Harvest Moon Catastrophe

Events occur every once in a while that make us all step back and realize just how human we really are. Sometimes emotions such as pride are inflicted. Prime example here, as we watched our towers fall, and the sirens on screen rushing into that cloud of debris, our anger for anybody who would do that fumed out of us as the pride in our chests gave us hope that Americans would pull through this. We would help our fellow fallen ones, we would not stop till every one of them still breathing was pulled out of that. That was a catastrophe that made us more human. In a sense, we need things like that sometimes.

Such a case has risen in my life, taking the form of.... -insert suspense here- a video game. Harvest Moon came out a while ago. Granted, I'm a little slow to review games that I can tell by the name are going to be lame and less than stimulating. But as my girlfriend stared at the game on the shelf with stars and twinkles in her eyes, I figured, there has to be something to it, why else would it still be so fucking expensive? As a side thought, it has occurred to me that I rate game play prematurely by the cost of the purchase. So, based on that, and the fact that I could not just stand by being the dick wad who wouldn't buy her girlfriend a game because the name of it was Harvest Moon.

Long story short here, last night I experienced something I'd never felt before. I thought patience testing was being forced to babysit 1-3 year old children. I never knew I could find enjoyment out of it though! For those of you who have never played Harvest Moon, let me break some news to you. You, are a farmer. I'm not kidding. You're goal in the game, is to farm productively, and get married to one of 4 chicks in the game, and then raise a family. That about concludes the game. Yes, yes, it sounds like blowing air through a straw would be a much more efficient use of your time. And it probably would. I'm not even going to lie to you. But what I found as I played the game.. was that you have these little plots on your farm. You know, for growing tomatoes and watermelons and such. And each of these little plots have to be hoed, planted, and watered individually. Once originally planted, you have to go around, preferably at least twice a game day watering each little plot. (Every minute of the day ticks by in the corner of your screen as seconds in real life) Let me give you a visual of what I'm talking about here:
Okay, you see each little plant thing. Yeah, that little fucker had to be watered twice a fucking day, all by itself, you then have to back up, reposition your watering can, and water the next one. Back up, repeat process.

That's not all, there's more to this than that. You have to love on ALL of your animals in the farm, DAILY. Train your dog, brush your cows, water your fucking plants, talk to the villagers, explore the area, make sure your ordering forms are filled out, and you have to make sure you get to bed at a reasonable hour or A) You collapse from exhaustion or B) You wake up late the next day throwing off your entire fucking routine. I mean this game is very much like running a real farm, time management wise anyway. So .... the problem is, yesterday, today and tomorrow are exactly the fucking same. You have to be married within a game play year, and that's a lot of hours spent doing the exact same thing, over and over and over again.

Why, you ask, why do I hate myself so much? I'll tell you...
IT IS MY PERSONAL MISSION TO DEFEAT THIS GAME!
Let me explain. Minus the rest of the repetitive crap you do in Harvest Moon, the watering of the plants is the most time consuming test of patience I've ever come across in my entire fucking life. And when the towers collapsed, I learned I was more of a patriot than I knew I was. And when I broke my neck, I learned I was not invincible. And playing Harvest Moon, I know now that I have very very VERY little patience. See, I did not know that. I thought I had decent enough patience. I was so wrong... -hangs head in shame-

But no worries, kiddos, I have found the solution to all you out there that have patience problems like I do. When we want to teach our children their alphabet, we play games that include letters. When we want to teach them to eat their nasty ass greens, we make it a helicopter, cause helicopters are FUN! Harvest Moon is the adult way to learn patience. I'm pretty sure. Somewhere out there, a developer was like, let's make our players have patience of GOLD so when they are done playing our game, they feel like that have made a personal achievement in their lives. And this game was made. I have to do this, this isn't a joke, I have to prove to myself that I'm still capable of bettering myself on any level. Any. I'm so not picky anymore. Video game better-ness is better than.. fuck, I mean, what's better than that? Oh yeah. Paving Nebraska's sidewalks in gold. (personal dream of mine)

Go out there people of no patience, and experience what the gaming industry has designed for us. Tell your boss your calling in sick because playing this game will help you not kill that fucking coworker of yours. Do it for your fellow fallen ones dammit. Do it for yourself. Harvest that fucking Moon! And do it with a smile!

-coughs- and erm.. also to make you smile:

I mean, like, hell yeah right?