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Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Top Stories from the last 24 hours
The Awkward Human Survival Guide: How to Handle Life's Most Uncomfortable People
December 11th, 2012Top StoryThe Awkward Human Survival Guide: How to Handle Life's Most Uncomfortable PeopleBy Adam Dachis
We've turned ourselves into well-mannered animals, choosing relentless caution and politeness over honesty. When someone puts us in an awkward situation, we tend to tolerate it rather than communicate honestly. No one wants to be brutal or harsh, but somehow the truth fell into that category even though you can be kind and candid at the same time. This is the root of how you solve uncomfortable situations, because they don't exist when you're comfortable with virtually anything. It won't happen overnight, but you can learn how to handle most any kind of awkward human being with a few tricks and a healthy amount of practice. People Who Don't Know What to Say
Ask a Simple Question That Requires an OpinionIf you're a good talker you already know that treating a first meeting like an interview gets a conversation moving easily and finds common ground. When someone's shy, it helps to go against popular thought and ask them about something that requires an opinion. If you ask how many siblings they have or if they like to travel you might end up with a number or a single word answer. If you ask about, say, a recent news story and what they think about it—or tell them about it if they're not familiar—you can hear their opinion and show that you're not going to judge them for being honest, even if you disagree. This will help them open up. Hear what they have to say, respond where you can, and ask them why they feel a certain way when you don't agree. Opinions are backed by emotion, and when you integrate a little bit of that into a conversation you're more likely to get to a more interest and honest place. Show Them You're Okay With Their DiscomfortYou may not enjoy their discomfort, but if you let them know you're okay with it you can move past it. For example, say "I might be wrong but it seems like you're a little uncomfortable. Did I say something that put you off?" Gretchen Rubin, of the Happiness Project, suggests this variation:
However you decided to say it, the tactic works for two reasons: 1) You put the awkward situation out in the open so there's no more trying to hide it, and 2) you take the blame for it so they won't need to assume responsibility or can assure you that they're just shy or nervous. From there, you can offer to tell them an embarrassing (presuming it's funny) or share something somewhat private so they can see you're not worried about judgment. When you're done, you can ask them to share, too. When you don't react poorly, they'll trust you and open up a bit more. Don't Be Boring on PurposeNo single tactic will work on everybody, but ultimately you want them to feel comfortable telling you personal details. Most people will open up if you're honest and demonstrate that you're a safe person to talk to who won't pass judgment (at least as far as anyone can tell). You don't want to try and make them feel comfortable by being overly cautious. If you ask boring questions you're far more likely to receive boring answers. Instead, you want to take reasonable risks and ask about topics that interest you (e.g. a news story, as mentioned earlier) rather than boring small talk. You may not always make a friend with this method, but you won't if you play it safe either. Your goal should be an interesting conversation, because then you walk away from the interaction with something no matter what. People Who Share Too Much Information
Be HonestSay you're at a party and you encounter little Mr./Ms. Chatterbox. You can escape with a trip to the bathroom, by getting a drink, or by letting the person know you want to go talk to a friend you just saw. While all of these options could be true, they leave open the possibility of resuming an awful conversation later on. Feel free to take the risk the first time around, as you may not run into this person again, but don't fear the honest approach. Have the courage to be direct. If someone's conversation makes you uncomfortable, tell them. By not telling them, you're attempting to make them feel comfortable and you need to ask yourself this: why? Why should you remain uncomfortable just to avoid awkwardness? The situation is already awkward, and telling someone you're uncomfortable isn't cause for anger or further dispute. All you have to say is "I'm really not comfortable talking about this" or "I'd rather talk about something else" so they're fully aware of your boundaries. Relationship and family therapist Roger S. Gil agrees:
