Spreading The Love

I'm starting to go full Oprah on GTA V. I've completely skipped GTA IV and San Andreas, but this game was a day one must-have for me on PC. I talked friends into buying the PC version, some of which ended up joining me on heists. When Haggy didn't buy it I went and got it for him. Claire seemed sorta, kinda interested in her typical "I'd probably play it if I had it, but I've got so much other shit to play" kind of way. So I bought it for her, as well.

Claire and I always arrange for a couple hours each day where we play something together. And we usually arrange for her mother and/or sister to hang with us, if they so desire. And since we've begun spending more on more time on GTA rather than Everquest 2 or even Warframe, I went and bought GTA V for Claire's mum. I'll admit I wasn't particularly sure about how that would go down. She spends way too much time with stuff like SecondLife. And GTA Online is kind of a life simulator, as well. Except, it's fun, stuff actually works and doesn't look like total ass.

"Excuse me, officer..."

Turns out I had nothing to worry about. GTA V is the kind of game that looks a bit overwhelming and confusing at first, especially when you're not a hardcore gamer. But play around with it for five minutes and magic happens. I mean, look at these fine, elderly people here:

Claire's mum is in no way a "senior" and she's actually into gaming, unlike the folks in the video up there. But that's not the point I'm trying to make. Look at that video. These fine people aren't gamers and many of them don't really approve of what's happening at first. But a few minutes later most of them are starting to have fun. And this is precisely what makes this game so great. You just wanna pick it up and interact with it. I was worried at first that her mother would get bored and run out of stuff to do, since she probably isn't into hardcore heists or anything. Now she's got her own apartment, garages full of stolen vehicles, all sorts of outfits for different occasions, tattoos... we usually find her on there when she's not responding on Facebook.

Funny thing is, Claire's stepdad has shown some interest in GTA, as well. He said he's getting bored of all the crap on TV and he needs something to help him wind down after work. He doesn't have a PC and I need the Xbox One for the job, so I went and ordered the game for the old Xbox 360. Resolution is a bit lower on there, of course, there's no proper 1st person view and you don't get fancy details like blades of grass and actual foliage. But he's not gonna care and he'll get to play it on the big TV screen, so it should still be fun when I bring the Xbox over.

No other game has ever received so many perfect review scores and I still believe it's the greatest game ever made. Also, I can watch Claire bathe in the pool behind her new bungalow when I look outside the window in my apartment. You can hang around inside buildings and watch the world go by in realtime - it's no staged, instanced make-believe bullcrap. If people decide to duke it out in military helicopters right outside my house, then I get to watch the show. That is, if I decide to stop watching the stuff that's on the actual, working tv inside the house.

Meanwhile, I've reached the highest difficulty on Path of Exile - "Merciless", with only the final two chapters to finish. The game is still immensely fun, though I'm a bit annoyed at how I constantly have to upgrade my character around GGG's balancing. I completely eradicate all the monsters in one area, only to get killed in the next one in one or two hits. So I stack resistances and extra life like crazy. And then my survivability is alright, but enemies become tougher and tougher, so it's time to slot yet another offensive buff, another warcry, some other method to boost damage output.

There are certain passives I'd love to put points into, but can't, because the more boring stuff such as life/armor/resistances must never be neglected. I'd be happier if gear and armor took care of all that, so I could focus on the real fun stuff in the passive skill tree. "All your damage is now fire", simply sounds a lot more exciting than "you gain 5% max hp". Besides, if survivability depended mostly on gear and skill gems, we could trim down that monstrosity of a skill tree by roughly 50% and make it a little less threatening. Instead, I'm currently ignoring all the bonus weapon damage I crave in favour of 15% more resistance to elements. Laaaame! Still loving it, though. Sometimes it's just hard to understand WTF is happening, especially in a full group of six people.

-Cat