Yesterday, I wrote 1,079 words on a story (for Sirenia Digest #85) whose title will not be "Pilgrims and Thunder Lizards."

Last night – well, this morning after four – I slept for shit.

(What follows, I know, is rather silly to write out here, as I have realized that the people who read this blog are not gamers. And, I suspect, gamers are not my readers. Yeah, generalizations. Sometimes, they're true.)

Before that, we waded back into The Secret World, which went somewhat well, at first. No Mayan mummies making it impossible to quest. But, before long, we ran into a section of the "story" quest that relied on some unfathomable feat of platforming. Now, I'm actually a superb platformer. On consoles. On PCs, no. Platforming pretty much has no place in MMOs, but here it's part of The Secret World's identity crisis. Is it an MMO, or is it a console game? It seems to aim for a hybrid of the two, which we're finding often fails. The way it frequently splits groups or duos up for solo instances, that's a particular failure. So is this platforming. After an hour of frustration, the two of us trying to make one jump, we gave up. Nothing destroys immersion quicker than this sort of repetition. Oh, that sort of repetition and the game's bizarre fashion sense. Seriously. Spooky and I have been able to assemble good outfits, but then our mother's taught us how to dress ourselves. We didn't take lessons from the casts of The Real Housewives of Orange County and Jersey Shore. No game has ever allowed players to don such a vast array of impractical, inexplicable, and unabashedly slutty clothing. With dashes of couture that must surely be funkadelic- and LSD-inspired mishaps. Partly, I think we are in the land of how men want to "dress" their wet-dream, fantasy pixel dolls. Partly...hell if I even know. But this does wear on the eyeballs and the brain and any sense of good taste. Grant Morrison sort of pulled this stunt off with The Invisibles; The Secret World might be trying to turn the same trick (it borrows HEAVILY from Morrison), but fails. I find I have far less trouble believing in ghouls and zombies than women who fight monsters in skin-tight hot pants and platform heels.

Unconvinced,
Aunt Beast