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Tag Archives: zombies

Final Boss Syndrome

Hi, my name is Moose and I have Final Boss Syndrome.

Hi Moose!

Erm, I thought about writing the rest of this post like a stereotypical *anonymous meeting, but I decided against it.

So, what is Final Boss Syndrome?  Is is a syndrome, probably a psychological disorder, in which you play a computer or video game all the way to the final boss and then suddenly lose interest and stop playing.  Symptoms are obviously more apparent with RPGs or games with something definite at the end.  It might also be the reason why I tend to play more puzzle games or open-ended games now.  It seems that I really like to play games, and I apparently don’t like to beat them.

Here is a very incomplete list of games where I’ve played up to the final boss and then stopped:

Anyway, it’s a pretty good list of games that I never end up completing.  It’s not for lack of trying on some of them.  Trying as in effort in psyching
myself up to play the final boss.  I just…lose interest.  Then I don’t like playing for awhile and by the time I manage to get around to it again, I’ve forgotten all the controls or something or my strategy I had built while playing the game originally and so I can’t beat the final boss.  This is  probably the most apparent with The World Ends with You.  That game has such a different battle system, I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick it up again.  I might have to play it through from the beginning again.  Which wouldn’t really be that bad.  Another game that would be really hard to pick up again is Trauma Center.  I really liked that game too, but I don’t think I can remember all that I need to do to heal wounds and whatnot.

In other news, I have beat some games.  Sometimes it’s just a fluke that I beat them, sometimes it’s not.  Here are some games I actually have beat:

So, PvZ is the really different one on the list because not only have I beaten it, I have beaten it several times.  I have beaten it so hard.  So hard to death.  Er…yes.  Anyway, not only have I beaten the game several times, I have also gone back and beaten all the mini-games, and survived over 30 onslaughts of zombies in endless survival mode.  I also have a pretty decent Zen garden.  So you see, this is quite an accomplishment.

But, that’s not all!  What I just described was on LeeEv, my main system.  I recently acquired an auxiliary system, Codename-Roodee, and I decided to install PvZ there as well.  What I hadn’t realized is that PopCap updated the game to include acheivements and the save files of the previous verison are not compatible with the new version.  That means…I get to play it all over again.  And I did.  I beat the game over Memorial weekend and it was completely unintentional, as I was doing a lot of other things that weekend that took precedence over beating a game I had already beaten.  But it was interesting, as I got to re-experience a bunch of things that I had completely forgotten about.  Like that magic taco.  Why did Crazy Dave just give me so much money for a taco the zombies dropped on my lawn?  Because he’s CRRRRAAAAAAAZY!!

So maybe…maybe this means my Final Boss Syndrome is going into remission and that one day, I will be able to beat the games I start playing, especially the games that I like.  Maybe one day I’ll be cured?

 

How to survive a zombie apocalypse with a scaredy-dog (1)

This post is about zombies, in case you couldn’t tell reading the title.  Not about peanut zombies, as depicted above (go check out his site, it’s the greatest), but zombies in general.

Recently, the CDC posted on their blog a brief list of things to do or have on hand in case of a zombie apocalypse.  This is very important.  You should always know what to do in case of an emergency and a zombie apocalypse is an emergent situation.  This got me thinking about how I would survive a zombie apocalypse.  I am apparently already well versed in zombie survival tactics.  Facebook told me so.  I took a few of the zombie related quizzes and my survival chance was always in the high 90th percentile.  I think I would stand a very good chance.  But the thing is, I might be in a group that does not know the proper zombie attack survival skills.  I mean, what if I was trying to survive with my dogs?

I’m not too worried about Choco.  She can be pretty stealthy when she wants to be.  All I have to do is take off her belled collar and you’d never know she was around.  That’s why she wears a belled collar to begin with.  She wouldn’t attract the zombies’ attention.

But what about Yaris?  Yaris is a bit of a scaredy-dog and she is not stealthy.  A friend often comments that her stealth rating is in the negatives.  That’s not stealthy at all (yet she still manages to catch and eat birds, but more on that another time).  Yaris might be so unstealthy that she’d end up attracting a lot of unwanted attention.  Well, basically any attention from the zombies is unwanted if the end goal is survival.  Anyway, what if she were like Captain Falcon and kept announcing her sneak?

This would be a problem.  Or…would it?  Zombies seem to be pretty willing to accept German Shepherd Dogs (GSDs) as their leader.  I’m not entirely sure if it’s only Hasta Mia that they’re willing to accept or if it’s all GSDs.  Seeing as how her brother was able to approach the zombies too and he’s also half GSD, I would say that zombies are just very tolerant of GSDs in general.  Yaris is a GSD.  The zombies might just ignore Yaris.  That would make her less of a liability to have around.  It might even get us close enough so that I could try Dr. McNinja’s technique for disabling zombies in close quarters when you cannot swing a weapon.  But wait, Dr. McNinja is a ninja and has had a lifetime of ninja training, you say.  How will you be able to mimic his technique?  Well, it’s true that I have not had a lifetime of ninja training, but I am a ninja.  Facebook told me so…and Facebook never lies and it wasn’t even a quiz that that told me I was a ninja this time, it was something else…and it’s classified.

Anyway, I think I may have unwittingly taken some of Frans Rayner’s ninja drug and became a ninja that way.  Anyway, because of that, obviously I would also be able to use Dr. McNinja’s method of close quarter fighting.  I would really like to try it out.

I guess if all else fails, I can always try and find a raptor.  Zombies are afraid of raptors.

Oh, oh!  Yaris has well-developed Yaris Beam!  How could I forget?

Choco’s Choco Beam isn’t fully developed yet, or it could be that she’s being stealthy and isn’t letting me know that she has full function of her Choco Beam.

At any rate, they’re both pretty smart dogs.  I’m sure they could be trained to unleash their respective beams to zap and/or fry zombies when necessary.  Maybe Yaris isn’t such a liability after all.  But she still wouldn’t be any good as a military dog.

This post was made possible by: Terry Border, Chris Hastings, Ethan and Malachai Nicolle, Matthew Taranto, the CDC, and zombies everywhere (the Western kind, not the Chinese hopping kind, more on that some other time).