Regardless of what I am about to tell you, I cannot recommend that anyone purchase the PC version of the game [Prototype], developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Activision.

I cannot recommend it, because it is the single buggiest game I have ever played in my life, with the exception of Front Page Sports: Football Pro 99, which was so bad it killed the franchise.

I cannot recommend it, because I could not play it the first night I downloaded it from Steam. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

[Prototype] is a sandbox game. You are given control of the protagonist - Alex Mercer - and more or less left to run around a city, killing everything in your path, following the plot if you like. I’m going to link to a screenshot taken from handpuppet.net, because I couldn’t deal with Steam’s shit tonight regarding where it decided to fucking hide screenshots (if the game allowed me to take them at all - there’s no option to map that key, and, Jesus Christ, it’s 2009, having a “take screenshot” button ought to be there) .

This particular shot doesn’t do the game’s senseless bedlam justice, but it’ll do.

It took me a long time to get to the point where I was senselessly murdering hundreds of NPCs, however!

The first issue I experienced was that I could not progress past the opening cut-scene. I couldn’t get to the screen that let me select a New Game. That’s right - all I could do was watch the cinematic over and over again. There is an issue on Activision’s forum about it here.

I eventually got past it, but I’m not sure what solved the issue. I rebooted my computer, went to work and came home. The game worked when I tried it tonight, but the bug still shows itself from time to time. If playing [Prototype] is the first thing I do after I reboot my PC, I seem to be okay.

The next issue was that my input device - a Logitech Marble Mouse (not a mouse, it’s a trackball… named a “marble mouse” for the same reason Chicken of the Sea is actually tuna, I guess) was not working correctly. The right button was registering as the left, and the actual left button wasn’t working at all.

Look, I’m bad enough at video games, I can’t play them with one mouse button tied behind my back.

This led me to trying to use a gamepad. I have a cheap-o USB hub that lets me plug up to four Playstation II controllers into my PC. [Prototype] recognized that I had a gamepad installed, but didn’t let me actually select it as the primary input device. (That bug is on the forum here.)

I mean… I mean, come on. I’m not going to fReAkoUt here or anything. This is completely unacceptable. It’s just unacceptable. The PC version of the game wasn’t finished - I can drop in a lot of swear words here, I can rant and rave and go berserk, but what it all comes down to is that the game wasn’t finished and it shouldn’t have been released. Yeah, it would have sucked for Activision if they had to delay the PC version while people were buying it for the 360 and the PS3, but you just can’t sell a game this preposterously broken. The manager or managers at Activision that made the decision to go ahead with this are incompetent, they should be fired, they’ll probably get raises, blah blah blah. They’re turning people off to the hobby with this infantile nonsense. Here’s how the technical support forum for the game looks - at the moment, there are 282 threads for the PC version, and just 37 combined for the 360 and PS3. Even when you factor in the fact that nobody owns a PS3, and even when you factor in that 50% of those threads are created by illiterate retards, it still plainly shows that the PC version wasn’t finished.

And it’s a shame. I did finally get the game to run, and I got a work-around for the mouse button issue by locating a USB mouse, plugging it into my system while the trackball was still plugged in, starting the game with the mouse, then unplugging it and switching to the trackball. After all this goddamn nonsense, I really have to say - the game is initially awesome. I’m picking up cars and throwing them at helicopters, I’m running up buildings, and - best of all! - well, this deserves its own paragraph.

You can walk up walls in [Prototype]. There are some very tall buildings in the game. After going up as far as I could, I took a running leap off the building and actually felt the sensation of falling as Alex Mercer fell to earth. I did this over and over again, just feeling my heart race and nerves go on edge. I’ve still got a bit of adrenaline in my system from this. I’ve never, ever experienced anything like this in a video game, and yeah, [Prototype] seems to be completely ridiculous in a number of ways, but even if it accomplishes nothing else, I have to give it credit for stirring that inside me. If nothing else, it’s the best skydiving simulator going right now.

