Mom is a Gamer, Part II

When we last left off, I had abandoned Bad Janet and GTA V for a Nintendo Switch and Zelda, Legend of the Wild, thanks to Allie's early Christmas gift.  The Switch is a handheld game system but it can also be docked so you can play with the TV as your screen.

I haven't played a handheld game since my kids had a Gameboy and I sometimes played Frogger on it while they were at school.  The poor frog always got run over.  Hmmm, are we sensing a theme with some of these games?  Maybe vehicles and I don't mix.

I got the Switch, got Zelda loaded, and set out to play.  Similar to GTA V, this is another game where you can have all kinds of adventures.  It opened on a boy named Link, waking up in a shallow pool of water.  Um, Link?  I thought I was playing Zelda.  But OK, I can go along with this.

Almost right away I realized the game was giving really specific instructions with everything - like press A to take something - which was good as I had no idea what I was doing.  I also did not know how to work the controls, which added additional challenges.  I found a treasure chest pretty quick and opened it to find a shirt, which Link put on.  Then suddenly he was transported to a high tower, where an old man pointed out a glowing structure in the distance and gave Link instructions to go there and bring him a treasure, and he'd reward Link with a paraglider.

First things first:  Link had to climb down the tower.  After struggling to jump to several platforms below, he ran out of platforms, and the only controller instructions showing were JUMP or LET GO.  I pressed let go and poor Link fell a long long way to the ground, yelling all the way, before landing in a crumpled heap where he whimpered ow and then he was dead.  You guys, I felt so bad for him!  Apparently I can run over a ton of adults in Grand Theft Auto, but have my young character die at my hands?  That hurt.

Eventually and completely by accident, I figured out that he could climb the rest of the way down the tower.  I got him to the shrine, got bombs, managed to get the treasure, and triumphantly came out of the shrine only to be beaten to death by monsters.  What the what??  I was not expecting monsters!  When he dies, Link is resurrected at the last place the game saved, so I got a chance to fight the monsters several times before finally defeating them.  I got Link back to the tower to give the treasure to the old man, who chuckled and told me I had to get four more.  I was so mad - I did what he said and he changed the rules!

Here's the controllers on the, uh...control thingie that came with the game, and the body of the system ready to be docked.

Jeff wanted to watch me play, so I docked the switch to use the television for the screen.  After asking me how did I manage to get to the first shrine without finding food, eating anything to restore my strength, or why I didn't have pants on Link, I realized that I had missed a lot, so I wiped Link clean and restarted the game. 

Here's the Switch in handheld mode - complete with Link wearing a shirt AND pants, so fancy!

Playing with Jeff watching was a trip.  First of all, he had me look around the cave where Link woke up and guess what?  There were two treasure chests.  So Link not only got his shirt but he got pants as well.  I had him exit the cave and Jeff showed me all the sparkling things on the ground that I'd run right by - I had no idea you were to go to them and press A - mushrooms and apples went into my inventory...which I also hadn't realized existed.  Weirdly, I couldn't find the shrine with the bombs.  I had just been there!  But everything looked the same so I wandered around and finally stumbled onto a different shrine and the game unfolded from there...slowly and with a lot of deaths, mostly Link's.

Occasionally I managed to defeat some monsters but every time danger was near, ominous music would begin along with the flustering - my flustering.  I've been playing this game off and on for a few weeks now and even though I'm a little better at fighting (and have acquired better weapons, too), more than once I've managed to accidentally throw my weapon at a sleeping monster instead of shooting him with my bow and arrow.  But ask me to throw my weapon deliberately?  Haha, not gonna happen.

I still will somehow hit the button that makes Link crouch while fighting, which is not helpful at all...or I'll hit the button that makes him hold a bomb over his head, which is a pretty glow-y blue with trailing tendrils of blue lights as he frantically runs while Jeff is saying drop the bomb, drop the bomb! 

Simulated panic running with bomb for photos - no animals were harmed in the making of this picture.

While there IS quite a lot of panic on my end, I do enjoy getting to a village, where monsters can't enter.  There are people to talk to, places to buy clothing, food, and weapons, and at one village I discovered an empty house that I could purchase for the sum of 3,000 bundles of wood and 3,000 rupees.  I think I had maybe 19 bundles of wood and about 100 rupees at the time, so it took a while to acquire everything.

Here's where the nature-loving person in me had a dilemma:  to get the wood, you chopped down trees.  Trees in the village.  I felt so conflicted - the first time Jeff told me to chop down a tree by a house I said no...I didn't want to destroy the beautiful environment.  He said they would magically grow back, so I reluctantly swung my ax and not only ended up with wood, but also apples, so I basically razed the village and got enough wood.  Sure enough, the trees grew back, whew!

This game has a camera so you can take selfies, LOL.  Anyway, this is the house that Link built - er, bought.

I finally had enough rupees to make the purchase, and I was so proud to call myself a Hatano Homeowner.  Of course then I needed to get it furnished and yes, this made the former Sims player very happy.  Plus you can't accidentally start a fire in this house like you could with the Sims, so I'm pretty sure the house is mine forever.

There have been a lot more adventures and finds in this game mostly thanks to Jeff pushing me to "go look over there" when all I want to do is hide from monsters and get stuff.  I had one long trek where I nearly quit the game thanks to having to fight a stupid stupid electric Wizzrobe monster over and over and over  - this went on for a couple of days and when I finally beat him?  I really have no idea how I managed to do that beyond shooting a couple of arrows and swinging my weapon, hoping he was near enough to be hit.  My hands were sweaty and my fingers and thumbs had imprints of the controller buttons on them; and yes, I took a break after that victory.

