"C'mon you guys, I have to go in a little bit," Bobby says, checking his R2D2 watch. "West Wing is on in less than an hour."
"Hey, what's this?" Jeremy asks. He has found the menu bar along the top of Quake III Team Arena and he's opened the 'vote' box.
"Oh, that's nothing," I say, "That's for online games."
"Where do I click to vote for Unreal Tournament?" he asks.
"Power to the people," Erik says from the back of the room. Everyone is in here now wondering when we're going to start playing again.
"Shoot Club is not a democracy," I insist to all of them. "We have to play Quake III some more. I haven't even gotten any screenshots yet. At least help me get screenshots for the review."
Trevor thinks for a moment and then says, "You need to forget about what you know. That's your problem. Forget about what you think you know about life, about friendship. And especially about you and me."
"What are you talking about?"
"Who are you reviewing it for?" Trevor asks.
I tell him.
"Is that one of those web sites that won't let you use swear words?"
"None of them use swears words. 'Sucks' and 'ass' are about as explicit as they can get." Why is Trevor asking about web sites and profanity?
"Okay, Quake III it is. Peter's on your team. The rest of you guys come with me." Trevor leads everyone out of the room.
Peter is still leaning over. "Okay, I think I'm feeling better now. I may have to take a break once we start." He sits uneasily at the computer next to mine while I set up the program to take screen shots.
I can hear the guys huddling in the other room. Trevor is up to something. The last time they huddled like that was when we were playing the Star Trek game. Trevor had convinced one of them to sneak out back and throw the breaker switch behind the house.
The game starts. Trevor has set up a capture the flag game. Before we even get out of our base, Peter says, "I don’t feel so good. I have to go sit down for a minute." He's already sitting down, but I suppose he means he has to go sit down somewhere else. He goes into the other room to start up Virtua Tennis, which serves as a sort of tonic for motion sickness.
I'm on my own, but that's okay, since I'm not playing to win now -- I just need to get the screenshots. I see them all in the distance, rushing my base. As they get closer, I see they've named themselves Dipshit, Penis-Vagina, Fuckstick, Shitbag, and Cockfuck, all of which appear prominently on the screen whenever the cursor gets near the player model.
I finally end up with screenshots of the level architecture and a few shots of Jeremy's character, Dumbtwat, which is probably the least objectionable of the names they’ve chosen. Then they watch Peter play Virtua Tennis while I reinstall Unreal Tournament, which we play for the rest of the evening.
Comments? Click
here.
|
||