I’ll end with this - I bought the Ghostbusters PC game a couple days before, and that didn’t work, initially, either. I tried to look up the issue on Atari’s site, but Atari configured their support forum so that you can’t search unless you register. Game publishers: tell your web developers to STOP FUCKING DOING THAT. I understand your desperate need for control in making us register for an account. Eliminating spambot posts is a fine reason for it. But you cretins need to let us at least run searches on your technical support forums for your bug-ridden fucking games as “guests.” No other industry in the world gets money for making broken garbage, the least you can do is make it easy for us to find out what we have to do to fix it ourselves. I’ll give Activision credit for making search accessible to unregistered users.

I would like to shortcut this review to say that in actuality, it is the greatest movie ever made, due to the fact that one of the pivotal characters is named “Capt. Pinbacker”. Case closed. FIVE STARS.

But were this an actual review, it would go something like:

Every review you will read of this movie says “the first two thirds are wonderful and beautiful, and then it takes a horrible misstep and fumbled into stupidity and incomprehensibility.” This will likely be your, the reader’s, opinion. There are two alternate arguments which you might make, which would be:

B. The first two thirds are wonderful and beautiful, and then it takes an intriguing turn into mystery and symbolicism.

C. The first two thirds are wonderful and beautiful, and then it gets stupid and incomprehensible, but by that point I didn’t care cuz it was still way cool.

I would probably put myself in the “C” category, though there’s surely plenty to discuss about what actually, you know, “happens” in the last act. It’s hard to make a case for anything that sounds coherent, but whatever.

The running theme, though, is that regardless of what you think of the ending, the first two thirds ARE wonderful and beautiful. What else they are is essentially a remake of every science fiction movie ever made. Let’s see, without giving any real spoilers away:

- 2001: Spaceship run by a computer which talks, and whose voice gets low when you unplug it.

- Event Horizon: Spooky ship travels long way to discover ghastly secrets.

- Alien: Ship with a bunch of goofballs on it, and cool-looking interiors.

- Dark Star: There is no WAY that this movie is not a direct homage to Dark Star. The movie is about a ship whose job it is to drop a bomb on a star (the Sun, in this case) to stabilize it. Which is exactly the premise of Dark Star, AND as previously mentioned, one of the characters is named “PINBACKER”. Alright?

- 2010: Ship finds the abandoned remains of a previous excursion, hilarity ensues.

- Every other science fiction movie ever made: Like I said.

When I reviewed Event Horizon, I made mention of the fact that regardless how much the movie sucked (which it did, very much) I was going to like it because I dig movies about big weird spaceships venturing out into the unknown. Nothing about that has changed in the ten years that have passed hence. When I saw the trailer for Sunshine, I said, “it looks like it’s trying to be a GOOD version of Event Horizon.”

So that’s basically my review. It’s a good (very good) version of Event Horizon. Actually, it’s a good version of all of the movies mentioned above, which it copies gives artistic nods to.

So, that’s fine. If the last part pisses you off, then just forget about it. It’s still a fine, fine movie, and the best of its type we’ve seen in a long, LONG while.

THREE AND A HALF STARS

I am curious, though, if we’ll ever see a movie set in outer space on spaceships which doesn’t make a single mention (or set piece) out of an airlock.

(…that wasn’t set in a galaxy far far away.)

An earlier time, call it 1988. A young Pinback gets his first real computer programming job in a real office (the US Treasury Department building in downtown DC). 21 years ago. So many memories.

Well, no, fuck that. A few hazy recollections of eating lunch at the goddamn food court across the street and nearly getting fired several times for coming in at 10:30, a practice now generally accepted throughout the IT world. A trailblazer to the core, this one.

The one lasting, vivid memory, though, was when I first discovered something which would stay with me from that day, to the very present:

Holy shit, you can play games at work instead of working.

Again, trailblazer, since I don’t think any IT shop in the world anymore actually does any work. But back in ‘88, there was only one guy in the Treasury building not getting anything done, and that was your boy, Pinner.

The game I was playing, the only game I was playing, was called “Begin”. The worst- or best-named game in history, depending on your appreciation of irony. The full name was “Begin: A Tactical Starship Simulation”. The colon separates a noun and a verb which have absolutely nothing to do with each other. I think that’s what first attracted me to it, its completely inappropriate name. It still kinda makes me chuckle.

