart right quick.

Where Dead Island really departs from its cousins is in weapon selection. The first area of Dead Island provides melee weapons almost exclusively. It’s great, visceral fun, but in the first dozen or so hours I spent with it, I’d only held two revolvers and about forty bullets. Fallout 3 was fun for me because I could skulk around the landscape with a hunting rifle and pop any enemies before they had a chance. Yeah, ammo was a little more scare than I liked, but at least it was there. Games that force stealth are no fun, but when it’s an option, that’s how I usually play it. It also provided a survival scenario that I could take at my own pace. If I wanted to avoid the mutants, I hike the long way around the mountain or take the shortcut through the cave. Here, the world feels much less open and you rarely have the option to go around zombies. You’re always the hunted, and rarely get to play the hunter.

The big difference between Fallout 3 and Dead Island where maps are concerned is that in Fallout, you have one gigantic map with all sorts of tunnels and buildings to explore. Dead Island is divided into several large areas with no such “dungeons” to find. I definitely would have liked at least a couple segregated areas. There is the hotel and a couple small apartments that take you to separate maps, but those barely count. We’ll have to see what later areas bring. The majority of the buildings are just textured cubes too. A good portion of the cabanas in the resort area have proper interiors, but once you hit the town map you’ll start wondering if all those doors are just painted on.

The game is a lot like Fallout 3, but it’s also coloured with shades of Borderlands and Left 4 Dead. Like those two, Dead Island is intended to be played cooperatively online with other people. The game wouldn’t even let me start at first because it’s set by default to online co-op and I don’t have a gold subscription to Xbox Live. I haven’t spent enough time with Left 4 Dead or its sequel to pass judgement on just how similar Dead Island is to them, but I hear that the “special” zombies on Banoi island bear more than just a passing resemblance to those in Valve’s games.

Borderlands though, I have played quite a bit more of. While it’s not quite as much an influence on Dead Island as Fallout, you can’t ignore the signs. For one, weapons in Dead Island are colour-coded. Yes, it’s a thing in other games too, but the only other one I’ve played that does that is Borderlands. The major difference being that I didn’t see a second-tier weapon for hours in Dead Island, whereas I picked one up on my third or fourth quest in Borderlands.

Another similarity is that random pickups respawn in both of these games. It takes away from the survival aspect (which wasn’t a part of Borderlands anyway), but I feel like it adds to the gameplay. Yes, the aspect of running around with no bullets is thrilling for a little while, but I find that when I run out of weapons, a game that centers around killing is considerably less fun. The old-style Resident Evils play that feature properly: they limit your ammo, but enemies never respawn, so it’s almost a like a puzzle where you have to figure out where your ammo is best spent. If weapons weren’t strewn about so liberally in Dead Island, you’d run out in no time and be stuck running away or punching zombies to death. To give you an idea of how useless punching is in Dead Island, they give you the achievement for killing while unarmed after just 25 zombies.

From the start of the game, you get to choose from four characters, each which his or her own strengths and skill trees. Just like Borderlands. Did the characters in Left 4 Dead have any differences that weren’t cosmetic? While this is key to building a balanced team, the fact of the matter is that I’ll never play this game with others. So I really wouldn’t mind if there were a “single-player” character, who could choose from the entire pool of skills. Also I’m not a fan of the “skill pipe” system, where you have to pump points into unrelated skills to get to the one you want. What I’m saying here is that they should have copied Fallout’s skill system too. I’m cool with prerequisites for advanced skills, but those prerequisites should make sense, and not just be arbitrarily placed along a line. Why to I need to get the “medkits are more effective” skill before I can buy the “less likely to be noticed” skill? Healing and stealth are two totally different fields.

Anyway, I’m coming off too negative. I really like Dead Island, though I fear it will end up sitting incomplete along with Fallout 3 and Borderlands despite that. The thing that ties them all together is that they’re all so huge and open, that I get an initial rush of excitement, with the exploring and the screwing around, but then burn out before I can even make it halfway through the story. Yeah, there’s something I never thought I’d lament: games being too long and having too much content. 16-year-old Ryan would be so sad if he knew that he’d grow up into a man that had trouble finishing games that surpass a 15-hour requirement.