Nevertheless, no matter how clear you are you won't always escape an awkward conversation—or changing for the better—with a direct and honest response. Sometimes you just need to leave. Instead of saying you simply want to talk to another person, tell the truth. For example, "we've been talking for awhile and I really want to see some other people here." This way you're not pretending to go talk to another friend temporarily, but instead just ending the conversation permanently without the harshness of "I can't stand talking to you anymore!" Finally, if you're in a one-on-one situation (e.g. a date) you have to make a difficult choice: to stay with this person for the minimum amount of time and then leave, or tell him or her that you're not enjoying yourself and want to go. Both situations lead to more awkwardness, but you really have to decide whether you prefer to rip off the bandage or peel it off slowly. Personally, I think it's better to take a straightforward and honest approach (i.e. rip off the bandage). Telling someone you don't want to spend time with them isn't fun for anyone, but ultimately it provides closure for both of you. If you don't want to see this person again, you'll have to tell them eventually (or take the timid approach of ignoring their communication until the end of time). Be a MirrorSpending time with an oversharer will make you want to pull your hair out if you're constantly thinking about the situation you're in. When you can't get out and you can't be honest, be a mirror. Start oversharing yourself. If they're comfortable with providing too much information, you're not taking much of a risk by sharing too much yourself. Have fun telling them things nobody else wants to hear about. You might actually enjoy it, seeing as few others on the planet would want to hear about the last time you got the flu or see 500 cute dog photos on your phone. Don't let the oversharer dominate the conversation. Participate, and assert your right to talk as well. At the very least, it'll make the time go by a lot faster. People Who Inspire Uncomfortable Conversations
Don't Assume AnythingWe all know what assumptions can do, so don't assume anything when approaching a sensitive, uncomfortable conversation. For example, if you're woken up every morning by loud sex through the walls of your apartment you shouldn't assume your neighbors are aware of the problem. You also shouldn't assume they'll agree that what they're doing is a problem, as the act is not, in most cases, enough to be considered a public disturbance. The same goes for things like yard work and loud music: at certain times of day, you don't necessarily have a right to complain. Before you act, ensure you know if the law applies to your situation and, if you live in an apartment, if the terms of your lease set specific quiet hours. Often times there are laws in your city and terms in your lease that dictate what's allowed and what isn't. You can still complain if something bothers you, of course, but you shouldn't assume your neighbors are breaking the rules or have any idea they're being loud. This gets difficult in the moment because you're angry and that anger isn't a means to a productive solution. Roger explains how best to approach a conflict:
In the case of a first infraction, regardless of what it may be, give yourself some time to cool off. If you can't avoid assumptions and approach the situation with a level head, you'll only make matters worse. Prepare a Simple RequestThe same goes for lazy roommates, overbearing parents, chronically late friends, smelly coworkers, and pretty much anyone else who makes you uncomfortable for any reason. Often times they don't know they're causing a problem even when it may seem completely obvious to you (and, perhaps, the rest of the world). Additionally, they may just not know what to do about it and think their behavior is, at the very least, tolerable because nobody's informed them otherwise. As a result, you need to approach the situation with one simple point: their behavior makes you uncomfortable. You do not want to argue that they should know better, or that they're wrong in the eyes of society. You simple need to tell them this:
This is a very formal and vague example that you wouldn't want to use verbatim, but it provides the basic idea. When broaching an uncomfortable topic with anyone, you simply tell them the issue and that you want to figure out a mutually amicable solution to the problem. Loud noises of any kind can be rescheduled to other times of the day. Perhaps you work late and don't wake up until 10:00 AM. You could simply ask your neighbors to forego their sexual activity/lawn mowing/death metal band practice until you've gotten your full night's rest. We're all different and have our own quirks that can both annoy and delight others. Even if someone's behavior seems unreasonable, it often has more to do with how and when. Plus, if you approach the situation kindly you're more likely to get what you want. Be Relentless When Nothing ChangesIdeally you want to resolve awkward situations as quickly as possible without creating too much conflict. Nevertheless, you don't always get what you want. Some people are just giant turds who don't care how you feel. These people require a little more persistence. In the event of a noise-related complaint, they're continuing to bother you because it's more inconvenient for them to stop. You need to change that reality and make it the less convenient option. If they're causing a public disturbance (according to the law and/or the terms of your apartment lease) you should call the police and/or your landlord every single time it happens. Maintaining a low level of noise needs to become a more desirable option for the infringing party. You make that happen by forcing them to deal with authorities every time they break the rules. The same principle works for other situations as well: simply make the problem more inconvenient for the person causing it and they'll choose a more desirable behavior. How you do that will vary from situation to situation, but with a little forethought it shouldn't be much trouble to figure out. Above All Else, Maintain Self-ConfidenceSituations become awkward when you decide they're awkward. It may not seem like it, but to some extent you choose to feel uncomfortable when you don't know how to handle a situation. It's okay to laugh and enjoy it, make fun of yourself, and move on. What people say and do doesn't change who you are. If you like yourself, there isn't any need to feel bad about being honest with people. Feeling awkward generally comes from a place of fear even though there's really nothing to be afraid of. Remember that, maintain a healthy amount of self-confidence, and you should have no trouble braving the strange world we live in.  |
