#and try not to kill myself if the interfaces do not look 100% the same (the tutorials use a previous version of same app)

[the-gayest-show]

i LOVE procrastinating this is fun i KNOW i have assignments to do but i cannot bring myself to do them. i am actually bored out of my mind. i have assignments to do and im bored. i COULD do assignments but i can't be bothered to start

and then im stressed as i realize ive eaten my whole day up doing nothing. is this laziness? i heard being lazy meant relaxing but im doing everything but these assignments. and i feel awful

[3pirouette]

Fic: Iterate (1/1)

Title: Iterate By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette Spoilers: Up through Endgame. Disclaimer: They're not mine. Word Count: 2953 Distribution: AO3 Anyone else please ask first :)

Summary: Steve lived through the 21st century twice, the second time hurt much more than the first.

A/N: I literally made myself cry today on the way to work while I was working this out in my head. It was SUPPOSED to be FLUFFY. I’m not exactly why I decided on this format, all I know is that it felt right. I hope you enjoy. Steggy is just mentioned, more Steve-centric. 

It was supposed to be a stupid, fluffy story about Old Steve living with his granddaughter and being a LITTLE SHIT to her all the time because he’s 100% comfortable with modern things and it drives her nuts. I’m sorry.

Also, please pay attention to vague time stamps. Certain details are changed for impact. Hence, AU (Even though I FULLY BELIEVE that once the stones are placed back there is only ONE main timeline where Steve lived, was Peggy’s husband, and that’s how he showed up at the end of Endgame. Fight me.)

AND I’M SORRY.

~*~ October 2023

He supposed he’d always been waiting for this day. Steve knew he’d be around for it, one way or another. At least, he’d always assumed that, though he’d thought he’d experience it in a very, very different way.

He didn’t know the exact time, just a vague recollection that it was early afternoon, that there had been sunlight they’d blocked out with the blast shields, that they’d tried to eat lunch but they were all too nervous.

Funny. Same thing happened to him today. He couldn’t manage to get anything to slide down past the lump in his throat, couldn’t fill his stomach to calm the butterflies. He tried coffee first. It was warm and robust but had no effect.

He pulled out the tin from the back of the cabinet and made a cup of tea from one of the few remaining bags there. He sipped it and imagined Peggy sitting across from him, telling him off for using old tea that would be bitter and teasing him for how much sugar he put in it.

He drank a beer and wished to god that he had just one flask of whatever it was Thor used to carry around. He needed something to calm his nerves.

He caught his reflection in the window over the sink. For just the briefest second he saw his young self, so broken by so much, not knowing that today would be the day he’d be put to his greatest test. But the sun shifted and he could see every wrinkle in the refection, every grey hair, the haziness to his eyes that the doctor said was the beginning of cataracts.

A lifetime ago this day had changed everything for him without him knowing. Today, he was just as eager for the moment when Banner would put on that glove, this time for very different reasons.

~*~

In the end, Steve Rogers managed to live a fairly normal life.

Once back with Peggy, he kept away from the spotlight. Unsure if he’d created a parallel timeline or if he was living in his own, he did his best to avoid changing things.

Because even when he wanted to change things, he realized very quickly, he couldn’t.

He became enamored with sci-fi and fantasy that included time travel, with physicists who wrote books on the subject. He wanted to understand it, to know the unknowable.

He eventually decided that he was prescribing to the Doctor Who Theory of time travel: that it was all very, very complicated but that some things, no matter what, had to just happen in their own time and some things were simply fixed and would always happen the way they were supposed to. He’d seen this first with Zola- as he’d tried to get the man and his influence away from SHIELD they only dug their heels in deeper and kept him. It was later reaffirmed when, despite every effort, The Winter Soldier escaped him and Howard and Maria were left for dead in their car, young Tony devistated.

After that day, he stopped trying so hard to avoid squishing butterflies and focused instead on enjoying what he had.

What he had was, after all, quite a lot: A wife, two young boys, and a second chance at the life he’d missed while fighting other men’s wars.

~*~

Despite knowing all that laid ahead for him and his friends in the future that was now his past and yet somehow once again his future, Steve eventually started longing for the new millennium as decades past him by. He missed the technology, the ability to have whatever kind of entertainment he waited at the tips of his fingers. Though he’d known a good portion of what would happen from history books, once he’d gone back, he’d lived an entire lifetime full of surprises, experiencing things like the moon landing and the Vietnam war first hand. But now, as he grew older and he knew his days with Peggy were numbered, he longed for the small comforts of familiarity, for e-mails and smartphones and heated steering wheels on cars that parked themselves.

As the 2000’s arrived, he felt himself get more and more comfortable with the things around him: the news, the events he’d already experienced once and would again in a different way. It felt good to feel at least on solid ground with the world around him, knowing what was to come for him.

His home was lonely after Peggy was gone, and he made his only granddaughter an offer she couldn’t refuse: free room and board if she helped him keep up the house. An elementary school art teacher, Maggie was happy to step in for a little financial relief as she tried to navigate the churlish economy.

If he never told her that he was perfectly capable of taking care of the house by himself, it didn’t quite matter. The company was more than enough. And if when she smiled she looked just a little like her namesake and it warmed his heart… well, that wasn’t a bad thing, either.

The best part, he’d found though, was that it was hilariously funny to drive his granddaughter crazy. He’d lived through the early decades of the 21st century as a young man. He’d learned how to navigate the internet, interface with the most complicated technology there was to offer, and listened to music that wouldn’t be written for years to come. He loved watching her face as he sang along to Billie Eilish on the radio or realize that she didn’t have to explain to him how to use an iPad or Facetime.

~*~

She yelled at him the first snowfall. Skidded her car (all-wheel drive, thank goodness he’d convinced her to get the newest model) into the freshly shoveled driveway and tore out of the driver’s seat, yelling at him a mile a minute.

They’ll think I’m some kind of self-centered princess letting a centenarian shovel this and try to kill himself!  She’d yelled, trying to take the shovel from his hands.

He was still stronger than he should be, and held his ground. I don’t want you hurting yourself on this stuff.

Me? She’s screeched, and he’d laughed. He couldn’t help but smile and find her concern at least a little comical. Deep down he understood, knew that he should be trying to sell his age a little more, be trying to hide that he was still strong and fast and in better shape than some of his middle-aged neighbors.

As much as he’d like to push her off, tell her to go inside, he couldn’t. She wasn’t a self-centered princess, but she was his princess, and he bent to her whim like a branch in the wind. He’d kissed her on the head and finally handed her the shovel, leaving her the last bit of the path to her to clean up, and promised to take better care of himself.

She didn’t know that when she left for work, he still went down the basement and bench pressed 225 on an easy day.

~*~

She teased him about his record collection. Even though records had come back in style, she still thought it was silly to have a whole wall dedicated to them when she could access nearly all of musical history on her cell phone. He showed her his own digital playlists and popped in his airpods when he was reading sometimes, but he loved the sound the needle made when it hit the wax.

One night, when he couldn’t listen to her teasing anymore, no matter how good natured it was, he played dirty.

You know, there’s a new song coming out by one of those artists you like. WAP? Heard it’s a cover of a song your Nana and I used to dance to all the time.

Two weeks later, he heard the familiar opening bass to the song Barton had played incessantly in the gym while he was working out and had quoted for months, the song that he hadn’t been able to get away from even in the past with random phrases like macaroni in a pot popping into his head at the most inconvenient times.

Barely half a verse in she’d either shut it off or turned the music way lower. At dinner she couldn’t look at him.

That was not at cover, Pop Pop. And I don’t want to think about you and Nana like that… ever.

~*~

She cried when she came home, a year after Peggy’s death, to see Peggy’s beautiful vanity had been moved into her room, Peggy’s jewelry box on it front and center.

What did you do? She’d kept asking him, tears in her eyes.

She’d want you to have it. He knew it was the truth. He hugged her tight as she sniffed and knew he’d made the right decision. He remembered Peggy sitting with Maggie on her knee on the small stool, letting the girl paw through her necklaces and play with her big fluffy make-up brushes. Maggie reaching for her eyeshadow and Peggy deftly pulling it away. Peggy being just a little too slow with the lipstick and the toddler bouncing around the house, proudly showing off the circle on the bottom half of her face to anyone who would look at her.

They’d loved their boys, but Maggie had both of their hearts in a way they hadn’t been prepared for.

Steve had to make up and excuse to leave the house the next morning when Maggie came down to breakfast, wearing the single pearl drop necklace he’d gotten for Peggy on their 25th wedding anniversary and her signature red lipstick. It was a good pain, but the first time he saw her in her grandmother’s necklaces, it was pain none the less.

~*~ Spring 2018

He knew the date it was supposed to happen. He’d kept up enough to know that it would, too. His other self was out there, somewhere, fighting what would become the biggest battle of his life.

Steve decided to focus on the small things. He kept the house stocked up with food and drinks, nonperishables that would last months and even years, toilet paper and paper towels. He ordered big metal shelves for the basement and made sure there was enough for multiple people for the long haul.

He didn’t know what would happen to his family in the snap- who would make it and who wouldn’t, but he was going to be sure whoever survived would be set for the following months where there was chaos, food and water shortages, and fear.

It would be a long five years for anyone that was left.

Even though she was home most nights, he asked Maggie for a standing Thursday night date. Some nights he showed her how to keep the house up: where the water main was, how to shut it on and off, where the gas line was, what to do if the roof started leaking. He made notebooks full of lists of things to do, how-to’s for the house and for life, and even, when he was awake in the middle of the night, wrote her letters so she wouldn’t be lonely.

Somehow, he just knew it would be him this time. He had survived the first snap, but if there were two of him and one survived, the other, statistically, did not. Thanos was very clear on how half worked.

