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| CANADA'S SOURCE FOR GAMING HUMOUR, PARODY, AND SATIRE
AT A LAN PARTY --It's difficult to watch a movie sequel if you haven't seen the original. The characters have already been developed, the story has already been explained, and the next installment usually starts off where the previous one ended, often leaving the viewer lost and confused. Most of the time it's too difficult to follow the sequel's story if you've missed out on the first movie. (Think The Two Towers, The Matrix Reloaded, or Fletch Lives.)
When Kelly Thatcher, a young gaming enthusiast, was invited to attend "LAN Of The Lost," a gaming event hosted by computer-gaming friends, he was a little apprehensive--because the game they chose to play was Warcraft III, the third in the series by Blizzard Software. Every month, these gamers choose a different PC computer game, and play it for the entire weekend--or until exhaustion sets in. Kelly had heard of the game, of course, but he had never played it, nor either of the first two titles in the series: Warcraft: Humans vs Orcs; Warcraft II: The Tide Of Darkness. When those games were released Kelly was already involved in the Command & Conquer series, and had never found the time to play the fantasy real-time strategy games. "I wanted to go to the LAN, but I couldn't just jump into the third game of this complex series without knowing anything about the Humans or the Orcs," said Kelly. "There was so much history, so much conflict between these two races, that I couldn't possibly pick it all up without first playing WC and WCII! What if I missed something important, like how ogres were created, the secret of manifesting elementals, or the real story behind the grunts?" Kelly was worried that he would be completely disadvantaged, because he didn't know anything about the gameplay of the first two titles. It had happened to him before. "I remember when I tried to play Wing Commander III," recalled Kelly. "I had played the original (of course), but I skipped over Wing Commander 2. When I started playing WCIII I was like 'Whoa! Who are these characters?!' Mark Hamill? WTF? What had happened to my wingman Lt. Hobbes, or the original Tiger Claw? I thought the humans were beating the Kilrathi! There were some serious gaps in the story, and that hampered my player development." Kelly still hadn't learned his lesson when he watched the movie American Pie 2, without first seeing the pastry-loving original. And the same again when he played Mario Party 4 on the Nintendo Gamecube, without any previous "Mario" experience. But he was determined not to ruin the the experience with the Warcraft franchise. "My friend Aaron was going to tell me how the second game ended," said Kelly, "but I resisted. I was committed to following the story in a normal linear fashion." Kelly did go to the LAN, and by the end of the weekend, he was close to finishing the single-player Orc missions, while the rest of his friends had deathmatched until they dropped. Unfortunately, no one was willing to "regress," and install the original Warcraft game to play him one-on-one. Next month, the gamers intend to play No One Lives Forever 2, the sequel to the popular first-person spy shooter. "Awe
crap," said Kelly. "Here we go again."
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| This fictional story about satire is intended for adults. | The World Leader in Canadian humour, humor, parody, and satire. | |
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