My Ball

The Ball: The world needs more zombie killing and world traversing tools

So, I finished The Ball this weekend. The basic idea behind the game is that your character finds himself deep in an underground civilization in Mexico and he discovers an ancient gravity gun that directs a ball twice the size of your character through a variety of Meso-American themed puzzles and traps. So, I found myself running through barren villages floating on top of great underground lakes and crushing its mummified inhabitants with my left nut, I mean, ball.

Let's see your traditional mummy killing weapons liquify the enemy.

The game isn't about mummy / zombie killing, but murder by ball produces a satisfying crunch after the creature chased you halfway across the dungeon because your ball was stuck in a mousetrap; very satisfying.
To put it another way, imagine your rifle hangs 20 feet in the air or in the sewers below you while trying to open the door to the next room.  Meanwhile, you're punching back and backpedaling away from the undead while positing yourself in such a way that will move your rifle closer to the objective. Yeah.

I asked myself, why, why would you need so many spikes on one wall?

 
It's not all mummy killing, however. When I wasn't running for my life or in a circle because I took a wrong turn at the intersection of right way and wrong way, I put on my fedora and tried to remember Indian Jones quotes while running past obnoxiously large traps. Secrets areas filled with little snippets of backstory dotted the dungeons, but after missing pieces of the explanation of the history behind the civilization, I gave up on my effort to meticulously scrounge each area in search of these historical artifacts and focused on progressing through the game until its anticlimactic ending.

Alright, I can tell I'm losing your attention, so one last before and after. After beating the game, I played through the Portal DLC, taking me back to Aperture and the deep underground one last time. No portals, but an excess of monkeys:

Oh look, a cute monkey on a conveyor belt, and there's an ominous button nearby. I stood here wondering what to expect

Oh.. oops.

Upon exiting the room with a dozen angry monkey ghosts presumably following me, GLaDOS chastised me for killing those monkeys, who had lived for thousands of years and were on the verge of leaking the secrets of life to their caretakers.

Skyrim'ing, Part 2

Playing Skyrim again, I found myself across a river, where a dragon and giant fought. I went over there, with thirst for dragon blood. One iron arrow finished off the dragon, while I collected the bones the giant turned for me and chased me down the road. I heard the boom, boom, boom for a minute before I jumped in a river and the current swept me away. I turned around to see the giant on the shore a fair distance from me just turn around and flee.

Meanwhile, I got stuck up in a tree.

I read this book and all I got was admiration for the author

I'm falling in love with Cormac McCarthy. For the past few weeks, I've been reading Blood Meridian, and I could sing praise of it all day. I need more of him, I need his works and literature inside of me. I watched The Road a week ago, and that only fueled my admiration for the guy. It's just as brilliant as Blood Meridian, but I must read the book to fully judge it. Finally, if you're still wondering who Cormac McCarthy is, well, he wrote No Country For Old Men, and it's just one more movie that I must watch.

Back to hiding away, like a groundhog, you'll probably see me in two weeks.