Games of various kinds
Let's Plays on youtube (i.e. people who upload games for our viewing pleasure and comment on them, see also: hankgames and Tobuscus) sort of makes me wish I had the attention span for video games. If I did, I would get every fucking viewpoint there was to have in Assassin's Creed and NO ONE COULD STOP ME MUST. GET. ALL. THE. VIEWPOINTSSSSSS. There's no shame in being a completist.
However, I am sadly not much of a gamer, I'm more of a backseat driver. I like to watch and while I can occasionally take the reins, I prefer to have the option of turning them over to someone else while I can still take part of the story. This is why I love LP's so much, because I can still take part of the story, even if I can't play it. And before you tell me that there is no such thing as can't, I actually have a physical copy of LEGO Harry Potter (a game which I do enjoy, btw), which I still haven't finished. I got to the part where they learn Lumos Maxima in year 1 and then I got bored and quit. So, yeah. Not much of a gamer. Or, really, anything that aquires my attention for too long. (It also doesn't help that the Lego game engine is an exercise in frustration. It's a platformer pretending to be 3D and it's annoying.)
I'm rewatching Hank play Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood right now while I wait for him to upload more parts of Assassin's Creed: Revelations (question: why does all series in the world have an installment titled Revelations?), but then I realized I want to know what happened before. I haven't seen AssCreed I or II!
So far I have found out that while Altair is a douche of epic proportions, he's also kind of funny in a bratty teen kind of way. I like Ezio best, though. Altair's douchiness falls on the wrong side of annoying for me to really take to him, which I am sure he is heartbroken about. Also, something I notice while looking for good LP's, there is something about AssCreed (or maybe gamer culture in general) that makes people averse to sneaking and hiding, and it is apparently worth it to be attacked by every guard in Jerusalem to free-run THROUGH everything rather than going around it. I mean, sure, if you have to kill them, you kill them, but doesn't it feel a little, I dunno, unnecessary to draw the attention of a bazillion guards just so you can run through a restricted area? I realize blending is slow and shit, but it's definitely faster to blend and walk right through the guard posts than it is to beat your head against them. Also, you could always sneak across the rooftops and kill the guards from behind. Just sayin', I've seen a lot of people lose their shit in-game and it confounds me every time.
I was going to talk about other things (life, the universe, everything), but I can't get into the whole miserly business right now, so you get games instead. And going from video games to Game of Thrones (DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE? Segue genius, forreal), I finally finished A Clash of Kings and started A Storm of Swords! ACoK is a good book, but it took me forever to finish because every time I got to a Theon Greyjoy chapter, I ended up wanting to fling the fucking thing across the room. By the end of it, however, I kind of wanted more Theon, because while he's annoying as all fuck, he is also interesting in a going-slightly-bonkers kind of way.
I've also started watching the series (OMG TYRION ILU!) but I had to stop halfway through the second episode because I wish Joffrey would go burn in all the fires. Surprisingly enough, I really, really enjoy Jaime Lannister. I didn't expect to, because he's kind of a twat in the first two books, but Nikolaj Coster Waldau is so charming and handsome, and tv!Jaime has a lot more endearing qualities than book!Jaime does. I especially liked the bit where he hired half a dozen whores for Tyrion and it was also cute and brotherly in that extra special, medieval fucked up kind of way. He bought his brother sex! Isn't that thoughtful?
In completely unsurprising news, Tyrion is my favorite. Maybe not in book (although... maybe he is, warts and all. Is there anyone whose head I like to occupy more?), but in series he is ADORABLE and I can't WAIT to see what happens in season 2, which has a more interesting Tyrion storyline, if you ask me. The best foe for any Lannister is another Lannister, and I love watching Tyrion and Cersei beat each other bloody. Other than Tyrion, I have a soft spot for all the Starks, because who doesn't? Someone said once that if the ASoIaF characters were in the world of Harry Potter, the Starks would be the only ones dining at the Gryffindor table, while everyone else partied it up with the Slytherins, and it's so true. Funny, too, because there is nothing that is half as interesting as watching these self-serving assholes claw at each other while the Starks watch them bemusedly from a slight distance.
I'm trying to stay unspoiled for ASoS and the rest of the books too, which is proving easier than I thought. I've only been subjected to one fan theory (about Jon Snow, no less) and almost all of ACoK came as a complete surprise to me, but I was spoiled for AGoT like whoa. I also have a slight character spoiler for the next few ones, but all I really know is that this particular character survives -- which admittedly is a pretty big spoiler in these books. GRRM should get together with Joss Whedon and form a Sadistic Writers club, and they could talk about murdering the characters everyone loves in horrible and inventive ways. I'm sure they would both enjoy it.