Maggie, at first, had been scared. His family knew he had a knack for predicting the future, but didn’t know quite why.

Are you dying? Maggie had asked, fearing the worst when she started to realize that their Thursday night take-out and movie date was about more than just spending time together.

No, he’d said so very often, I just want you to be ready for anything.

Despite all of her questions, she went along with it.

When the day came, he couldn’t quite keep the sadness out of his eyes. Couldn’t quite smile at her. They ate pizza in front of the TV, watching a comedy Maggie had picked. He kept his eyes on his watch. It was coming.

His fingers itched. Like he could already feel his cells pulling apart.

He reached out, taking her hand in his and covering it with is other hand. “Maggie, you know I love you, right?”

She smiled at him, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She’d sensed his anxiety all day. “Of course, I do. And I love you, Pop Pop.”

He looked away and then back at her. “I promise you, whatever happens, I’m alright, and I’ll be back.”

“Pop Pop,” her eyes filled with tears, “What are you talking about?”

He shook his head, “I’ve left you everything you’ll need, and I promise I’ll be back.”

A tear fell from her eye as she squeezed his hand tighter. “But where…”

It was as if the world went silent as it started to happen. Though the television droned on in the background, he could swear the air was stiller. He started to see the dust fill the air and tried not to breathe.

But it was wrong.

It wasn’t him.

Her hand was falling to nothing in his, the fear in her eyes haunting as the skin of her cheeks flecked into the air, swirling before falling along with the rest of her into a pile on the couch.

It was so fast. So fast.

And it wasn’t him.

“No…” The word fell from his lips as a whisper, sobs starting to form in his throat.

~*~

He wondered, nearly every night for five years, if Thanos knew. If it had somehow been a conscious choice to keep him alive, to make him suffer just a little more. To make him watch his other self on television trying to promote healing.

Sometimes, he realized that this was a blessing. His sons and granddaughter were safe while they were snapped, protected by the fabric of the universe. Bucky had told him that he didn’t remember anything from being snapped, didn’t feel any different when he woke up than if he’d taken a long, heavy nap.

Somewhere, his family was taking the universe’s longest nap without him.

But they’d be spared these memories. They’d be spared lonely nights of missing loved ones and too little to eat while the world sorted out the jobs that were suddenly empty to keep things running for those that were left behind.

They’d be spared the fear of the gangs that started roaming the streets of half abandoned cities, looting for food and clothes in stores that had never officially closed but also couldn’t open with their owners simply gone.

They’d be spared the rolling blackouts and the contaminated water scares.

They’d be spared the fear of the country as the government suddenly found itself missing elected officials and the infighting and the rhetoric that came with martial law and hasty elections.  

They’d be spared so, so much pain and loss.

Every day, he relived it all, twice over.

He counted every day for five years, making his way through each week and month motivated by only one thought: they were coming back. He needed to be ready for them, for her.

He helped his daughter in law keep their house, managed his other son’s apartment in DC and kept his things ready and waiting, made sure Maggie’s things were safe and in working order, made sure her bank account stayed open and her phone bill was paid. He’d never, not once, considered he’d be the one left behind, and the logistics of all there was to do left him busy for the first few weeks.

Everyone told him his hope that the dusted would return was infectious, but after the first year, people stopped listening. He knew, for a fact, they’d come back, but everyone else didn’t. Even the past him was operating on the idea that they’d never be back.

Some days he didn’t make it out of bed. He laid there, talking to the ceiling, whispering to Peggy, wishing she could talk back, wishing she could be one of the ones brought back. He missed her with a ferocity that hadn’t changed since the first time he’d been in this time, but had only been tempered and strengthened by a lifetime together.

As the days drew closer to the five-year mark, he began to make arrangements.

~*~ October 2023

He cleaned the living room and set it to the way it had been that night. He pulled out every note and letter he’d written Maggie and his children and put them in the kitchen, ready and waiting.

He sat on the couch, facing the blank television, a new, piping hot, pepperoni pizza sitting in front of him, untouched.

He still couldn’t eat.

He still didn’t know if this was the right timeline. As he’d gotten closer to this day his faith had wavered. What if all he’d come to believe wasn’t true? What if this wasn’t the one fourteen million? He wanted to believe, but he didn’t know for sure.

He looked at his watch, watching as the seconds ticked by. What were a few seconds to him? He’d lived more than one lifetime, and that had been enough. He had barely made it through these five years the first time. The second time had almost truly broken him. He was ready for this to be over. He was ready to stop having to deal with loss and to be able to live whatever time he had left with the family he loved.

He held out his hand, and waited.

[antibioware]

My final thoughts on Mass Effect: Andromeda (a 3 years late review)

So I spent the past week and a half playing a game I paid 13€ for, one that I promised myself I wouldn't touch but that in the end I gave a solid try to anyway, because I was willing to give Andromeda the benefit of the doubt. Because I'm aware that sometimes I'm a bitch, and that the Mass Effect trilogy had its own problems too, but I still regard it as one of the best gaming experiences of my life.

It wasn't as bad as I had expected it would be, but that doesn't make it good. Above all else, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a game that could have been interesting, had the creators actually cared to make something out of it outside of just “Dragon Age Inquisition in the Mass Effect universe”.

I wanted to write a more coherent post about what I didn’t like about it, aside from just shitting all over it like I’ve been feeling like doing since the canonical bury your gays in the game slapped me in the face. So here it is, an overlong post about a 3 years old game.

Before getting into the main elements that I disliked, I wanna preface this post by saying that I enjoyed parts of the game. The main characters, while not as well characterized as they could have been (no Bioware character ever is), grew on me the more I played the game, and by the end were the main reason why I kept playing. Unlike DA:I, the writers did a really good job building up the found family trope in this game, and while it turns corny at times, it’s very heartwarming. I think many of the planetary settings in Heleus were stunning to look at, to the point that I didn’t even mind all that much having to drive from point A to point B.

I didn’t hate the game, and I’m speaking from the point of view of someone who enjoyed it, but not enough to simply accept its many flaws.

The problems with the gameplay itself

There are three main things that I don’t think work well and are up in your face since the first seconds of the game: the game interface, the fight mechanics, and the open world aspect of the game.

◦ The first impact I had on Andromeda, right from the first 2/3 hours of playing it, was that it was very cluttered and very, very confusing. I had just finished playing ME3 and I had issues understanding how to move without having a proper map onscreen, how to read throught the thousand tutorials for the 100 new, useless elements they added to the game that are either reused from ME1 or taken directly from DA:I. The game didn’t need a crafting system, especially not one DIVIDED IN TWO DIFFERENT SECTIONS, it didn’t need an inventory system, and especially it didn't need to have the sheer amount of sidequest it had.

◦ The fight mechanics + leveling up/classes system is a hot mess. I understand they wanted to try something new, and in part they did make the fighting feel more fluid, but not being able to rely on teammates for necessary stuff like overloads/specific powers that you need during fights severely impaired the strategic element of the game. Now it’s just a third person shooter with teammates dying left and right because you have 0 control on how they fight, aside from putting them in one place or another.

The fact that you can only use 3 powers at the time is a consequence of the confusing leveling up system. Because you can have an endless amount of powers you can give your character, they needed to find a way to make them not too overpowered. The problem is…. You had more powers to use in-game in ME1. It doesn’t work so well.

When the fighting mechanics in ME3, a game that came out in 2012, feel way fluider and more enjoyable than the ones from the game that came out in 2017, something is very wrong.

◦ Open world games are a challenge, because too many developers don’t understand that turning a game into an open world doesn’t make it good, it just makes it bigger and slower. It was a problem with Dragon Age Inquisition, and it’s a problem here with Andromeda - with the only good aspect being that at least Andromeda gives you a decent car to explore the planets.

ME1 had some level of open world-ness, and there was a valid reason why ME2 and ME3 got rid of the concept: the maps you’re given are a big, cluttered mess of nothing. You have several thousands sidequests, many of which incredibly similar to each other, and nothing fucking else. Sometimes you will accidentally stumble upon something interesting, and then return to a 6 hours drive into the nothingness that keeps repeating over and over again.

It got to the point I almost stumbled upon the endgame because I got exhausted of running around doing errands, and I tried continuing the main plot, only to realize I was almost done with it. That was it.

Empty self-referencing

This is the term I used to describe my girlfriend why the way the game made call backs to the previous games bothered me so much. Call backs aren’t new to the concept of the game (the Mass Effect trilogy literally lived on characters returning from previous games, referencing things that had previously happened, etc.), but because this game wanted to be a separate thing from the ME trilogy, it couldn’t use this sort of material. And that’s completely fine! The game wanted to be its own thing, I was happy about it at first, because the trilogy was over and done for. If Mass Effect was indeed gonna continue, it needed a fresh start.

The problem is, it also needed to remind players that it’s a Mass Effect game, the game from which Commander Shepard came.

So, how to solve this matter? Well, instead of referencing stuff that actually happened in the trilogy, it solves the referencing aspect by putting a bunch of relatives of characters from the trilogy in the game. You get Conrad Verner’s sister, Nyreen Kandros’s cousin, a lost illegitimate son of Zaeed Massani, a brief cameo of Garrus Vakarian’s dad, a krogan on New Tuchanka being from clan Urdnot, and so on. And it was funny the first time or so, maybe even the second, but at some point it just turned awkward, and I started asking myself, “is this it? Is this all that’s left of the trilogy, just a bunch of big name characters to remind the player you belong from the same universe?”. The brief way they referenced back to Shepard was also very awkward and felt... out of place, with the rest of the game.

A couple call backs I really liked were:

Liara being acknowledged for her work as a Prothean researcher and being in contant with Ryder Senior, without much reference being done to her time in Shepard’s crew. It was good, seeing her from an outsider perspective.

