My friend Brett made a movie when he was twelve called "Two Indiana Joneses." You can probably guess that it featured him and a friend both pretending to be Indiana Jones. Well, I got to enjoy my own taste of protagonist duplicity last night while playing Assassins Creed. I was just about to complete the final assassination when I rounded a bend to see another assassin standing there. Figuring this was one of my allies I targeted him to see what he had to say. It didn't take long for me to realize that this was no random NPC but rather an exact duplicate of myself. I figured maybe this was some cool gameplay twist; that the Animus was malfunctioning and creating multiple Altairs. When I moved, so did Altair 2. The trippiest aspect was how the guards only attacked the other Altair. I could easily fend them off by concentrating on my doppelganger, but the camera stayed focused on the original the whole time, even cutting back to Altair 1 during those cool slow-mo counter attacks. It started to dawn on me that this probably wasn't supposed to be happening. That suspicion was confirmed when I came to what I assume is the end of the level and found nothing but a few rocks floating in an endless blue emptiness.

Now this happens every time I try to finish the game. There're lots of videos of the glitch on YouTube and it seems fairly common. For a while it was fun to run around with my mirror image killing dudes and then assassinating myself. Apparently the glitch is caused by having one or more additional controllers plugged in during the last section of the game. Looks like I have that damn Rock Band drum kit to blame! I have yet to check if removing the other controllers fixes the bug. With Jade Raymond talking about how the development team wanted to include co-op but had to drop it on the most recent Bonus Round, I guess it's probably safe to assume it's related to some piece of co-op code that didn't get tucked away properly; though I know about as much about making games as I do about breeding the platypus, so I really shouldn't speculate.

This glitch is the caboose of a short little train of gaming tragedies that has befallen me lately. First my Halo 3 Limited Edition discs come scratched, then I have to return my Guitar Hero 3 controller twice due to faulty hardware, now this Assassins Creed nonsense...PLUS I strongly suspect my Rock Band USB hub is jacked. It just makes me want to go eat a whole tub of mayonnaise with my bear hand like Hurly on Lost.

I'm just kidding. Mayonnaise is fucking disgusting. You might as well eat a jar of aged jizz if you are going to eat that shit.

Also, I'm just kidding about being upset. What I've really gained from these little disasters is an appreciation for being a grown-up gamer. As a kid, if the one game my mom and pop got me for Christmas was fucked up or the one game system I owned stopped working, that was tough shit. I was stuck playing old ass games or painting miniatures until we could return the game or get the system repaired. Now, as an adult, I'm fortunate enough to own all three major consoles and a diarrhetic elephant diaper load of games. So during this season of thankfulness, I'm saying, "Thanks turkey! As I worship the leftovers of your bread-stuffed corpse, I'll sing a song of praise for having games to turn to in my times of need...for having an awesome job that provides me with enough Dan Dority to get the games I want...and for the time to play those games. Ben Franklin was right. You should have been America's national bird."


P.s.: "Dan Dority" is character from the HBO show Deadwood. Also, his name is a cool way to refer to cash money.