I'm not exactly flush with cash these days, but the new Wii title Endless Ocean just came out, it's only $30 (most Wii games are $40-50, and many other games are $60 at release), and I had a Best Buy discount card.
I... I'm not sure whether this is a game. I have heard people griping about Wii software and referring dismissively to some of the less traditional stuff as "non-games", and I've always disputed that. If you can play it, it's a game, right?
I'm not sure this is a game.
EO is a diving simulator (or "sim", as gamers would call it). Not a very accurate sim; for instance, if you run out of air, you just automatically return to the boat. So far as I can tell, you simply cannot engage in any sequence of actions or button presses or anything that will cause your character to die. The location is pristine and unspoiled, another clear sign of a fairly loose use of the term "sim".
You, uhm. You look around. You find interesting-looking things. You interact with them. There's occasional "missions", which are apparently all optional. I did one, where I guided someone into finding a fish called a "humphead wrasse". (It turns out this is not merely an invention of the game; apparently, it's a real fish!) I have otherwise mostly just, well, wandered around, admiring the scenery.
Make no mistake; the Wii's not a graphical powerhouse, and this title hasn't got the kind of painstaking fine detail and texture work that goes into trying to blur the line between Playstation 3 games and Pixar films. It's possible to see some blurs, and the textures aren't always perfect. The underwater tone does seem to rather mitigate that, though, making it much less distracting than it has been in some titles.
What this title does have is absolutely beautiful graphics. I don't mean technically impressive; I mean relaxing and beautiful to look at. Despite being a confirmed lover of Minnesota's winter weather, I can almost understand, when I play this game, how someone could come to want to live in a tropical environment.
I keep waffling on whether or not this is a game. Games have purpose, and direction. The comparison I'd make, I think, is that every game I've ever seen has been like fireworks. Fireworks are beautiful, and I know I enjoy fireworks. And now... I'm looking at a cozy fire crackling in a fireplace, and there's marshmallows, and all I can do is try to figure out whether or not this is fireworks.
I don't think EO is exactly a game. I think it is a member of a broader category I don't know the word for, of which games as I've usually played them are a likely and common example.
It's $29, and I think at that price it's well worth it. I am taking a couple of vacation days soon, and I'm guessing that one of those days will be spent mostly just swimming around enjoying the scenery and poking fish to see whether they like it.
In 1990, or maybe 1991, we got a kitten. He was small and grey; my parents wanted to name him Shadowfax, but I insisted that Greystoke would be a better name. It stuck okay. He turned into an unusually large black and white tuxedo cat, and for the last seventeen years or so, was one of the most fascinating animals I have ever encountered. He was exceptionally tame; not servile, like a dog, but he acted as though he sort of understood that we were the ones making things go. He trusted humans, and put up with a great deal of stuff. He earned his own parody of a verse from Particle Man:
Tolerant cat, tolerant cat tolerates things that bother a cat.
Anyway, Monday night, he was his normal self; a little sneezy, maybe, but normal for him. Tuesday morning, he was lying on the floor, gasping for breath. Apparently, his heart issues had finally reached the point where his body could no longer compensate for them; his lungs were full of fluid, etcetera. The vet determined that, with a diuretic to drain his lungs, he could quite happily lie down and breathe slowly in an oxygen tent, without much pain. Without the oxygen, or without the diuretic, not so good.
The odd thing about pet cats is that, after you've spent years teaching them to trust you, you're pretty much expected to hire someone to kill them. That's what we did. I didn't get to see him, sadly; I had to be up at the office, and then take the car to the shop, so all the decisions about this got made from the waiting room of a car dealership in Burnsville. Not a great thing.
Anyway, we used to have four cats, and then we lost one, and then we got another one, and then we lost one... And we were down to three. With Stokes gone, we were down to two, and that's just not enough to keep Luka's dog in his place. So I went to the local impound, who turned out to have a darling little girl kitty, whose name is apparently "Molly", sitting around looking for a home. We have brought her home, and we are trying to get her adapted to the other cats and the dog. She pretty much started out adapted to people; she sits on the bed and purrs.
Having played a lot of World of Warcraft recently, I have a sort of internal monologue.
You have completed Tasty Tartar Control Tuna Treats!
Your reputation with New Cat increased by 10.
You are now Neutral with New Cat.
Haven't been active in blogging much lately, probably because of Winter Foo, aka Seasonal Affective Disorder. I got a full-spectrum bulb and added it to my room's collection of light sources, we'll see whether that helps.