As regular as the changing of the seasons the Steam winter sale has started. As usual, there are a lot of games from independent producers marked down to ridiculously low prices as well as a handful of AAA titles to keep things interesting. The gimmick this time seems to be coupons. There are Steam Achievements associated with many of the games and completing them gives you either a coupon or a lump of “coal”. You can trade in coal for… more coupons. The coupons really aren’t that big of a draw. I have a couple so far but the “deals” on the coupons are worse than the sale prices on the same games right now, so they are kind of useless. Still, some of the deals are really good. I’ve cut way back on my video game spending (I only bought two full-price games this year (Dragon Age and Skyrim) so being able to pick up enough games to keep me occupied for the next few months is worth it. I’ll probably look at some of these in more detail later, but here’s the haul so far. Portal 2 – Yes, I’m probably the only one who hasn’t played it yet, but at $7.50 it finally fell into impulse buy range. Orcs Must Die! – Been lots of good buzz about this one. It seems to be a combination of tower defense and FPS. Psychonauts and Costume Quest – A pair of games from Double Fine. I started playing Psychonauts
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Steam Sale – Winter 2011
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Review – The Breach
The Breach by Patrick Lee Ex-corrupt cop/ex-con Travis Chase, recently released from prison, is hiking through the Alaska wilderness and trying to figure out how to get his life back together when he stumbles across the crash of an unmarked 747. Inside the crash he discovers that everyone on board has been executed, including the First Lady of the United States. A note in her hand sends him in search of the two survivors of the crash, who are being brutally tortured to force them to reveal the location of an object that could lead to the destruction of everyone and everything on Earth. And thus begins Breach, the first novel in a new thriller series by Patrick Lee. While many thiller novels by such writers as James Rollins, Jeremy Robinson or Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child skirt the edges of science fiction in their novels, Patrick Lee embraces it wholeheartedly. While it is marketed as and starts out as standard thriller fare, make no mistake; this is a science-fiction thriller. Travis soon rescues Paige Campbell, the last survivor of the crash, and learns what is happening. (Warning: Minor spoiler for the first of the novel.) Paige works for an international government organization known as Tangent. Thirty years ago, an experiment beneath Wyoming opened the “Breach” of the title; an opening to… somewhere. Various artifacts (which they call “entities”) have been coming through the Breach at regular intervals since then. Some of these entities are benign, some are very dangerous
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NaNoWriMo 2011 – Week 3
Chapter 4 – The Division David did not relax until they had cleared the outskirts of Madrid and were driving through rural countryside. He was deliberately avoiding the major highway and using the SUV’s navigation system to find a more indirect route. No one had spoken. Dr. Alvarez was apparently still trying to absorb what had happened back at the Museum. Brad was the one who seemed to be worse off. This was his first active mission and David had forgotten that he had never been on a mission that turned hot and didn’t have the military background he and Alicia had. Adrenaline had carried him along until he got back to the SUV, but he had been silent ever since. He no longer looked as if he was going to be sick but David noticed in the mirror that he still had his eyes closed and his jaw clenched tight. “First time seeing death up close and personal like that.” he thought. Alvarez was the one who finally broke the silence. “OK.” she said quietly in an even voice. “Are you going to tell me what is going on here or not. There’s no way all of you are with the NSF. NSA, maybe. But I think I deserve to know what is going on.” “We’re sorry about your friend.” Alicia said. “That wasn’t what I asked. And I somehow doubt you are.” David shook his head. “Whether you want to believe us or not, we actually are sorry.
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Skyrim – First Thoughts
Skyrim, the latest game in the Elder Scrolls series, came out last Friday and I’ve spent most of the last few days playing it (to the detriment of my NaNoWriMo output). I feel like I’ve barely put a dent in the game world but already I can tell this game is going to solidly in my top games of all time and may even knock Morrowind off the top of the pile. In best Elder Scrolls tradition, you start Skyrim as a prisoner. It is 200 years after the Oblivion crisis (the plot of the previous game) and the Cryrodillic Empire is falling apart. The northern province of Skyrim has entered open rebellion against the Empire and the Imperial Legion has just captured the leader of the rebellion, one Ulfric Stormcloak. Unfortunately you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were captured by the Legion. One Legionnaire realizes your innocence and protests but his commander orders that you be sent to the headsman along with the rest of the prisoners. Fortunately (for you anyway), just as you find yourself on the chopping block a dragon appears and attacks the town. You and the other prisoners escape as chaos breaks out. As you make your way through the burning village you can join up with either a fellow prisoner (one of the rebels known as the Stormcloaks) or the one Imperial Legionnaire who defended you. (Quick, who wants to tag along with the people who just tried to
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NaNoWriMo 2011 – Week 2
Chapter 2 – Geneva David spent most of the trip reviewing the files on Folts’ team that had been sent. There was nothing unusual about any of them. Folts himself had a fairly extensive file; he was an outspoken critic of the US military, or anyone’s military actually, and had multiple run-ins with anyone that didn’t support his particular view of scientific research. He didn’t seem to be overly supportive of social or environmental issues either. Apparently his entire world view involved his branch of scientific research. Alicia and Brandon had been going through Folts research. The reports he had filed with the NSF seemed to support what Brandon had known about him; he had been working on his nano black hole theory. His grant filings had stated that he expected his research to have applications in energy production but Brad’s own analysis of what he had published showed no hints of research in that area. “I think he’s trying to make a black hole, no matter how small, just to say he was able to do it.” Brad finally concluded. Peter had been working at one of the computer stations toward the back of the plane and eventually came back forward, handing each of them a folder of travel papers. David glanced at his to see an NSF id card, passport and handful of credit cards. Brad had pulled out his passport. “I have one of these already.” he said. Alicia looked up. “I thought you said you had
