February 6, 2015

 I set my alarm this morning, just for the satisfaction of turning it off and going back to sleep. Sadly, I fell back to sleep much too quickly so I didn't really get to enjoy the realization that I was rudely awakened but able to ignore it and go back to bed. Oh well.

Today was a very lazy day. I responded to a discussion post, so I'm done with that for the week but I might still respond to another post, just to be safe. I also need to read the textbook chapters for the other class, which I plan on doing tomorrow.

I finally set up my desktop today, mostly out of curiosity in the Battlefield: Hardline beta. I was still annoyed by how it performed the other day on my laptop. It didn't take too long to set up my computer but it took much longer to download the game. During that time I ate lunch, watched some of Die Hard with A Vengeance, and probably did something else, too.

And then I played the game. The beta has two maps and three gamemodes. I tried Conquest and Heist but it turns out I still suck at Battlefield. I spent the whole time looking for people, finding people, and then getting killed. Couldn't win a gunfight to save my life, literally. Then I tried Hotwire, which is the gamemode I tried the other day on my laptop and had a horrible experience because of the lag. I also could drive in third-person because the camera freaked out and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Well, today the game ran fine and I knew that I was supposed to get in one of the marked cars and try to drive it as long as possible. Previously I thought only one team captured cars and the other team had to stop them, which sounded kind of sucky for the team not capturing cars. It is way more fun knowing that anyone can get a car. And, I'm actually pretty good at driving. I love driving games and the fact that people are trying to shoot you and blow you up takes it to a whole new level. It doesn't really say much because everyone is technically a noob, but I did manage to get the top spot and the MVP medal three or four times. There was one match where I was on such a roll that I drove the slow-ass tanker truck around the map for over half the match and racked up a huge score.

I also took the opportunity to fly a helicopter. At one point back in Battlefield 3 on Xbox I could kind of hold my own in a helicopter, at least to get from point 'A' to point 'B'. I tried flying a couple times in Battlefield 4 but couldn't get the hang of the mouse and keyboard. Also, every time I got in a helicopter to try and work it out, other people would spawn in the helicopter and then I was that asshole that didn't know what he was doing and crashed right after takeoff. In the beta there are only transport helicopters and a lot of the time in Hotwire they aren't used because it is kind of boring. People want to drive cars, not ride around in a helicopter. Unless the pilot is good, in which case you can follow cars around and blow them up with the giant machine guns. Anyway, in the more open map I started dabbling with the helicopter, figuring out the basic controls and just getting a feel for the thing. I got to the point where I was able to do laps around the map and kind of track cars so my gunners could shoot at them. The other map required flying between buildings, which I did manage, even saving myself several times from near disaster. But I'm still not good and there is probably no way I'd survive in an attack helicopter. I think for those you need to fly in first person so you can line up the guns, which sounds terrifying.

It is now once again very late and I am ready for bed. My brother invited me out for lunch again tomorrow and I'm looking forward to trying a new restaurant. It'll be hard to beat the veggie sandwich I had last weekend but we'll see what happens.