The cat meowed.

Yesterday we finally had the producer from the TV show who might be interested in fixing our kitchen come by. The interview was postponed a week, so we re-cleaned our house and psyched ourselves up.

It was convenient, however, because things had been put on hold for a day at work while details of the upcoming collections were sorted out by corporate. So I just didn't go in. Instead I got up and went to the gym, did a playthrough of Tatsunoko VS Capcom (and didn't lose a single round), want just waiting for the producer to show up.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 showed up in the mail, so I was pretty excited. I popped it in right as Lindsay came home from running to see a client. She wanted me to play Heavy Rain, so I quit after my first match online.

Were in the middle of a tense scene when the producer showed up. They weren't here for long, though. The basically videotaped up walking through our kitchen, pointing out the problems (of which there are many) and talking about how we might like to change it.

Then we sat down and did a more personal interview, asking how we met, what we do... stuff like that. The interview went fine, but not great. Lindsay was pretty nervous and REALLY wanted to get them to fix our kitchen, so she kind of dominated the conversation and was talking really fast.

I tried to speak up, to not come off as too quiet, but it was kind of hard to get a word it edgewise without just being awkward. But it was fine. The really bad part was the pets. Most were locked upstairs, but Oliver was in the bedroom alone. He was quiet all day, but hearing the stranger in the house must have really intrigued him because he started meowing. Loudly. And constantly, about every 10 seconds, the ENTIRE time we were being filmed.

I was trying to be personable, energetic and fun-loving, but I wanted to scream. Everyone ignored it, there's nothing you can do to keep a stupid cat from being stupid, but it was really distracting. I'm hoping she didn't leave and just go "well, we can't film a tv show with meowing in the background the entire time" and forget us...

All in all, it didn't take more than 30 minutes. We have no idea if we'll be selected. 1/2 of me says "yeah, maybe" and the other 1/2 says "OLIVER!!!"

After that was over, we finished up Heavy Rain. Overall, I liked it. I'm glad I played it. I'm glad it exists. I hope it's not he future of games. Because it's barely a game, really.

I thought about going back and trying to see different outcomes and scenarios from the game... but I don't think I will. Kind of like Mass Effect 2, I experienced my story, and I'm pretty happy to leave it at that (but I still want that DLC, ME2!).

The game started slow, built up to be tense, engaging and exciting, and then ran out of steam, a little bit. There's a lot of things it does well. And at it's best moments, I just couldn't wait to see what happened next. But there's also a lot of things it does poorly. The most offensive, to me, was a late game twist that might have worked just fine in a movie. But despite it's best efforts, this is no movie. And as a game, I think it's pretty offensive to try to pull crap like that. It basically cheated in it's storytelling.

But then I listened to the Gamers With Jobs podcast where they did the Spoiler Section discussing the game, and I realized just how many different ways the story could play out. Even though I didn't experience them first hand, it game me a much deeper appreciation of the game.

So now I'm impressed again.