Pikachu and the friendly tortoise

What an interesting day this has been! It was the hottest day of the year thus far, so we decided to take Hugo out. Interesting observation #1: Giant reptiles have a magnetic effect on elderly ladies. I was standing around outside the pet shop, which was waaaaaaay too hot. And Hugo, who had spent most of the day walking up and down the street on his weird new leash was fast asleep in my arms... on my chest... on my shoulder... um... yeah, all of the above at the same time, because that's just how big he is now. Head goes on the shoulder, tail is somewhere around the nuts, which is always a bit unpleasant, especially since he uses that thing to hold on to stuff. I kid you not - he climbs out of his tank and gently floats towards the carpet whilst roping himself down using only his tail. Fascinating stuff.

Anyhow. Standing around outside, where the air moves and isn't getting heated up by dozens of reptile tanks. People walk by, turn their heads, stare, stop their cars for a moment, the usual. Because that's the kind of thing you do when you have a chance encounter with a small dinosaur. Seriously, their faces are the closest thing to a real dinosaur you'll ever see.

Not actually Hugo, but it gets the point across.

And then there was this old lady. The stereotype your brain comes up with when you think granny. Tweety's owner. Snow white hair, face like a nutsack and disturbingly fearless and curious when it comes to Hugo. She didn't even stop to ask whether he's gonna spread unholy, leathery wings, breathe fire and proceed to tear out her very soul to drag it down to the 9th circle of hell, where her spiritual remains shall be devoured and shat out in the shape of a newborn divorce lawyer. She just started petting him and started asking about what he eats, how much a guy like him would cost, that kinda thing. She even took a few pictures with her hot pink (!) iPhone. What interesting times we live in.
Granny #2 got into her car and was ready to drive off when she spotted me, stopped her engine, opened the door and asked me if she could have a look. Eep! And again, 10 minutes of petting and Q&A ensued. She told me I had a very precious pet and that I should take good care of him. Yes, ma'am! o_O

What's even more amazing than the fact that the walking dead of England know no fear of reptiles is the intense friendliness of the common red-footed tortoise or whatever the fuck that thing at the shop was called. You see, I don't really know anything about nature's resilient little frisbees. A class mate back in elementary had two viciously aggressive turtles, which I'm told is not the same thing as a tortoise, because the former are water-based and the latter live on land. I also know that our friend, Swiss Guy, has a bunch of tortoises in his yard. Swiss Guy probably has a real name, but who cares, we just call him that.
So this friendly tortoise at the shop tends to scratch at the glass of his tank when he wants attention. He also gets up on his hind legs and then topples over, which is awkward.

He looks like this.

So Claire picked him up and I had to re-learn one of the two things I actually knew about these guys. #1: Their heads are the closest thing to an uncircumcised penis I have ever seen, aside from an actual uncircumcised penis. This is a fact.
#2: As a finger, you don't want to be anywhere near that dickhead, because those guys like to bite. Hard. Our special little friend proved me wrong today.
Long story short, this guy loves a good head-rub. I have never seen anything like it. The head usually just disappears into the shell. Or worse, if you piss them off. This tortoise? He'd push his head against my hand as hard as he could as I stroked him. Weird.

Claire walked him up and down the street. I had Hugo, she had the tortoise, who would happily walk around and explore town. Easily one of the stranger things I've done so far. For a moment, we've brought the entire street to a halt, as everybody would stop, stare and point. Well, what would you do if you walked into something like that?
Our new friend was really more of a tortoise-shaped dog. I can't begin to describe how much this fascinates and surprises me. Alright, sure - how much intelligence can it possibly take to follow the person who feeds you every day? But the whole petting, handling and affection thing really threw me off. I was under the impression that tortoises sit around, wait for food and spend the rest of the day loathing you. Mr. Redfoot was very friendly and adventurous. Fun.

In other news: Mechs.
And surprisingly: No, not Mechwarrior Online. I'm actually afraid to try that one, for two reasons. First of all, it looks incredibly deep, tactical and large-scale. Maybe I'm getting the wrong impression here, but scale-wise it looks a bit like Battlefield or Planetside with Mechs. You know, spend a week walking around until you finally get to the action and then some asshole kills you from 300 miles away with a terribly unrealistic sniper rifle. Or some long distance laser equivalent in case of Mechwarrior. Oh and if you happen to be one of those dickheads, who are about to spam comments about how I'm just butthurt because I suck at Battlefield:

For the slightly more intelligent among you: I simply lack the patience, attention span and tactical ability to enjoy this kind of game. There's nothing wrong with this stuff, I'm just not the target audience.
The other, bigger reason that puts me off Mechwarrior: I don't know shit about the franchise. The last Mechwarrior game I've played came with my Matrox Mystique, sometime in the late '90s. All that battlemech and battletech stuff, fine-tuning weapons, energy-consumption, range, counter-measures, yada, yada, yada... I just don't like the idea of being a complete noob in an environment created and inhabited by nerds. I may as well hang out at a comic convention and argue why Star Trek is better than Star Wars or DC is better than Marvel. I can tell Batman from Captain Kirk, but that's about as good as it gets. I don't need some basement-dweller on my team telling me that, OMFG, you cannot be serious with that fucking gauss cannon on that mech of yours and where the fuck is your gatling laser and I don't even know if any of that stuff exists on there, as the only mech I can somewhat accurately name is a Mad Cat.