Dead Island has a few good things about it that weren’t key traits of other games though, and while I’d love to talk about those, there’s one thing that really bugs me about the game. I mean really boils my turnip. I usually don’t care if games with high NPC/enemy populations re-use character models/sprites. A few of my favourite games don’t even bother to recolour clothing, never mind create unique NPCs. But Dead Island really takes the cake; on the resort map, there are literally two female NPC character models: the standard one, and the one that’s a little chubbier. Female zombies are the same, but discoloured and with bits missing. Yes, their heads and bikini patterns change, but they’ve still all got one of two bodies. Oh yes, and every single female (outside of the two playable females) in the game is wearing a bikini until you get back into the hotel. It is ridiculous. Sex appeal is great; I have no problem with bikini babes. This is overkill though. The sexism line has been long since crossed. There are at least a dozen generic male character models. Would it have hurt to put some short shorts on at least one of the female models? Come on, Techland. Have a little class. The good news is that once you leave the resort there are properly clothed ladies, but I had played over ten hours before I got to that point.

So after all this complaining, what do I like about Dead Island? One thing that sticks out in my mind is the “thug” zombie. Thugs are a good foot taller than your average walking dead, and they can knock you flat with a single hook or headbutt. They are dangerous, and you learn that quickly. Encountering a thug is terrifying because you know that you’re going to be facing something that can kill you with little effort. Compounding this effect is the fact that thugs emit the most blood-curdling roar in the history of video games. It chills me to my bone, and instantly makes me stop cold in my tracks to assess my surroundings. The only thing that keeps thugs from being a total nightmare is that they move at about half the speed of a normal zombie. Still, the tension blows through the roof whenever a thug howls, and I find taking them down incredibly satisfying.

The best way to stop a thug, of course, is to remove his arms. Severing enemies’ body parts has been one of my secret favourite things to do in video games for years. I played the first level of Turok 2 over and over, never caring to progress in the game, just happy to play with the different weapons and see how they tore the monsters apart. Dead Island definitely strikes the right chords in this regard. Once you get your first cleaver or machete, you’ll never want to go back to pipes and wrenches. Blunt weapons can be used to break zombie bones (which is hilarious in its own way) and smash in their heads like so many pumpkins. Bladed weapons, logically, will completely remove the offender’s limbs. Sometimes you’ll swing at the right time when a zombie charges you, which will sever his head in one swing and put the game into slow motion to watch his head pop up while his body keep running past you. It’s quite awesome, but takes more than a little luck to pull off regularly.

Outside of thugs though, removing limbs isn’t strictly necessary, as by the time you’ve got that second arm off, that zombie’s probably re-dead anyway. Decapitation, of course, is always your best bet. They’re zombies! And they’re scary! A lone zombie isn’t much trouble; you’re equipped with a kick move that almost guarantees knocking a ghoul down, and once they’re down, they’re meat. Though as I noted before, a bunch of zombies can easily tear you a new one. I don’t know how many times now I was poking around and got mobbed by a group of four or five zombies. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but they hit hard and flail around pretty quickly. Especially the “infected” class of zombies, who are Dead Island’s version of the Hollywood zombie. Not that classifying the fast ones as “infected” makes a lick of sense. Aren’t all of them infected? Isn’t that the problem?

Anyway, I’m getting totally off-track here. My point there was that zombies are scary. Especially since they level up with you. You life bar gets bigger with each level-up, but it’s really moot because zombie arm/claw/bite/whatever strength increases at about the same pace. Infected class zombies (they move faster and hit harder) are even more lethal because if they get you, they usually get in three or four hits at a time. If you’re up against two or more infected, there’s a good chance you’re going to die. Regular zombies (“Walkers”) are considerably less dangerous, even in large groups. They have one advantage: they’re clever enough to get the drop on you. Walkers are the only zombies whose howls blend in with the ambient noises floating on the air, and they also like to play possum. I figured obsessing over tearing apart corpses to make sure they don’t get me when my back is turned was going to be a habit exclusive to Dead Space. I was wrong.

