Oct 14, 6:05 pm
You know it’s a very hard life for us Frag Dolls. I am playing so many games right now. I’m still in love with Rainbow Six Lockdown. I can’t get enough of FarCry Instincts. Brother’s In Arms: Earned in Blood is flank-tastic. Fahrenheit is still chilling me to the bone. I’ve been duking it out with the kids on Halo 2. Of course, I have to fit in a round on Everybody’s Golf if the weather’s nice. KOS-MOS needs me to help her save the galaxy in Xenosaga 2 and when I need a bit of excersise do I go out? Pffffth! Going out’s for wimps. I just throw some shapes with EyeToy Play 3. Neither Xenosaga 2 or EyeToy Play 3 are even out yet but being a Games Journalist has it’s privileges. It doesn’t end there though. I’ve got my sister on skype saying “What are you doing? Why aren’t you on Guild Wars? Come do a quest with me? Are you listening? What’s a ‘Takedown’?”
Ahh, yes. Burnout Revenge. You gotta love it. No, I mean it. You’ve got to or I’m coming round your house to take you down, in person. So fast, so violent, so very simple. It leaves your mind free to talk about other things with your fellow racers. It got me to thinking about the different chat dynamics of different games.
Some games really need you to stratagise with your teammates. If you’re playing Total Conquest or Retrieval mode on Rainbow Six Lockdown your team will benefit greatly from planning, calling for medics and updating each other on your position. This would interrupt any real conversation too much so in between all this the Frag Dolls like to have a little singalong. We currently favour Take on Me by Aha. Far Cry Instincts also benefits from a bit of strategy talk in Predator mode which is punctured regularly with people shouting “Waaaaa, he’s near me. Run awaaaay!”
Some games should be conducive to a bit of nonsense chat but for one reason and another just aren’t. The sport of pwnage has become almost second to the sport of boasting about pwnage in Halo 2. I can see the appeal of having a way to get out all your frustrations and having a place to show off but it’s not my way, personally. I’d rather be setting the world to rights and philosophising. The place to do that is Burnout Revenge. Recent topics of conversation on B:R have been:
- Sock gloves with toes in them – good or bad?
- Age ratings on games
- Do yellow cars go faster?
- Why ladies don’t like to talk about their age
- How bad the weather is in Glasgow
- How much rubbish you can talk while playing Burnout
‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax --
Of cabbages—and kings --
And why the sea is boiling hot --
And whether pigs have wings.’
