Jaw Dropped

My daughter is pretty good at some video games.  Soul Calibur 3 is one of those she kicks much ass on.  In addition to fighting games, she also enjoys racing games (arcade racers).  Her favorite amongst those is the legendary Burnout 3.  Up until two days ago it had been months since we played it.  At that time she did the same thing all little kids do when first learning racing games:  spun around a lot, hit the guardrails a lot, had to reverse a lot. 


Then everything changed.

The other night she asked to play it with me.  I loaded it up on the trusty PS2 and we picked our cars.  The countdown began, and I reminded myself that I would be stopping along the track a few times to let her catch up, much like I've done for Mirror when she attempted to master Gran Turismo 4 (and she will kill me if she reads that).

As soon as we got the green, she was past me.  In fact, it was an honest-to-goodness race, with her leading most of the time (she officially won two of three).  No rail running.  No out of control spins.  Just good ol' fashioned madness that the game is supposed to deliver.  I was so stunned that at one point I was convinced that I was playing the system and not my six-year-old.  Somehow between the last time we played and now she got good at it.  She hasn't been practicing at someone else's house.  She hadn't been practicing when I'm asleep.  She just got good.

Besides being impressed, I started mentally ticking off all the games I could introduce her to.  Games I have avoided because they take more precise control.  She was interested, too.  She started asking me about ones she could see in the stacks.  As she said, "I want to beat you at those, too."

Perfect.



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Kicked In The Ass Again

Soul Caliber III is one of those great fighting games that appeals to those who don't like fighting games. It's also got a fantastic character creation system that lets you do just about any character you can think of. That's the part of the game that appeals to my five-year-old daughter. And then she played it.

Admittedly, when we started playing the game I gave her a 200% handicap. I didn't want her to be discouraged from playing right away. There was a problem, though. She got real good real quick, and she liked it a lot. She liked it so much she started blurting out lines from the game at random moments.

Today I took the handicap away.

In other fighting games she's done well ... without any handicaps. Not great, but well enough to make the game fun. When I took the handicap away the game got really interesting because she got better.

Better.

Perfect, actually.

She was winning fights without me even laying a hand on her. Perfect.

Granted, I won a few, but she never got a "Perfect" when playing with the handicap. And my wins, it should be noted, came from me doing a running slide to knock her out of the ring. "Why would you do that?" she asked. It was a good question. I didn't want to tell her it was because it's the only way I could win.

Eventually she grew tired of the game because beating me so much wasn't as "much fun."

Seriously? She's five, and this is ridiculous. I'm now forced to break out a NASCAR game and school her in the ways of competition.

God knows I can't do it any other way.