Hellsplit Arena is my new favourite thing

 

One reason why I have difficulty bonding, forming friendships, not completely fucking hating people, apart from the fact that the majority of them are unbelievably fucking stupid, is the fact that nobody likes the shit I like, and I can't for the life of me understand why.

Take reptiles, for example. Yes, they can be scary, especially when you don't know shit about them, and they're not inherently cute like cats and dogs. Thing is, when I post about how a giant monitor lizard, who roams around my house like a dog, walks around the park on a leash, plays tug of war with his toys and hops on the sofa for cuddles and human interaction, I expect people to go, "wait, what?". But you stupid cunts always disappoint me. Our giant Burmese python isn't always in the mood to socialise, but he's too smart to bite the hand that feeds him. You know what he does when you invade his privacy while he's not feeling it? He'll give you a bonk with his snoot. No teeth. He won't bite, attack, strangle your shit, draw blood, all of that shit lesser snakes do when they're scared or confusing you for dinner. He gives you the nose. "Not right now, please, thank you." He's intelligent enough to understand you don't mean any harm, he's figured out a peaceful, non-painful way to say no. Do you morons give a shit? No, of course you don't.

The time I have spent with our unusual pets has changed how I see the world and animals in general. Even something as basic and primitive as a snake has the ability to learn, possibly even displaying some form of empathy, if on a very basic level. "I don't want to be with you right now, but I also don't want to harm you." Granted, the snakes motives may be more along the lines of, "If I hurt you, you're gonna get scared and you might stop feeding me", maybe they're selfish or maybe our snake is just too fucking stupid to actually hit with the teeth. You know. Maybe I'm giving him too much credit. I can't be sure. It's still highly remarkable.

Where the fuck am I even going with this? Well, Hellsplit Arena, obviously! The game is nothing short of a dream come true for me, yet nobody seems to give a toss it exists. Pavlov VR, Zero Caliber, games where you shoot realistic guns in virtual reality, people go crazy for that shit. But swords? Oh no, please don't make me exercise! What the fuck have you all been doing when you were kids? Seriously.

If you were at least remotely normal in your childhood, and you had friends or siblings, the one thing you did when the fair came to town was to buy one of those shitty plastic ninja swords. You know the ones. They come with scabbards in any colour imaginable, the 'blade' itself is made from garbage white plastic, they were cheap and flimsy and stupid and you didn't care, because you were battling all the other kids. 

These haven't changed in over 30 years.

Alright, so maybe we were just beating the crap out of each other with flimsy plastic toys until somebody started to cry, but in our minds we were having epic sword fights. You know, like actual sword fights, not that gay stuff you've secretly done with your cousin. We didn't have cable tv back then, we had no idea what an internet is, and our imagination was still fairly healthy, because videogames looked like this:

You kids with your smartphones and your PornHub have no idea how lucky you are.