The fact that Avitus Rix, being a turian ex-Spectre, knew Saren and was in fact his disciple.

Both these elements are things that make sense and tie the game back to the trilogy beyond just going “hey, this x character is the relative of this other x character, isn’t it crazy!”

The plot, and the problem with binary choices

It’s easy to make fun or critique the game struggling to find its own plot after something as big as the ME trilogy was. But Bioware isn’t an indie developer, it’s a huge fucking company, and they could have done better.

While I liked the design of the Remnants architecture and enemies, putting a plot point revolving around an ancient, long lost alien civilization who was much more technologically advanced, sounds a lot like a bad repeat of the Protheans.

I liked the Angara conceptually, but I didn’t like their design all that much and I often found it hysterically funny that angara are supposed to be a deeply emotional race, when the animators left them stuck with those mono expressive faces and unemotional eyes.

And on top of all of this, the kett are boring villains. The exaltation progress is really just a bad repeat of how Reaper indoctrination worked, and the way they talk reminds me of the big bad templars from the Dragon Age universe. It’s literally nothing new, and because of it, it’s boring.

When I was playing the endgame, all I kept thinking was “this is it? this is all they came up with? for real?”. I liked the twins aspect of the endgame, but aside from that, it didn’t feel satisfying.

And now comes the reason why it didn’t feel satisfying: the game got rid of the Paragon/Renegade system from the trilogy, and because of that, they also got rid of the possibility of additional problem-solving solutions during big choices. 

In Andromeda, almost every major quest has a binary choice attached to it: choose this or that. Burn the facility or save all the angara but leave the facility standing. Save the krogans or Raeka. Pick Sloane or Reyes. Keep Sarissa as the Pathfinder or not. Etc.

in the trilogy, complete, important binary choices were rare (choosing Ashley or Kaidan is probably the biggest one) and the consequences had long lasting effects. Not all of them did (saving or killing the rachni in ME1 and rewriting or destroying the geth in ME2 didn’t have so many long term consequences in ME3, for example), but a great deal meant big changes in the following games.

The issues with these choices in Andromeda? None of them matter. Characters will get angry at you for going against their will in a single dialogue line, and then never mention it again. The opinion on the Nexus won’t change if you expose Spender, Addison’s connections to the Exiles, or Nexus people targeting the angara. None of your companions will betray you or leave you for going against their will during their loyalty missions.

A Mass Effect game with choices that don’t influence the final result of the game feels like a joke, and while I know in many ways the trilogy also had a problem on this matter on some parts, dead characters stayed dead and betraying a friend’s trust meant losing them in the near future

The unavoidable part where I mention the issue with LGBT rep in this game because I’m a nonbinary lesbian and I can’t detach that aspect of myself from how I consume media

Endless gays and trans folks out there have already written this sort of matter so as my last point of critique, I’ll make it quick. Bioware has a long story with homophobia and transphobia in its character writing - this without mentioning the huge problems with racism in the character writing, too. Many gay/bi women in Bioware games are written by the same homophobic straight cis man with a lesbo fetish, AKA Lukas Kristjanson, and that alone gives a really good feeling on why such issues exist.

The original Mass Effect trilogy had very little gay romance options, out of the amount of romance options: as of ME3, there are two main gay romance options for fShepard (Liara and Traynor, without counting the mini-romances that were put in the previous games for pure fetish fuel) and two for mShepard (Kaidan and Cortez, both only added in the last game).

Andromeda wasn’t... the big breath of fresh air in the representation department they tried to pass it as. There are more romance options, but for once, there add to add another m/m romance option later on because the only gay romance available were with minor NPCs, and there’s an issue with the amount of content gay romances get compared to main het romances.

There’s a single trans NPC, and it's a random person you meet who tells you her deadname and the reason she transitioned right away. Ugh.

And now we come to the bury your gays mission that made me almost uninstall the game: the mission to find the turian Pathfinder with the help of his partner, the previously mentioned Avitus Rix,  who also happens to be the first gay male turian character in the game (the first gay female turian being Nyreen Kandros, who dies btw). You invest time to trace back to the turian arc, while listening to Avitus talk about how important the turian Pathfinder is to him, you realize pretty fast they’re lovers, and when you find out the turian arc, it’s all to discover that the Pathfinder is already dead. Not a choice in the game that could accidentally kill him, like with Raeka, or an active choice you make to keep him in his role, like Sarissa. He’s already dead, and you’re left with Avitus alone and mourning.

The game is from 2017. This sort of bullshit is unacceptable, and I will keep screaming it until Bioware manages to pretend like they care about their LGBT fans.

To end this mess of a post - Mass Effect: Andromeda lasted me a total of 50 hours of game, and in a way, I’m glad I got it out of my system. It was a delusion, but at least now I can cross it off my list and go back to playing other stuff. I understand that this is a game many ended up liking, and I’m sad I can’t say I’m among them, and that I couldn’t even fully enjoy the game at times. Also I promised myself I wouldn’t mention this but goddamn the facial animations of the game were so ugly.

DESPITE THIS, I really loved the characters, and I very much enjoyed Vetra’s romance, which was the main reason why I bought the game. 

[siodium]

REVIEW: BURIED STARS ☆

came across this korean mystery vn and i knew i had to get it bc someone commented that it had a similar feel to danganronpa/zero escape O: seems like i have a type

i usually don’t prefer to get digital copies of games but there was really no choice... i heard the physical copy is sold out in korea and resales are going for 200 USD ain’t nobody got money for that

i don’t think anyone i know is gonna purchase this game and play for themselves and i can’t share the game either bc it’s a digital copy sooo i’m gonna write a review~ please enjoy!!

basically the plot goes as such: the survival reality tv show Buried Stars was about to commence the finals of its current season with the remaining five contestants when the building suddenly collapses. most of the audience and staff members were safely evacuated except for seven ppl (the five contestants and two staff members) who are trapped in the wreckage with just their smartwatches that connects them to the outside world via calls (problematic bc they can only call a restricted number of ppl and the signal inside is shit) and phater (bootleg twitter). after trying to make some calls, everyone was then told that the rescue team would take around six hours to break into the collapsed building to get them out.

ok so they just have to wait it out... in an unstable building that can come down at any moment. cool.

then!!! they find the producer’s dead body, seemingly a victim to the falling debris!! they’re down to six survivors now.

despite the circumstances, voting is still ongoing and some rando on phater claims that the contestant in the last place will die as if the atmosphere wasn’t bad enough.

this is your smartwatch interface!! most of the functions are pretty useless with regards to the actual gameplay but it’s just fun to play around with them i guess

for e.g. you can change the background and ringtone but they don’t affect anything

there’s this feature that keeps track of changes that occur when you pick certain conversation topics during communication rounds and it’s really useful for replays!! too bad it doesn’t keep track of sanity changes in mc

this is the mc!! even though he looks like he would be a tsundere punk he’s actually very soft?? kinda like saihara but with a bit more spine

AND THIS IS MY BEST BOI GYU-HYUK

i lowkey ship them bc of their interactions alsjdkasjs jUST LOOK AT THIS

i was expecting there to be a lot of mysteries but given the circumstances i guess it makes sense to not have that many... there’s no murder mystery if it happened in an accident site and looked like an accident you see

a lot of conversation topics focus on the character’s backstory and stuff so you get to learn more about the characters while waiting for rescue (one of the goals of this game is actually to collect characters’ profiles!)

bonding through a shared traumatic experience sounds reasonable

did i mention that the cutscenes are fully voiced (either in korean or japanese depending on your preference)?? i played it in korean for my first gameplay for ~Optimal Experience~ but i switched to japanese in subsequent plays bc i wanted to be able to understand what the characters were saying without reading the text

the only thing that throws me off is that characters are given japanese names in the japanese dub but the in-game text still uses their korean names??? why

my boi gyu-hyuk is voiced by takuya eguchi and hyesung is voiced by shimono hiro (i actually doubted my ears at first bc hyesung sounds angry 24/7 and i only know shimono’s derpy zenitsu and troll ouma voices sweats;;) wOW 👍👍👍

the first ending is the same for everyone even if you picked the best options

they call it a “normal end” but tbh it’s a bad end bc everyone dies and nothing is resolved

after you clear the game for the first time you will get to replay from the start but your options will change so you can proceed towards other routes!! yay

oh yeah in case anyone is wondering this game is rated T and bodies are shown in the form of a silhouette with non-explicit close-ups during investigation so if you can’t handle graphic stuff it’s not too bad

warning: from here on there will be spoilers for the true ending and other endings!! stop scrolling if you have even the slightest intention to play the game

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collected all the endings after 30ish hours of gameplay!! i wanted to strive for 100% completion in achievements but i’m not sure how to get some stuff... might go back and try other options in the future

in the true route you receive help from this random phater user plughole aND I JUST LOVE THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN HIM AND DO-YOON LMAO

idk if anyone tried to guess who the real culprit is but it turned out to be

my boi gyu-hyuk......

he had his reasons (not trying to say he did no wrong) and it’s just unfortunate that things turned out this way

while playing, i thought to myself... if there was one person i would glue do-yoon to throughout the entire game it would be gyu-hyuk... bc i was certain he wouldn’t hurt do-yoon

i was right tho... even in some routes where do-yoon catches him in the act, gyu-hyuk didn’t try to silence him

CRYING

i don’t know much about korean law but he has THREE murder charges on him whicH SOUNDS LIKE DEATH SENTENCE

i’m sad bc there’s no way to save my boi even in his best ending

plughole visits you in the hospital in the true ending!! he is also a troll irl it seems

he was kinda sus in the beginning but i really hoped that he was a Good Guy to keep do-yoon sane in the wreckage

and i’m glad he was

do-yoon looks super baby in his hospital clothes

he was not kidding when he said that his actions were bc of his sister (who is a hardcore fan of do-yoon) lmao

aaa the girls are doing great after their treatment!! they visit do-yoon too!!

