It was the kind of Summer day that really made you appreciate modern life.
We were sprawled on the floor of my friend's newly-built room, getting blasted by the icy goodness from a freshly-installed AC unit whose temperature controls were pushed as far down as they'd go, almost as if mocking the seething sun that was burning the world right outside our frosted windows, rampaging in an effort to regain what it had lost during its year-long slumber, making the puddles that were pockmarking the yard dance until they evaporated into nothing and rejoined the clouds from which they had spawned in the form of a vicious thunderstorm that had roared overhead the night before.
But we didn't care about the natural poetry playing just beyond our closed door because we were kings of a world of our own making, betting it all with reckless abandon while trying to gain Lady Luck's favor with each roll of the dice, hoping that our strategic movements would pay off as the minimalist pieces made their way across the Monopoly board, colorful currency being exchanged every time someone's fortune failed to achieve the desired result. It was a choreography we had learned to perfection through years upon years of repeating it every chance we got, and today was just another installment of that long, epic saga that had started somewhere in the Fifth Grade and continued on well beyond our Elementary School days. But today felt different in the sense that I was winning... and I was winning in such a way that our battle had actually turned into a massacre, with me gloating as my growing Mount Everest of fake money cast a menacing shadow over my friend's flat valley of cards and unused hotel pieces, his enormous pride dented by each and every bad roll and discouraging event card that was drawn by him.
At one point --and already drunk with power-- I watched in absolute delight as my friend's last-chance die roll had him land exactly on one of my utility companies (I owned both) and then I couldn't help but twisting the knife as his tiny pile of money thinned even further as we consulted the rules and decided that I was owed much more than he could afford. Now, normally I'd have been pretty forgiving about that and I would have either waved him off to continue the game or just hand him some money that was still in the box just to take a jab at him... but the one thing you should know about my best friend in the whole wide world is that he doesn't take charity, regardless of the context. It was actually personally offensive to him because he was one proud dude indeed, the son of immigrant parents who worked nearly the entire day and who had saddled him with the responsibility of looking after his baby brothers from the time we were both fantasizing about Pokemon during its first season, so when I actually took some money from my own pile and gave it to him in mocking "mercy", telling him that it was "to feed his family", he laughed very hard and actually took it in stride, but I could tell that he was about done with the whole thing. I understand that now, but I certainly didn't back then (not that it mattered, because my friend wasn't a quitter and so kept trying to claw his way back into the game like he had done so many times before, but this was one mountain he couldn't climb and, truth be told, I was getting bored, too).
The eternal battlefield.
At its core, Monopoly is a game about economics, and the only reason we kept at it for so long was because it afforded us ample opportunities to annoy the absolute hell out of each other while driving sports cars and, uh, top hats across a board, the spirit of competition residing in the carte blanche it provided for mocking shenanigans. It was all great while we were both in it, but it became rather dull once the game had become pretty much decided. And so, without much ceremony, we engaged in the painstakingly long process of getting all the pieces back into their box, another chapter of this endless war firmly behind us.
My friend then headed to the computer, but I stayed right there because I was completely mesmerized by the freezing powers of the aforementioned AC unit, and that was because I had never seen one in action before. I grew up in the midst of a firmly middle class family at a time when not a lot of households felt the need (or had the means) to install those expensive machines, but my friend's parents were cashing in on a life of hard work and decided to live it good in retirement, remodeling the entire house and getting all the toys I'm sure they wish they'd have had at our age. For that reason, I decided to sit below the icy blast a little longer while he went to watch more of those wrestling videos he loved so much.
I remember feeling quite relaxed by the soothing nature of a machine humming in the wall, the smell of freshly-applied paint filling my nostrils and just the enormously sweet nature of being exactly where I wanted to be: living a carefree life in the middle of a bright Summer day.
Hello, world!
For that very reason I chose to get my trusty flip phone out (I was a very late smartphone adopter) to prank a text service aimed at tween girls which promised to get you someone's anonymous, randomized secret in exchange for your own. It was kind of stupid, but I had long learned that the system was being abused by a lot of like-minded individuals (many of whom were among its target audience) that had found it to be hardly --if at all-- moderated, so I usually ended up having a blast exchanging BS submissions like "Red's a color" for things like "I woke up today". But it was at that very moment that Lady Luck decided to stop smiling upon me and to make it absolutely clear that my Monopoly luck was a one-time thing, to be remembered more than counted on... because I got a message from one of the few legit users of that service, someone who sounded terrified because she had allegedly stolen from her mom's purse and was now freaking out she was gonna be found out. It wasn't even all that grave, but it certainly soured the mood. It almost felt like I was taking advantage of someone by trading my obviously trollish submission for their almost-panicked entry. It was as if all the fun had been sucked out of the room, so I rejoined my friend instead of letting that take root.