I’m sure there are other good things about Dead Island aside from zombies. There really probably are. It’s just, they’re all done better in other games. Most of them in a single game! That doesn’t mean it’s not worth playing though! If you can get over the slightly janky combat system, dependably buggy graphics, and vicious difficulty spike, you’ll have a grand old time on Banoi. Might even be better with friends. I’ll never know. I’m excluded from that world because I’m a dinosaur and prefer local multiplayer.

Catherine

It's mature!

Catherine is yet another game about duality. Yeah, there are lots of those. Ikaruga might be the most obvious and easiest example (Breath of Fire IV being the least obvious but most noteworthy). It’s not a terribly original idea for a video game anymore, and really, it wasn’t even an original concept in general by the time video games came around. I’m not a literature enthusiast, so I can’t name any examples, but I’m certain that traditional authors beat the idea into the ground long ago. Catherine however, uses it to great effect and unlike Ikaruga, does so a little more subtly. And by “subtly” I mean it’s not a core gameplay mechanic.

This duality becomes apparent if you notice the game’s logo, which is a yin-yang-esque seal that features Catherine and Katherine, the game’s two… I’m really not sure the best way to describe them. They play many roles in the game, which change depending on how you play it. They aren’t really the leading ladies and I’m even a little hesitant to call them secondary characters, because there are very few situations in which you can interact with them directly. Actually, I think the best description for the K/Catherines is “plot devices.”

The story of Catherine is a week in the life of Vincent Brooks, a man wavering under pressure to marry his longtime girlfriend (Katherine), who ends up spending a night with another woman (Catherine). The game follows Vincent for each of the seven days in this week, and possibly farther. I’ve only achieved one ending so far (of… three, maybe?), and it extended the story into nine days.

Over the course of this week+, Vincent goes through a lot, but the focus is on whether he longs more for the stability of a life of order, or the excitement of freedom. In the game, you are asked to make many decisions. The bulk of them are how you make Vincent react to the problems of the people around him, and only influence what ends up happening to those characters. There are a handful of questions asked to the player specifically though, which will shape how Vincent approaches his own problems. Every one of these choices, and even some other actions (like replying to text messages) affect a small meter that pops up and lets you know which way you’re headed. The NPC choices will tip the meter a little, depending on the answer you choose, but mandatory story choices will sometimes knock that thing a good quarter of the length of the whole bar.

The difference between this meter and the morality meter in countless other games (Mass Effect, Fable, etc) is that it not, in fact, a measure of how good or bad Vincent is. Though you can easily get the wrong idea, due to the fact that one side is blue (and is topped with a cherub) and the other is red (and adorned with a tiny devil child). This meter actually represents whether Vincent values freedom or order more, which is pretty morally ambiguous. Maybe Vince wants to live a life of freedom, not falling to the pressures of society to settle down and live his life the way he’s told to. But this doesn’t necessarily make him evil. It’s not even the <i>wrong</i> way to live. On the other hand, what makes “order” so inherently good? If you think about it even a little, it could easily be spun either way.

Therein lies the more subtle duality of the game. I mean, it’s not actually subtle because the game’s gonna be beating you over the head with that meter, but the point is that Vincent has a choice to make, which will affect what kind of person he ends up being. The subtlety is that little events are influenced by the meter here and there, but none of it makes a huge difference until late in the game, when Vincent finally has to confront his demons, whatever they may end up being.

The gameplay itself shows another kind of duality, but not within the mechanics themselves, but rather the separation of game mechanics. The game takes place over the course of a week, and you get to take control of the more interesting points of every day within that week. Each day is split into two separate play types. During the game’s “daytime” phase, which usually takes place between 8PM to 1AM, you get to watch the majority of story events unfold, and then get to hang out at Vincent’s favourite bar, The Stray Sheep. Sheep are actually a secondary theme in the game, but that’s someone else’s article. In the bar, you saunter around, talking to the various patrons and staff. About half of them are dealing with their own mid-life crisis, and you can listen to their stories and encourage them to face their problems. The other people about are generally around for entertainment purposes, generally giving cryptic hints about events to come, or cracking wise about Vincent’s predicament.

