Goodbye

IN THE words of Julie Andrews: ‘So long, farewell, auf Widersehen, good night’:

We’re all off. Not far fortunately. We’re moving round the corner to the ever lovely BeefJack where bovine comedy is plentiful and the living is easy…sorry. Clearly I’m in the mood for lyrics.

The content will be as grand as ever and I’ve no doubt you’ll all be happy to read the sterling work we’re conjuring up.

This however isn’t just to tell you that we’re going. It’s to say thanks to you. Yes you *points*. As clichéd as it may sound, this site would have been nothing without you dear reader. You’re brilliant.

And oi, you lovely freelancers who have written for the site over the year. You’re brilliant too and I wish you all fantastic future writing careers.

Now finish reading the lovely content that we’re ending on and wander on over to BeefJack. Pull up a chair there, have a laugh, enjoy yourself. It’s going to be an exciting ride ahead.

Jennifer Allen

Potential dangers

Steven Croop wonders if DEFCON is a little more sinister than meets the eye.

WHEN THE nuclear-horror thriller WarGames was released in 1983, its climactic moment was when the computerised retaliatory failsafe WOPR ran through its scenarios and found that every one resulted in “WINNER: NONE.”  The only way not to lose, then, was not to play.  With the Cold War still going strong, the great fear of the era was mutually assured destruction—an unwinnable game that no one could quit unless somebody else stood down first.  1991 came, the MADness ended and the world watched the First Gulf War—the first videogame war—on television.  Now the climax of WarGames feels more like when NORAD has a base on the line that’s about to get hit with a nuclear maybe-missile.  We see the line trace its way to the blue triangle, and both vanish in a white circle.  Is the base still there?  Say anything.  It is the fear of an era in which widespread computerisation heralds instant communication but also instant miscommunication.  It is the fear of desensitisation in an abstracted era.  Kill a person at the push of a button, a person who is nothing more than an infrared blur on a grainy monochrome TV feed.  Watch them running, running—gone.  Introversion sought to distil these sentiments—new and old—into a game, and DEFCON resulted.

I recognise DEFCON as a ‘heavy’ game that I find it difficult to play consecutive matches of, but where the game somewhat undoes itself is its brisk pace and demand for concentration.  It leaves little room for reflection by the average player like me, who is busy trying to decide whether to surface his subs and annihilate the North American eastern coast, without thinking about the hugeness of the meaning wrapped up in his small conundrum.  The best way to feel a given match’s true weight would be to have already lost, to have nothing to do but watch and go ‘wow’ as the game blooms brightly.  I got exactly that dark luxury in the last game of DEFCON I’ll probably ever play.

Excessively violent Risk

As a Europe (players are assigned control of a broad geographical area, all of which are continents except for Russia) sandwiched between Russia and Africa in a three player free-for-all, I was bound to be the first to go down.  With my fleets decimated, my radar blinded, my airbases and silos neutralized, by the 15 minute mark I was effectively out of the game.  But my enemies had expended so much ordinance eliminating my offensive capabilities, my cities remained mostly intact.  In real life warfare there exists the concept of the ‘open city’: a declaration from the defenders of a city that they have abandoned the city and that their opposition should occupy the city rather than subject it to further (unnecessary) bombardment.  Stripped of my ability to visit destruction upon Europe’s enemies or defend her cities, I would have liked to declare Europe an ‘open continent’.  Unfortunately the goal of DEFCON is not to surgically lay low the military of the opposition, except as a means of getting at the succulent interior of his continent.  Kills are points in DEFCON, and only the mass deaths of civilians count.  Hitting a city with a missile produces x million deaths dependent on its population, with each million deaths of the enemy’s people equal to two points and each million deaths of your own people inflicting a one point penalty on your score.  The silos opened at last and I watched as Europe’s cities disappeared in the crossfire.  I comforted myself with the thought that Europe only perished out of the necessity of the game, for the sake of the scoreboard.  Civilian populations aren’t labelled with a points value in real life, so there’d be no reason for Europe to burn.  The open continent would be spared…right?