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If You Want Me I'll Be in the Bar: On an Open Relationship
December 11th, 2012Top StoryIf You Want Me I'll Be in the Bar: On an Open RelationshipBy Rich Juzwiak
Over the past four months, I have learned that even when you are allowed to cheat, cheating still feels like cheating. I'm still not sure how I feel about polygamy or polyamory as it concerns my sexuality, but I understand the argument for monogamy louder and clearer than ever before. Frustration would be a relief compared to this blur of confusion, seduction, distraction. It's really hard to draw lines while you are having sex. Your hand is either moving or stabilizing you and, ugh, who cares about drawing — you're having sex. These are the symptoms of my open relationship, or whatever it is. I fell in love in paradise. My third trip to Fire Island's Pines this summer in early August made for the most beautiful weekend of my year. My visual memories of it are washed-out and lovely, a series of mental Instagrams. I was amongst closer friends than I was when I'd previously visited. We spent our first day there, Friday, sitting by the pool, smoking joints, drinking jalepeno-infused vodka, talking about R&B and arguing about pop culture. In the early evening, a circle of us were dancing near the stereo inside the house when the two final guests arrived: King*, a friend of the weekend's organizer, and Raph*, a friend of King's that no one had met before. I don't know what song was playing when they arrived because I was drunk by that point, but let's say it was Ghostown DJs' "My Boo." It might as well have been that. King and Raph immediately joined the circle. I was struck by how much Raph looked like a straight friend of mine that I always considered hot but had never pursued. For the novelty of that resemblance alone, I figured I should fuck Raph. Don't get me wrong: he was beautiful in his own right, with a lean, chiseled '70s body, these giant eyes that closed into points like cartoon teardrops on their sides and the thick curls of a Roman god. I don't know what I said to Raph or how closely we bonded while I familiarized myself with the ways his body moved, but I know that when we left for the underwear party, I walked next to him. I did not want to go to the underwear party. I never want to go to the underwear party. Raph and I walked (well, I stumbled) along the boardwalk in pitch darkness talking about horror movies. We had been walking for at least 10 minutes when I asked him, "Do you actually want to go to the underwear party?" He said he didn't care. "Do you want to just head back and hook up?" I asked. "Yeah." Great. I kissed him. We turned around. We got home and "Yours," from Mariah Carey's flop album Charmbracelet, was playing. Raph knew all the words. We sang them together, swirling in the pool, reveling in cultural and biological gayness, like you're supposed to on Fire Island. We went upstairs, wet, and sloppily fumbled with each other's bodies in the single bed I had picked. That night, there was a shortage of places to sleep and either Raph or King would have to take the couch. Raph never made it down. Over the next two days, I consumed him in every way I could, short of literally inhaling him. Everywhere he went, my head turned and my body followed. We swam and danced and talked and talked and talked and listened to Elle Varner's "Refill" on repeat, like our ears were bottomless. I loved that he had forgotten to bring a swimsuit and still wandered around Fire Island in wet, dark briefs for the entirety of Saturday, without a bit of self-consciousness. I loved the way he'd say something mildly funny and then throw back his head with a stoned, "Heh heh heh," regardless of whether he had been smoking weed. I loved how high his IQ was (I could tell it was, so I asked). I loved the way he moved in a PG-13 stripper formation, rolling his body toward and all over me. I loved that my interest in him seemed to be reciprocated entirely. On Saturday night, we walked with our group to Cherry Grove for another party that turned out to have an exorbitant cover charge. We scoffed and went to a bar around the corner instead, just the two of us. We walked home through the Meat Rack, the section of wilderness between the Pines and Cherry Grove that's notorious for public sex. Some guy approached us and said he wanted to play with us. We both made out with him. It was whatever. I could tell Raph wasn't at all into it, so I told the guy Raph was traditional and we went away. Then Raph and I fucked in the dunes. We walked on the beach back to the Pines and when we reached the boardwalk, we found an unopened bottle of Amsterdam poppers waiting for us. We huffed them walking back and I almost fell off the boardwalk. Once back in my bed, we used