Other bar-time activities include texting the K/Catherines, visiting the washroom, changing the music via a jukebox, having drink, and playing an arcade game. Once in a while, Catherine will send a seductive photo with a text message, and Vincent won’t look at it unless he’s in the privacy of the washroom. That about all it’s there for. Also, you can have him wash his face, which will trigger a short event that will likely make you jump the first time it happens. A new music track for the jukebox is unlocked with each achievement you earn, which is great because achievements are almost never accompanied by a tangible reward. And sitting down to have a drink will (obviously) increase Vincent’s alcohol meter, which will cause him to move faster at “nighttime.” Also, when you finish a drink, the game will show you a little trivia about whatever you just polished off. It’s an odd feature, but I found it compelling and proceeded to get Vince stone drunk every night so I could hear as many as possible.

The daytime segments are cool, and do a great job of moving the story forward and building the characters, but they’re more than a little slow. That’s where nighttime comes into play. The other big dilemma Vincent is facing is that every night he gets trapped in a nightmare where he must climb a tower of blocks or else be brutally murdered. Not a huge issue normally, but due to a mysterious string of young men found to have died in their sleep, it seems quite likely that if Vincent dies in the dream, he dies for real. This is where the game does a complete 180, ripping you out of the safety of the bar and literally forces you to think on your feet or die.

The nightmare sequences’ “Levels” are made up of between one and six themed floors of crumbling block towers. They’re more like block walls, really, but the point is the same: you need to manipulate the blocks in the tower/wall to make a way to the top. On easy mode there are only a handful of really tricky parts in the second half of the game, but even on normal, you’re looking at some rather clever puzzles as early as the second night. Those puzzles are only half the problem too, because the tower below you is crumbling away pretty quickly. Having to think about a puzzle might lose you the high score, but if you really can’t figure it out, you’re dead. And of course, classic video game staples like bad guys and trap blocks are there to make life that much harder for you. Unlike the relaxed atmosphere of the bar, you really get a sense that in the nightmares, the game wants you to die.

Other notes here are that you’re scored on your speed and how many coins you pick up, and are given a trophy at the end of each night. They’re mostly irrelevant, but unlock new stages in an extra game mode if you earn them on normal or hard difficulty. The last floor of each stage is also a boss “fight,” where instead of racing against falling blocks, there’s a giant monster clawing at you heels. Occasionally they will change the properties of random blocks or shoot lighting bolts or razor blades at you. These floors are usually the most frantic, and far and away the most fun in the game.

Generally, Catherine (the game, not the character) is more than happy to keep the bar and nightmare sequences completely segregated. Though as always, there are exceptions. I’d mentioned that there is an arcade game in the bar, should you feel like whiling away your time on a game within a game. The really fun part is that Rapunzel is a tiny reproduction of the main game’s nightmare stage gameplay. Instead of the walls being hundreds of blocks high, they’re only maybe a dozen. At least, for the first few stages. There is no time limit in Rapunzel, but you do only get a certain amount of moves per stage, putting the focus on solving puzzles. These puzzles are much more devious than those in the main game too, as I’ve only managed to get to stage eight out of 64 (Maybe. There’s an achievement for beating stage 64, anyway. I assume it’s the end). It gets even deeper when Vincent receives a taunting text message that says that Rapunzel also has multiple endings. When has that ever happened before in the history of video games?

The nightmare stages also give you a change for a little reprieve in between floors. There, you’re treated to a nice little sanctuary, where every other man suffering from the nightmare stands waiting to challenge the next floor. These men all look like sheep in the dream world (which ends up being tied into the story), and some of them will have defining traits like ties or hair. These ones are people you can interact with in the bar, and will open up to you even more here, since to them, you’re the one who looks like an anonymous sheep. You can continue to encourage them to keep climbing here, and some will even share climbing techniques with you. Until late in the game there’s a merchant sheep here too, who will sell you items that can give you a small edge. But buying items costs points, and is therefore a bad idea if you want to earn gold trophies. Besides, items can be found while climbing the towers themselves, and the game (on easy mode at least) is pretty good about doling out items when they’ll be most useful.