Look:

The version I grew up on was Begin 1.65, and in its time, it was the best starship simulator of its time.

Oh, the times we had. It was totally an 80s game — all text, and you controlled your starship by typing commands. A particularly ambitious coder could probably turn it into a zcode or Hugo game. I played it to death, but at some point you have to grow up, and I did, and forgot about it.

Then a couple weeks ago I saw the new Star Trek film, and liked it a lot, and then got all nerdy and started looking for a Trek video game. The only recent one I could find was Star Trek: Legacy for the Xbox 360, which had two things working against it: 1) the reviews were not altogether glowing, and 2) nobody has it.

Then the memory banks finally offered me a withdrawal, and I remembered Begin, and did a Google search.

The weirdest fucking thing that’s ever happened on the internet was seeing that “Begin 3.0″ had been released… in 2009.

Fucking game hadn’t had an update since 1993 (when “Begin 2.0″ had been released haphazardly after the authors apparently just abandoned the project and put out what they had.) And then here it was, my past coming back to life.

Begin 3. Holy shit.

Just to give you a sense of what 25 years of technological advances can bring, Begin 1.65 looked like this:

Flash forward to present day, and watch how Begin magically becomes transformed into the multimedia extravaganza which is Begin 3:

Finally, Begin has graphics befitting a game that was released in the decade that it was originally released in.

And look again:

21 years after I first found it (and 25 years after it was first released), it is still the best starship tactical simulator available on any gaming platform.

There is no point and click. You still have to type the commands. The Windows port is a bit clunky, as the massive graphics update actually makes the interface slower and less responsive.

It is essentially the same game it was in 1984, but the shit works. It has everything it should. Power management, system management, multi-armed tactics, team tactics, tension, and various Star Trek requisites like boarding parties, transporters, tractor beams, and all that. The only game I know that ever came close to this was Starfleet Command, in the late 90s/early 00s, but countless bugs and an atrocious interface doomed that one.

As insane as it sounds, and as wrong as it should be, Begin still fucking rules. And the new, state of the art, cutting edge Begin 3 just makes it better than ever.

Here are some links:

The Begin Wiki
Ben Hallert’s Begin page, the fansite which ended up lighting a fire under the original author to keep Begin alive.
Tom Nelson — author of Begin 3 and co-author of 1.65 and 2 — started this site along with the release of Begin 3.
Begin Yahoo group, surprisingly active.

And now look once more:

Micro Foundry BBS Archive

This is the BBS where the authors and fans of the game would hang out and discuss stuff. This archive spans the years 1988 to 1990.

Right around page 5, you can see an 18-year-old Pinback come in and start taking over.

Misty, watercolored memories!

Hello! There have been like no updates lately. This is mostly because I have entered one of those weirdly productive periods when it comes to making a text game, and partly because I put together a machine that plays Robotron downstairs. Robotron is addicting on its own, but the joysticks I have on the thing numb my hands after about 15 minutes of play. I’d need some kind of speech-to-text program to follow up a session with a blog post. Windows XP has text-to-speech, but most people only encounter that when their pets jump on their keyboards. It’s like… Windows Key + … U? I’m not sure. My cats would know.

I haven’t been completely idle. There’s a new Space Hulk or Warhammer or something-game coming out, and I was asked by Jerry Whorebach to disfavorably compare it to the 3DO version. I… I can do that.

Enjoy!

Somebody might tell you that MLB has their act together when it comes to understanding the opportunities that the Internet offers the average fan to catch their favorite team. THIS IS COMPLETE BULLSHIT. You might even hear them say that Bud Selig should be congratulated for these advancements, as if fucking Selig has ever been on the Internet in his entire life. There isn’t a single commissioner in sports doing a good job right now, but that’s another story.

Here’s a breakdown on the sheer incompetence of getting your game. (Please note that I am writing this with the perspective of a guy living in a different market than his team - I live in Colorado and only care about the Blue Jays. If you are within like 200 fucking miles of a stadium, you get to enter the world of PROXIES and various other stupid horseshit.)

