I was playing ScribbleNauts for the DS some more recently. For those not in the know, it's a silly little puzzle game where you solve puzzles by writing the name of the object you would like to appear, and then using it in more or less intuitive manners.
While it does have an impressive vocabulary, I am more frequently frustrated by it's inability to do what I expect than I'd really like... many times solving a puzzle is more "what do you want me to do??" and not actually doing it. For example, it gave me a scene with a skunk, a telescope, and a scientist, and said "get rid of the skunk and give the astronomer something to look at". Of course, I can't hurt a skunk, so I tried numerous things.. eventually I put it into a doghouse. The astronomer then approached the telescope. So I put Saturn in the sky. When he didn't respond, I added galaxys, stars, quasars, pulsars, the moon, and a black hole (er, that last one killed me and I had to start again). But no matter what I put in the sky he wouldn't look. Finally, in desperation, I discarded the dog house to start over. This apparently took the skunk with it, and now the game was happy and I passed the level. Grr... if he was still unhappy, he shouldn't have gone to the telescope.
But the game also frequently makes me laugh, which is why I keep playing. I was having a hard time with a screen where you start surrounded by zombies, and have to protect a girl and get her to the escape helicopter. The zombies are too close to erect a wall in time, and there are too many to shoot them down. In desperation, I rezzed a car to try and drive through them - only to find I forced the zombie into the car. I likewise found zombies don't drive well, and although they tried to drive through us, they couldn't do any damage. So I put a car on each side of us, where the zombie there would drive forever into us (stuck), and also block the zombies behind the car. This gave me lots of time to figure out how to get rid of them, which ultimately came down to dropping a campfire on their heads and burning them out. Finally, we jumped over the cars onto a ledge, and I took the cars away (leaving the zombies), and burned them too. For some reason, this solution made me giggle. Maybe I am a bit twisted. ;) (I also giggled when I used a wand to turn a menacing T-Rex into a harmless frog on another stage... or when I tricked trick-or-treaters with a vampire... go figure.. ;) )
I had a vivid dream, not last night but the night before, just forgot to write it down. Probably due to watching Terminator: Salvation recently, I dreamt about the same sort of world - the machines had taken over and were working to eliminate humanity. I had broken into a run-down apartment building to hide out, watching the flying machines go by on patrol. One thing that was odd, was I had a Vectrex game system. I unplugged it, so that the machines wouldn't detect it running, but it wouldn't shut off. I studied it, noting that it had been modified - at least it had stereo sound and a different control panel. I remembered noting to my friend, "If this was a movie, this modified game system would definately be the key to defeating the machines." But, of course, it was only a modified game system.
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Dear Santa...
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