{"id":39764,"date":"2017-07-19T02:10:31","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T06:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=39764"},"modified":"2017-07-19T02:13:22","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T06:13:22","slug":"nan-o-war-inter-o-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=39764","title":{"rendered":"Nan o&#8217; War: Inter o&#8217; Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Considering that my computer&#8217;s in a cardboard box along with half the rest of my possessions<span class='snote' title='1'>I&#8217;m moving. I haven&#8217;t been burglarized by Calvin.<\/span>, now seems like a time to spit on my hands, hoist the blag flag, and thoughtfully contemplate the future of this series.<\/p>\n<p><div class='imagefull'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/bg_140.png' width=100% alt='In other words, naval gazing.' title='In other words, naval gazing.'\/><\/div><div class='mouseover-alt'>In other words, naval gazing.<\/div><\/p>\n<p>I try to approach games I cover with one knuckle-duster labelled &#8220;HARSH&#8221; and the other &#8220;BUT FAIR.&#8221; I take this idea seriously, especially when documenting games basically no-one plays. I like to make it clear that all I&#8217;m sharing is my subjective, tractable, imperfect understanding of what the game promises and how it functions.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;d like to pause the narrative for a moment and tell you a true story.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not long ago, for reasons not really worth getting into, I ran into The Crunch. For well over a month every moment could be filed under one of three categories:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Taking care of my bare minimum responsibilities<\/li>\n<li>Eating meals prepared by a megacorporation or pitying loved one<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Sleeping.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My leisure activities included singing in the shower, loneliness-induced hallucinations, and interpretive belching. Videogames didn&#8217;t feature very prominently.<\/p>\n<p>As The Crunch gradually softened into The Chew, I found myself with my first day off in recent memory. Hours and hours without a single emergency to occupy them. I wish I could say I went to the park, or had a date with my significant other, or perhaps took a day trip to a town with its own pre-printed merchandise. I did not do those things. Alas, my backlog yawned.<\/p>\n<p>I played <em>Blood and Gold <\/em>for five goddamn hours straight. I sat right down in my busted chair with a full glass of raw unsweetened concentrated cold-brew coffee and slapped the cobwebs off Steam and loaded up my screenshot utility and played <em>Caribbean!<\/em> until my wrists ached. Hours of ships cutting awkwardly against the wind. Hours of losing a dozen crew members to an entirely successful boarding. Hours of inaccurate pirates, repetitive ship-to-ship combats, shaky English, and embarrassing breasts. Hours of grinding gambling to have the funds to grind merchants for bombs so I can grind pirates for reputation so I can upgrade my ships <em>if that&#8217;s even how it works<\/em>. Very possibly I played more <em>Caribbean! <\/em>than any non-developer has ever played in one sitting. <em>Caribbean! <\/em>until my vision blurred. <em>Caribbean! <\/em>until my hard drive burst with records. <em>Caribbean! <\/em>until I had enough material that I would never, ever need to load the game up again.<\/p>\n<p>God help me, I had a fucking blast.<\/p>\n<p>So how many posts are left in this series? I can&#8217;t say I&#8217;m certain. There&#8217;s some upcoming repetition I fully intend to time-skip, but really&#8212;when can I say I&#8217;ve seen it all? When can I be sure I&#8217;ve nothing left to share with you? When I&#8217;m queen of the pirates? When I&#8217;m queen of the world? When I&#8217;ve beaten <a href=\"http:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/659930\/Blood_and_Gold__The_Zombiest_Adventures\/\">whatever the hell this is?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>All I know is this: I&#8217;m game to continue exploring. That may not be worth full price, but it&#8217;s got to be worth at least something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Considering that my computer&#8217;s in a cardboard box along with half the rest of my possessionsI&#8217;m moving. I haven&#8217;t been burglarized by Calvin., now seems like a time to spit on my hands, hoist the blag flag, and thoughtfully contemplate the future of this series. I try to approach games I cover with one knuckle-duster [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}