DIRECTV MLB EXTRA INNINGS

So, it’s Saturday and there’s nothing I’d rather do than climb out of bed, shake about ten pounds of cat hair off me, and catch Roy Halladay vs Cliff Lee, in what should be demonstrative proof that Lee winning the Cy Young Award last year was fucking horseshit. 

Directv is offering a “preview” of MLB Extra Innings. It’s $160 for the entire year, and honestly, with how much the equivalent is for the NFL, that sounds like a great deal. (I will go ahead and assume that Directv’s NFL Ticket will break $240 in September.) 

The problem is that they don’t broadcast all the games! Are you fucking kidding me? And more - how is this game not on? This is fucking inexcusable. I know that Lee is turning back into a shitbag, but for fuck’s sake. 

More, it already takes effort to keep track of the regular game times for the Jays. I work until 7 or 8 PM, and their home games start at 5:07PM MDT. I’m not physically around to use the Directv solution, but let’s say I get out early (or the Jays are on the west coast) - I have to seriously consult Directv’s schedule as well? Fuck that. Seriously, fuck that. Again, I understand if they can’t broadcast Rockies games, but otherwise they need to seriously fuck off. 

MLB.TV

This is $14.95 a month. And maybe it’s okay this year, but I’ve had it for the 2008 and 2007 seasons, and it’s just shit. Something about it isn’t compatible with our anti-virus software at work, which is fucking amazing, in so much that all anti-virus software has bloated themselves into some kind of security suite, and that whoever put MLB.tv together can’t just give you a link to a a video or audio stream. And Christ, the thing is always locking up. This is a miserable ripoff - again, maybe it gets better in like mid-July, when interest has cooled off and there are less people catching the games, but I had games locking up on me at that point as well last year. (If your experiences with it are better this year, that is awesome, and do feel free to describe what it’s like in the comments. I’m honestly curious.)

iPHONE GAMEDAY APP

This is okay, I guess - it’s $10 for the entire year. Audio only, except - except! They will put small videos of clutch hits and such for you to watch, if you really want to. I’m fine with audio-only, as long as I can choose my own announcers, which I can with this.

The app lets you click on the box score, and see who is fielding where - it’s got lots of easy-to-implement stuff that reminds me of how the Diamond Mind baseball game is set up.

I did buy this, and I think it’s good, overall. The really maddening part is how they deal with commercials. The audio feed goes silent, but not immediately! I honestly think some asshole is sitting there with his finger on the “mute” button at the source, and he simply forgets to hit the button right away. (The most annoying commercial in the world right now is the one for Super-8 on Toronto’s the FAN station.) I’m fairly certain that the same guy forgets to consistently put the sound back on right away .

ACTUALLY GOING TO THE GAMES

Well, yes, this would be best.

So, I don’t know. There really is no perfect solution for catching the games live. Directv is too demanding, MLB.tv is an enormous pain in the ass, and the iPhone app can’t get me consistent audio. The whole thing is fucked.

Just a quick note to anyone dropping by: I’m on Twitter, at http://www.twitter.com/icecreamjonsey.

Here’s the thing about Tiger Woods: Nobody argues about it anymore. 

There was a time, if you can believe it, that there was such a thing as the “Big Four” of golf. They were: 

Tiger Woods 

Phil Mickelson 

Vijay Singh 

Ernie Els 

These were the heavyweights, and even though Tiger was winning more than his share, the others would bristle at the fact that Eldrick was always getting more press, more credit, more money, more LUV, more whatever. They were the Big Four, and they all wanted the same respect, and they all thought that if they tried hard enough, it wouldn’t always be Tiger at the top of the hearts-and-minds list. They all thought they had a chance. 

For a year or two, even, it was the Big Five — The above, plus Retief Goosen. 

This was not that long ago. In fact, this was AFTER the Tiger Slam, AFTER Tiger had begun to really start tearing into some records that had long been thought unsinkable. Even after all that, there was still a Big Four, or a Big Five, or even a Big Two, once Mickelson became the clear, consistent almost-front-runner. 

But just as recently as a year ago, maybe two, all of that seemingly just stopped. 