Ugh, note to self: get some new damn icons.
However, I am sadly not much of a gamer, I'm more of a backseat driver. I like to watch and while I can occasionally take the reins, I prefer to have the option of turning them over to someone else while I can still take part of the story. This is why I love LP's so much, because I can still take part of the story, even if I can't play it. And before you tell me that there is no such thing as can't, I actually have a physical copy of LEGO Harry Potter (a game which I do enjoy, btw), which I still haven't finished. I got to the part where they learn Lumos Maxima in year 1 and then I got bored and quit. So, yeah. Not much of a gamer. Or, really, anything that aquires my attention for too long. (It also doesn't help that the Lego game engine is an exercise in frustration. It's a platformer pretending to be 3D and it's annoying.)
I'm rewatching Hank play Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood right now while I wait for him to upload more parts of Assassin's Creed: Revelations (question: why does all series in the world have an installment titled Revelations?), but then I realized I want to know what happened before. I haven't seen AssCreed I or II!
So far I have found out that while Altair is a douche of epic proportions, he's also kind of funny in a bratty teen kind of way. I like Ezio best, though. Altair's douchiness falls on the wrong side of annoying for me to really take to him, which I am sure he is heartbroken about. Also, something I notice while looking for good LP's, there is something about AssCreed (or maybe gamer culture in general) that makes people averse to sneaking and hiding, and it is apparently worth it to be attacked by every guard in Jerusalem to free-run THROUGH everything rather than going around it. I mean, sure, if you have to kill them, you kill them, but doesn't it feel a little, I dunno, unnecessary to draw the attention of a bazillion guards just so you can run through a restricted area? I realize blending is slow and shit, but it's definitely faster to blend and walk right through the guard posts than it is to beat your head against them. Also, you could always sneak across the rooftops and kill the guards from behind. Just sayin', I've seen a lot of people lose their shit in-game and it confounds me every time.
I was going to talk about other things (life, the universe, everything), but I can't get into the whole miserly business right now, so you get games instead. And going from video games to Game of Thrones (DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE? Segue genius, forreal), I finally finished A Clash of Kings and started A Storm of Swords! ACoK is a good book, but it took me forever to finish because every time I got to a Theon Greyjoy chapter, I ended up wanting to fling the fucking thing across the room. By the end of it, however, I kind of wanted more Theon, because while he's annoying as all fuck, he is also interesting in a going-slightly-bonkers kind of way.
I've also started watching the series (OMG TYRION ILU!) but I had to stop halfway through the second episode because I wish Joffrey would go burn in all the fires. Surprisingly enough, I really, really enjoy Jaime Lannister. I didn't expect to, because he's kind of a twat in the first two books, but Nikolaj Coster Waldau is so charming and handsome, and tv!Jaime has a lot more endearing qualities than book!Jaime does. I especially liked the bit where he hired half a dozen whores for Tyrion and it was also cute and brotherly in that extra special, medieval fucked up kind of way. He bought his brother sex! Isn't that thoughtful?
In completely unsurprising news, Tyrion is my favorite. Maybe not in book (although... maybe he is, warts and all. Is there anyone whose head I like to occupy more?), but in series he is ADORABLE and I can't WAIT to see what happens in season 2, which has a more interesting Tyrion storyline, if you ask me. The best foe for any Lannister is another Lannister, and I love watching Tyrion and Cersei beat each other bloody. Other than Tyrion, I have a soft spot for all the Starks, because who doesn't? Someone said once that if the ASoIaF characters were in the world of Harry Potter, the Starks would be the only ones dining at the Gryffindor table, while everyone else partied it up with the Slytherins, and it's so true. Funny, too, because there is nothing that is half as interesting as watching these self-serving assholes claw at each other while the Starks watch them bemusedly from a slight distance.
I'm trying to stay unspoiled for ASoS and the rest of the books too, which is proving easier than I thought. I've only been subjected to one fan theory (about Jon Snow, no less) and almost all of ACoK came as a complete surprise to me, but I was spoiled for AGoT like whoa. I also have a slight character spoiler for the next few ones, but all I really know is that this particular character survives -- which admittedly is a pretty big spoiler in these books. GRRM should get together with Joss Whedon and form a Sadistic Writers club, and they could talk about murdering the characters everyone loves in horrible and inventive ways. I'm sure they would both enjoy it.
Ugh, note to self: get some new damn icons.