The week started off with a surprise: Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs somehow came up with the idea that we should get a whopping 400 Quid, so they went and put that straight in my bank account. Along with a little letter, explaining it was legally due to us and what have you. So Claire and I sat down and did what every sane person would do in our situation: We got fucking paranoid.
Let's recap 2013 thus far: The whole thing kicks off with the biggest work order, followed by the most handsome amount of money I've ever received since I got this job. Followed by a surprise, "Dude, where's your other article", which resulted in even more extra money. And now this. Now, I don't know how stuff works for you people out there, but whenever something good happens to us, life will instantly take it back and then shit on us. From hospital trips and heart problems to having no money for food, rent and electricity to sick and disappearing pets and our wedding getting postponed ad nauseam, we've drastically lowered the bar for a good day to "We're still alive, we had something to eat and there's probably something on the telly." We're humble like that.
We've been engaged for four years now and our wedding plans must have become a bit of a running gag among family members. I've been living on this Island for nearly three years and while I'm still hoping to see all the sights someday, with the way things have been going for us, I really just know this place through Countrywise. And suddenly, almost over night, the bills are paid, the accounts are balanced and we're eating fresh plant and animal matter. And if we keep up our modest lifestyle and don't go totally nuts with the surprise "wealth", we might actually make it through the year, even if things end up going just as shit for me work-wise as they were 2012. Or, if I'll end up getting lots to write about this year, we can finally do that whole marriage and vacation thing. And the PC needs some serious upgrading. We'll see. I don't like spending a whole lot of money before it's actually there. Bleh, how mature!
Speaking of mature: Does it ever stop feeling weird to do grown-up stuff? I'm not talking about anything sexy, but things like taxes, managing your income, ordering groceries and the like. Is that supposed to feel weird? Because it does to me.
Like most kids, I had my fair share of chores around the house when I lived with my parents. Depending on what combination of parents and/or step parents I had at the time, some of them were fucking slave drivers. If you have a car and no job and nothing to do all day, would you send your ten year old to the supermarket, which is a 20 minute walk away, and ask him to bring home a shitload of groceries? My first stepmother sure did. Yeah sure, it builds character, some of us had to walk 20 miles through the snow, uphill, at 5am every day, just to get to school, but come on.
Bitching and chores aside, living with your parents always makes you feel 'safe' somehow, doesn't it? I mean, the fridge is always full, you can grab whatever you like, you're not responsible for anything money-related and you never get any mail or scary phonecalls. After I had moved out, visiting my parents for the holidays or even just a weekend felt a bit like coming back to the promised land. There'd be real food in the fridge, more than I could possibly eat and drink in a week, and I could take as much as I wanted and not pay for it. Unlike most people, I never wanted to grow up, since I'm not overly interested in drinking, smoking, driving or going out, but it wasn't until I moved out that I realized just how much it sucks to be an adult. Once again, I don't count sexy stuff. You don't have to be an adult for that, anyway. After all, I'm fucking German. The stuff you Brits call soft porn is nothing but a shower gel commercial where I'm from.
The weirdest thing about the way I do my grown-up stuff today is how I seem to become more boring and less... I dunno, weird? After I had moved out, I felt like a total renegade when I had pizza for breakfast, cereal for dinner or nothing but spaghetti all week long. Because I'm my own boss now, I can do what I want, eat what I want, when I want. Today? I cook a proper meal every night and save leftovers for the next day. I'm waiting for a Tesco order right now and it contains fucking apple juice. WHAT HAVE I BECOME?? I've gone from "It's 3am, let's fucking raid McDonald's!" to "Well, there's still some chicken in the kitchen, but it's a little late to eat now. Better save it for tomorrow." Rargh! And it's not just me, who is getting gradually more reasonable and dull. When I look at Facebook, it feels like all of my friends are getting married and/or having babies.
I have reached a point where simply knowing that I can go out there right now, show my credit card and get 200 boxes of cereal, which I could eat right out of the box, in my underpants, is so good, I don't actually have to do it. If I went to a party in town, they'd probably ask me if I was waiting to pick up my kid or something. I'm not cool anymore, my penis is off the radar. If Claire ever realizes that she could do so much better, I'm gonna have to flirt in the 30+ category. Brrrrr!