One last thing:  you can acquire a horse if you sneak up from behind, jump on it, and hit the L button to soothe it before it bucks you off.  I was successful with my third attempt, so I took her to the stable, got her a custom mane and tail, and named her.  I am happy to present to you my horse:

Bad Janet, in all her edgy glory.  Maybe I'll be better riding her than I was when Bad Janet drove cars in GTA V...maybe??

Grand Theft Auto V - A Newbie's Take

I've been bored bored bored for months now.  There's only so much TV I can watch, and reading is very hit or miss with my attention span.  Knitting is still a no go, thank you drug-addled brain and shaky fingers.  So when we were in Dallas a couple weekends ago, I killed some time watching a streaming version of Grand Theft Auto with Allie’s boyfriend Andrew, while she and Jeff were installing some security cameras in the garage and downstairs area.  Honestly what got me hooked was seeing that the character wore a salmon colored sweater, and whenever he got a new vehicle, he promptly drove it to his body-shop and had it painted salmon, which is my kind of game.  Color coordination?  I am in.

Well, my interest got everyone excited - MOM IS FINALLY GOING TO BECOME A GAMER!  Not so fast, people.  Mom just wanted to do the Sims-like part, where you create a character and design a house and decorate it.  Only with vehicles.  But sure, I'm game (har) - so Jeff downloaded GTA V onto his computer and I started playing, which as you might imagine, did not go well considering the last video game I was proficient at was Centipede.  At the arcade.  In the early 80s.  So yeah, I had a big learning curve.

Day one:  I was on some sort of tutorial in a snowy area and after many failed attempts I managed to grab a stack of cash and shoot my way out to escape, but then I had to drive a vehicle on icy snow roads.  Just driving would have been a challenge but having the car slip and slide?  I kept crashing, dying, and starting over.

Also, I couldn't figure out all of the actions - most eventually came to me but I had to take a picture of one and text it to the kadults for help:

Allie responded first:  "Isn't that enter?  Like return on a typewriter?"  Oh.  Yes it is, and notice how she was speaking my language, using 'return' and 'typewriter'?  I would have felt dumb but there were so many things to learn that I blanked on what should have been a familiar symbol.

Day two:  More of the same but apparently if you fail at a mission so many times, the game offers you the chance to skip that section (I think this may only be in the tutorial version), so I did.  Then I was transported to a coastal community in southern California, where I was part of a team repossessing sports cars.  Well.  I would either crash right away, or drive so slowly that the guy who I was repossessing the car from would catch up to me on foot, pull me out of the car, and beat the crap out of me until I died.  Or I'd accidentally hit the F key which would make me exit the car and then someone else would beat the crap out of me.  Or else I managed to drive away but would lose the car I was supposed to be following and die.

Day two, hours later:  I stumbled onto the page where I could create my own character - yay, like the Sims!  Except for criminals.  I decided to make my version of Bad Janet from The Good Place.  OK that was fun.

Bad Janet, with all of her attitude, ready to take on her first job.  She had to drive to a meeting place and then get the drugs.

I managed to get Bad Janet to the meeting place - you'd be surprised at how many times you can run over light posts and pedestrians and still get where you're going.  She got out of the car to get the drugs, only to be shot by several people.  So we began that again, and again, and again.  At one point I had her running away (in high heels - go Bad Janet) and lost the car, so she walked and walked and after a while I realized that I could click the F key and she would enter a car, even if it wasn't hers.  Yep, old Bad Janet would smash a window with her elbow and get in the car and drive away; she made that look easy.  Driving was still terrible, but at least she started out in a nice car until she crashed it too many times.

And then...Bad Janet came across a Mini Cooper:

Heck yeah she stole it.  Also, get the drugs, I know, I know.

She drove so far out of the city that she got completely lost:

Get the drugs - yes, she would do that if she could get anywhere NEAR the drugs!

Apparently once you missed the first opportunity to get the drugs, the drug guy got in a car and kept driving away from you...I was convinced at that point there was no way to ever get the drugs.  Side note, I later found out that I was right - well, according to some gamers online.  You either got the drugs right away or else you got to practice driving around southern California, LOL.

So, here's the deal:  I was playing this on Jeff's computer, which is a gaming computer and can handle all of the graphics and sounds, but I was using a keyboard to play, which means driving by pressing the W key to move forward, A to move left, D to move right, and S to reverse.  Hey, I drove a stick shift as a teenager, but these actions were about 1000 times harder, mostly because there were either two speeds when driving - herky jerky starting and stopping (like a stick shift when you first learn how to drive one, LOL), or 135 mph.  So trying to subtly move to the right or left was really hard, much like it must be when one is driving 135 mph in real life.  I wouldn't know...I may have gotten up to 90 mph or so as a teenager (I'm not admitting anything, MOM AND DAD WHO ARE READING THIS) on a freeway but there weren't pedestrians and other obstacles to avoid.  Also I may have only done it once.  Maybe.  Who's to say for sure?  WINK.

Boy that was a tangent.  What I was trying to get at, is that Jeff decided I needed an actual game controller to make it easier so I could, say it with me, get the drugs.  He was ready to buy an Xbox controller when Allie offered to give me an early Christmas gift in the form of a Nintendo Switch, which is a handheld video game that you can also play on the TV.  I abandoned GTA for Zelda, and that's where we'll pick up next time on MOM IS A GAMER.