It all started on Friday the 6th.
I was playing one of my all time favorite games: Transformers: War For Cybertron (hereinafter to be called TWFC). It was awesome, I was kicking butt and it was epic. I know what you're thinking, I got carried away just playing it for hours. Well, that's not entirely false, but it's not quite as simple as that.
I'm a member of a forum where people who like the game can go and interact. It's nice to get a feel for the people behind the Autobot/Decepticon as it were. I have been a member for a while and shared my own insights or complaints, given feedback and received suggestions. I enjoy the community for the most part and usually check it daily. A bit before Christmas one of the veterans of the forums offered to buy a game for the person who could guess his favorite game of all time, or be the closest to a number between 1 and 1000. I had a dream a bit before this that someone told me that their favorite game of all time was Diablo II, but, I thought that was kind of weird, so I guessed Mario Kart and the number 444. My cousin Phil (check out his blog here!) had been talking recently about the number 4 in Japan and how 444 was like death or something, so I just threw it down. On January 2nd I got a message when I logged into the forum that one of the members sent me a private message. I went to my inbox and it was from the guy running the contest telling me I won! I guessed the closest number. His was 420. I checked the thread and he had updated the original post to include the information that I had won, what his number had been and what his favorite game was. Diablo II... Um... that is weird. Not that he likes the game, but that I dreamt about it. I should have just put it down, that would have been pretty awesome. Not that it mattered, I won anyway. So, in order to claim my prize I had to pick a game up to a $20 value, but for him to give it to me we had to be friends on Steam (a sweet PC game hub/community that lets you keep games installed directly on your computer instead of needing to pop in the disc every time).
Now, because I was friends with this guy, who is fairly prominent in the TWFC community, I started getting friend requests from a bunch of the other veterans. Shortly after I would add them to my list they would pop up in a chat telling me how fun it is to play with me and how good they thought I was. That was pretty cool to hear from guys that are in the top 50 for the game. One of the guys that added me is from England and one night he invited me to help him with some footage he is getting for a Transformers movie he is making. He needed someone good enough to pull off some crazy stunts with him. I said sure and we got started. The first stunt he needed was for me to be Arcee (a small "girl" autobot) and I had to run toward a low wall, jump over it and turn around mid-air, throw an EMP grenade so that it hits him and then before I hit the ground on the other side of the wall "dash" (special ability) to the side and down the ramp that leads to a lower level and then cloak still in mid-air. He had to be chasing me, get blinded by the grenade, jump over the wall turn and shoot a cloaked robot in mid-air while also in mid air and still partially blinded by the grenade. I did a couple practice runs and then he said he was going to film it. We never got it right during the practice runs, but we hit it first try when he was recording. We did a bunch of stuff and a couple other guys came in to help us do some scenes with more characters. It was really fun and we got tons of stuff filmed, but then I looked toward my window and saw light coming through it....Yep, it was morning. For Mr. England man over in England it was no big deal because he was just doing his normal thing, but I am 7 hours behind him so I should have been sleeping.
So, now I can't really fall asleep before 3 or 4 if I try. It's pretty bad. I miss sleeping at the right time.