The reason given for WOPR’s creation in WarGames is that too many humans refused to pull the trigger in drills.  I wonder if today and in the future we might not have the opposite problem, with abstracted warfare mitigating human conscience.  Instead of the average FPS with its crosshair and health meter, it might be that DEFCON is the closest thing that videogaming has to a true mass murder simulator.  Its interface is more believably what some missile commander underneath a mountain might base world-altering (or world-ending) decisions on.  Playing it, we see how easy it is to end entire cities when they are just coloured diamonds.  I think that the most important victory in DEFCON is to break through that wall of abstraction and entertain the consequences of our amusing little simulation were it played out in the real world.  DEFCON has shown me what it feels like to watch a continent burn.  For that I appreciate it, but now it is too laden with death to feel like I am ever just playing another game.

Part five.

No more messing around for Greg Giddens as he leaves the comforts of Megaton to resume his search for his father in A Vault Dwellers Journey Episode 5.

CHATTY WAS quite eager to continue with the research for the book, but I explained my situation to her and she understood my reasons for moving on. She had very few caps left so I exchanged what kit I could for some of her wares and left her be. I saw a travelling vendor outside the gate so I planned to sell the rest to him on my way out.

Moriarty was hanging around outside his bar, as usual, picking his nose and staring into the distance. I caught his gaze as I walked up to him.

“I’ve dealt with Silver.” I said.

“Good lad. Tell you what, give me 100 caps and we’ll call it quits.”

I handed over the caps; slightly annoyed that I had to do his dirty work but I did appreciate the 200 caps he didn’t take from me. Moriarty told me about how my father passed through on his way to some radio station in the ruins of the city. He marked it on my Pip Boy and off I set to check it out.

Leaving my new home

The vender was still outside the gate and had enough caps to buy the kit I’d ‘found’ from the huge store. I glanced at my Pip Boy’s map, figured the direction and begin walking, with my hand hovering over my pistol in case something nasty attacked me.

In the blink of an eye I arrived at the huge store. It was like I teleported here; weird. The rest of the journey was a lot more troublesome. In order to get to the radio station I needed to get deeper into the ruined city, and these old tunnels I found with “Metro” written above the entrances seemed like the only way to do it.

I was terrified of going inside. I’d heard rumours back when I was in the vault and from some of the patrons in Moriarty’s bar, that feral ghouls and super mutants roams these tunnels, not to mention raiders. The raiders didn’t bother me so much, they were human, but the other things were something else, something alien to me.

With my heart beating like crazy I entered the tunnel, turned my Pip Boy’s light on and ventured deep underground. I followed my Pip Boy’s directions the best I could but the maze like tunnels did a great job of getting me lost. Sure enough, these tunnels were full of feral ghouls, and those motherfuckers were fast. The second they spotted me they would leg it full pelt with intent to eat. Scary little buggers were on top of me before I could fire a straight shot. I eventually calmed myself down enough to deal with the ghouls but my heart was starting to hurt from all the scares and adrenaline pumping through me. Finally I found an exit.

Back up in the fresh air I felt much safer, and then the super mutants showed up. Two hulking great beasts, both branding hunting rifles, appeared from a ruined building and immediately started firing at me. I took cover behind a personal shelter thing, one of those man sized, steel shelters apparently erected before the nukes fell to aid citizens stuck outside if a nuke did come down. With bullets ricocheting off the shelter and the ground, I peeked round the corner and fired my pistol at them.

My first super mutant

The fire fight seemed to last hours, but in reality it couldn’t of been longer than a few minutes. I killed one of them but was running severely low on ammo by that point. Thank Atom a bunch of knights appeared and assisted me. The Pride of Lyons they called themselves, lead by Sarah Lyon from a military group called the Brotherhood of Steel. At the time I had no idea what this group of soldiers were. From what I could tell they were well trained, well equipped and determined, and luckily for me they were heading towards the radio station.

Apparently the super mutants had setup base near the radio station, and with this station being a base for these Brotherhood of Steel chaps, things got messy. I followed close behind the pride as they moved forwards. I passed by one of their injured and, whilst no one was looking, I nicked all his stuff. We came to a large ruined school building, full of super mutants. I hung back and watched in awe as the Pride of Lyons did what they did best. Laser fire and automatic rounds filled the air as the two sides fought it out. It was kind of beautiful, in its own way. With the school’s perimeter clear, they moved forwards into the school. As they did, I looted the corpses of both sides dead. I figured they weren’t using it so why not?

Continues…

Rampant Production.

Leena Van Deventer gets stuck in with the sweaty masses producing a whole game within 72 hours.