Not just among the writers, always prone to hyperbole and wanting to write breathless columns (like this one) about the next coming of the Lord — that had been going on since before he fired shot one as a professional, somewhere in Milwaukee. 

No, by this time, it had even stopped among his peers. A couple of semi-famous maniacs (I’m looking at you here, Ian Poulter) would occasionally find themselves in front of a camera and say hey, I’ma be #1 soon, and they’d take it as seriously as if I’d said it. But you never heard it from anyone from yesteryear’s Big Four, Big Five, Big Anybody. 

One day, they just stopped. 

One day, after too many second-place finishes to Tigs, Els stopped thinking his Big Easy swing would carry him to the promised land. 

One day, no matter how many “Tiger Who?” caps his caddy wore, Vijay realized there was no point. 

One day, after one too many oh-so-sincere, smugly self-aggrandizing smiles into the camera, Phil just gave up the dream, realizing being a legitimate, or anywhere close to legitimate #1 was not to be, in his lifetime. 

Now, nobody that matters in the sport even bothers trying. They are a generation of professional golfers subdued into being satisfied with million dollar purses, Rich-and-Famous lifestyles, and always being known as “one of the other ones”. 

Not a bad life. And certainly a more honest one, now that they’ve given up the dream, one that was destined never to be theirs, once Earl and Kultida Woods hooked up that one fateful, sweaty night, and nine-plus-six months later when the baby held a cut-off iron in his hand and tried to emulate his father’s swing. 

Nowadays, when he shows up, even if they put up a good front in the press room, behind their eyes they’re bowing down, and showing a begrudging, defeated respect. 

The smart ones — the ones with some dignity, and perspective, and humor — add in a little admiration. This is why Rocco Mediate at last year’s U.S. Open was such a wonderful story. This was a great guy, with humor and wit and joy about him, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to win, and that’s why it was so great that he almost did. 

The night before the playoff, while answering reporters’ questions in the press room, somewhere off-screen Tiger walked in to prep for his own session with the microphones. 

Rocco noticed, looked up, pointed to him faux-menacingly and said, “Hear that, pal? I’m comin’ for ya.” Then motioned to the press and added, “See, he’s scared of me.” 

Rocco got it. You can’t come for him. You can’t scare him. The best you can do is make him, and the rest of us, laugh at your predicament. 

Finally, everyone is coming around to that. 

Game over.

I wrote a review (spoilers, sorry) of a game called Don’t Look Back over on Caltrops.

ICJ’s note: the year is 2009, and Pinback has taken to finding everything he can on submarine games. Why? I think the idea has always appealed to him because it combines so many things that he enjoys. The open water. Piloting things. Hiding from those who seek to do him harm until such time that it’s possible to sneak up on them and destroy them. These are things which I definitely think define Benjamin ‘Pinback’ Parrish, and why the idea of a sub game had always struck his fancy. 

ICJ’s note II: GOD it’s annoying to hear people talking like they are British all of a sudden. 

NAME: The Ice Diaries 
TYPE: BOOK 
AUTHOR: William R. Anderson 

This book is the true story of one of, if not the coolest things that have ever happened. In 1958, Captain Anderson took Nautilus, the world’s first NUCLEAR FUCKING SUBMARINE, and sailed THROUGH THE FUCKING ARCTIC OCEAN, right underneath the FUCKING NORTH POLE. Nothing evercould be as cool as that! The coolness factor of that eclipses by far the coolness of everything else that has ever happened! So, I have to give the book a positive review, just for telling this story, and for spelling all the words right and not making any truly offensive grammatical mistakes. 

But what this really is, is a love letter from Anderson, to… well, seemingly to everyone who has ever existed who had anything to do with the Nautilus, submarines, the Navy, water, or anything else consisting of molecules composed of hydrogen and oxygen. His lavish buttkissing knows no bounds, and nobody escapes from its radius in this book, from President Eisenhower all the way down to the lowliest, blackest ship’s cook. A sample passage which I will now make up, but which summarizes perfectly the tone of the book, goes: 

And it’s all very nice, and heartfelt, and I’m sure all the people involved with Nautilus (who according to the book were the bestest, most flawless, wonderful people ever to live) will smile broadly while reading it. 

