Day 134 - oh, the Payne

Hey there!

Yeah, I know... it's been all quiet on the They Were Our Gods front of late.  To be honest, that's a problem most bloggers have... you can only write every day for so long.  And when I'm using up words for this book project too, then eventually something has to give.

Also pulled from the excuses hat is the 'work' card... I've had loads on, and as I've been attempting to get promotion there on two fronts, it's meant I've had to put in a lot of extra work to try and get my applications looking good.  But that's all done with now, and I'm just sitting waiting for the outcome.

It might look dramatic, but that's going to hurt when he lands.

I've now got a well-deserved week off, in which I intend to give this blog, and the book, some right hammer.  But I thought I'd do a bit of gaming first... and a game I rented a little while ago was Max Payne 3.

Now, I'm not a big fan of first-person shooters.  I'm rubbish at them.  Third-person shooters, I enjoy a lot more.  I'm still not that great at them, but for some reason I just find them more enjoyable to play, as a rule. Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption, for instance, has been one of my favourite gaming experiences of the current generation.  And as Max Payne 3 is also published by Rockstar, I expected more of the same  Well, maybe with less animal skinning...

Pure evil, in digital form.

So far, it hasn't quite worked out to plan.  I'm absolutely terrible at this game.  I blundered through the first bit reasonably well, which gave me hope that I'd improve as things went on.  No such luck.  I'm only on the second chapter or whatever it is, and I'm repeating the same section over and over and over again, and dying every time, making absolutely no progress with it whatsoever.  It makes me want to give up already.

In some ways, though, that's a remarkably old-school bit of game design.  After all, how many times in the Eighties did we play a game and, in particular, one section of a game over and over again, before finally triumphing heroically?  Personally, I have particularly painful memories of the C5 section of Monty on the Run.  I must have failed on that section of the game at least a hundred times, and it's scarred on my brain.

Ahhh, there's lovely. Until I get to the bosses, anyway. Then I'm rubbish again.

Eventually, however, with perseverance and no little amount of skill, I made it through that section and managed to complete the game... yes, without cheating.  It still stands today as one of my proudest gaming accomplishments.  And if I could do it back then, I can damn well do it today.  Max Payne won't be the beating of me.  I'm going to crack on with it, and I'm going to complete it.  I will be triumphant!

Well, unless I get distracted by NiGHTS into dreams...