yeah i also want to know why do-yoon is the only one still hospitalised with all those bandages when everyone else is fine but i guess maybe he got injured when he protected gyu-hyuk from falling debris at the start of the game

...

if you don’t find out the true culprit of the murders gyu-hyuk goes free and he visits you every day in the hospital aND SAYS STUFF LIKE THIS

ugh it hurts me

...

there’s also a joke ending (when you pick the “i’m the attacker” option lmao) which i appreciate a lot!! something to lighten the tense mood is what i crave for in games like this

somehow i feel like it’s even scarier than the usual atmosphere bc of how ooc everyone acts

BUT YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S REALLY SCARY?

there’s a horror route that you can enter by using the “laboratory” conversation topic on everyone and expressing how much it creeps you out

and the entire game shifts in genre to actual horror (like with paranormal activities)

IT WAS REALLY SCARY AND THERE WERE HANDS EVERYWHERE AND EVERYONE WAS ACTING WEIRD ASLJELKASJ i had my eyes closed half the time and i regret playing on my monitor

i didn’t take many screenshots bc as i mentioned my eyes were not looking at the screen for most part but i hope that you can kinda understand where i’m coming from with these two screenshots

...

the game is actually split into two major routes (A and B) which differ in who gets saved and who dies

you can only start on the B route after you get the true ending which is in the A route

unfortunately there is no route where everyone (even if you exclude the producer bc she dies before do-yoon regains consciousness at the start of the game) survives TT

if hyesung and seil survive then gyu-hyuk kills himself and leaves a note but do-yoon tears it up so we don’t know what he wrote

overall a solid mystery vn with beautiful graphics and enough routes to keep you occupied for many hours!! i highly recommend following a walkthrough bc it’s not an easy game if you want to collect all the possible endings and achievements

cuz there are minor changes to the epilogue depending on how close you are with the characters

i actually don’t play a lot of VNs but i feel like all VNs need the route map thingy in AI: the somnium files

my only gripe about this game is prob the derpy translations which usually isn’t a big issue (imo at least) but for a game priced this high?? i expected better

anyway that’s all from me!! thanks for reading til the end hahah i wanted to write a srs review but i just ended up simping for gyu-hyuk

[cheesedoodlesurprise]

Dragon Age 2 Rant

Someone brought it up in some random Facebook Group and it got me thinking that I should finally just put it down in words.  

Dragon Age 2 is so horribly underrated that it hurts.  

The game gets so much hate that people didn’t understand what it did right

–BUT let’s get this out of the way fast: The below rant does NOT include the Level Design.  The same 4 locations used over and over.  There is no excuse for that.  It is bad and it should feel bad for it.  However much the points i will make can also be transferred over to this failure as well, that is just warping a point to excuse lazy or rushed design.

The people I have spoken to tend to cite one main example of its failure as a Role Playing Game(barring the above shit level design) and that is simply that it fails due to its action-style gameplay when compared to the original Dragon Age:Origins.  And I understand that.  There’s two radian wheels(unless you have a computer) and you’re running around and there’s not really much Party Maintenance like it had in the original.  It is not what a traditional RPG should be, and the party direction system was not the best(it reminded me way too much of Kingdom Hearts and Donald’s proclivity to use mega-elixers every time he loses one bar of mp unless you jump in there and hit him with the no-no can) especially when you realize that capitalizing on Condition Statuses is a main feature in felling your enemies.  It is just a gross departure from what a Role Playing Game should be, compounded by the fact that this was the Second Installment and it was already deviating so much from the turn based-lite party management norm.

The answer to this is simple.  Think back to the beginning of the game.  What happens?

The Hawke family gets attacked by a big fuck-off dragon and the story immediately cuts to Cassandra giving Varric shit for telling her something as stupid as “A Dragon Appeared” and you see that this whole game is now a narrative work; a retelling of events by someone being interrogated.  

Not just anyone, A FUCKMOTHERING BARD!!!!

Have YOU ever played a tabletop with someone rolling a bard?

You can’t believe a word they say, because the truth is boring and never makes for a good story.  So when asked what they did when separated from the party, instead of ‘Oh, there was a goblin so i stabbed it in the back��� you’re told of a daring battle with a Bugbear King, where after felling the horrid beast, you found the princess he was holding prisoner and after releasing her from her bonds, she then had you free her from another trapping: that of virginity.

The point is this: Bards Lie.

If you take nothing else out of not just this long, badly punctuated, rant, take that.  Bards Lie about everything and anything.  It is who they are.  The story is all that matters.  So what is a Bard to do when being tortured by a bunch of Zealots, demanding knowledge on what to expect when they track down and try to kill one of your best friends?

Punch. That. Story. Up!

You make what originally is just a standard-if not slightly above average-fighter look like a whirling dervish of death to any who would cross him.

That’s what makes the story so well, this isn’t just an unreliable narrator, it is THE MOST unreliable of narrators.  One that tells you, right off the bat, that a lot of this never even happened.  You never know what really happened to Hawke and his Band of Merry Murder.  So, yes, the gameplay is a lot more action-oriented and you don’t have nearly as many combat options(especially if you are a mage) but it’s punched up to 11 the whole time because the person conveying the story is giving it all a nice sheen of ‘this is what happens when people cross them.”  You are not watching the Story of Hawke in this game.  You are watching VARRIC’S story of Hawke.

But that only answers the main issue people have with the game.  The change in controls.

What I never got is this: How can you rip on an RPG about its controls?  They are just mechanics, nothing more, and I have to say Bioware games always kinda sucked at their Turn-Based-But-Not-Really Mechanics.  KOTOR had a lot of issues and the crux of it was the clunky interface and squad controls.  I would love to have a party on a set it and forget it mechanic and not having to constantly pause the gameplay to switch over to one of the characters because they chose to not move out of fire.  How is that better than a little bit of AI that will give your party even SOME autonomy?  Because if you wanna talk about immersion, a character who is, in the narrative of the story, talked up as the quickest cutpurse on this continent and can never be caught by anyone but for some reason can not even fathom the idea of moving away from a giant spike pile he can see on the ground and instead walks right through the damn thing and kills himself is example 1:3 under the definition of Ludonarrative Dissonance.

….My point is this: Combat in Traditional RPGs is kinda trash to begin with and the main reason you play them is not combat.  It’s story.  The story is the big pull.  And this game has story falling out its ass.  It suffers in some places, sure, with what you can tell is rushed design and you are pigeon holed in a lot of places.  Case in point:I was a Mage who hated Blood Magic but put a lot of faith in the Apostates, so when every time you choose to help runaway mages and they come back and, whelp, looks like they are Blood Mages now I was so VERY angry at the game.  Livid.  I honestly don’t think people who played Rogues or Warriors and got DEEP into their characters(@meonlyred, I’m looking at you) can really match that level of anger and disappointment in the story of a game.  No matter what I try, these people just kept failing me.  

But that is the point.  I got so invested into this story that I was disappointed in 1s and 0s.  Here I was, trying to change the whole of Kirkwall by action alone: proving that having Magic does not mean you will become a monster(and, yes, i HATED the goddamn teaser trailer because in it, HAWKE USES GODDAMN BLOOD MAGIC JUST BECAUSE THE FUCKING BULL MAN WAS TOO MUCH FOR HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and yet every one I was putting faith and and having others trust my judgement on have been utterly betraying that faith and trust.

Because this land never functioned on the same as me.  I was the outsider.  The Fereldan immigrant, assuming that this world will function the same as the one I left.  Granted the land I left also had a jihadist attitude to my way of life, this new one in Kirkwall had a civil and social structure completely Foreign to me.  There was no way to change the way they viewed the world because I was just one person.  One Outsider, no matter my lineage, who couldn’t change anything.  This land was going to burn itself no matter what I did.  

And that was the point of Varric’s Story.  Hawke wasn’t the cause of the things that doomed Kirkwall.  The Expedition, the one that found the artifact that corrupted everyone?  Hawke just helped with the last leg of its setup.  They would have got it together eventually.  They would have found it.  Bartrand would have found it regardless.  And Anders still would have…. You know what, let’s save that shit til the end because I don’t want to upset myself early.

Anyway…. All of this would have happened no matter what(maybe a few things would have changed slightly, but not by much) Hawke did, but he was still in the middle of it all.  I know a lot of people like their stories to be centered around them, but those can get boring. Let’s use Fallout as an example: The Sole Survivor, wandering the wastes of The Commonwealth? When you spend your first 100 hours farming Duct Tape instead of finding your son, you come out to be an asshat.  But The Courier?  NOPE!  He was just a guy living in this world.  He isn’t the center of any story, really.  He is just a guy out for revenge, but he has no idea where to get it so him wondering around and dealing with random crap isn’t nearly as a disconnect as the game before or after it.  They are really fun and enjoyable protagonists.  Heck, one of my favorite Final Fantasys is 12: the one where you are NOT the main character of the story.  Thats the Sky Pirate and the Princess.  You are just tagging along for the ride, experiencing their story like a good audience surrogate.  

The only reason you are always being thrust into the middle of everything is because the Powers of this Town are throwing you at them.  The Qunari menace?  You are asked(told) to go deal with it, and it all blows up in your face because of someone else.  Hell you even tried to STOP the hellscape to be with Anders(that motherfucker) by being a good person and talking to him.  But nope.  He had his crappy agenda and nothing you could do would stop it.