LAST MONTH, from January 28th to the 30th, was a miraculous weekend for gaming all over the world, where we saw the number of games on this planet increase by a whopping 1500! The most amazing part? They were each made in under 48 hours. As was the challenge put forward by the International Game Developers Association, in the 2011 Global Game Jam. With nothing but their talent, experience, and the theme “Extinction”, the jammers knuckled down after watching a keynote online by Keita Takahashi to their respective jamsites around the world to make magic in a fraction of the time we normally associate with game creation.

There were 44 countries participating this year, with 140 separate jamming locations and over 6500 developersconstructing 1500 games. England had 5 jamsites in operation, two in London, one in Birmingham, one in Luton and another in Stafford. Ireland had two, one in Dublin and another at the Tipperary Institute in Thurles. Scotland had one each in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and Wales represented in Newport. Australia represented with 3 jams in the wide brown land, one in Perth, one in Sydney, and one in my very own home town, Melbourne. I was lucky enough to be asked to be on the judging panel by the Melbourne chapter of the IGDA and adored every minute of it. I came in at differing points on all 3 days to see how the jammers were going, check out their progress, monitor hygiene levels and liberally dispense jelly snakes.

As usual with semi-literate folk such as myself, the thing I happened to like most about the Game Jam is the hardest to put into words. The buzzing, energetic level of excitement in the rooms even in the first hour of development was palpable as people scurried around trying to make teams with the appropriate proportions of artists, programmers, designers and sound artists. Egos were put aside almost as if they were volunteering for some sort of charity event, there was that similar sense of banding together for a good cause – and the good cause was games for the fun of it. No publishers lauding over you trying to dictate creative control, no competing within the ranks to try and score that promotion, everyone was there for the same thing. The love of games in their purest form. The in-jokes about whether a certain baked good was a fabrication, the mindless yelling of the name “Jason” (while miming pressing X) and the constant verbal articulation of familiar video game sounds all bounced around the walls and left me with a warm fuzzy reminder that we’re all connected by our love for play, and in particular our love for video games. There was more camaraderie in those computer labs than you could poke an 8-bit stick at, and that’s what I love the most about this kind of collaboration.

The jammers I spoke to at the end of the Melbourne event said it was energising and inspiring, and they hoped to gohome and either continue polishing their gem from the weekend, or create even more with focus on as short a period of development as possible. Starting out with a narrow scope then broadening it as time permits means we’ll hopefully be seeing more and more games by these extraordinarily talented folk soon. The networking opportunities presented in the talent pool that has been the Global Game Jam will hopefully soon spread out to mean big things for the games industry as a whole. Getting like-minded people together to do like-minded work when they otherwise wouldn’t get together in such circumstances is electrifying for the industry, and on the weekend of the 28th, the industry just got a little bit stronger, wiser, better connected, and more productive. Here’s to seeing what next year’s Game Jam has in store, hopefully it will be bigger and better than ever.

All games are playable at: http://www.globalgamejam.org/games/2011 and the global winners have been announced here: http://gamesauce.org/news/2011/02/02/gamesauce-challenge-announces-global-game-jam-winners/

Flight

Leena Van Deventer talks FLIGHT.

FLIGHT IS a charming development from Armor Games that I fell across while cruising Kongregate. Your aim is to “Throw your paper plane, collect points, upgrade, (and) save the world”. Pretty big task for such a flimsy piece of aeronautical architecture, she cried. You start off with a fairly basic paper aeroplane (nothing to do with Angus and Julia Stone, unfortunately), some environmental features (acting as boosts) and the aim to go the longest distance possible before crashing or stalling. Through a little grinding and points-farming, you begin to earn money with which to upgrade to bigger and better flying machines. Your upgrades not only apply to your variety of craft, which can transmorph from simple school-yard paper glider into something resembling a Harrier jet, but also to the environment.  Other upgrades affect fuel efficiency and capacity, engine boosts, inertia on the initial fling of the aircraft, and an adorable “mysterious and impractical upgrade probably not worth the money”. This however ends up being an essential part of getting the long distances required to score maximum moolah.

This nifty little free flash game even involves a small storyline to try to encourage you to finish the game and max out each upgrade on offer. You start off in London, where a small girl is desperate to send a letter to Santa asking for her Mother for Christmas. From here the plane hits a lovesick man square in his lovesick head in Paris as he laments his repudiated lover, before writing a love-note to send through the air currents to reach his other half. He draws a picture of them both near a campfire and speaks of their wish to one day go camping near their dream campfire. Swooning is apparent as you slowly walk along this meandering storyline. As the lovelorn gentleman propels his aircraft into the air with nought but the power of his love, I started to get a little whimsical about this game. Until the next cutscene.

