Should've taken a left turn at Albuquerque

"Okay, where the hell am I going?"

"This place looks familiar. I think"

"I JUST WENT IN A CIRCLE? WHAT?"

-me playing any game with large maps

Throughout my years of playing video games, I can say I've sampled, and had fallen in love with, various genres and game titles. I've kicked ass, and had my ass kicked, in fighting games. I have toyed with the powers of being a god in various god-games. I have wandered aimlessly doing everyone in the village a favour (which, surprisingly, is a LOT of games). I have put myself in the protagonist's shoes and hack-n-slashed my way through story lines, falling in love, and utter hate, with characters. And I've made the unfortunate mistake of playing Silent Hill 2 once and had gained a whole new found respect for people who can stay up past 3am.

With this, I believe I've learned a few things about myself. One is that I cannot do stealth missions even if my life depended on it. Like ever. Two is that I'm a horrible shot, but hopefully I can remedy that.

Three is that I get lost.

A lot.

Constantly.

Now, in real life, I'm horrible at directions. I need to take one route for a certain number of times before I feel not-weird trying out shortcuts or different methods to get there. The fact that I'm allowed to drive is a mind-boggler in itself, seeing as I'm really not the type to climb on top of the hood and yell out "ADVENTURE!"

Apparently this translates into video games too.

taken from here. Oh god.

I'm not even sure how I get lost half the time, seeing as I do consult the map every chance I get. It's like I go down one way, take a turn somewhere, and then BAM. Dead end. Or BAM. Back to where I started.

Either or.

It doesn't really stop me from playing games with large maps, It's just one of those minor, or major, inconveniences. More than anything, it's me yelling at the screen wondering how the hell I even got to that point. It's one reason why I don't do well with horror games, coupled with my ability to panic. Hell, I'm very likely to be the first or second one to die if ever I got stuck in a horror movie. Ugh.

Though there is something to be said about getting lost; something about appreciating things more by taking the scenic route and such. It's when I really get to appreciate the graphics even more, and notice the little details. And for me? It's usually the little details that many will overlook that sometimes make it even more awesome to play the game.

It's a 50-50 sort of thing, in the end. I mean, sure, getting lost is a hell of a lot of frustrating. And sometimes I want to scream at myself, but sometimes it makes you appreciate everything else even more. And also the tendency to come across rare events and items. Like, super plus points.

Spoiler for the next post: My Top 5 Maps of Doom.

Won't that be fun.

- Alex

PS: plus points for anyone who gets the title reference.