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NaNoWriMo 2011 – Week 1
Prelude: Amazon Rain Forest – Brazil The moon broke out from behind the clouds, illuminating the junglescape with silvery light that reflected in dazzling highlights from the small stream. The light barely illuminated the ground below the jungle canopy but did reveal the buildings squatting in the middle of the large, cleared field as well as several men wandering slowly up and down the rows of crops growing there. In the darkness beneath the canopy, a shadow moved beneath a tangle of leaves and vines. David Stone lifted a pair of night-vision binoculars to his eyes, carefully angling them to avoid reflecting the moonlight toward the fields ahead, and scanned the area. He lowered them again, touched the earpiece he was wearing and whispered quietly. “I count six. You?” There was a slight pause then the earpiece crackled. “Yes, six on patrol. But I think there is another on the roof of the lab building.” David lifted the binoculars again and looked, then cursed quietly to himself. Gabriel was right; another man stood on what looked to be a platform built against the slope of the roof. He noted that this guard was also using a pair of binoculars to periodically scan the area. “I see him.” he whispered to Gabriel through the earpiece. “He’s running surveillance too. That’s going to make it more difficult.” “Agreed.” came the response. “Should we pull back? Wait for your government or mine to send more people.” David shook his head then remembered that
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On the Level
So Skyrim, the fifth game in the Elder Scrolls series, is coming out next week. I’m looking forward to it, mainly because Morrowind, the third game in the series, is one of my favorite games of all time, as are Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, both also done by Bethesda. You may notice that I didn’t mention Oblivion, the fourth Elder Scrolls game. That’s because I think Oblivion made a mistake, one that wasn’t in the Fallout and thus I am hoping that won’t show up in Skyrim. That mistake was having the world level along with the player. Everyone wants to feel as if they get better and more powerful as they go through a game. Whether this is an improvement in our skills as a player as we learn the game or the improvements in our character’s skills and equipment, we like our character at the end of the game to be better than they were at the beginning. This is especially true in fantasy games. This goes all the way back to Dungeons and Dragons, the first of the modern role-playing games. We want to see our weak, nearly helpless first-level characters developing into nearly-unstoppable demigods at level 20. This is something expected in fantasy. No one blinks when Aragorn single-handedly slays his way through an orcish army in The Lord of the Rings and it is just expected that Luke, Leia and Han can blast their way through dozens of Stormtroopers in Star Wars, but
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Review – Train Simulator 2012
Over the past week or so Steam has been running a sale on Halloween/horror themed games. One game, oddly, was Train Simulator 2012 with its Trains vs. Zombies DLC. (No, really.) I had seen Train Simulator before but had mostly been aware of it as that game that had about 150 pieces of DLC on Steam. (It appears that every single train car and locomotive ever made is available separately as DLC.) But for some reason the concept of “Trains vs Zombies” was weird enough that (along with the 50% discount) it convinced me to pick it up and actually look at it. So marketing successful, I suppose. Having played with the game a bit, I have to say that I am disappointed with it. I’m not sure what I was expecting actually but the game has for me failed to deliver, though I’m not sure if that is the fault of the game or not. As the title states the game is a train simulator. A train simulator has to be different from just about any other simulator out there in that you don’t have full freedom in where you go. A plane, boat or even farming simulator should let you wander around more or less freely within the simulation area but trains by their nature are confined to their rails. You don’t steer a train, you just manage the speed to keep it from falling off the rails on a curve and to make sure you stop at
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NaNoWriMo 2011 – Back in the Saddle Again
Well, NaNoWriMo starts next week. For the three of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is short for “National Novel Writing Month”. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to encourage writers and those who aspire to be writers to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. No, really. I’ve attempted NaNoWriMo several times now and I’ve always failed but I’m trying again this year. My problem has always been that I have ideas for things (including this oft-neglected blog) but never seem to be able to actually consign them to paper (or word processor files in this case). I keep hoping that I will come up some magic formula that will let me write things easily, but have never come up with one. The truth is, creativity is hard work. I’m sure there are some people out there for whom things flow naturally but for me it often feels that there is a physical block between what I want to get out of my brain and actually getting those ideas into physical form. So I’m trying NaNoWriMo again this year. I’m hoping that if I can physically force myself to put words down on paper, then I will somehow open the hole between the inside of my head and the outside. Will it work? Who knows, but for now I’m planning on it. See you in November.
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It’s Not Reality, It’s Just a Fantasy
I took a swing through a bookstore the other day, the first one I had been through since the demise of my local Borders, and as usual went to check out the SF section. What I found, also as usual of late, was that most of it was actually fantasy. Mostly Urban Fantasy, actually; so much urban fantasy. I didn’t find anything (my reading pile is still big enough that I don’t need to grab anything just to have something to read) but as I left I started wondering what happened to the Science Fiction shelves of old. I remember when Science Fiction and Fantasy were two different areas in the stores and the SF shelf was the larger of the two. No longer. Of course, part of it is the popularity and success of such things as the Harry Potter and Twilight series which of course have spawned their imitators, but this just changes the question as to why these series became so popular in the first place. I think it is because that, based on what Science Fiction promised us, Science has failed. I’m not talking about “where’s my flying car?” here. Up through the 1950’s and 1960’s, everyone thought that science (Science!) would solve all of our problems. Robots would remove all need for menial labor. The Atom would provide all our energy needs. We would be living in a utopia fueled by the fruits of science. Reality didn’t match that. We are constantly told of the
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