Can't Dodge: Swearing at a bastard

For this “Can’t Dodge” I have decided to write about an indie game! One that’s free! Yes, it’s free! And I’m shit at it!

OK, so, there are two types of games I won’t be writing about in Can’t Dodge much; RPG’s and stealth games. Only because I’m actually quite good at them. I think it’s because there’s a lot of standing around and thinking. No sudden moves, you know?
But I am so fucking bad at side scrolling platformers. My archenemy! I can’t stop falling off things and running into other things and being fucking shot in the face AND WHERE ARE THE FUCKING MUSHROOMS AND FUCKING RINGS WHEN YOU FUCKI-

So, what do you get when you cross a game genre I’m awesome at and one I’m awfully bad at? The answer: A lot of shouting.

And stealth Bastard must have heard me say every swear word in the English language, and some new ones, too.

So you’ve got the usual elements, run, die, run, die some more, run jump and die, and so on. But you also need to stay in the shadows, making sure you’re not spotted by cameras and robots (fucking robots!). The cameras aren’t so much of a bother but the robots will shoot you on site. And these shots blow you up. Boom! Blood and guts everywhere!

Let me tell you about one level in particular. Level four. Yeah, that’s right I’m stuck on level four. Fuck you.

So I jump down from a ledge. Bang, robot shoots me.

I jump down as he turns and run for the shadows. Bang, robots walks into me.

I jump onto the ledge I couldn’t help but miss and jump down behind the ‘bot to hack the keypad. I then panic because I have no idea how I’m gonna get past the robot.

Rinse and repeat until I figure out that you need to jump back onto the ledge. I’ve never felt so stupid. That’s a lie, I’ve acted pretty stupid in my life and I will continue to do so for many years to come.

But, getting passed that, I got to a point where I had to hack a keypad to start an elevator. Alright! Here we go, movin’ on up!

It crushed me because I was a little too close. That’s the point where I said “Fuck this, I’m leaving.”

Fun game, though.
http://www.stealthbastard.com/

Can't Dodge: Scarecrow Troubles

I don’t play MMORPG’s. I just don’t. And I don’t trust those that do. They constantly want to level up, no matter who they have to kill to do it. I don’t want to be killed for the sake of somebody’s insane urge to have a new speed skill or whatever.

But I do like DC. I mean, who doesn’t like Batman? I’m going to add those who don’t like Batman to my “don’t trust” list.

I’m also a big fan of free stuff so when DC universe Online went free to play this month I downloaded.

We’ll skip over the part where I downloaded it at 11:30pm and it didn’t finish until 4:30pm. I only got three and a half hours sleep because no MMORPG players have mentioned the download time before.

Instead, let’s get straight to how shit I am at the game.

At first I seemed to be alright at it. Make a cool looking hero in a trench coat, have Batman as my mentor and agonise over choosing a decent name that wasn’t taken.
Battle through Brainiac’s ship in the tutorial mission, blah blah blah, team up with Superman and the finally leave and go to the Gotham precinct. Not too bad so far! Batman has given me some orders and told me how cool I am!

Then the first mission started. Go fight Scarecrow’s goons and protect hazmat guys. Simple, right? Fuck no.

I don’t know how to protect these guys! I keep close to fight the goons coming after them but lag kicks in and the hazmat guys disappear!

I find myself chasing ghost in yellow suits, trying to protect them. It also doesn’t help when the goals are written in itty bitty font sizes, almost impossible to read.
But I did eventually figure out what to do. I saved some dude, hit some dudes. All good.

Then I had to find the scarecrow. “In the sewers,” they said. Is he? Then why can’t I go down one of the many manholes?!? Turns out I had to wait in a queue, on the “on duty” screen.

After that I spent a lot of time getting my ass handed to me by goons. I’ve been told that I need to “grind” which means I need to level up by killing enemies for hours, gaining nothing except maybe making the next mission a little easier.

It also looks like I chose the wrong “travel power.” I chose acrobatics because it was as close to Batman as I could get. So while I’m running slightly faster than normal, there are people running past me with super speed and flying over me with flight.

Fuck that. No more of these games for me. RPG’s are fine but MMORPG’s are not for me.