HOPE

SLAM! You're making steady progress through a game when suddenly you come face to face with a brick wall and it's a large brick wall with a very bricky kind of texture. No matter what you try you can't find a way around it or over it. You get frustrated and backtrack for hours thinking you must have missed something but eventually you give in, hit 'save' and put it to one side.

Coming back to a game fresh after even just a few hours can work wonders. The solution stares straight at you like your opponent in a staring contest and it seems so obvious that you can't believe you didn't think of it before.

This has happened to me quite frequently recently and other than tiredness it's often that I tend to look for something far more complicated than I need to. What prompted me to write all this down was a Gears of War co-op game with Matt that pointed this out to me clearer than anything. Nearing the end of our game we were just chatting and from where we were standing you could just make out the top half of a sculpture in the middle of a large garden... H... O. What could it mean? Head Office? Hand's Off? Height Obstacle? Hippocratic Oath? We got a bit nearer to see if it would reveal any further clues. It did. There were more letters below... P... E. PE? Well there's the obvious one, Physical Education? Or maybe Playboy Enterprises? Polycromatic Erythroblast? Prostate Enlargement?

A shot rang out, as shots often do, and something registered.
HOPE! It's HOPE!

It had taken us a good couple of minutes to reach this conclusion. Minds like steel traps but rusted shut having been left out so long. It was time to get some sleep!

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