The way Catherine draws its parallels is a fairly unique one in that it shows you two options, but then proceeds to blur the distinction between the two. Katherine and Catherine, freedom and order, the bar and the nightmare. While it goes out of its way to make it seem like there’s a proper and improper way to go about playing the game, that’s just to mislead you; it’s really all gray area. Just because you want Vince to hook up with Catherine doesn’t mean you need to be a complete ass to Katherine. But you can. Don’t like the puzzle stages and want to get back to the story? Choose easy mode and look up speed run videos on YouTube. Don’t like the slower bar sequences? Skip them. Or just play Rapunzel. The game is about growing up and taking responsibility. Or maybe it’s not, because the game is really about choices. (Actually, maybe it really is because I’ve only played through as a solid seeker of order.) The point is that Catherine wants to show you that there’s always a choice. It wants you to know that for every choice you make, there’s another you didn’t. For every yin there’s a yang. For every Katherine, there’s a Catherine.

Sometimes we might fall

I know that it’s been a while since Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, but it’s a real testament to how poorly the Metroid Prime Trilogy sold that Samus has had to resort to selling condoms to make ends meet. At least Metroid: Other M comes out soon and her regular cash flow will pick up.

Interesting tidbit: While typing the two sentences above, I missed typing nearly half of the o’s. Weird.

TE Hits the Road: Fargo ’09

Hi all! Yeah, it’s yet another article about the once-again yearly trip I take down to Fargo/Grand Forks. I say once-again because there was a stretch in there for a few years where we didn’t go at all, but for the last three years, it’s been an essential part of summer. The only difference is that now, instead of going down with my family, it’s me and the woman. There are pros and cons for both parties, but I don’t really care who I go with. The Fargo/Grand Forks trip is the only summer staple I still have left, so I’m holding onto it as tight as I can.

That aside, I’ve decided that this year I’m just going to mash up all the pictures I took instead of trying to do anything more inspired with them. No categories, no long-winded stories, no character commentary. Nope. Just going to put them on the page and make some quick notes where I deem necessary.

Also there are tons of pictures,. Enjoy 😉

This is a cake. This is what Stephanie and I ate for breakfast. Actually I had a bowl of Reese Puffs cereal beforehand because she was taking a really long time to get to my house. But yeah, cake for breakfast. Woo!

We struck a deal before we left that she would drive there, and I would drive home. I wasn’t told until we’d arrived at the hotel, but apparently I had been voted to drive everywhere while we were in Fargo.

GPS. Lifesaver.

I bought a huge jawbreaker on a stick at the Duty-Free. It’s been ages since I’d had one of these bad boys, and I felt it was absolutely necessary. My mission was to finish it by the time we got home. I did one better and finished it before we were even back in Canada. The passport is there for scale.

She opted for the jawbreaker’s smaller cousin, the cherry Jelly Belly sucker.

I think I might have had a better chance of getting in here when I used to come down with my family. The girlfriend seems wholly opposed to entering a restaurant so garishly decorated. But we went to TGI Friday’s, so I don’t know. Maybe she’s got a fear of aliens?

I feel it’s important to mention that I used that baby pool to its full extent.

Our facilities. This is the most interesting photo ever.

Aah! Too much sunlight!

“Take one of me on the couch!”

“Now take one of me on the bed!”

See? TGI Friday’s. Hard on the eyes though it my be, no trip to the United States is complete without a stop in either here or Chili’s. I wish Canadian chains or those that extended into Canada knew how to make such wonderful fries.

Dear God! Six years with this camera and still I take blurry pictures! I’m a horribly lazy photographer.

So good.

Also awesome, but far less new to me.

For years, I’ve refused to believe that this DVD exists. Well ,outside Amazon, anyway. But I found it! I really found it! Now I can’t say Hot Topic never did anything for me.