Here we see a man in Egypt, receiving the love-note and in his mind imagining the two lovers thrust into that dream campfire of theirs and all eternal hellfire breaking out, making the world explode. Riiiight. Just as I was thinking “You kinda lost me, dude”, he bit into his finger, enabling him to write “THE END IS NEAR” with his own blood on the paper plane before sending it on. The story went from kind of losing me to losing me in such proportions I had to leave a trail of crumbs in order to be found again by loved ones and offspring.

The storyline may have lost me a little, but the playing is what kept me coming back. I didn’t care too much for cutscenes and didn’t feel like they took away from the game, more so that it just wasn’t perhaps as fleshed out as it could have been. And you know, less crazy. You start with an initial fling of the aircraft, thrusting it into the air. From here you slowly descend, much like the real thing, but with added upgrades enabling you to steer and use engine boosts, very much unlike the real thing. Collecting paper cranes and stars along the way help you to gain money for upgrading, and also small power boosts. The super boost stars have a tail behind them, enabling you to get enough warning about where they are to be able to attempt to collect them. Using your A and D buttons to control the angle of the nose of the aircraft, and space to use your engine boost, you can attempt to fly for as long as possible over the given environment, whether it be London, Paris, Egypt, Africa, or Japan.

The music is a joy, not being repetitive and annoying, specifically in the places where the game play might be. The art style avoids the predictable Paper Mario type parchment effects and sticks with a unique and clean interface. The cutscenes in particular have a warm hand-drawn quality to them that adds depth and interest. It would have been nice to have some added elements in the environment, such as a risk of bird strike or other such threats to bang into mid-flight, but considering its price point (or lack of it) and simplicity I think it still stands on its own quite well.

Flight is a fun way to spend some time, as you keep trying to beat your personal best you will be rewarded by a few strokes of good luck that keep you excited and motivated to keep playing, that makes it this week’s Friday Freebie!

You can find Flight at Kongregate.

Part four

Severe radiation poisoning, unprotected sex and mass murder. Just another ordinary day for Greg Giddens in A Vault Dwellers Journey Episode 4.

COMING BACK from Minefield was far more dangerous than the trip there. Bandits spotted me around the half way mark and, without any provocation, began firing on me. For several miles we ran, dived, hid and blindly fired, like a bullet fuelled dance. Eventually I got lucky and killed one of them. The other, in fear and most likely complete shock, legged it.

I began rooting through the bandit’s corpse; as you do. She was covered in such a thick layer of dirt and grime I found it difficult to distinguish between her clothes and skin. After rummaging around for a bit I found some ammo for her weapon, another pistol like the one I already had. Then, out of the blue the second bandit appeared, holding a knife out towards me.

He looked at me hard and muttered “Don’t make me do something I’ll regret.”

“Okay” I said, as I took off into a sprint as fast as my legs would carry me. Stupid bandit.

Home sweet home

I soon arrived back at Megaton, wheezing and panting like a sick dog. The robot greeted me again and this time I didn’t wet myself, so that was progress. I was still covered in dirt, dust and even a little blood for my misadventures, but regardless of my appearance no one looked at me any different. I’m starting to think the world up here is very dangerous place; I can’t believe that my father would risk coming out here. I headed straight to Chatty’s shop to give her a few of the mines I’d gathered. She was over the moon, the crazy bint. In return she gave me a bunch of grenades so the trip was well worth the effort. I do love explosion, almost as much as stealing.

Chatty rambled on about checking out some huge, old abandoned store to the east in search of provisions, and most importantly medicine. Additionally she mentioned a home-made recipe she had for radiation sickness that she was eager to test. I kept telling myself that helping her out would be a good thing to do for my own sake and for others like me. Justifying my time on her errands. The truth is I was afraid of searching out my father. He could well be dead by now, it simply ain’t safe up here. I decided to help her for these last two elements for her book, and then I would move on. Maybe I’ll come back this way once I’ve found my father and his fate.

I choose the radiation poison cure first of all and, like it was the most normal thing in the world to ask, chatty said “I know lots about it from books, but I never seem to get a live example. Not for long, anyway. So I need you to get a bit of radiation poisoning.”