Since my friend had just gotten high-speed internet, I decided to suggest something different for our next virtual adventure: after falling in love with the game that headlines this article by getting to review it for my first job, I convinced him to download it from some shady site, being beyond eager to share it with him, and then took on the role of a nerdy "tour guide", explaining the story and mechanics to him, watching in anticipation as a new fan was being born right in front of my eyes.
But my friend wasn't going to give me the satisfaction. Not after what I had just pulled on the cardboard battlefield.
I used to think that friendship was at its best when it involved like-minded individuals, but time and experience have show me that some of my most fruitful and meaningful connections were made around people I have had key disagreements with. You only ever see the full picture by zooming out and allowing perspective to take hold, which they provided by contrasting their points of view with mine and forming a rich tapestry of thoughts and ideas that combined with my own to weave something beautiful, and my friend embodied the entire philosophy by being my magnet opposite on each and every thing, both big and small (except Pokemon, we were both absolutely sold on that one).
The irony is that Deus Ex could get pretty damn close to what my friend wanted it to be... but not without patience.
And so... he made fun of my favorite game relentlessly, brutalizing its dated graphics (duh), flat, inexpressive voice acting, limited animation, awkward combat (even though that's the whole point of the opening chapters on an RPG) and pretty much each and every other aspect of the entire thing, delighting in having me defend the game with fanatic zeal as he kept pushing forward and finding new things to criticize. He got killed immediately by doing what most new players do when they try Deus Ex for the first time: thinking it's Doom and charging at enemies until they are nothing more than another footnote on UNATCO's casualty report.
But then he reminded me of why I love Deus Ex so much in the first place:
After going about it in the most maddeningly inefficient way (and I'm sure that he did that just to spite me... which, uh, mission accomplished), my friend ended up begging me for cheat codes so he could actually complete the first mission and see if the chat with the NFS leader was as good as I had promised, but then he decided to mess about and engage the security bot patrolling the entrance to the Statue Of Liberty by flexing his new God Mode and getting it to chase him across the map, slowing down just enough for it to catch up to him time and again, until they ended up at the pier where you originally meet your informant and get a second way into the building. But here my friend did two things I will never forget: first, he threw himself into the water in a mock suicide to see if the bot would follow (it didn't) and ended up stumbling upon a sunken barge full of supplies that I didn't even know existed, despite obsessing with exploring every inch of the opening map during my review. Then, he continued antagonizing the stupid machine of death until it... ran out of ammo. I, again, didn't even know that was possible, and it even stated it itself by robotically calling "out of ammo" over and over, as if willing to dissipate any doubt we could possibly have as it stopped firing his guns and just sort of idled in place... too bad that it ceaseless chant destroyed my theory that it had become a pacifist machine after being shown the futility of armed conflict first-hand.
But I will be the first to admit that it has a, uh, surplus of toilets and a lack of action, at least early on.
The next thing my friend did was to try and beat both the now-defenseless robot and the UNATCO informant to death with a crowbar he had found just lying around, before calling it quits without ever making it to the encounter with the terrorist leader, his already quite thin patience completely exhausted by triggering an obvious trap in the form of a smoke grenade left by the enemies in one of the back entries to the building. But I didn't mind that he quit in such unceremonious fashion because all I could think of was that he had managed to discover two new things by making fun of a game I adored and abusing its gameplay mechanics just to try and demonstrate how "worthless" it was... but that's Deus Ex, isn't it? A game that adapts itself to each and any player that tries it out by responding to their every approach, and that made me love it even more.
I'm not sure we will ever see another game quite like it.
I wish I could tell you that I then took over the controls and taught my friend how to really enjoy that genius game, but the reality was somewhat different: after his little robot-disabling, informant-beating power play, he quit the game, uninstalled the whole thing and then nuked the installer just for good measure. Then he pulled up YouTube again, and we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon watching Try Not To Laugh Compilations, Fail Compilations and even some RC-Vehicle Disaster Compilations (because of course we did) as minutes melted into hours and snacks were consumed rapidly whilst hysterical commentary and fits of laughter were exchanged with each and every frame that flashed on screen, all while the sun that had forced us inside made its quiet retreat below the horizon and cooled down the world just enough for us to shut down our man-made Ice Age and head outside to take our first looks at the velvety, starry sky that promised a long, exciting Summer up ahead.