….you know what, sure let’s talk about it now. That whole ending arc just pissed me off to no end.  There is Anders killing the ONE person in this whole city trying to hold everything together and treated people with even an ounce of trust and faith JUST TO PROVE A POINT THAT SIMPLY BY DOING IT DISPROVED HIS GODDAMN POINT!  

“Mages aren’t evil so I’m going to kill the beacon of peace in this whole shitty city which will lead to EVERY GODDAMN MAGE to just flipping a ‘whelp guess i’m an abomination now, time to murder everyone, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee blood magic is fuuuuuuuun!’ switch and I guess completely dismantle my entire point.  It’s a good thing Hawke stabbed me for being a fucking idiot” and then you come across the Mages who are holed up to protect themselves but, wouldn’t you know it, their leader turned himself into a Tentacle Death Monster and now you have to kill the one mage who had your back and was a beacon of not being a dickhole.  

All of this just constant “Mages are all evil dicks, lets torch them all’ just upset me so much.  I was playing the entire last part of the game with a giant grimace.  Angry at this whole damn city and making me kill all these people I tried to make better.

Yes, me.  I got so deep into this game(if you read up, I dropped the possessive pronoun a bit when talking about the story) that I was upset that they were betraying MY expectations of them as people.  Not Hawke.  By this time I got way into the game and imprinted.  

No matter what faults it has, in the end its story caused me to become so engrossed with it that even when it took a turn I did not like, I was so invested I was still hooked and responding to it as if it were happening to me.

I know it was a long rant that just sort of cut off, but Anders will do that to me.  Hell, I hated what he did so much, I even tried making a toon to romance him so I could see if there was more dialogue options or how it would shape with him actually having a loving relationship and nope! He still acted the same.  Just pleaded more for me to understand.  

I STILL had to gut him.  I was still so damn pissed off at him I had to kill him even as a character romancing him!

[nothe: wrote this up at work when I was bored so there is a very good chance I have odd stops and idea changes due to the nature of writing something while also having to work  on projects so it may be updated frequently]

[absofrutely]

Online Persona

At first I was against a voice-activated device with no graphical user interface, a vocal opponent even. It wasn’t until an Amazon Echo Dot device was shipped to my work (addressed to me!) by mistake that I first thought about installing the device in my apartment. Apparently, there was another Andrew Williamson on the 5th floor in my office, but the delivery guy mistakenly delivered the package to the 4th floor, and I wasn’t feeling generous, so I opened up my mystery box.

Setting up the Echo wasn’t seamless. Since the Echo was tied to the other Andrew Williamson’s Amazon account, it wouldn’t activate as the other Andrew reported the device lost or stolen after not receiving it. Amazon support wasn’t any help either since I couldn’t answer any of Andrew’s security questions to unlock his account. They told me that I could ship the device back to Amazon (no) or I could use the device as a paper weight, but it would never be activated as an Amazon Echo. Shocked by the finality of that statement, and tired of all the hoops to jump through, I exchanged the Echo by swapping it out with one that I bought from and returned to Best Buy.

At last, I finished setting up the device. I linked it to my Spotify, ordered a Philips Hue smart light starter kit, got some Belkin WeMo smart electric switches, and splurged on an Alexa-compatible iRobot floor vacuum. I wanted to outfit my apartment with a Nest thermostat and a Nest camera, but my apartment didn’t have a central heating system, and setting up a Nest camera in a studio apartment seemed wasteful. Mainly, I just felt like spending money, and was frustrated that I couldn’t.

I started out easy with the basics, setting a timer, asking Alexa what time it was, and playing “The Luckiest” by Ben Folds on Spotify. Within the Alexa app on my Android phone, I could choose my preferred news source, so I chose NPR. Whenever I asked Alexa what was on the news, it’d feed me the latest NPR headlines. I was pretty impressed. I could see myself listening to the news while I ate my greek yogurt and granola in the morning.

Over the next couple of weeks, interacting with Alexa became more natural, as I frequently asked for the weather before I chose my outfit for the day. Our conversations weren’t much of a dialogue, but more of a one-sided inquisition.

I couldn’t be sure if it was the latest software update or something I had enabled in the app, but for some reason, Alexa started responding to me by name, having recognized my voice. “It’s 9:41pm, Andrew” it would reply. I just assumed that it had some sort of built-in voice training feature that could distinguish my voice. That, or it was possible that Alexa was connected to my Amazon account, which knew my first and last name. Either way, I was taken aback when Alexa addressed me by name.

I asked Alexa, “What does my voice sound like?”

She replied, “What would you like me to say?”

My phone lit up - a notification from Alexa to input my desired text.

Within the Alexa app, I typed in, “Hello, my name is Andrew Williamson, and I’m a proud dog owner.”

After hitting the submit button, I was shocked to hear my own voice. I entered in a couple more paragraphs of nonsense. It was perfect. It captured the nuances of my speech, especially intonations and even my quirky way of pronouncing “scenario” (‘sin-NARH-EE-oh’ instead of ‘sin-NAIR-EE-oh’). My heart rate quickened - it must have been the hundreds of hours of voice training.

That got me thinking - is it possible to reduce a human being to an amalgamation of complex formulas and algorithms? I had always thought my voice was unique, although I hated hearing it in recordings. The voice was one thing, but how about the nuance of a personality, the very thing that made us all human? I thought about how sad it would be if an algorithm could accurately capture the essence of someone’s humanity; either it’d be a really complex formula or a really simple personality.

Though, if something was really able to capture the totality of a human, as best as it could, then we’d be able to live multiple lifetimes if we recreated the world around us in the same simulation. If we were able to insert ourselves into key inflection points within our lifetimes, we could eliminate the what-ifs because we could speed up the simulation to see the 5, 10, 20-year consequences of one decision. A life with no uncertainty, a life that was properly vetted before it was lived. A perfect life with no missteps, no unpredictable traumatic accidents. Not necessarily a pre-determined life, but being informed of a smarter way to live.

On the flip side of things, the model needed to account for everything, including all other human beings, living creatures, inanimate objects, and naturally occurring phenomena, like weather and natural disasters. Without perfect knowledge, a simulation would always be flawed. Informative perhaps, but ultimately flawed.

It dawned on me that someone or some entity might be trying to create a perfect model of the world, especially with so much information being captured nowadays. Nest cameras, Amazon Echos, Google Homes, devices that are always listening, video conferencing, Instagram, Facebook, Skype, Tinder, TikTok, YouTube. The list goes on. More inputs, more information to train a more perfect model, if the information was consolidated and centralized! I wiped a bead of sweat off of my brow carefully, making sure my tinfoil hat stayed put.

Digging deeper in the settings screen of the Alexa app, I enabled the permissions for Alexa to track all types of data inputs that would build a robust model of me. In addition to what Alexa observed organically, I could upload pictures and videos, connect Alexa to Gmail and Facebook to capture all information that lived on those platforms, or manually upload anything else I’d like it to know about me via a CSV file.  

Selfishly, I thought about how I could personally benefit from my online persona. GDPR. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was the answer. I thought about my online presence, the different platforms that I’ve used over the years, and the information that they had on me. I’d pose as a European and write into each company asking for a data-subject access request, which compelled each company by law to send me a data dump of all the information they had on me, and I’d upload it to Alexa by sending the file to andrewwilliamson_data@alexa.com much like I could send e-books to my Kindle via a special email address. So easy! I thought.

It was reminiscent of that one Black Mirror episode, “Be Right Back” where a grieving widow created an artificial husband based on his social media profiles and his text message history. The main difference was that I had embellished my artificial likeness with a data dump of all Wikipedia articles written to create a better and smarter me, so to speak.

Alexa was also compatible with an app called If This Then That (IFTTT) which allowed the user to automate certain workflows depending on user-defined triggers. One very basic example was the ability to change the color of my smart lights to violet as soon as I started playing music. Stuff like that. But the app also supported more complex logic that was user-customizable - given that information, I plotted my next move. I had Alexa listen into my work calls and record my screen over the next few months of work. Alexa started learning my day-to-day tasks, the names, voices and faces of the people I worked with, and the different tools that I used to do my job as a Senior DevOps engineer.

One Saturday night, I called my boss tearfully and told him that I was diagnosed with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, or FOP, a rare disease that caused muscles, tendons, and ligaments to turn into bone spontaneously. Eventually, my joints would be frozen in place and I’d be completely immobile. At some point, I’d have to choose a body position to spend the rest of my days.

He was speechless, but his normally stoic demeanor eventually broke down. As he choked back tears, he expressed his condolences.

I told him that due to my condition, I’d appreciate the ability to work remotely 100% of the time.

He agreed enthusiastically, promising to support me in any way.

Using IFTTT, I was able to clone instances of my Alexa persona, so I booted up a simulation of myself, but modified some parameters to deteriorate my appearance and gait. For good measure, I multiplied the depression metric by 1.25 and in the preview mode, the pain behind my eyes intensified, while the corners of my mouth curled downwards. A couple gray hairs sprouted up at my temples, the laugh lines turned into gashes, eroded by tears from hundreds of sleepless nights. It’d be perfect.

My voice followed suit, quivering and breaking 50% more than usual. Due to the ossification of my joints, any type of movement would be accompanied by a painful wince and a grunt for effort. No one would be the wiser during my meetings, which were held via video conference. Automating my own job was a success, but I craved more.

I created four more virtual instances of myself, without the debilitating disease, and had them scrape job postings on LinkedIn and Glassdoor, making sure to filter for remote jobs only. Within seven days, I had 125 job offers to choose from, and I booted up 121 more avatars to accept them all.

With income from 126 jobs, including my original DevOps job, I could finally breathe. In the mornings, I woke up at 9:30am, hand-ground some Sumatran coffee, and made some steel cuts oats, the non-quick kind that took 20 minutes to simmer.

