Lately my husband has been playing the new video game “Fallout 3″, which takes place in a post-nuclear war world, a war which your character has survived by living underground in a vault. Eventually you escape your vault, come up to the surface, and must undertake various missions assigned to you by different groups of survivors.

As you travel you can acquire various random items that may assist you in carrying out your missions, like food, medicine, and weapons. One such item featured in this game is something called “Nuka-Cola”, which of course warmed the cockles of my soda-loving heart.

“It’s so nice to see that cockroaches are not the only things that survive nuclear war,” I remarked to my husband during a recent gaming session.

“Yes, it’s nice to see that even here, someone is still making soda,” he agreed.

“Because there’s really not much that a Coke can’t fix,” I said, at the exact moment my husband was attacked by a roving gang of fire-breathing ants the size of small houses, who were, ironically, impervious to the powers of soda.

“It’s like French fries,” I said, warming to my subject. “Because you know,” I said, struck with the gravity of the revelation I was about to reveal, “French fries are God’s medicine.”

“I bought 2 new games. They’re both by the same people who did ‘Mass Effect’.”

“The one where you were the chief?”

“No, the one where I was the captain of a ship.”

(Blank look)

“The one with all the sex.”

“Ah, that one.”

“And I don’t know what’s in these games, but the clerk made me show him my ID when I was checking out.”

“Wow-what does it say?”

“Hm, only blood, gore, and violence. But no sex.”

“Oh well, you can’t have everything.”

(The opening title sequence plays out on the TV screen.)

“But apparently it does have titties.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be a video game without titties now, would it?”

He always sees the good in me.

This weekend we were playing a new video game featuring characters from the X-Men series of comic books. I’m playing as “Storm”, the character who can harness the power of weather.

I’m a bit directionally challenged , so I told him, “It’s a good thing you’re the one in charge of getting us around, because to me it looks like we’ve come back to this same exact room about 27 times.”

“That’s OK, baby,” he replied. “Some of us can read maps, and some of us have lightning.”

Me: I think the robots in this game are a little anachronistic.

(Yes, I was trying to hold to a uniform standard a video game whose only consistency lies in the constant featuring of scantily-clad, anatomically-impossibly-large bosomed females.)

My husband: I don’t think they’re robots, so much as animated suits of armor.

Me: Scarily, that actually makes sense.

As I came out of my office into the living room on Sunday evening I was informed of the following by one of The Gamers:

“Jenny, I had to fight 30 levels of men in diapers wearing bowls of curry on their head to get here.”

Me (looking up at the television): Yeah, I heard you say that when I was out in the other room, and I was r-e-a-l-l-y hoping that I heard you wrong. But apparently, I did not.

-This “What?!” moment is brought to you by the game Shadow Hearts 2, the game that will make you constantly question your sanity and turn to the people around you to ask, “No, seriously. Am I on drugs?”

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One of our friends has just been hired as a police recruit. The following story comes courtesy of her first day on the job.

Police Corporal: Hey, do you have a pair of really nasty jeans in your car?

Our Friend: Um, no.

Police Corporal: Well, you need to get a pair of really nasty jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and a pair of shoes that you don’t mind getting really gross and keep them in your trunk.

Our Friend: OK, why?

Police Corporal: Because we might need to send you out into the woods to look for corpses.

Lately my husband has started playing a new video game, and while normally I enjoy watching him play, this game is really making my head hurt.

See, they trick you. Because they’ll be going along, telling a story that is more or less believable, and then they’ll just throw in some random, goofy-ass twist. Not so much as to completely derail the main storyline, but enough to trick you into thinking that, “I know I can MAKE this make sense if I just think hard enough.” But you can’t, because it’s things like this:

-Europe in WWI, OK, officer of the German army teaming up with an emissary from the Vatican, yeah, have to track down a special tool to exorcise all the demons they will be meeting on their quest, I can live with that, finally obtain the Special Exorcising Tool which turns out to be The Giant Ivory Tusk Of The Holy Mistletoe. “Yes, ha ha, I will slay all evil forces with the universal symbol of ‘gettin’ some’ at Christmas!” Wait-what?! [Read more…]

…but this weekend I let my husband teach me how to play video games on the Play Station.

And now I have become one of those people who randomly yell out nonsensical things like, “Damn you and your flaming venom breath!”

The good times just never end here.

Yesterday we once again played host to The Gamers,and dedicated as I am to bringing the world entertaining stories from my everyday life, I decided to listen to what they said during game play and take notes for my blog.

So today I present to you, “The Best Things I Heard This Weekend: The Gamers Edition”.

1. Gamer 1:I just got donkey punched by the abominable snowman.
Gamer 2: That’s not the abominable snowman. That’s the abominable WTF?!

2. Gamer 2: Say no to ice-wielding zombies.
Gamer 3: Say no to zombies, period.

3. Gamer 1: OK, take the bone-studded choker.
Gamer 3: Yes, pick up the boner.

4. Who else needs to be slayed?

5. (Earlier in the evening someone had expressed their belief that having sex steals your soul. Later during game play someone’s character killed a wild boar and we all watched as the boar’s soul left its body.)
Gamer 1: Hey, that pig had a soul.
Gamer 2: I guess it didn’t have sex today.
Gamer 3: Or else it was a virgin.

This weekend my husband bought the video game “Prince of Persia: Two Thrones”. I was in the living room when he played it for the first time, because I like to watch the opening sequence of all his new games to see if it has a story I’ll be interested in following.

As usual, the first thing he did was to scroll through the different screens where he could set his gaming preferences, and when the “Display” screen popped up I saw this:

Tutorials-yeah, that makes sense

Progressive Scan-sure, that’s some technical stuff

Blood

Screen Adjust-more technical stuff

Wait-what? BLOOD?! Since when is that a technical issue?

Yesterday evening as we were driving to pick up dinner my husband turned to me and said, “Good news! I closed another gate to hell yesterday!”

(This “What?!” moment is brought to you by “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” for PC)