More crap I bought. Teenage Zombies was ten bucks, and the rest I consider to be things absolutely essential for me to own. I was hunting Friday the 13th and American Dad Vol 4, but Ghostbusters Vol 1 came out of nowhere and made me the happiest girl in the world.

Like the trip to Fargo itself, no summer is complete without a small tub of Americone Dream.

TGI Friday’s was having a two-for-one burger day, and I had ordered a burger for dinner, so they gave me this second one to take home. I ate it that night and forcefully regretted eating two giant cheese-slathered burgers in one night. A task a younger me would ahve faced with aplomb.

The main dresser on our first morning. It’s covered in crap we bought and other such things. The Playstation 2 is there because I hate overpaying for movies I don’t really want to watch and every time I bring my DVD player I forget the remote.

Seriously. You’d think I would know how to take a not-blurry picture by now.

I usually grab a jug of Hawaiian puch on my southernly adventures, only this time I picked the “light” version. Trying to watch those calories…

West Acres mall. It’s huge, and wonderful. It’s probably the best mall ever. It’s not a lot better than Winnipeg’s biggest mall, but I only get to go there like once a year and I don’t get bored of it. Also I looooove Mrs. Fields’ cookies.

We went to the Lone Star Texas Grill on our second night. We’d never been there, but were pleasantly surprised. The steak I had was excellent (especially since I hadn’t had a steak for several weeks at that point), and there was a pail of peanuts on the table to keep me busy while we were waiting for the food to come.

That evening we ventured over into downtown Fargo, and on our way back, we ended up accidentally driving through some sort of classic car show-off night. Don’t know for sure what was going down, but we took a bunch of pictures.

I used the Fargo onion to determine that we were going the right way on the way back into the hotel/shopping part of the city.

I guess it’s just out of habit that I keep taking pictures of the Fargo TRU. We didn’t go in this year, but it looked just as sad as ever on the outside.

All packed up! I don’t subscribe to Nintendo Power anymore, but I felt like picking up an issue for old time’s sake. This one was the perfect candidate, because the only things I really want to read about are the new Mario & Luigi game and Wii Sports Resort.

This is how many towels we used over the course of two days.

I’m going to miss that wonderful continental breakfast buffet. It’s really the highlight of all my best hotel stays.

On our way home we stopped in Grand Forks to investigate the Columbia Mall among other shops. It’s just as boring as ever, if not moreso because they don’t even have the cookie place in the food court anymore.

Evidence that she does eat.

There was a completely random mailbox on the side of the road nearl Kohl’s. I felt that I should capture its soul incase it disappears between now and next year.

This makeup is all blurry! Let’s go somewhere else.

I bought these movies at Best Buy. Zombie Strippers is pretty hilarious, Zombie Diaries was disturbing, and Trailer Park of Terror-though I expected the most from it-was merely okay.

No, I did not buy Friady the 13th twice. I don’t know how it got into this picture. On the other hand, Jason X was five bucks and was the last missing piece in my collection, and the Elm Street four-pack was $10 and completed its own collection. Mallrats I couldn’t understand why I didn’t already own.

We hit Rock 30 games on the second night, and I picked these up there. I have no idea why in God’s name I had sold Donkey Kong, as it is one of the greatest original Game Boy games ever, and FF8 I own on PC, but would rather play through my PS2. I will not say how much I paid for either of these items. I will say that one was just a little more expensive than it should have been, and the other was hideously overpriced. I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.

And that’s pretty much it. Following in the general spirit of this “article”, I really don’t have much more to wrap up with, so I’ll leave it at that.

~FIN

She’s not in Riverton

You’ve seen the pictures on Facebook, now here’s the video!

This is a short video from our weekend getaway to Hecla Island, a couple hours north of Winnipeg. We stayed at the Radisson Oasis Spa, and here we’re exploring the nearby Hecla Village. It was really the only thing to do out there this time of year. The golf course was still closed, and we could only get so many massages. So we played on the rocks for a while.