them again and got crazier for each other. We left together the next day. I had some Molly saved for a friend of mine and I to do, but I wanted to experience it with Raph. He agreed. Back at my place, we did the MDMA, fooled around on my bed and retreated to the bathroom to wash up. He got into the shower first and he looked so gorgeous - his tight, compact body complemented by the lighting and smoothed by the water. I asked if I could take a picture of him nude in the shower and he let me. I took two. "This is…something, right? You feel this between us?" I asked. "I…think so?" he said, placidly zonked. He tilted his head back. "Heh heh heh." I swooned like a girl at the bar who'd been there too long. Those first days together comprised the purest love experience of my life. Do you know what it feels like to love every single thing about another person? To be enthralled and entertained merely by staring at someone? I do. I had no idea what I was doing. I'd given myself a year to "recover" from my last relationship. The idea was to reclaim youth I lost by settling down at 24 with my first-ever boyfriend and then staying with him for a decade. My wild oats had just gotten rolling when I met Raph. I let them run wherever they'd take me. I suspect that, if I am to be satisfied, having sex with one person for the rest of my life is not in my future. No matter how committed I am to someone, I need a modicum of negotiable freedom. More than anything, I think this comes down to my lifelong obsession with options. I feel anxious in their absence – separation anxiety that prefers a concept over one human. On car trips I took as a child, I'd carry with me every book in the series I was reading. Now I always have an iPod of 150 gigs of music on me, just in case. I took Raph to the intersection of where I'm at and who I am sometime during our first week together. One night at Soy and Sake, I blurted out that I wanted to keep things open. If he flinched, he cloaked it in a blink. "I don't have a problem with that," he said. "I don't think we should get in the way of doing what the other one wants. Do what feels right. The most important thing is to be honest." I wondered how open he needed me to be about my openness, if there were some guidelines we should set, but we didn't really reach a conclusion. He told me that knowing ahead of time was preferable to not knowing, but this was a hazy directive at best. "I might get mad if I walk into the apartment and you're doing it with someone," he went on. "But then again, I might just join you." A man after my own dubiously available heart. I loved him more after hearing this. Yes, I loved him and I told him that the next time we did MDMA, a week or so later. I had planned on verbalizing what was so clearly there while driving back from my mother's house in Jersey, where we'd spend the upcoming Labor Day weekend. But I couldn't help it – I was bursting with truth. "I love you, too, Rich," he said. "And you're so nice to me." This he said almost frowning, but pushing back at the weight of his past. I considered the implications of his expression. Being mean to this guy, this innocent vessel of pure kindness, would require the same level cruelty as abusing an animal. The next time I was home alone that week, I was on Grindr, chatting idly but not, y'know, pointlessly. The week after Labor Day, I hooked up with two strangers. Negotiating the difference between honesty, openness and self-truth is brutal. I didn't tell Raph about those Grindr hookups because they were meaningless but also because I knew they were sleazy and sometimes in the moment, I use a total lack of acknowledgement to will away things that I am ashamed of. However, I did tell Raph about dudes that I was thinking about hooking up with – ones I had encountered circumstantially, not ones I'd actively cruised for on Grindr. There's this one guy I see all the time that drives me fucking crazy with desire and I told Raph about him a few times. One day, Raph told me he wouldn't be able to hang out that evening because of plans and I told him, "I think I'm going to make a move on that dude tonight." "Go for it. Try him out for both of us," he said, leaving the door open for a threeway. The dude turned out to be straight. Oh well. I told Raph about a former next-door neighbor that I'd reconnected with recently. I had always wanted to have sex with him. "I can see why you'd want to have sex with him, that sounds hot," he said. I took that as an endorsement. I hooked up with him. It was fun until I felt like shit. I knew I had to tell Raph about it. I introduced the topic on the G train platform by stammering for a while in that unfair way of buying time while casting fear in someone's heart. "I told you about that guy that I used to live next to?" I said finally. "I hooked up with him this week." "OK," said Raph. "I mean, I know you wanted to know beforehand and I felt like I gave you a heads-up but I wasn't sure if you wanted to know, like, immediately before if it was a sure thing or if this counts as sufficient disclosure or what you'd like to know in addition to the fact that we hooked up or what?" "No, it's cool," he said. I could tell he wasn't lying. I know what it's like to be accepted by this person and I felt him accepting me all over again. "I know I'm fucked up and I'm making up for lost time in potentially fucked-up ways, so if anything about this isn't cool to you, tell me," I continued vomiting. "I'm really