My nephew Alex has pretty much everything going for him. He's in a good home, gets good grades, has lots of friends and his parents don't spoil him too much.
Unfortunately, he was born with the n00b gene.
Before Christmas, I had learned that he had gotten a PS2. Therefore, Mom and I decide to buy him Final Fantasy X-2. We figured this would keep him busy for a while. Let's point out here that Alex is 12.
There wasn't enough place at the table for everyone, so the oldies ate first, followed by the youngsters. While Alex was eating, I went downstairs to the PS2, popped the CD into the machine and started playing a piece of the game. After a while, Alex comes down, so I reset the machine and let him play.
After 2 minutes, he says "[KodiaX987], what do I need to do?"
I turn around and find out he had just gotten his first mission and had been left to go and accomplish it.
"Did you read your mission orders?" I ask.
"What mission orders?"
"...You skipped the dialogues, haven't you..."
"Yeah. It's boring."
"Restart the game."
"What?"
"I said: restart the game, and this time, read the dialogue. Your mission orders were there, you just had to read 'em."
Flash forward a few months later. I'm at Alex's place, he's just rented Turok Evolution. He asks me to start playing if I want, and what does he do in the meantime?
He goes on the Internet to look for cheat codes.
That's right, he hasn't even played the fucking game yet and he already tries to cheat on it.
Flash forward a few months later, yesterday, actually. He comes home because his dad had to bring me a Windows XP machine to do some operations on an infamous hard drive of mine. I had burned a few Dreamcast games for Alex so I asked him how they were.
"They're good." He said. "But Industrial Spy, I have absolutely no idea what to do. I can't even move!"
For your information, Industrial Spy isn't even a game where "you" move, it's a game where you issue orders to agents.
So I said: "Did you say 'yes' when the chick told you if you wanted further assistance on your first mission?"
"...What?"
"She said that. It was her third line actually. She asks you if you want further help and then the tutorial begins."
At that point, I should've told him I had written about the chick asking that question on the jewel case cover but it seems Alex hadn't read the box at all.
"Know what? Restart the game, say YES when the chick asks you and go from there. By the way, the castle mission is gonna fuck you over. That's all I have to say."
The castle mission in this game operates on a set of doors and traps, connected to 24 switches scattered throughout the level. I don't expect Alex to ever finish it.
"By the way, are there any cheat codes for Rez?" He asks.
"No. You need to work for all the unlockable yourself, like a man."
Next up, I start working on the hard drive. The machine my half-brother had brought belonged to Alex.
I turn it on, it crashes on startup. I need to reboot it once and then it works properly.
I plug it to the network, and start transferring files. Quickly, I realize his computer is fucked up in the worst ways: it is slow as hell, randomly freezes, and I get porn ads over porn ads.
So I turn to Alex and say "You need to format that box."
"How do I restart it?"
Note that Alex can't get himself to say "format". For him "restarting" in his mind is "formatting" in mine, don't ask why.
Then my half-brother tells me: "I told him I wouldn't fix his machine anymore, that if he fucked it up, it would be his problem and he'd have to fix it himself."
So I say to Alex: "You NEED to format your computer."
"But how?!"
"Go look on the Internet or instruction manuals, ask your dad, whatever, this is your mission. I am not giving you any further information. You go and figure out how to fix a box yourself."
"But I don't know how to restart [format] my computer!!"
"Go seek the answers. Make a man out of yourself."
"But how do I do it?! I don't know!!"
It was time to leave, so he was forced to hop into the minivan. I still have his box since my transfers aren't finished. But when I give it back, I know he'll never get to formatting anyways.
So to summarize, Alex:
-Looks for cheat codes before even playing the game.
-Cannot fix his own computer.
-Is unable to acknowledge the idea of reading the instructions, the manual, or seeking help files over the Internet.
-Always skips the dialogue, whether it's important or not, and then wonders why he's all lost.
-Is able to fuck up a computer so often that people around him have resigned to helping him out, knowing he'll just fuck up again in a matter of days.
-Click on EVERYTHING. He clicks on all the ads, installs all software whether he asked for them or not, and always gets fooled by the fake Windows message ads.
I told him if he ever came to #psow, I'd be able to fool him into deleting the entire contents of his hard drive. I'm waiting just for that, so that he can finally learn that he's gonna have to learn how to figure out stuff by himself.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: KodiaX987 on 2004-07-29 19:31 ]</font>
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