Parrying projectiles
Never bring a knife to a gun fight, they say. But what if it’s a really big knife? Bullets, we all know, are useless against a skilled swordsman. I’ve been playing cyberpunk shooter E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy again and was delighted to learn that in the grim dark future of humanity, katanas can deflect bullets. Of course they can. They wouldn’t be cool if they couldn’t. I adore games employing this bit of daftness to make swords functional in high-tech games. There’s your hand Raiden out there in Metal Gear Rising too, twirling his nanoblade to deflect bullets as he runs around. Or going low-tech, magical men like Geralt can deflect crossbow bolts in some Witcher games. Truly masterful swordsman can even deflect projectiles back at attackers. Any opportunity to use an enemy’s attacks against them is a joy, and obviously that’s cooler with a sword. It’s my understanding that non-spaceship Star Wars games exist primarily to let you be cool and reflect laserblasts back at Stormtroopers.
Customisable horn honks
I don’t have a lot of opinions on how cars should look. As one look at my GTA Online garage shows, the opinions I do have are probably bad. I largely skip customising cars beyond making them a nice blue or teal, or murdered-out matte black if I’m feeling edgy. But if offered the opportunity, I will always spend much time and attention on one bit of customisation: the horn. Oh, what joy to scroll through a list of car horns! What a treat to honk honk after honk! I enjoy discovering serious, macho honks. I enjoy silly honks. I especially enjoy musical honks (can’t resist a bit of La Cucuracha or Colonel Bogey). All my GTA Online cars, of course, have clown horn honks. I feel I’m making clear to Los Santos that I’m just a cheery clown come to pootle around; the murderous reactions I sometimes get to honks make me think other players believe it’s an accusation against them. But car games are not my forte (nor indeed my forza), so please, reader dear, tell me more about cool horns you’ve honked in more games.
But which is better?
For me, it’s parrying projectiles, hands down. Wait, no. Never hands down. Keep your hands and your sword up or they’ll get you. But what do you say, reader dear? Pick your winner, vote in the poll below, and make your case in the comments to convince others. We’ll reconvene next week to see which thing stands triumphant—and continue the great contest.