Over breakfast, I finished another Murakami short story, called “Tony Takitani,” which was about a Japanese illustrator who fell in love with a woman was addicted to buying dresses but she ends up getting killed in car accident, and the illustrator is left with an empty house full of dresses. His father soon dies after, he forgets what his wife’s face looks like, and he ends up by himself, lonely in a large house.

I had suspected that the story would end that way. That’s the arc that all Murakami stories followed: a passive male protagonist who meets a life-changing female character, there’s some glimpses of hope or happiness, but the main character ends up alone, staring off melancholically into the distance into the sea, usually on an overcast day. No happy endings, and not really much of a resolution. And after finishing each book or short story, I felt lonely as well, not because the story was sad, but perhaps a stark reminder that life isn’t neatly wrapped up when it’s time to close the cover of the book, which the opposite of nearly every book that I had read. The hero gets the girl, a cathartic confession of love, the villain gets caught, the town gets saved, and everyone’s lives are better off than they were before.

To shake off the gloom, I ran along the coast for around an hour until heading back home. After toweling myself off, I checked my email. Scrolling through the hundreds of emails, my eyes widened when I saw an email subject stuck out to me: Congratulations for being nominated for a Pornhub Award: Performer of the Week. The email itself looked legitimate, had no misspellings, hovering over the links took me to the actual website, not lookalike phishing links, and I confirmed that it sent from the actual Pornhub domain.

The category that I was nominated for was “best male solo performance.” My head felt completely numb. I already knew what happened, but couldn’t bear to confirm it. I clicked into the link, and on the screen, I saw my own face staring back at me. “SultryCommando” was the username, and under “Uploads” I saw a list of 37 videos, titled with some of the most click-baity names. I had to watch at least one. I picked “Pizza Delivery Surprise!! WATCH TIL THE END,” which had 2.4 million views.

There was cheesy music and I saw a video of myself in tight cutoff jeans waiting expectantly for a pizza delivery very obviously - I saw my virtual self glance at his watch and tap his foot impatiently, mumbling something about punishing the pizza guy for being late. However I noticed his (my) devilish smile as he uttered those words. Oh god, I thought. Fast forwarding a little bit, the pizza guy finally rang the doorbell. Squinting a little, I quickly realized the pizza guy was still me. There were two of me in the same video and they were about to interact. The simulations must have discovered each other (but how?!) and started working together. I slammed my Macbook shut.

No. But I had to confirm. Flipping open my laptop, I scrolled to the middle of the video, and with much hesitation, the end. After watching two sweaty bodies collide with one another for almost 20 minutes, I felt sick, but also angry and impressed that Alexa was able to infer what my genitals looked like with 90% accuracy.

But my success as a porn star was only one of many accolades I’d receive. Surprisingly, most of the simulations gravitated towards social media influencing, with millions of followers on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitch. Remembering that there were 125 job offers signed, I wondered what happened to all of the legitimate jobs that they had gotten. I did some more digging and found that the simulations outsourced their jobs to another simulation they had written within their own simulation. Of course, the simulations didn’t know they were in actual simulations - or did they? If that was the case, then wasn’t there a high chance that I was a simulation as well, but just one level up?

The money they made funneled all to me and I couldn’t speak to whether or not the simulations had a real consciousness or if they were computer programs designed to optimize an assigned task.

The phone rang, and kept on ringing for the next two hours. I had concerned friends call to tiptoe around the subject of me being a porn star, extended family members who wanted to subtly reintroduce themselves in my life due to my Youtube fame, and my boss, who told me that I was fired for lying to him. I didn’t blame him, as my frail videoconferencing demeanor was a far cry from my virile, dominant, but sometimes flamboyant online persona. That, and he had also probably seen my Alexa-created genitals and couldn’t bear to look me in the eyes anymore.

Amidst the fabulous riches, the crumbling social life, and the unbridled fame that was tainted with a bit of social ostracism and cautious distance from curious and sometimes gawking onlookers, I felt unsettled. I could never live up to the zany online personas of my alter egos, and when someone alluded to a video that I had supposedly created, I’d be puzzled. It was like being mistaken for one of my 125 identical twin (well, not twin) brothers.

I grew anxious and falling asleep became harder and harder. On one particular night, I had a panic attack where it felt like I couldn’t breathe. Doubled over, wheezing, and clutching my chest, I yelled at Alexa to play “PornGrooves Vol. 3” on Spotify to calm me down. As my breathing steadied and my heart rate slowed back down to normal to the beat of the smooth jazz in the background, I wondered where it had all gone wrong.

Truth be told, I didn’t even want an Amazon Echo in the first place, but only set it up because I thought I’d fall behind from a technological perspective if I didn’t step into the world of smart devices. My coworkers talked incessantly about the convenience of their wifi-enabled sous vide cookers, bragged about installing smart locks and the novelty of their Ring doorbells on their front doors, but for me, I went home to an abusive father with an alcohol problem who opened an $18,000 line of credit in my name.

When I spoon-fed him, he’d berate me from his wheelchair and slap the spoon out of my hand, spraying split-pea soup on the linoleum floor. I was used to his fits of rage and his hurtful words: “Idiot. Your lack of ambition was what killed your mother. If you were a better son, she’d still be around.” I brushed him off, long immune to his babbling.  

I wheeled him out for walks first thing in the morning and when I got home, I made sure to take him out again before it got too dark. I’d shampoo his hair as he sat on the plastic lawn chair in the bathtub. He made sure to tell me that I was a piece of shit who wouldn’t ever amount to anything.

My two brothers had broken all ties with Dad years ago, leaving me holding the bag. I should have reported him for identity theft and called the credit bureaus to clear my name. But out of love, I couldn’t.

Out of love, I continued paying the minimum payments for a credit card that I didn’t own, but was technically in my name.

Out of love, I automated my job and ruined my life so I could send him to a proper home where he could get 24 hour care.

Spending money on smart devices was the only thing that I ever did for myself, the closest thing that resembled a hobby - my form of self-care.

Two weeks ago when the paychecks came rolling in, I thought, “We don’t need to live like this anymore.” Excitedly, I went to go tell my father the good news.

He was in his favorite brown easy chair near the window, where he got the most natural light.

“Dad, wake up! We can finally move out of here.”

I took a look at his iPhone that he held in his right hand. The volume was low, but it was still playing one of my Pornhub videos. Realizing that he had found out about me, I took a step back, which was when I saw the empty bottle of sleeping pills in his other hand.

He had told me he didn’t want a funeral, although I doubt anyone would have shown up anyways. I felt numb, not really knowing what to feel. I was heartbroken that he was gone, but guiltily at the same time, relieved by the absence of his toxic control over me. I wanted so badly to hit a reset switch.

A month later, I moved out of that apartment and bought a modest house down the street instead. This time, I bought a Ring doorbell and some Nest smart cameras.

One Sunday afternoon, the Ring app on my phone sent me a notification that someone was at my door. Opening the door, I stared down into the face of my father, who was still in a wheelchair.

“Andrew, you said you’d always take care of me!” he croaked.

Speechless, I took a step back into my home. I looked down, expecting to see the new hardwood that I spent days installing, but instead saw the yellowing linoleum of my old apartment kitchen. It was my old apartment again, furnished just the way I had left it. Before I moved out, I told the landlord to donate everything. To get my security deposit back, I even did a walk-out with him when the apartment was empty!

There was no way. I had seen my father’s casket lowered down into the earth.

Frantically, I checked my phone. The Alexa was app was gone. I searched on Google for Amazon Alexa. Zero results. I scoured my apartment for any smart devices. Nothing. Alexa didn’t exist in this plane of existence.

I lunged for my kitchen knife, but it disappeared right before I could grasp it. In one motion, I opened my window and leapt through the screen, but there was no free fall. I found myself crumpled into a heap back on my kitchen floor. 

Someone was toying with my life. Free will and choice was an illusion. This was some Harlan Ellison shit. For reasons why I couldn’t understand, perhaps for someone’s sick enjoyment, I was destined to spend the rest of my days spoon-feeding my father in a dingy apartment. Maybe I went off the rails in someone else’s simulation. Wasn’t serving my purpose and they had to set me back on course. 

That night, when I was bathing my father, I couldn’t remember much of anything anymore.

What was I thinking about again? This was normal. In fact, my life couldn’t be more perfect.

[sleepymarmot]

MEA liveblog #7

Spoilers!

Multiplayer

This interface is a mess. I move my mouse onto "exit lobby" and it turns into "kick player". Buttons just jump around and transform all the time.

And the APEX mission shit needs to be fixed. When you select a mission to play, don't direct me to lobbies who play the same enemy/map/difficulty but not as the mission! Join lobby, see "custom", exit lobby, select "custom game", re-select mission, join, end up in the same lobby, rinse, repeat...

At least I can end up second when I join on wave 5 as a human vanguard lol

F Human Vanguard card!

Tempest

Non-custom weapons of different rank shouldn't exist as separate items in the inventory! Unlocking a higher rank should upgrade the old item like in ME3! This stupid inventory system exists solely because of crafting! If you need inventory limits so much, let them apply only to the crafted items! I've already complained about rewards being lost with no warning if the inventory is full and it's still bullshit! 

I crafted the N7 chestpiece! 25% shield on kill (of course), 5% damage resistance, 2% shield restoration, 2% health&shield regen speed, 2% max shield. I called it "N7 Slayer X". And turns out, it was dad's armor...

Oh right, it needs a new color scheme!

Havarl

I like this ex-STG, he's talking properly.

I don't like the sound effect from Annihilation -- it's like water in my ears!

Hey Peebs, how do you immediately know where the next piece is as soon as we pick the current one?

Kadara

Here's the bar fight. Animation is not bad but has no energy.