But on to happier things. This thing, in particular:
"After much review and consideration, Acony Games and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) have mutually made the decision to discontinue development on the free-to-play FPS game, Bullet Run. As a result, SOE and Acony will sunset the game and end all game services for Bullet Run on March 8, 2013. We would like to thank the players for their dedication and support of the game."
I reviewed this game a little while back, gave it a 1/10 rating and said I'd rather drink a whole bottle of Tabasco through my ass than spend another minute with this garbage. Now they cancelled it. I don't wanna take all the credit for that, but my review was the only one at the time. I like to believe that I helped a little.
So why does that make me happy? Because it tells me that I still know how to do my job. I wasn't so sure about that after I had reviewed a very early version of The War Z in November last year. Basically, the game had just been released in a rather unfinished beta state and, as it goes with budget titles, we were already working on reviewing the game in that state. The rule of thumb is - if they're already charging money, you can do a review. Some might argue that you can't review something that isn't even finished, but is an MMO ever finished? Besides, there's a date and version number under every review, clearly stating that the scores are based strictly upon what's already there. Things can always go up or down at a later date.
Anyhow - this particular game was a blatant, shameless copy of the popular Arma II mod "DayZ". When asked why both games were nearly identical with their naming and gameplay, the War Z designer assured everyone that it's all a coincidence, their game had been in the making for years, DayZ didn't even exist when they got started with their game, that kinda crap. As a critic, you wanna believe these things to some extent. Tiny, ambitious developer, promising concept, you don't just go and shit all over their stuff, so you go with their story. Support the little guy and all that. And while the game was still missing some key aspects and features planned for a later release, the basic concept was there and actually seemed rather fascinating to me. If you're not familiar with the whole thing, you're basically in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and you're supposed to survive as long as you can, fighting thirst, hunger, zombies, infections and other players when they turn out to be greedy assholes.
Long story short, I gave the whole thing 66%. It lacked polish and there was no real long-term motivation, all of which had been noted and criticized in the review and that's that. And time went by, the lead dev made some bad press when he referred to some players as faggots. Somebody took a closer look at the War Z terms of service and noticed that they were a direct copy of the terms from League of Legends, up to a point where the War Z guys couldn't even be bothered to remove the name 'League of Legends' from the text they stole. Then some other smart guy noticed how the "artwork" on the War Z banner wasn't original, but really just a collage of stolen and mildly photoshopped images from other websites and tv shows such as The Walking Dead. And of course the whole story about how The War Z had been in development for years and wasn't just a ripoff turned out to be a lie. The list goes on (for the whole story, look here), but I'll go ahead and sum it all up by saying that the game's lead designer is a complete asshole and a lying scumbag.
Several months after my review, the game was released on Steam in the same incomplete, unfinished state I had reviewed it in. Difference being, they now openly advertised the long list of missing features as though they were finally implemented, up to a point where pissed off customers demanded their money back by the ton and Steam kicked The War Z right out again. What's worse, the whole thing was now infested with cheaters, flying and teleporting around the map to shoot random players and take their stuff. Metacritic lists The War Z with an abysmal score of 23%, which isn't much of a surprise. After several months of lying, stealing and blatant copying, as well as months without any development whatsoever, it's easy to bash the shit out of a bad game and the guy who is trying to sell it. Of course this is also making my 66% review score look utterly stupid, even though none of that stuff had happened by the time I wrote my article. I fucking missed it
This is seriously annoying. Explaining why a game is or isn't fun and worth playing is probably the most important aspect of any review. But something I find equally important is finding the black sheep and punishing them for trying to scam people, for lying and ripping them off. As a gamer, nothing pisses me off more than spending a lot of money on a game, which ends up lacking a whole lot of its promised features. When I don't get what they promise for my cash. Maybe Dungeon Lords has traumatized me a bit there, I dunno.
So when Bullet Run got cancelled, it felt good! Not because it's a bad game (which is it) or because I'm on some personal crusade against the publisher (which I'm not) or anything. But because they were selling something that didn't even exist! Their whole website is a collection of lies, bullshots and false advertising.
So I bashed it. I said that whatever game it is that they're advertising on the official website, it sure as hell ain't Bullet Run. And now it's going down. No more Bullet Run! Ha! Of course that would have happened one way or another, they probably don't even know my review exists. But that's not the point. I'm just happy that my bullshit detector is still functional. That said, I really hope nothing else is gonna set that thing off for a long while now. FFXIV relaunch, I'm looking at you!
-Cat
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