Animal Cruelty For Fun A̶n̶d̶ ̶P̶r̶o̶f̶i̶t̶
“It’s a good job this game doesn’t have a ‘Kick Animal Companion’ skill … or I’d spend all my upgrade points on it!”
— Me, observing that the game a friend was demo-ing to me had the most behaviourally realistic virtual dog I’ve ever seen².
—
¹ In the words of my sister, in reply to my observation that I need to find it on DVD (which I’m having trouble doing) and questioning whether that were, in fact, such a terrible state of affairs: “Nobody needs it on DVD … Nobody needs it at all.”
But I do.
And so do you.
Trust me.
² Loyal, fiercely protective, stubbornly resistant to backing down from fights against overwhelming odds, permanently chasing after people and things (requiring you to drop what you’re doing and race after him to keep him out of trouble), constantly underfoot when not (blocking your way through doors and narrow openings, preventing you from moving in tight spaces, stopping you from turning around, causing you to trip over him as you try to back away from the barrage of bullets), barking for no readily apparent reason at the most inopportune moments; if it were my canine companion then, rather than Rover (or whatever), it’d be named Get Out Of The <effing> Way, Dog! — at least that’s what the dog would think its name were anyway ³.
Of course, that’s not going to be something I need worry myself about, but it was an impressive waste of two hours nevertheless — sadly, I’m far too busy to play games right now and watching someone else do it or a couple of hours is as close as I’m gonna get to a console session for quite a while <sigh>.
³ IRL, of course, any pets I may have are possessed of very simple names …