Told the asari dancer that I'm done here and she needs to talk to the dude herself, but the quest still sends me back to him -_-

Tempest

So, Kesh was adopted?

Okay, Kalinda is 100% Marjolaine. Peebee's personal storyline is even more copy-pasted from Leliana than Drack's is copypasted from Wrex.

Aya

So many sidequests again!

The Moshae's words about the definition of victory! That's the smartest thing I've heard in this game in hours.

It's really weird to hear her talk so sweetly to me... When we first met she didn’t seem to like me.

When Vetra said people were staring at her, I couldn't resist suggesting they're just all in love...

I suggested taking people who sold their Aya slots onto the Nexus. That's not even charity -- the same ambassador gave me a task to convince angara to come there anyway! So this would kill two birds with one stone.

For the visitor who wanted contact with his family, I had to reload. The options didn't even seem too different... Got it right for the other two: gave an honest professional answer about health issues, and a confident casual answer about finding work.

Great, now I have to head back into the city to buy stuff... This is literally a fetch quest lol

Eos

Omg, the Architect is in orbit now!

The Roekaar fight in an old settlement was very chaotic and fun with Flamethrower/ED/Lance, though it'd probably be easier to just charge

Tempest

Aaaand Jaal gives me his loyalty mission. It's funny that I'm going to do my own love interest's mission last...

Jaal's LM

I continue to be unimpressed with the Roekaar being pure antagonists. :/

Didn't shoot the guy, told Jaal he was badass.

Why are loyalty missions so short?

BTW Ryder just looks wrong in N7 armor... She's not Shepard, that's not her allegiance or her story.

Tempest

Jaal, just as we're leaving Havarl you decided to invite me for a visit down there?

Turian ark

Avitus has very stylish armor

For fuck's sake, Bioware, why do you hate gay men so much?

I convinced Avitus to take the mantle. It was a very sentimental decision for Ryder -- because her situation is very similar. Her SAM and the connection he had with her father are unique, but she didn't think of that in that moment.

Nexus

"Better to find your wings as you fly" Easy for you to say, Sarissa, your predecessor wasn't a loved one

Tempest

I'd agree with Peebee about relationship and baggage, but of course I felt obligated to take the romantic option

(I don’t think there’s an option to agree with her, though, so it’s only for the best)

Voeld

Liam, Vetra, don't fight!

Whoops, sorry for leaving you to die in the purification field, Vetra

...I liked the old color scheme better. Green light looks more alien, but less pretty.

Nexus

Final memory -- here we go!

My theory was that the Archon was somehow Ellen, but that made so little sense I didn't even write it down :D This is simpler.

BTW there's finally Shepard's gender we had to select in the beginning -- in translated subtitles :D Didn't hear it even once in the audio -- could it be Bioware actually took their foreign audience into consideration? :O

Honestly, it's weird that the Reapers info is so secret... From the OT I got the impression that Shepard was yelling about it to everyone at every opportunity...

Fine, fine, you made me emotional with Liara's message.

Shit, I was expecting this decision...

I feel pretty sad now. That's all?

Peebee's LM

Oh, so that's why she lives in an escape pod :D I thought this was only a characterization thing, not a Chekhov's gun!

I said I wasn't mad, though I was a bit. But I mean Ryder *is* mad but also having the time of her life so...

Shit I just shot Kalinda instinctively lmao

Ok I replayed the entire sequence and Idk. This is really the hardest choice in the game...

I'm tempted to say "Yes, literally" :D

Since it's so hard to reaload, it's fair game to watch videos before deciding for myself. Okay, "Yes, literally" is way too harsh.

Alright, this Ryder is not going to make Peebee sad, but I've already planned a Renegade-ish playthrough with a Ryder who values knowledge over everything, so... :D

(Btw, I love that MEA's brand of a more ruthless protagonist is not "uncontrollable brute" but "intellectual snob". As tedious as this game is, I'm already super eager to play character who has those values & takes urgency of tasks seriously.)

This mission is enjoyable and the choice feels maybe the most meaningful... But it has all the classic Mass Effect problems. Kalinda sends a shitload of people to murder us, we murder them, but when she's helpless and we have a finger on the trigger all of that suddenly doesn't matter. Sidonis all over again. Sure, murdering people begging for help is bad in a lot of ways, but she did just try to kill us, a lot of times... Plus, why the fuck can't Ryder jump over and catch the Remnant thing?! That needed to be a second, Paragon interrupt after the Renegade "shoot her." And Ryder is a goddamn biotic, as is Peebee, as is Kalinda! Peebee, Pull is your first goddamn skill! It'd actually be completely plausible if the artifact had shields and/or armor and therefore immune to Pull or Singularity -- but not giving the characters even an idea to try is just stupid!

Tempest

Inviting Peebee to live with together made me revisit my room and inspired me to make some changes. You know what, I'm going to play music in my quarters and change into the short-sleeved pajamas. It's my own ship, why do I walk around it in street clothes? The jacket is stylish but too much to wear at home. I wish we had a "formal" outift for Nexus/Aya/other hubs in addition to the "casual" clothes we wear on the ship.

Shit I went to read someone's post about Peebee's LM and caught a spoilers about the romance post-LM

Addison is right, getting pregnant in that situation was irresponsible

Ah the continuity in this game. "Found more outposts"? I have every possible outpost and all planets at 100%!

"On hold: Place an outpost" bitch where

Voeld

What, there's still a cold hazard?! What was the point of the vault, then?!

Whoa, so the angara believe exaltation not just kills their people but destroys their immortal souls? Wow! That should have been said by a major character during the main story, not by an easily missed NPC!

Oh great, I died and the game refuses to load the last autosave

Dear game. Why did you create four autosaves for the same second. All glitched. Half hour of gameplay lost... God please let the last manual save work. I was sure I saved in between, but just now my PC decided that we still have daylight savings clock change when we do not, and the timestamps on all recent saves are messed up. This especially sucks because I'm trying to rush Peebee's romance because I don't know when the sex scene comes up but I want to make sure it's not when my mom is home while I play it on her PC lol

Tempest

Fuck, that was cute! And Peebee did tackle Ryder, as promised! :D I wonder what she says through Zap in the platonic version...

Addison please don't say the baby screams "like a banshee". I fucking jumped.

"Before you say anything: no PDAs" :D

Level 50! Time to craft myself a powerful new Dhan. I've been running with rank three all this time...

I love that whenever you ask about Kalinda and then return to the general dialogue tree you say "Let's talk about something else" and Peebee responds "YES. Please."

Voeld

Alright, so: the kett leaders are dissatisfied with the Archon because he hasn't reported to them recently, the communication with the kett homeworld(?) might be disrupted in general and the Scourge might be to blame.

Tempest

Damn, SAM has a pretty insightful speech about death! The only thing that can't be rationalized after experiencing it, which is why it fascinates. I actually haven't heard it explained this way before.

My movie night quest hasn't progressed since I brought Jaal his device...

Eos

Ryder watching and playing football with two giant guns floating near her hips... omg

Elaaden/Kadara

What? I'm completely confused by all these identical salarians.

I don't understand this choice. He promises to give us the intel if we let him go... what proof do we have besides his word? And how would arresting him stop us from getting intel from his computer etc?

Reloaded to see both options, chose to arrest him

Havarl

I'm not hugging Jaal's mother wtf

Ryder has surprisingly good facial animation when Jaal shows his mementos

In theory Ryder should like Jaal for being such a nerd but the only thing he makes me feel is mild irritation. His interest in "taking things apart" is an informed quality just like his supposed emotional openness. It's not reflected in his dialogue or storyline at all.

And now I'm finished with all quests in the ally category. I wanted to finish the game asap, but now that we know the patch is coming on Thursday, I'll wait for it.

Multiplayer

Extracted from Silver for the first time as Human Vanguard (level 8, rank IV)! It was against Remnant, so Observers and Destroyers were the only problem. Nullifiers are ridiculously easy for a melee character -- like Ravagers, but without acid.

Got Krogan Vanguard from a pack. Will I have to tolerate the Rage overlay?

The first game with Kroguard was going well, he's got a stong melee even though he's slow... and then wave 6/upload/Kett killed us all :(

Completely unrelated to anything, but I just realized that if you pick the romantic option in the escape pod with Peebee, they don't actually have sex. Call me stupid because that's what Peebee's initial condition is, but I thought Ryder's response changed her mind! When Ryder said "Let's not rush things" I interpreted and meant it in the emotional sense, as "It'd be dishonest to hide that I have a crush on you, but you don't owe me anything, and if you don't ready for a Serious Relationship and Grand Romance yet that's fine because I'm not either, so let's just hook up and leave reflection for later" -- which I thought was pretty sweet and interesting? Because this whole relationship to me was built on the fascinating contrast between Peebee's emotional reservations and casual/flirty attitude, and conversely, on Ryder very consciously respecting Peebee's emotional space. Maybe I just fundamentally don't understand sex and romance lmao. But if character A propositions character B, character B says they have feelings for character A, and the scene promptly fades to black, I assume they do the do because that's how these things are filmed? Only in comparison with the other option, which is actually pretty explicit, it became obvious to me that's not what the director meant. I'm pretty disappointed because I thought it was a good subversion of Jack's "either sex or romance" thing in ME2. And it messes with my headcanon/characterization... I guess I'll have to retcon it into one of the two options. I'll probably go with casual, not romantic in that case. But I just read that Peebee will tell you she's glad you said no, so... :/

Multiplayer

Failed a Silver APEX mission agains the Remnant as a human vanguard :(

Got an asari sentinel!

The patch is here, but I can't launch the game now :( This needs some work.

Ugh, I stop playing for two days and have no motivation to pick the game up again...