trying to search myself for ways in which I might be mad, but I'm not coming up with anything," he said. "I... don't care?" I was so relieved. My heart leapt another notch and I decided that this whole fucking bizarre feedback loop of me doing shameful things and him accepting them without a hint of reservation made me love him even more. When I was preparing for my trip to Florida, I jokingly told him I was going to find a worker at Disney to hook up with in a bathroom there. I did it (in Universal Studios, actually) and I told him within minutes of reuniting after I'd returned to New York. "Seriously?" he said, with glee in his eye. We high-fived. In October, Raph moved to Jersey for a month – he knew someone with an open room and he wanted some more time to find a place in New York. A few days before he moved, he found out that he had cancer. At one point on Fire Island, he'd mentioned to me that he'd undergone treatment for skin cancer earlier in the year, but he didn't really go into detail and it just seemed like an unpleasant relic of a past life. I didn't get the sense that he wanted to talk about it – it conflicted with the joy he lived to project and it seemed irrelevant anyway. This kid was fine and healthy. His spry body moving to Brandy's "Put It Down" over and over again was proof alone, I thought. The cancer was returning just a few months after he'd been treated. "He's going to die," I thought. A few hours after he texted me the news, we met in the Village to hear a DJ, but I was so miserable that I asked to leave after 10 minutes. In a cab en route to Williamsburg, he lay down across the back seat with his head on my lap, assuring me that everything was going to be OK. He was the one with cancer. I could barely speak. It was OK. Or, at least, that's how it seems right now. Test results came back suggesting the cancer hadn't spread – not to the lymph nodes, not to anywhere. All he needed was outpatient surgery to get the cancer removed from his skin, and regular treatments of immuno drugs for about three months. He wouldn't even have to go through chemo, which initially seemed like a certainty. But as a result of the small amount of treatment he does need, he is often tired and his sex drive has decreased. Intellectually, I understand, but having the passion evaporate before my eyes feels a lot like a replication of my last relationship. My support of Raph has been unwavering, though. Even if we hang out consistently for weeks and don't end up doing it, that doesn't make me want to see him less. If anything, he's pulled back from me. Hurricane Sandy marked a sharp turn for us: Raph was supposed to come over to my place that Sunday and ride out the storm with me. I bought a bunch of snacks, asked him to bring board games and was looking forward to cracking into my pile of unwatched movies. But Raph was called into work for pre-storm prep and missed the subway – they had all shut down at 7 p.m. that Sunday before the storm. I was disappointed. I saw Raph twice that week. He had mostly stayed at his place in the Lower East Side without electricity, but dipped up into the power zone a few times to hang out with friends of friends. He came to me Thursday and left Friday. On Saturday, I walked over the Williamsburg Bridge to meet him for dinner before jetting off to Florida. I kept myself busy the Raph-less week of Sandy by reconnecting with a one-off hook-up. This guy helped me take my mind off things, but put a bunch more on it. My bed becomes a slippery slope when I hook up with someone more than once. At what point does this association become a thing, and then at what point does that thing threaten my relationship? At what point do I give into that and follow my heart to where it seems to be wandering? I felt confused and bad and soon after I returned from Florida in mid-November, I brought up the subject of our sex life. Actually, the first thing I did that evening after work was start babbling pathetically. I almost had it all with Raph and otherwise had way too much on my plate. I was a wreck, but I didn't tell him exactly what had me so upset. He assured me that he was still attracted to me, that he wasn't rejecting me. Those things weren't the issue. His kindness was never a question. The situation that my behavior had led me into was. Before we could finish our conversation, his roommate came home. The next day, in an email with the subject line "well hello handsome" (it kills me when he refers to me as "handsome"), Raph told me, in part:
I couldn't argue with any of that. But I could also take a hint. We emailed everyday still, talked all the time, but after this email, we saw each other even less. I slept with even more strangers. After that, every time I received an email starting, "hi handsome," and ending with one of those primitively animated Gmail emoji – everyday, basically, he loves them – I felt worse. There's one that's of two yellow squares with eyes and a mouth – one is static and the other advances for a side hug. This is exactly how Raph hugs sometimes and I know it sounds so stupid, but one morning, that emoji made me cry. A few weeks ago, I slept with a guy multiple times and then I went home with someone else later that week who told me he loved me while we were hooking up. I don't think he meant it, but it fucked me up. The slippery slope was becoming my plane of existence. I'd think about Raphael, this perfect angel with an unlimited capacity for kindness, and