This post is a combination of a Weekend Report and a This and That post. Enjoy!
I did my annual garage to yard waste depot run Saturday morning, making three trips to get a year's worth of leaves and cardboard out of the garage. Since I cleaned it all up a few weeks ago it was fairly quick and painless. Now our garage is clean and empty (mostly).
Saturday afternoon Kim went shopping with her mother, so I was free to do whatever I wanted. (It helped that I did a bunch of work in the morning.) Since Andrew was otherwise occupied, I headed out to the mall for a little gaming. I then met Kim and her mom at Moxies for some supper. Man, was the A/C on in the restaurant, I just about froze!
Saturday night I had another episode with the esophageal spasm or esophageal hernia. This is the fifth time and follows the pattern of occuring after a large meal such as the Extreme Chicken burger I had at Moxies. I'm making a doctor's appointment to talk to him about it, but I suspect he'll tell me to eat less big meals.
Sunday Kim and I were both sleepy so we didn't get up until around elevenish. We then checked out the Car Show in Carleton Place, drooling over Corvettes, Chevelles, GTOs, and the like. Afternoon saw some grocery shopping, gardening, and BBQing. Ah, the joys of summer.
All during the weekend Kim and I took the time to play our respective video games: Kim playing Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo DS, and me playing Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones on the Gamecube. I got the game for my birthday in February but it wasn't until the last couple weeks did I make any real progress. I was happily moving along in the game until late last week I had a boss fight I could not win. For the first ten tries, I didn't even know how to hurt the boss (actually, it was two bosses fighting together as one... doubly annoying) and finally I figured out the trick to hurting them. Then I needed another ten tries to find out how to win the battle. Then another ten tries to actually pull it off. To make all of this worse, every time I turned the game off I had to go back to my save point which involved going through a difficult chariot run to get to the boss battle. ARRRRGGGGGG! More than a few times I wanted to throw the controller and/or quit the game.
I persevered and late Sunday afternoon saw the death of the bosses. Relief and pride flooded through me as it meant I could continue the game I was up to that point enjoying very much. So here's my comment to any game designers out there: don't make a point in the game that requires skill or determination several magnitudes greater then the rest of the game up to that point required to get there. It is a sure way to frustrate the player and cause them to quit. I don't mind games that require some practice and skill to master, but a game that goes along smoothly and consistently and then presents an obstacle so much harder to get past, it pisses me off to no end.
Ok, rant over. Carry on.
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