So I did the sensible thing and went for the alternative, which is an affront to any true Mechwarrior fan and borderline blasphemy: Hawken. Why is it so offensive, you might ask? Well, let me show you:

A Mad Cat, also known as the most awesome Mech of all times.

'Recruit', a Mech from Hawken. But wait, there's more:

User-customized Recruit. Note the red paintjob and the white hearts.

You see what I'm getting at. Mechwarrior has steel behemoths raining down death and destruction on you, whilst Hawken has bouncy boxes of joy, some of which resemble a walking microwave oven wearing my old valentine's day boxer shorts.

Hawken is also a lot more twitch-based. Mechs on there are surprisingly agile and they jump, run and boost around like lemmings on crack. Which, gameplay-wise, is right up my alley. I want immediate, clusterfuck-style action, no endless running around and planning and sneaking up and getting in position and whatever the fuck you do on the more intelligent shooters out there.

And to be perfectly fair, Hawken isn't all pink hearts and walking tv sets. There are some pretty badass mechs out there. Here's one I have created:

Easily the most awesome-looking toy in my arsenal. Also, I'm so incredibly shit with this thing, it makes me cry. I have another mech, one I'm actually really, really good with. And it's.... well. A bit embarassing, really.

Yes. This tiny... yellow thing. It gets better.
As a match ends on Hawken, the camera highlights the most valuable player (or their mech, to be more precise) on everybody's screen. So every now and then, when I try hard enough, my mech is featured on the mvp screen and everybody gets to look at it. That's what happened the other night. And everybody shouted: PIKACHU!

When Pokémon got famous over here I was already 16. I'm straight. Believe me, I tried, because my friends, my siblings, everyone wanted me to give the games and even the tv show a fair chance, but let's just say the magic never really happened for me. If you're male, about my age and capable of naming all 151 original pokémon, kindly send me an email so I may remove you from my contact list on Facebook.

In all fairness, lots of people actually like this shit. So when they named my mech Pikachu, they didn't try to insult me. In fact, the Hawken community is incredibly friendly, I have only seen one person being accused of cheating in about a week of intense play and the amount of immature players, who use dumbass racist remarks and speculate upon my mother's sexual activity make up but a tiny fraction of an otherwise great player base. Most people just want a good time. Highly unusual for an FPS game, especially of the F2P variety.
So, you know what? To hell with it. May as well roll with that shit, right? Here we go:

Look for the name in the top left section of the screen. :P

I do, however, refuse to shout "Pika! Pika!" as I charge at an enemy, guns blazing.

One thing I genuinely enjoy about Hawken is its decent F2P model. It's not great, but decent. Every mech, every weapon and upgrade, can be purchased with ingame credits, which you earn by playing the game. It takes roughly six hours to earn enough credits to buy a mech and there are no cash only premium mechs. Of course you can just go and buy every single item in the game using cold, hard cash. And stuff doesn't cost an arm and a leg, either. A fiver will get you a mech and a bit of customization on the side. Not too shabby.

What I don't like is the near-complete lack of "try before you buy" factor here. Yes, there are fortnight-long test drive events, which allow you to pilot certain mechs without having to buy them, but if the one you're drooling over is not on test drive week, you're gonna have to buy the proverbial cat in the bag. Games like Smite at least give you the option to test all the playable characters in a practice match against bots, so you'll know exactly what you're getting, but Hawken does no such thing. Not good.

Also, all cosmetic changes cost real money. Want a new paintjob, a fancy new set of legs or a shiny new particle effect with those thrusters? Cough up! That's fine, they gotta make money somehow and looking cool does not give you any real advantage in combat. Still, being the customization whore that I am, I'd greatly appreciate a way to earn new camo and stuff simply by playing the game, even if it's for many, many hours. Oh well.

Despite running on the UnrealEngine, Hawken's visuals are fairly unimpressive and the ever-present texture pop-in is incredibly irritating. The whole thing is a bit of a mess right now - the client only runs on DX9, yet the config file is full of tesselation settings, which tend to lag the shit out of the game at no visual benefit whatsoever. There's also the, admittedly impressive, NVidia only PhysX particle option, which turns the game into a stuttering, unplayable mess and looks like this:

Pay special attention to how many times the guy says PhysX in a really annoying way. Brrr!

My biggest gripe with the game is how there is practically no visual feedback when you get damaged. Half of the time my mech will get shot to pieces while I'm fighting somebody and it always catches me by surprise when the damn thing blows up, because I'm under the impression that I didn't take any damage at all. Yes, there's a tiny number display inside the cockpit, which shows your current armor rating (HP), but the cockpit doesn't quake when I get hit, there are no red lights flashing, all I get is some small cracks in the glass when it's already too late. That's it. You'd think that a six-pack of hellfire rockets to the face would leave a bit of an impact. Huh.

Ah, fuck it. It's annoying, but not annoying enough to stop me from playing. And it's an okay replacement for the now dead Warhammer: Space Marine. No more death matches on the pc side of things. Boo! 

-Cat