how fucking Satanic I was being and I knew this had to be reconciled before my entire world exploded. After a movie last week, as Raph and I walked in the West Village, I told him that I was having a really hard time. I verbally shuffled until I finally said, "I'm being really compulsive sexually. I slept with a guy multiple times last week. I went home with another on Friday. I feel like I'm out of control and I'm just being terrible to you. I am the worst guy and you are the best." At the time, I didn't feel like I was revising the, "It's not you, it's me," cliché in extreme terms. It's not what I meant to do, but it's exactly what I meant. And mean. I'm the cancer here. As usual, there was no anger or disappointment, just patience from Raph. I wondered if his absence during Sandy had anything to do with our setup, specifically my behavior and in so many words, he confirmed that it did. OK. "Open," to him, he explained, didn't necessarily mean that he wanted to have sex with a bunch of strangers, but it did mean a certain amount of leeway when it comes to our time together, the freedom of "not feeling like I have a responsibility to be by your side every second." But then what? How do we prevent another Sandy? Do we even want to? Maybe I do and he doesn't? Or vice versa? How do I keep my head straight? By limiting the number of people I sleep with? By limiting the number of times I sleep with one guy? By dropping this shit and obsessing over him like I did for the first two months of our relationship? "No. No rules," he said. "I accept you. I like spending time with you. And even if we aren't going to date anymore, I'm still going to like you and want to spend time with you. You haven't hurt my feelings. I don't feel bad about what you did. If you do, that's something you have to work on yourself." "Why are you so nice to me?" I asked him. "I want to shake you and tell you not to be a chump, Raph." "I'm not being a chump," he said. "I'm doing what feels right. This makes sense. I would rather give love and get hurt a little than do nothing. Anything you could do to me I've already experienced and I don't think you're a bad person. I think you're a great guy." I put my arm around him and we walked and walked, up to Union Square to Petco, down to a Mexican place on University. When we began the conversation, I was prepared for it to end not just the night but our association. But there he was, by my side, with the acceptance he had always given me. He was emanating it like it wasn't a thing, like it was just something that came with the package, a halo. We neared the restaurant and he squeezed me a little and told me, "It feels good not to feel bad about something." It did. Raph's reserving judgment no matter how hard I thought I was pushing was treatment for my guilt addiction. He's either providing methadone so that I can build up the strength to do a different, potentially detrimental fucked-up thing, or he's extracting the sickness from the blood of our relationship. If my narcissistic predictions of hurt and devastation I'm causing that manifest themselves as guilt continue to be wrong, I'm reasonable enough to leave the business of fortune telling. I think. I hope. "It's OK, Rich. You're fine," he told me. If you say so, Raph. *Not their real names. Image via Jacqui Martin/Shutterstock.  |
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Assassin's Creed III's Final Chase Sequence Was The Worst Thing I Played All Year
December 11th, 2012Top StoryAssassin's Creed III's Final Chase Sequence Was The Worst Thing I Played All YearBy Kirk Hamilton
I was playing through the final chase sequence of Assassin's Creed III, wherein the protagonist chases a man across the dockyards of Boston. Trying and failing, again, and again, and again, forever and ever, amen. Really, it's just the final leg of a chase sequence of sorts that's been going on for what feels like the back half of the game. I lost count of the number of times Connor grunted, "I need to find Charles Lee" at someone, usually upon arriving somewhere Charles Lee wasn't. Eventually my search led me to a tavern in Boston, yet another place where Charles Lee wasn't. But there was a guy there at a table, and some light torture later, he told me Lee could be found at the docks. So, I go to the docks, and there he is, ready to run away. And we arrive at the worst video game sequence of 2012. My discussion of it here is not intended as a walkthrough. It's at best a post-mortem, an attempt to slowly drive back past the car wreck, stare down the wreckage and attempt to attain some sort of closure. With the hope, however futile, that the healing can begin. As with many missions in Assassin's Creed III, this one begins with a guy moving away from you with a glowing marker on his back. Chase him! the game instructs. Okay, you think. So you begin to chase him, and three seconds later this happens: These explosive barrels just sort of happen to explode in your face, sending you flying backward, arms pinwheeling, lurching away from your target. 1) Why did the barrels explode? 