Wish Fulfillment

All that the ROM really wanted for his birthday yesterday was for the Red Sox not to lose to the Yankees.  Not at Fenway at least.  It's been a rough year for the World Series champs, and they're certainly not playing like they're going to be repeat champions, if they even make it to the playoffs at all this season.  And then their first home game against arch-rival New York just so happened to fall on his birthday last night.

The Red Sox came through and delivered on his wish and beat the Yankees by a final score of 19-3, their largest run total against New York in the history of the franchise.

Thanks, Boston, that's all that we wanted. 

That's all we wanted from the Red Sox, that is.  We also wanted a new video game to play.  Back on July 6, we noted that according to the very detailed in-game statistics, we were 19% of the way through Metal Gears Solid V.  In the 20 days since then, we've only managed to complete another 4%  of the game for a total of 23% complete.  We've been stuck on Mission 16 for a week now, unable to complete the challenging battle with four elite, supernatural soldiers guarding a supply truck.  

It's not fun when you can't win and we've found ourselves actively avoiding the game.  And when we think about it, even if we do finally figure out how to complete Mission 16, there's still another full 78% of the game ahead of us, and the battles will only get more challenging and more intense.  It's become a chore, a burden, to play.  Many of the side missions are starting to feel very similar to one another and even the main missions all have a very formal, repetitive format to them. We feel like we're just grinding through a near-endless series of difficult if not quite impossible missions and we need a break, a change of pace, so that we can enjoy game playing again.

So yesterday, on his birthday, the ROM downloaded a copy of Far Cry 5. It's set in Montana and you play as a stranded deputy battling a white-supremacist death cult (the game  doesn't actually admit the cult members are white supremacists, but it's Montana and they're all white and you do the math).  After the Red Sox victory, the ROM played the game for about two hours, and it's a nice change of pace from the grim, military atmosphere of MGSV.

So, we got our birthday wishes - a decisive, record-setting Red Sox victory and a new video game to enjoy.  See?  Getting old doesn't have to be a drag.