She was certain of her cure’s ability so I decided to risk it. I left her store and walked down to see the unexploded nuke. My Pip Boy started to detect the radiation. Then I stood in the puddle surrounding it and began to bathe myself. The Megaton resident looked at me as if I was completely insane, as I washed the dirt off my skin and gave my clothes a good scrub.

The Pip Boy ticked away as my skin became itchy, then soon after I felt like I was on fire, tingling all over. The old man beside me began preaching about the will and power of Atom. And the people looked at me as if I was crazy! When I couldn’t take it anymore, I got out of the irradiated pool and went back to see Chatty for her cure.

“I’m as irradiated as I can get without burning a hole through the floor.” I said to her on entering the store.

Continues…

Resurrection: Super Monkey Ball

Resurrection is Resolution’s weekly retrospective feature. Jon Beach climbs down a branch of the tree of gaming evolution and reminisces about SUPER MONKEY BALL.

Effing Meteors.

Leena Van Deventer shows us around EFFING METEORS.

EACH WEEK I’m going to be finding a neat little (free) browser-based game for you to devour when you have some time to kill. Today’s tasty morsel is a game with one of the coolest names in the history of games: Effing Meteors. Effing METEORS MAN! Developed by Greg Wohlwend (art), Jacob Grahn (programming) and Arseniy Shkljaev (music), Effing Meteors is a tongue-in-cheek extinction shooter at it’s core, and this starts to ooze out of it at every given opportunity.

By holding down your cursor and moving your mouse around to collect space debris, you can start creating super meteors to try and rain death and destruction down on the awaiting masses, composed of little critters begging to be extinctified. The longer you collect debris, the larger the meteor becomes (even becoming a planetoid if you leave it long enough) and the more damage it does on contact with the pitiful suckers below. Your first level involves them being quite easy to kill, just mindless leaf eaters wandering around the planet minding their own business, but don’t go thinking it’s that easy for the whole game. Soon SNAILS will SHOOT at you, ruining all your planetoid building goodness and requiring a little more thinking on your feet.

You progress this way through differing environments and planets, slowly annihilating anything in your path, until you get to the boss fight… Yeah, you heard me. The boss is a gigantic Tyrannosaurus Rex that shoots LASER BEAMS FROM ITS EYES. I know right! You need to use all your space-junk collecting abilities to try and take this sucker out, because he’s got tracking lasers to ruin each attempt. It’s a very visceral reward to hold down on your mouse and feel the space-chaff being drawn to the cursor then flinging it either down to your planet or up off your screen for a radioactive boost. The music is relaxing and adds to the atmosphere (oh! my sides!) helping the game feel rich and polished. The art style is equal parts 10 year old’s imagination (which is awesome when it comes to dinosaurs) and high school science laboratory.

Effing Meteors is amounts of fun that are almost indecent to talk about, like it should be something I kept private. It’s not pants-fun, but it’s the next best thing. You get to shoot asteroids at a dinosaur while he shoots laserbeams out of his eyes at you. Says it all really, no? It’s almost too much kick-ass to fit in one game.

You can find Effing Meteors for free on Armor Games(http://armorgames.com/play/10265/effing-meteors), Kongregate (http://www.kongregate.com/games/Jiggmin/effing-meteors) or Jiggmin (http://jiggmin.com/games/effing-meteors). If you’re feeling generous you should make the most of the tip jar on Kongregate and thank the developers for finally filling the Dinosaurs-with-frickin’-lasers gap in the market.

Part 3.

Things get explosive for Greg Giddens in A Vault Dwellers Journey Episode 3.

IT WASN’T far to walk to get from Silvers hideout back to Megaton, but I’d loaded myself up with so much stolen crap that it was pretty hard going. Eventually I made it to the gates, and just as I was hobbling past, the robot sentry outside it sudden spoke.

“Welcome to Megaton.”

Fucking frightened the life out of me. This was the first time, out of several walk bys, that it had spoken. The robotcontinued to chat away as I pushed towards the gate, pretending that I hadn’t just jumped and wet myself ever so slightly. It seemed pleasant enough, the robot not the warm trickle on my legs. Not unlike the robot we had back in the vault. I guess they’re all like that; obedient pieces of tin ready to do our bidding. After climbing the steel slopes up to Chatty’s store, I walked inside, plonked my gear on her desk and grinned at her. Chatty’s pretty clueless fortunately and happily started talking prices with me. Her security guard, however, gave me a look of knowing. He’ll be watching me carefully from now on so I best find other stores to sell stuff to in the future.

