Jolt Country

<b> THE FOLLOWING LIST WILL NEVER BE COMPLETED </b> Under advisement from the Celestial Guardian and general malcontent that derives a name known from a novel that was inspired by a dog fuck he saw scrawled on a bathroom wall.

<b><i>Beasiality....</b></i>

<i>Cruising on the foreline... Considering black and white...</i>

Final Fantasy may or may not be found below...

X

<b>Diablo 2</b>

Known for enticing various forms of backwater consideration, Diablo 2 is famous for being a perpetual, easily addicting, mind fuck that proved humans are meant to toil needlessly towards no end while complaining about an arbitrary scoring system to an entity that <i>Just Doesn't Care</b> since gaining a semi-secret and oft transposed item through over three thousand hours of gameplay somehow validates such opinions.

Stat Trees
Item Runs
Endless Gameplay cycles

Everything such item made the opinion of every random person to visit Diabloii.net a valid argument. Transposing the mathematical equations to ensure maximum item recovery... Yes... These were prime considerations. As were plotting the skill sets and asking around about the comulative damage of Fire Golems against Iron Golems.

Wasting a saturday night in a bedroom, figuring out the equations for Magic Find, finding out that gambling was pointless even with a Goldwrap belt, these were a set of problems done in notebooks during my highschool English classes.

I learned statistics just to acurately implement my own formulas into the game via modified gear.

<i>This is a joke</i>

<i>No its not</i>

Diablo 2 consumed my life while I didn't much care for the game. Going through Hell for the second time didn't allow me to derive joy from my existance. Working out the equations in my head did.

And I'd sit and read through forums, wondering how I could modify the drop ratio. Its odd then, that while I wasn't the only one to become thus into the game, it appears my loneliness stemmed from refusing to call Blizzard a bunch of raving morons for implementing a lower damage cap to Whirlwind.

$30 and Three Thousand Hours of anything will allow a person to feel validated in pressing an argument against a company of over 400 people.

Emotional addiction is achieved through acclimating oneself to the systems and inventions of another.

This is the lesson I learned from Diablo 2.

IX

<b>Ultima: The Black Gate</b>

SNES. The SNES version. Lamenting the end of Final Fantasy 3, this game filled the void.

After nearly three days of playing through, I became lost in a dungeon, a dungeon part of the main quest, and then irrevocably lost when my save game put me back in the exact spot.

<i>Maps of the dungeon were made</i> Charts of the probability of finding a path based on paths that led back in on themselves <i> were also made</i>

I remember a fire sword and arrows. Dying an endless number of times, and finding myself in a drainage pipe near my cousins house applying the ideas I gleamed from trying to find a way out of the maze my avatar was placed in.

Just now remembering how I knew how to scrawl a map, place geometry in accordance with room size, <i>Slay a dragon</i> to everyones bemusement because I played this game.

Charts, graphs, map making, and everything was a summer of profound worth trying to get out of that maze. Five minute increments of jotting down geometry between bouts of having a football thrown at me, merely because the premise was an interesting one.

<i>Everything is an interesting problem</i>

I played Chrono Trigger afterwards

VIII

<b>Asherons Call</b>

If you enjoy equations and being able to predict every single occurance of character advancement, Asherons Call is Grand.

Grand because... All the ingame equations are publicly available.

<i>What a concept</i>

Every level is a progression of grinding away to advance a skillpoint in a level. Its an interesting excercise.

<b>Everyone has played this game at one point in their life</b>

<b>Everyone is playing this game right now</b>

Everyone is wondering and hoping about the future. The future seen from a narrow view of time which doesn't exist. Profound limitations in human sight and that is our commitment <i>to the future</i>

I enjoy not playing Asherons Call every moment I am not playing Asherons Call since predictability is tiring. An endless escapade which only ends when an escape draws nigh. My escape was a girl.

Two years older than me, she took me behind a slide and played teeter totter with my heart. No she didn't. We played both Asherons Call and Diablo 2 together while we never actually talked about playing these games together.

Life was an escape. These games were a ritual. One sorely lost when we were both banned. Suicide together.

The rest of the summer was spent carousing in dark places speaking of the void and the power of the concept of nothingness and the human character, until boarding school swalled her whole, ripping her asunder from my person.

VII

<b>Final Fantasy 6</b>

Renting this game from blockbuster, a clerk I knew from the store bought the copy, somehow, and deleted my save game.

<b>LOCKE HAD DOOM BEFORE THE WORLD OF RUIN YOU FOOLISH MORON</b>

Though he did work on my game for me without actually advancing the story... He also had nachos.

I thank you for the nachos, wherever you are.

VI

<b>HOMEWORLD</b>

Salvage

The only concept to the game.

Salvage

What every reviewer will forget to mention.

Salvage

Oh wonders!

Salvage kept Homeworld in my mind every waking hour for two months (only when I wasn't thinking of something else, which was all the time except for five minutes during a bus trip).

Every single enemy ship could be captured. Homeworld is a space game. A SPACE VIDEO GAME. And every enemy ship could be captured for ones own personal use.

Wonderful. Exciting. In one mission, there were 350 ion frigates. Giant shooting beams. 350 before the final mission. I plotted in my mind the way to most quickly obtain them. Took my some time, though I was crafty. I was funny.

The form and function of finding spacecraft continued into every other part of my life because... I applied physics to this video game. Didn't work quite as well, came close though, and it turned out swell.

Swell

This list is now being forcibly stopped thanks to the sponsors everyone knows that love the world and everyone in it.

I thank you for thanking them and for remembering the wonder and possibility that every project which isn't completed holds in the minds of everyone who discovers it.

That was an entertaining read. I never knew how much math entered into Diablo's gameplay.

It's good to have you back, man.

You know, I've been playing D2 on and off for quite some time now. The second week it came out, actually. The only redeeming feature of the game is, sadly, figuring out how soon before I can cheat. I got through two acts legit before I discovered the code of Jamella. Jamella is apparently a programmer who, like me, discovered that Diablo 2 is best played with hacked equipment. Unlike me, however, Jamella actually did something about it. Where I would just grouse about having to quick escape thru a town portal because I couldn’t hammer on the 1-4 keys fast enough and simultaneously direct (via mouse clicks) for my character to please move away from the nasty bad things that are draining my health globe faster than beer drinkers at Oktoberfest. (This is a prime example of a run-on sentence. please continue.) Jamella actually wrote an editing program enabling me to jack up my character’s stats and gear. At this point I became invincible. Very nice. I beat that game in less than a day. In order to test out my invincibility, I moved my character into the midst of three rather nasty ‘mini bosses, then left to go eat lunch. When I returned about a half hour later they were still futilely trying to beat me into wood pulp. I hadn’t lost a bit of health at that point.
I also found out that beating the game using a hacked character is also similar to cheating. You win but it’s not a good win. There’s no challenge. It makes the game more boring.

I could plot out damage and magic find ratios for all the major bosses (bhaal runs. Diablo wasn't a very good drop) from memory. Which is amusing small talk whenever someone asks me for directions.

"Bud, how do I get to the baseball field?"
"6x8/(y+43x) - 2y-x"
"Huh?"
"No uniques for you"

And how do they compute damage in an RPG?

Thats right, equations! Any stat based game will have have to do damage equations because... Enemy stats against player stats (last changed) + armor and weapons = Damage inflicted. Neat to think all those problems are being solved quicker than one can think.

Aardvark:

My one concession was my preference for the Necromancer. Just stood there and never did anything.

There and here and everything...

Maybe over there?

I'm not here.