But the dude sailed a FUCKING SUBMARINE underneath the FUCKING ARCTIC, for fuck’s sake! Let’s get to that! Let’s get to the nitty gritty!! What’s it like to be submerged for days on end, 400 feet below a 100-foot layer of ice!! Let me taste the fear! Let me lick up the sweat of excitement that permeated every second of the voyage! 

Well, there’s some of that, but you have to hunt for it in between hearing about how everything and everyone in the whole Navy is totally the best, most perfect gift from Lord Baby Jesus that has ever been. 

So, you know. Great story. Okay book. It has some good pictures, too. SPOILER: Anderson dies at the end, right before the book is published. 

RATING: Two and Three-Quarters Stars

NAME: Bacalao 
TYPE: BOOK 
AUTHOR: J.T. McDaniel 

This is a fictional account of the boat “Bacalao”, from its construction before the war started to the end of the war. You can tell this book was written by a sub historian, because more than any of the books I’d read previously, this one is dense with exacting descriptions of the construction and operation of a WW2 sub, down to seemingly every dial, wire, valve, pump, or tank on the thing. If you are looking for a breezy novel you can just zip through, surfing through page after page of non-stop, dumbed-down action, this is not it. If you are a sub junkie, though, and want to get as far down into the nuts and bolts as possible, give it a go. 

The book takes less pains with its human protagonists, though I was pleased to note that this is the first sub novel I’ve read where none of the characters are ridiculously idiotic, obnoxious, 2-dimensional, or irritating. While they’re basically only in the book to move the story about the subs and ships along, they all act like reasonable people and did not detract from the enjoyment of seeing how the sub was really operated. 

One surprise is that, up until the rather anticlimactic finale, Bacalao — unlike boats in lots of other sub books/movies — actually does pretty well, despite page upon page devoted to getting across how much their torpedoes sucked. A novel approach, but one which lessens some of the dramatic tension. You keep waiting for something horrible to happen, or for them to endure an impossible counterattack by Japanese destroyers, but… in general, they just float around kicking ass (when the torpedoes work). I didn’t mind this too much, as the descriptions of how they kicked ass were fascinating, and made me want to fire up SHIV again and try some of those tactics. 

A fine book! 

RATING: Three and a Quarter Stars

NAME: Real Fleet Boat 
TYPE: Silent Hunter IV mod
TIME SPENT WITH: A few hours 

So once you really get into SHIV, you’re introduced to the Modding Community. Apparently there are many many SHIV mods, done mostly by people who had earlier versions and wanted the damn thing to work right. But another group of hardcore historians set out to make mods which would make the simulation as perfectly realistic as possible, given the limits of the gaming engine. 

One of the most popular “supermods” is called Reel Fleet Boat, and is a compilation of seemingly hundreds of individual mods, all coming together to transform SHIV into a completely new, and terribly realistic WWII sub simulator. 

Mainly what I noticed at first was that the sun graphic was nicer. But I had two weeks of otherwise uneventful Pacific transit before anything interesting happened, so I had a lot of time to stare at the sun graphic, which is not nearly as painful — in my experience, anyway — as staring into the real one. 

Other noticeable nods to realism were that the sounds are upgraded, the voices say things more in line with what I’ve read in books (see rest of thread), and other nice little touches like additional key commands and restructuring of the toolbar menus to make the game easier to operate. 

I completed my mission and then set about patrolling the area, to give the new combat system a workout — a system which was more closely supposed to reflect the actual conditions on an American WWII sub off the coast of Japan in late 1941, including raising torpedo unreliability to a realistic level. And if I’ve learned anything by reading books about the period, I’ve learned that until about 1943, the torpedoes completely blew chunks. 

Anyway, in the dark of night, I get a sound reading — a lone merchant (rare sight in these waters), bearing 290, about 4500 yards ahead. It’s the middle of the night, and he has no escorts, so there’s really no reason to submerge. I put engines full ahead and maneuver around for an ideal targeting situation. 

