When Stranded Deep, Just Close Your Eyes

I have deathly fear of open water. Shadow of the Colossus on the PlayStation 2 had moments that nearly killed me, and though I endured about 7 hours of suffocating aquatic hell in Subnautica on the Personal Computer, an encounter with a deep sea creature had scarred me so much in that game that I had to quit playing - it's a great game though if you can stomach it. Now, we can add Stranded Deep, a game that is still in Early Access on Steam for... 3 years - oh lord - into my list of scariest experiences of my gaming life.

Basically, Stranded Deep is a survival game that places you in an open world where you have to survive its harsh environments by building stuff and keeping yourself fed. Where Stranded Deep is unique is the fact that the game takes place on an ocean map scattered with small islands and yes, there is more ocean that there are lands. What I am dreadful to learn is that the game slowly forces you to venture into the open sea to travel between these islands because there is never enough resources in each of them and if you are brave enough, dive deep into the sea surrounding these islands to scavenge rarer materials from old forgotten wreckage and debris. Apparently, there were plenty of air and water disasters that have occurred at this location.

Things are so peaceful on land.

So I was in the middle of building a small wooden raft because the emergency raft that the game gave me to start with drifted into the seas when I left it in the shallow water in the middle of a rainstorm. The game is not smart enough to allow me to complete building the raft unless I place it on water so I did just that in an attempt to attach the rudder. So guess what? The raft started drifting into the middle of the ocean and since it didn't have a sail built on it yet, I was not able to control its direction. I should have just jumped into the water while I was closer to the island but I was frozen in fear because I saw a large shark swimming near the surface close to the raft as I was drifting away. Then, something seemed to be bumping onto the raft. I was like, oh fuck. I was pretty certain that the game wouldn't dare give the sharks the ability to attack you on the raft because wouldn't that be too much? Since the weather seemed rather rough at the moment, I concluded that the sea was just playing tricks on me. I could have quit the game but I wanted to see if I could end up on one of these islands by luck no matter how long it would take. I angled the camera up so that my character couldn't see the open water around me. Then, in a blink of an eye, the flimsy raft got capsized...

Island hopping nightmare.

I was engulfed in fear. My body tensed up and I couldn't move. At that moment, the line between reality and video gaming blurred. It was such an awful, dreadful feeling. I knew that I was going to die. So what did I do? Well, I closed my eyes while clutching tightly on to the controller in my hands. I didn't want to the see the shark. I didn't want to see the dark depths of the ocean. I mustered up what was left of my courage and sneaked a peek and saw that I was fully submerged so I forced myself to dive deeper into the ocean and then I closed my eyes again. I just want it to be over, no matter how cruel the solution because the unpleasant, horrific situation I was in. It took seemingly forever but my character eventually died from drowning. I think I was attacked by a shark too while I was drowning judging from the noises. Moral of the story? Well, I should never, ever allow myself to be that close to the ocean because if something happened to me in that environment, I would just give up...

FIRST IMPRESSION: 4 out of 5

Gamer Dream: The Eye Specialist

What do gamers dream about in their sleep? In this series, we will explore some of these weird dreams that I have been having of late. For the most part, all that I (not) see when I go to sleep is empty darkness, a sort of peacefulness that you can't feel, sort of like our non-existence before the interruption of life. So why have I been dreaming a lot lately? What the heck do they all mean?

Dreamed 01/24/2019: I found myself with an optometrist. I was getting my eyes checked and he was telling me that I need to see an eye specialist because he didn't know the reason I was having vision troubles. Then I found myself at a mall. I looked at the mall map and saw that the office of the eye specialist just happened to be at opposite end of the mall. I had to wade through a very crowded mall to get to this specialist. The term "eye specialist" kept repeating in my mind on my way there. When I finally made it to my destination, the dream suddenly ended.

Perspective: I do have vision issues so I can see the reason behind this theme. It's a condition that I have to pretty much live with but apparently I may not be satisfied with this situation at a subconscious level. The mall setting is an interesting addition to this. I haven't been to a mall in 10+ years. I hate the mall. Is going to the mall even a thing in this digital age? Its inclusion here seems to be of fear and discomfort, a location of probable danger and uncertainty. I am not a fan of public places, especially these days. Then the repetition of "eye specialist" - the only thing I can think of is my frequent selection of the "Ranged Specialist" character Nazeebo in Heroes of the Storm. He's my go to character whenever I play the game. If not for the daily quests requiring me to play a different character class, specialist Nazeebo is always my number one choice. It's Nazeebo, Nazeebo, Nazeebo! and I play HotS a lot, so that's a lot of Nazeebo. The "Ranged Specialist" description under his name has branded itself into my mind without me knowing it. As a matter of fact, I never noticed that description being placed under the character name during the character selection screen until I took the screenshot below. The "Eye Specialist" then can be decoded as "I (am the) Specialist" as a sort of self-affirmation message. So nothing too deep in this particular dream, just a mishmash of my daily reality. The whole specialist thing is perhaps the most prevalent aspect of this experience so we can categorize this one as definitely gaming related.

Nazeebo in my mind. Is this a good thing?

A Beautiful Odyssey

If you are familiar with the way I game, you know that I skip around a lot. Everything is mood based, it doesn't matter when a title first materialized in my Game Library, if I am in the mood for a particular experience, I normally would drop anything that I was supposed to continue playing - you know these days, games are mostly designed as a long single playthrough event - and move on to the next thing. These past couple of years, it's been hard to pull me away from Heroes of the Storm, but a game finally managed to do that and it's Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. There have been major controversies surrounding this game with the whole XP boost situation - though 40+ hours in, I have not experienced any hindrance from not accessing this tacked-on feature - and the unfortunate spoiler I overheard about relationship decision with the latest downloadable content. Still, Odyssey is such a blast to play, there is always something for me to do, and the way they manage level scaling is very effective where you are free to pursue whatever quest chains you desire at any time.

Head over heels for Odyssey.

Now it helps that the main character in this game is hawt and yes, I picked Alexios, the guy. Based on the short amount of time I dabbled into Assassin's Creed: Origins, I understand that both games feature the same open world do anything, see everything philosophy as well as the graphics engine but you know it always helps to have attractive looking main characters, I mean, I try to make one every time I am given the opportunity to in a game's character creation screen. I personally think Origins looks a tad better environment wise, for some reason I favor the Egyptian theme more even though it's mostly over-represented in video games and other media than Greek culture. So yes, Alexios made me committed to check out what he's up to, something that Origin's Bayek failed to do, before I was completely hooked by the game itself.

You know who else is enjoying this game? The bloody in-game sharks...

As you can probably gather, I am pretty much sold on this game. I just love playing it and then I encountered something I found absolutely beautiful: two manly Greek guys kissing. Well, I found this extraordinary because even though gay themes have been making it into video games for a while now, they sometimes tend to showcase the "safer" representation of a gay couple. For example, you would normally get an elf partner because you know, male elves apparently are generally considered fair and pretty and then sometimes the other guy would almost, always be flamboyant. I know that sexuality is a spectrum: sure, there are plenty of gay couples comprised of two effeminate guys - usually the way it's represented in popular media, ahem Modern Family - because I think for some reason the responsible entities always try to drastically distinguish gay men from straight men and there is something wrong with that. So when two roid-rage types, a Spartan and a rough mercenary, are just pawing all over each other in a video game, well, that's always a cause for celebration. Yes, Odyssey has been very, very good to me.

Surprisingly, I managed to get my finger to hit that screenshot key while this was happening.