So, full disclosure here, I don’t know much about opera.

The performance form, anyway.  Not the web browser.  Actually, I don’t know much about the web browser other than that Opera fanatics tend to have that extra level of crazy that goes above and beyond Linux evangelists.

Not that crazy is necessarily a bad thing; progress demands crazy people.

Anyway.  Opera, in the classic sense.  I don’t have a lot of experience with it.  The last time I went to see an opera was with my family, who bought a nice set of cheap seats in the nosebleed section of the local concert hall to see, uh, I forget what the opera was but the chick in it dies of consumption.

I realize that’s like trying to narrow down a Gilligan’s Island episode by saying that it’s the one where they almost get off the island but Gilligan screws it up.

Anyway, one thing I didn’t realize about myself before that incident was that I am apparently prone to vertigo.  One thing I didn’t realize about opera houses is that, if they find a customer sitting out in the lobby having turned a pale shade of gray and trying not to lose his dinner all over the lobby, they will stick you in a seat that’s less prone to giving you the screaming heebie jeebies.

So I actually wound up with a really good seat while the rest of my family was stuck up in the bleachers.

Not that they were actually bleachers.  In fact, they differed from bleachers in two important ways: First, they consisted of individual seats rather than benches.  Second, there was absolutely no chance of catching a foul ball.

It occurs to me that opera could be considerably improved if they added the possibility of catching foul balls.

But I digress.

Oh, and about halfway through the second act of whatever opera it was, the supertitles cut out, which was apparently not intended.  Since I’d never been to an opera with supertitles before, I kind of assumed that this was normal, that you were only supposed to understand the first bits of an opera and that everything afterwards was supposed to be incomprehensible.

The titles DID eventually come back on.

It was still pretty incomprehensible.

Anyway, wow, this post really wasn’t about opera, even though it has an opera in it.

See, Parasite Eve, which I started tonight after finishing Koudelka last night (and spending a little time with Red Alert 3 : Uprising), starts with an opera gone Horribly Wrong, with an audience full of people bursting into flames.  I’m pretty sure that’s not normal behavior for an opera.

Like, oh, 95% sure.

I figured I’d take another journey into the PS1 vaults since I was already kind of used to 1990s graphic quality and wanted another good creepy game after Koudelka.  Having played for an hour so far, I think I made the right choice.  I’m a little worried that there won’t be enough healing items around to keep me upright, but I guess I’ll find that out as I find it out.

At least there seems to be lots of ammo.

I am given to understand that it’s a pretty short game, that the story is pretty good, and that the third game in the series was only released on Japanese cell phones, which drives some people stark raving mad.  I figure I’ll play the first game, but not the sequel, because then I won’t ever have to rant about not being able to play the third.