SHIV offers manual targeting, which is the only “real” way to play — figuring out firing solutions and angles is much of the bulk of the challenge of the game, and letting the computer do it all for you turns it into little more than a very slowly paced arcade game. I admit I am not the best at it yet. My first salvo of three torpedoes, set for a 10-degree spread, missed wildly ahead of the target. I had underestimated the target’s height, and overestimated its speed. 

With one more torpedo left in the forward hatch, I line up again, set the values to more accurate levels, and let the fish go. I switch into external viewing mode, just for the joy of seeing the torpedo draw it’s perfectly angled wake through the water, right abeam the target’s bridge. As it ran directly into the target’s port fairwater, I braced for the joyous cacaphony of impact. And then… nothing. “Torpedo is a dud, sir!” 

Alright, I guess that’s realistic. 

I swing about quickly to bring my two stern tubes to bear on the lucky-ass merch. A quick bearing reading and angle-on-bow estimate, and off they went! 

And off they went, right past the ship. I must learn how to do that better. Nuts! 

The fore torpedo tubes are still reloading, so I while away the time pummelling the ship with my deck gun. I have no real hope that the artillery will sink her, but it’s satisfying nonetheless. 

With tubes 1 and 2 reloaded, I swing around and prepare for another run. I won’t be so careless this time. 

I let the first fish go from tube 1 and switch to external mode again. This is a work of art. It streamed directly on course to hit at the exact midpoint of the ship on its starboard side. Once again I braced… 

And once again… “The torpedo is a dud, sir!” 

Now this is getting a little too realistic. Pissed off, I snap off #2. I’m only 300 yards from the target now, so when this one fails to explode, I’m not as pissed, since even in the stock game, you have to give the torpedoes about 500 yards to run before they arm themselves. I was desperate, though. 

More artillery, while I wait for the stern tubes to reload for one last, desperate try. 

They load, and I swing around, putting the Luckiest Man Alive directly astern. Now he’s zigging and zagging, about 1500 yards away, so with one last burst of hate, I try to anticipate his next zig, and snap off the two stern fish, manually setting them to turn about 10 degrees left of where they were aimed, assuming he was going to turn into them. 

The second fish was going to miss wildly to port, but the first one was destined for greatness. If everything held up, it was going to smack right into the port-side bow of the retreating vessel, surely enough to put down the artillery-ridden hulk. 

I once again went to external view to savor the torpedo’s last couple hundred yards. It was going to hit. The merch’s luck couldn’t hold out any longer. There it goes… 

“Torpedo is a dud, sir!” 

OH, FUCK REAL FLEET BOAT. 

RATING: FUCK REAL FLEET BOAT

I couldn’t hear anything in Scotland, and certainly not on a bus. I had an operation on one ear when I was like eight, but no records exist from that era in time, so who knows what was performed. Mengele could have implanted twins in the canal; I’d have no documentation either way. I think I might have had otosclerosis, but the treatment for it mentions the possibility that you might just get FACIAL PALSY as a side effect. A “side effect”! It would have turned me into a hideous monster, yeah, that’s a goddamn side effect. With that in mind, here are some other fun and famous “side effects” from history: DYING. 

All that really remains from the operation is this garish scar that runs down the back of my left ear. The only people who see it are hairdressers, and as a result, I’ve become a wandering, aimless drifter when it comes to getting haircuts - the ‘Bill Bixby-as-David Banner-from-the-Incredible-Hulk-TV-Show’ of people getting haircuts: always moving on, never staying in one place, always staring down an unfamiliar cannister of blue comb fluid, unable and unwilling to form lasting relationships with women…. who, er, cut hair. 

Not being able to hear anything on the left side isn’t a problem in a culture where everyone drives, and everyone’s passengers are on the right side. Most conversations in my car tend to proceed as follows:

PASSENGER: “This band is terrible. Why is the teenager’s singing so shrill? What band is this?”
ROBB: (minutes of silence as I wrestle with the thing I hate most in life, which is stating the name of fucking pop punk bands)
PASSENGER:  ”… Hoooookay, changing the subject: are you lost, or are y–”
ROBB: “It was (Danger Radio / New Found Glory / Saves The Day / Death Cab for Cutie / The Cab).”
PASSENGER:  ”Okay, this car ride is over.”

