10-15-02 @ 10:32 am EDT

Just realized that's a term I haven't used in a very long time. On an old website I used to belong to, I became known sort of as the Queen of Feh. People actually thought I had coined the term, and asked to know what exactly it meant. Anyway. It's looking kind of weirdly yellow outside right now.

I intended, after posting that last entry, to spend the rest of the night working on Part 94, possibly typing out more Ojibwa works from the Online Books Page, and who knows what else. Maybe read and rate. Instead, somehow, I got caught up at Google trying out different online text-based adventure games and such...ALL NIGHT LONG...and do you know what? I didn't find ANY that were very good. NONE!

The first one, exploring some haunted house, was slow and kind of basic but tolerably interesting, until...I got to a page telling me that was it, if I wanted to see the rest I'd have to buy a CD! SCREW THAT! If they had a guestbook I should have left a nasty message. Most sites like this at least offer you ONE free game, allow you to FINISH the damn thing. Spend a half hour or so going through a game I won't even be able to finish? No thanks. That was a VERY low move. Needless to say I will never be returning to THAT site again.

A couple more were either just walk-throughs of pictures...*sigh*...no interaction or anything...or required Flash or Shockwave, which I can't download or update right now. Others, I died too quickly in and I had no idea how to even work them--the help was no help at all! I tried a few of the text-based adventure games--they're very basic--including one with little symbols for illustrations at FreeArcade or whatever. But the help was useless; whenever I got an object, what was I supposed to DO with it? The help didn't say. Others, where you had to type in commands, were just too confusing. They had long, long lists of commands that would work, and they didn't even LIST everything that you could use! How was I supposed to remember it all while playing and being attacked by hobgoblins or whatever? Never mind...

A few were dead links or just wouldn't load.

Some others were too complex. I don't play D&D because of all the stats and junk, and that's what I came across. How the hell am I supposed to know how many dexterity points versus strength points I'll need? You can't figure these things out in real life, so why do they make you do it in a game?

I played for a while at some stick-figure cop game, which was okay, but just got too boring. It was too simple, and you could figure out the culprits by scrolling over the links and comparing the URLs. Dead giveaway!

And finally, I came across one that had excellent graphics and reminded me of one of the Ultima games. Coolness! I played Ultima VI, I think it was, a long time ago, and loved it. So I had to try this out...I couldn't understand how to figure out my stats, *sigh,* so chose a preconfigured character, this pretty lady with red hair. My old avatar in Ultima VI was a pretty lady with red hair. :) I loved that game...when I figured out the mantras or whatever and learned how to deal with the gargoyles, I felt like a god.

And then...I spent the next part of the morning trying to figure out how to walk this little person around (use the numbers on the numeric keypad--what's so wrong with the arrow keys??), and how to talk to people (for some reason it kept saying, "Tehuti, when you have the time, let's play a game!"--?!??). I finally figured out how to talk to people and what was needed of me, so I went to the store and accidentally ended up buying some weird elixir, I had no idea what it was for! So I spent the rest of my money on antidotes...to what, I have no idea...and then left to go south as I had been instructed to. Some castle I had to visit or something.

Well, I went south, and just HAD to check out a cave, stupid me...and next thing I know, some wyvern and a giant scorpion or something are attacking me and I can't even figure out how to fight! I just realized I forgot to use the numeric keys, so maybe that was how to select the commands...but anyway, help didn't tell me how to do that, so I guess I ended up being poisoned, and I died.

SCREW--THAT!!!!

I don't like arcade and RPG-type games for this very reason: It's too easy to die. Me, I like games where you wander around and find all kinds of neat things and talk to people and figure things out--not puzzles and riddles and mysteries so much as just discovering things and making them work together. Stats? Hit points? Combat? NO! I can't figure out how to do those things properly. But that's the problem: ALL games deal with those things, so I'm screwed. I can't find a decent online adventure game that I can actually understand and live through!

So instead I wasted my entire night when I should have been working on my story...trying to live out another adventure that just didn't cut it. :( What a waste. And not a single good game in the bunch. After being killed by the wyvern or whatever, I just sighed and closed the browser. I couldn't even find a good pinball game or anything. I used to be good at computer pinball. The only halfway-decent game I know of online is Collapse!, and that gets tiring after a while.

I DID like how that one text-based RPG with the symbols started out, me exploring rooms and picking up things, but as soon as the combat and commands came into function, I was lost. *sigh* Oh, I forgot to mention the OTHER decent-looking game I found, with pictures, but...I couldn't even get past the first room! I registered to play this thing, and all I could do was pick up a backpack and a piece of paper, and look at a rock...I couldn't pick up the rock, nor could I open the backpack or read the page, using every single command I could. What was the POINT? It's really sad when I can't even get past the first room. I'm upset because that game actually looked interesting, too. :(

There are a lot of choose-your-own-adventure-type things out there, but if I wanted that, I could just look around here. I'm not good at those since I get too lost--I have a hard time choosing things--plus I just wanted to explore on my own, not deal with adventures somebody else had laid out for me (probably typo filled, too). No luck! So I guess I give up.

Well, I guess I've spent long enough on this entry. What a disappointment this night turned out to be. Off to go do something USEFUL with my time now...