I’m not always a bastard

Chatty priced up my goods but didn’t have the cash to pay me outright for it all. I browsed her store for ammo and stimpacks and found a good balance of payment between goods and cash. I now had the money to buy Moriaty’s information about my father, but before I could head over and sort that out it seems I owed Chatty a favour.

“…Ghosts don’t exist. But landmines do. Oh boy, do they. And that’s what we need to study.” Chatty said as I tuned in from counting my caps.

I think she must have been talking before I tuned in. In fact as I stood there staring at her I began to remember her saying something about going to a place called Minefield, and disarming and bringing back some mines for her to study. I got her to mark the town’s location on my Pip Boy then headed out to get these mines for her. She wanted me to help her gather information so she could write a survival guide on the wasteland. To be honest that’s a pretty good idea. I know I’d find it handy. So whilst I agreed to help get these mines largely to keep the guard from getting too suspicious, I may help her out for the sake of helping her from now on. I’m not always a bastard.

Minefield, as it turns out, was fucking miles away. Thank the nuke I’d sold all that crap, I wouldn’t have had theenergy to travel this far with any more stuff on me. I was a bit concerned about disarming the mines once I neared the town. Chatty said it’s just a matter of pressing a button on them once they start beeping, and making sure to be quick about it before it explodes. Easier said than done, I imagined.

Very, very carefully I began my approach up the torn up, cracked road surface, treading lightly and remaining ever watchful for the saucer shape of a mine. I saw one a few meters in front. Slowly now, don’t rush. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Fuck, fuck, fuck! And silence. It worked. One mine disarmed.

Suddenly a shot rang out and I heard the ping of a bullet ricochet off the ground. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Oh shit! That shot had woken up a bunch of mines. I began to run back the way I came, barely making it out of the way of the mighty explosion. Staying on my feet, just barely, I turned to see the damage. Huge bellows of smoke were rising to the sky and a car, sat not far from me, was lightly roasting in a fire. The car then exploded with the power of miniature nuke. For a split second, I could feel myself flying through the air. It seemed like minutes were passing by as the world slowed down and I witnessed the mushroom shape of the explosion. Then darkness…

Continues…

Part two

Things turn violent for Greg Giddens as he continues his search for his father in A Vault Dwellers Journey Episode 2.

THE TIMING for illicit deeds was perfect. Last light was just setting in and best of all half these shacks aren’t even locked. Sneaking around from shack to shack I ended up with a fair share of crap, but right now every cap counts, so all this junk suddenly becomes treasure to me. As a final fuck you to law and order my last target was Sheriff Simms’ shack. Unfortunately it’s locked, not a drama, I’ve got a few bobby pins left, time to work my magic. Fuck, that’s one broken, shit, and another, ‘click’ there we go, third time’s a charm.

Is that a sin or just a law?

It’s a little bigger than the other shacks in town; I’ll need to be careful. Larger area to search means longer on site and higher chance of getting caught. I’m quite certain finding the vault prick from earlier in his bedroom is going to get me the good news from the business end of his rifle. With my sack of goodies near enough full now seems like a good time to leave, wait, what’s that? A figurine with a moving head, that looks pretty cool, yoink! Suddenly the front door came crashing open. I span round in a frenzy almost dropping my bag of swipe. Immediately I noticed the door was actually very calmly being pushed open, the crashing noise I thought I heard was just me on edge, shitting myself.

The silhouette was unmistakable; the cowboy hat gives it away, Sheriff Simms. With no windows or other exits to leg it or dive through it looks like my pistol is the only way out here, if I can calm myself down enough to hold it steady. It took twenty fucking shots earlier to kill that fucking Bloatfly, how the hell am I going to slot a human branding a rifle with just the ten shots I’ve got left? I’m so fucking dead.  Wait, calm down, now what is it they always say “squeeze the trigger don’t pull”, wait, squeeze? It’s a fucking trigger not a button; you have to pull it or it ain’t going to do shit. Stop it, don’t over analyse the situation, it’s just going to get you killed sooner, or is it? Fuck, stop it.

Right here’s the plan, when Simms walks out of the shadows, start munching on an iguana stick and acting a little drunk. Yeah that’s perfect. Drunken fool stumbles into a shack in search for food, nothing could be more innocent. If he goes for his rifle however, then draw the pistol and pray to the nuke you hit him somewhere good.

Continues…