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Friday, September 25, 2015

Sixteen More Weeks of Winter

Far Cry 3 was the game that changed everything in 2013. Which of course means "another first-person sandbox but with prettier shrubs or some other damn thing." And those shrubs were indeed gorgeous. And I guess the game was okay.

In my experience, it was a game about hunting increasingly dangerous animals like sharks and cassowaries because only their skin was fit to make me a bigger wallet even though my pockets were just overflowing with crocodile skins and deer pelts and tiger rugs and all manner of perfectly serviceable wallet-crafting animal hides. Sometimes I also climbed radio towers, and toward the end I got a wingsuit that was nowhere near as fun as the parachute in Just Cause 2.

Also I murdered like 10,000 dudes. Come to think of it, they probably had wallets I could've just stolen.

I guess the actual game was like... an Apocalypse Now type story about becoming the jungle or whatever. A bunch of white people get stranded on an island full of savages who are all black except one German guy who helps you because this is a Ubisoft game. Your name is Connor or Carter or something and a voodoo swamp witch gives you a magic tattoo that implements basic RPG leveling elements because people sure liked those Arkham games, and you have to just murder brown people until you get off the island.

The primary antagonist is Vaas, a man who I swear to Christ is modeled on and voiced by Charlie Day even though IMDB has been telling me for three years now that I'm wrong.

The gang murders a bunch of tourists.
Vaas here is always droning on about the definition of insanity, which is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." In his case it relates to killing... Jason? The protagonists name is Jason? Maybe his brother was named Connor or whatever? Who cares.

He keeps trying to kill you and you keep getting saved by narratively convenient tattoos, and he keeps droning on about the definition of insanity until you murder him.

And while that was pretty irritating because I couldn't skin him to make a bigger quiver, the guy that actually said that thing he kept quoting wasn't wrong. Which brings us to the Chicago Bears and the last 9 months or so of radio silence.

Monday, February 2, 2015

The Cycle Begins Anew

Jay Cutler could still win a Super Bowl. After everything he's done to me, after everything we've seen, I still believe it. I've seen what he can do in a system that works for him and the players around him. I've seen what he can be when he decides it's time to release the dragon. Jay Cutler could still win a Super Bowl. He's just never going to, because we're getting ready to throw the next five years in the garbage before they even start.

These last few years, the Bears were conducting a grand experiment. They broke free of tradition and hired a GM who looks weird and talks weird and acts weird and drafts weird players. That guy brought in a coach who was also weird, and together they tried to turn the Chicago Bears into a modern NFL franchise.

They failed. Oh, how they failed. The first year was a given. Honestly, it went better than I expected it to. The offense worked like a charm, and I'm not going to fault any one person for the fact that the defense crumbled into dust and we had to ask Shea McClellin to be a starting defensive end.

And then this season happened. And good God, was it a shitshow. Matt Forte played well because he always does, and Kyle Fuller looks promising. That's about the enthusiasm I've got. The Trestman Experiment revealed very little other than the fact that Marc Trestman moved to Canada for a reason.