2) No, seriously. Why did the barrels explode? Did someone make them explode? What happened? Why? The upshot is that the chase begins with what amounts to a giant middle finger right in your face. Something of a sign of things to come, as it turns out. You think you're gonna chase this guy? The game says. Fuck you, you are. First, we're going to slow you the heck down, buddy! If you don't fall down and fail the chase right there (Again: This happens like three seconds in), you then have to get around these guys: And it's much harder than it looks! You'll have to slip around to the side, but don't cut back too quickly or this will happen: You'll get knocked down and fail the chase. Okay, so, now the game has put two obstacles in your way in a matter of seconds, either of which can make you fail, and neither of which is particularly easy to dodge. I played this sequence around 30 times (or more, it kind of all became a blur). Each time something different would happen. That can be a good thing, right? This game is unpredictable! No. That's not what's going on here. The controls are just inconsistent and dodgy as hell. So the only inconsistency is that I have no earthly idea what Connor's going to try to do this time. Alright, so, you get pretty good at slowing down before the barrels explode and going to the right to get around the first dudes, and then you hit these dudes: Who are easier to dodge, you just have to go to the left and run alongside the water. And that's when you notice that the game has given you two optional objectives: Stay within a certain distance of Lee, and don't shove anyone. DON'T SHOVE ANYONE. It's easy enough to ignore these objectives, but when you do, you get a big flaming chunk of red text and an "X" on the screen to tell you, you know, that on your 26th try of this godforsaken travesty of a mission you've fallen short of the lofty goals the game has set for you. Oh, you will not be getting 100% synchronization! Nope! Because you shoved a guy in a high-speed chase. Hell. Alright so back on track. You'll play this part of the chase a couple of dozen times at least, so you'll get pretty good at it. I actually got good even at not shoving people. But believe it or not, this 100-yard stretch of hell is not even the worst part of the chase. Now comes the second part, the burning boat. You'll run into the boat to see Lee standing still and waiting for you, which is just insulting on so many levels: The game is rubber-banding you, there is no way to catch Lee before this point or after it, you're basically running through a totally scripted cutscene. It's a movie in which the director hasn't told you where to go. So now, you'll run forward and in the grand tradition of annoying-ass video game chases, the fire causes a pathway to become blocked just after Lee passes through it: So you'll probably die here once or twice before figuring out that you have to go up and around. Then, you'll get to the end of the ship and you will encounter a moment I have come to think of as THE ENTIRE PROBLEM. It looks like this: It's another moment when the roof collapses right after Lee passes under it. You're thinking, based on what you did when the exact same thing happened five seconds ago, that your answer lies in turning to the left, jumping across the fire, and following Lee. Who you can see heading that direction anyway. And so, bless your heart, you will try doing this. Again and again, you'll try. And you will fail, again and again. Here, watch me fail, a lot:
Yes, those are all separate attempts—I just started recording myself after about my tenth time through. The video makes its point in the first minute or so, but if you'd like to share my pain all the way through, be my guest! So okay, as you've gleaned from the final part of the video above, you actually are NOT supposed to turn away from the roof that fell, you're supposed to go through it. I was stymied by this so hard that after an hour of trying, I fell into that black hole of existential despair that only video games muster. You know the one, where you have a timed sequence that you must beat, and yet you know that there is a certain point past which you will have no idea how to proceed. Click to view It isn't that you know what must be done and lack the skill, you likely have no idea what to do. And you run straight into it the fire, and every time you fail, and you knew that you were going to fail, because you had no idea how to proceed when you started. It becomes a special sort of hell, and you begin to have real thoughts about life, and death, and the passage of time. And then eventually you crack and do what I did: You turn to YouTube, and you find a guy who has finished the game and you watch him. And then you play through the rest of the hateful sequence and are rid of it forever. Click to view Many things in Assassin's Creed III feel thrown-together, but this chase, those five minutes of gameplay that somehow stretched into hours, stands apart. It feels as though it was thrown into the game at the 11th hour with no playtesting or second thought. Of course, some of you will have sailed through this sequence on the very first try. And to you I say, with no ill will: Well done. Good show. We're all very impressed. (Okay, maybe with a little bit of ill will.) But given how many people I've heard talking about this mission elsewhere, I have a strong suspicion I'm not the only one who had this much trouble with it. Yes, the rage will fade; the frustration with this chase and the rest of the game's interminable, unsatisfying ending will evaporate. And yet this document will stand as evidence that a multi-million dollar video game can still contain moments so truly awful that all you can do is sit, gobsmacked, staring at your television and shaking your head.  |
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