Seriously, between the richly unsatisfying conversations, and shame of a grown man listening to pop punk, the doctors would have done me a favor if they spontaneously gave me a two-for-one on the ear surgery and deafied me. All of this came to fruition when I hopped on a bus with Lex, towards the end of the trip. Lex will hop on a double decker bus just for the view! I did love that about him. As someone who loves being on TV, I also loved the fact that there was closed-circuit television on the buses. I was a star!

Lex, like Barack Obama and Jack the Ripper, is left-handed. Nik, my other frequent companion on public transport, is right-handed.  I noted that Lex picked the right side of the aisle every single time, and Nik picked the left-hand side virtually every time. (I never picked a side, because my pedestrian upbringing demanded that I was always the last person in my party to board a bus.) 

Lex explained that evolution has trained us to desire to “defend” ourselves with our dominant hand. A lot of people think that evolution is a process that takes millions of years. Not the case in Scotland! It took one generation of people boarding the bus before this was sorted out: you simply wouldn’t survive long enough to reproduce if you messed that up. Buses… can be brutal! Case in point: at one point, I was on a bus with Nik headed to a town where we would meet and have dinner with her friend, Jonny. I had just sampled something called “Irn-Bru,” and was instantly addicted. The thought of a half-hour bus ride without it was too much. I chugged the can on the bus and was planning on just chucking the can in the bus’s front-mounted trash bin. I wanted to look smooth doing so, and failed miserably: I ended up smacking my forehead on a mirror I never even saw. 

We left the bus and walked down the street. Nik noted that I had hit the mirror so hard, it detached from the bus completely. She said the bus driver was out of the bus, trying to re-install the thing. The entire time, I’m just walking forward, unable to force myself to look back, lest I turn into a pillar salt, or even worse, get yelled at by the driver to go back and help. Anyway, I had fairly nice trench carved out of my forehead, which gave me, Nik and Jonny something to talk about that evening. I give Jonny full credit for being pleasant and charming, and not simply lighting an oil-soaked rag in an attempt to drive back from whence I came.

Getting to Loch Ness required a bus, but not till the end. The first thing we had to do is catch a train to Inverness. And, well - I had to go. You can’t spend four years on a game about cryptozoology and be three hours away from where Nessie is and not go. It even involved taking a train! Nik and I found a section of the train with a table - ah crap, here comes Q and A and — !!

Q: A, you look particularly fetching these evening - have you lost a little weight?

A: Oh, Q. You always know just what to say. (/swoons!)
 

Q: … Let’s get started! Do text games pay anything, A?

A: Nossiree. If making text games paid anything, Robb’d have deducted the trip to Loch Ness as a business expense. The advancing state of computer graphics didn’t just ruin all the scenes with computers in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it — and not to selfishly internalize a sea change in entertainment that cost a lot of people we respect their jobs — forced Robb to spend money on buses and trains to see the monster, without making the expenses involved in the trip the government’s problem.
 

Q: Deduct things!!?? 

A: All right, let’s not get crazy here with all the tough-guy talk, none of us knows how to “deduct” anything.  

Q: That it?

A: Yeah. 

… All right, I’m back. Loch Ness, at least the part we went to, is in the town of Drumnadrochit. There’s, um, a loch… and a post office… and an exhibit, where you can get the real scoop on the legend. 

Yeah, all right. The exhibit rocked. There’s two of them, and honestly, we didn’t have enough time to see both of them… well, I gotta fix that someday.

As for the rest of the trip?

Like I said when I started doing these, it was the two best weeks of my life. There’s nothing I can do to crystalize the emotions of meeting two people who have become so important to me over the months and years - believe me, I’ve been trying. But I guess, if I had to sum it up - I absolutely loved Edinburgh. I meandered about all sorts of different monsters in this blog post, and the thing with monsters is that the really good ones always keep coming back. Edinburgh? Edinburgh! You haven’t heard the last!

Of meee!!