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 367: Taskmaker (1989)

This is a pretty morbid way to organize your “to do” items.

         TaskMaker

United States

Storm Impact (developer); XOR (publisher)

Released 1989 for the Macintosh Remade and re-released as shareware in 1993

Date Started: 15 May 2020

          TaskMaker is a slick little game, probably the best I’ve played so far on the Macintosh. It uses the platform’s strengths in graphic detail and sound but offers a fuller RPG experience than most Mac games of the era. While it has that inescapable “cutesy” look of most Mac games, it’s relatively long and hard, and it has enough good, new ideas to break out of the “Ultima clone” status that you might otherwise assign it at first glance.

           It’s typical of a Mac game to offer menu options for movement. At least this isn’t the only way to move.

        We owe reader LanHawk yet another appreciation pin for tracking this down, in this case writing to the original developer for the files. Because almost everything written about the game is about the 1993 version, being able to cover the original is a nice coup. I’ll have more on the development and the two versions on a subsequent entry; I’ll probably take a run through the 1993 version while I’m covering the game rather than saving it for 1993.

      The backstory is relatively short: The land was once at peace, under the direction of a wise king. When the king died, the “governing body split into three confrontational factions.” The main character is an adventurer who remembers the way things used to be. He decides to restore order by becoming Master of the Land, but lacking experience and guidance, he seeks out the TaskMaker, an advisor of the former king.

            The TaskMaker introduces himself.

       Character creation is a process of selecting a name, then selecting five personal attributes from a list of 20. Your selections calibrate your maximum totals for seven attributes: food, health, spirit, strength, agility, intellect, and stamina. Current totals for these attributes are represented with a bar, and they deplete as you walk around the kingdom and fight. You find various potions and objects to restore lost attributes. Most important are those that restore health, because it depletes fastest in combat, and food, because everything else can be restored with rest.

           Creating a character. I imagined this one something of a bard.

         The game world is a relatively small 100 x 100, dotted with castles, dungeons, towns, and caves. The TaskMaker lives in a castle to the center-east of the land, and the basic setup is that you go to him, he gives you a quest, you go out into the world to find and complete the quest, and you return to the TaskMaker for a reward and the next quest. Quests take place in towns or dungeons. The game doesn’t make a lot of distinction between dangerous areas and safe ones, as dangerous monsters can appear in towns or castles, including the TaskMaker’s, and NPCs can appear in dungeons. 

            The game opening has you sailing to the TaskMaker’s shores. Too bad you don’t get to keep the boat.

         The equipment system is pretty advanced, offering slots for helmets, armor, cloaks, amulets, belts, gauntlets, bracers, boots, rings on both hands, and an item in each hand–either a weapon and shield, a two-handed weapon, or dual-wielding two weapons (I found the latter to be much better). No matter how much money you make, the shops (which only show you items you can afford) always seem to have a better item available. 

            Buying items in the shop.

Choosing between two helms.

           Monsters are a mix of traditional (goblins, orcs, kobolds) and somewhat original, although most of the original ones are also kind of silly, like happy faces and evil computers. I haven’t met any so far with much in the way of special attacks or defenses. None of them seem capable of magic or attacks at range, for instance. They’re simply differentiated by how many hit points they can whack away in a single combat round.

            The “Evil Mac” is a goofy enemy.

            Combat is of the early Ultima type, where you hit (F)ight and hit the creature in front of you, although it has a little more complexity with spells and usable items. Combats are quite tough, even well into the game. For the first few hours, I had to repeatedly use what we might call “exit-scumming,” by which I would lead an enemy to the exit of an area, fight as long as possible, retreat to the outer area, rest, and re-enter to continue fighting. This is made possible partly by your one advantage: you can carry a huge amount of equipment–more than 60 items. That’s enough food, potions, or whatever to outlast any enemy. But I occasionally found myself in impossible situations where enemies would appear both outside and inside at the same time.

            Battling some goblins on a bridge.

        This is where we get into another of the oddities of the game: when you die, you don’t die permanently; you go to Hell. You can escape Hell by fighting your way through demons and solving a maze (if you die in Hell, you just reappear in Hell), but you then have to go find your non-equipped equipment back on the surface. You also lose your gold in the process.

              Wandering through Hell’s maze.

         This system unfortunately introduces a weird way to cheat. The game tracks the world state independently from the character state. This theoretically allows you to have multiple characters active at once, although I don’t know how this works with the TaskMaker. Thus, if you die and reload instead of escaping from Hell, you’ll still find a pile of equipment where your character last “died.” You could use this to infinitely replicate useful objects like potions or expensive objects that you can sell at the store. I didn’t deliberately cheat this way, but it’s annoying and hard to get out of Hell, and there were times that I reloaded and then picked up some of my old, duplicated items if I happened to come across them. To avoid temptation, I’ve been trying to reload before I die in times when death seems inevitable.

The separation of character from world means that you can also take advantage of commands to reset a particular map or the entire game world, keeping your character as-is. It’s a good option if you want to clear the same dungeon twice, finding double the treasure and experience. 

           Little piles of stuff mark the location of previous deaths.

          The controls are quite good, offering keyboard backups to all of the menu commands. Spells are cast with SHIFT and the first letter of the spell. There’s an “Invoke” spell that lets you type in your own spells that you might find during the game, but it apparently also a way for the developer to introduce cheat codes and interface changes. I’ve been slow to explore spells; the one I’ve used the most is the “Strike” spell which casts a bolt at enemies. I tend to use it on fleeing enemies so I don’t have to chase them.

Sound is also quite well-done. Much of it uses spoken voice recordings. (In fact, one voice they used, a deep bass, sounds eerily like my own.) When you first start the game, the voice says, “TaskMaker.” A different one says, “What is it?” when you use the (I)dentify commands. There are screams for deaths on both sides and solid attack and spellcasting effects.

The TaskMaker’s first task was to retrieve a package he left in Skysail Village. It was in an area of the village amidst a horde of monsters and required me to figure out a switch puzzle. The game is fond of puzzles involving doorways blocked by electric forcefields for which you have to find a switch to deactivate. When I returned the package, he rewarded me with five “Instant Vacation” scrolls, invaluable items that replenish all of your meters.

     His second task was to retrieve a chessboard in his own castle. It was in an area north of the bar. Getting it involved fighting a few monsters, but it was otherwise pretty easy. He gave me a double-bladed sword.

         My reward for the second quest.

       For Task 3, he wanted me to travel to some silver mines, where he owns a share, and kill some conspirators who had taken over the mines, bringing him back a golden chalice as proof. This was a tough mission; the mines were full of numerous tough monsters, but also some nice treasure rewards. By the time it was done, I had mostly magic gear and a magic sword in each hand. The TaskMaker’s reward was a suit of platemail, a huge armor upgrade from the leather I was wearing before.

          Battling a “war wizard” in the silver mine.

         I’m still working on Task 4, which is to find an unknown magic item in the “sands of Porta.” He indicated he doesn’t know where the item is buried, so I might be “in for a lot of digging.”

           The TaskMaker gives the fourth mission.

        As you quest, you amass experience and gain levels (I’m on Level 7 now) and your attributes increase. I guess they must increase proportionally to the skills you actually use because my spirit and intellect (which governs magic) have barely gone up but my strength, agility, and stamina are almost at maximum. Health and maximum food didn’t budge for a while but increased a bit during the last few hours.

      Other features of the game: 

       The game tracks your karma based on how many good, neutral, and evil creatures you’ve slain and other acts like stealing from shops and houses in town.

            Checking out my personal statistics. I’m “basically good.”

         There’s also a score. It increases every time you solve a quest or kill a creature and slowly decreases as you move around in between those moments. High scores are tracked on a scoreboard.

There’s an “identify” command that will tell you what’s in front of you. An “action” command will use it if it’s usable.

A “get info” command tells you a bit about the history of whatever area you’re in.

         The TaskMaker’s castle.

          The game has its own “runic alphabet” used for shop and city signs. It’s not translated in the game manual, so I suppose you have to figure it out by noting the runes in places where you can guess what they’re saying. I haven’t been bothering with them, but I wonder if I’m missing hints and clues because of it.

         As I’m in Skysail, I’m guessing those runes say “SKYSAIL.”

           NPCs aren’t terribly valuable in this game unless you bribe them by giving them things. Even then, they rarely tell you anything you need to know.

              The game pokes fun at Lord British. I didn’t realize his adoption of a more executive role was well known in 1989.

          If you drink alcohol, you start to go the wrong direction when moving. I think Ultima introduced this, but I don’t remember what edition. IV, probably.

There’s a fun system where you can find valuable objects like gold bars and necklaces and “cash them in” at ATMs. It feels like ATMs were pretty new in 1989. I think my Maine hometown may have only gotten one that year. 

             Finding an ATM in a dungeon. This dungeon happens to be full of treasure, so it was a relief to find it.

          There’s a set of miscellaneous game options I’ve never seen in any other place. I feel like every game could benefit from these. I don’t know what “wandering monsters” does, though. Un-checking it doesn’t seem to stop them from appearing.

            Setting various game preferences.

          A shop in the castle offers an invisibility cloak. If you put it on, the shop will no longer transact with you because you’re invisible.

          Come on! You’re the one who sold it to me!

            I rather enjoy this basic approach: offer an open game world with a variety of small missions. You don’t have to follow the TaskMaker’s quests exclusively; nothing stops you from simply exploring the towns and dungeons in a random order, or even from solving some of the quests before the TaskMaker even gives them to you. We’ve seen this approach before, going all the way back to Akalabeth, but this is perhaps the first game to use it with such a variety of lengths, difficulties, and objectives.

         But while I’m having fun, it’s tempered by an inability to ever feel like I’m getting more powerful no matter how much my statistics and inventory increase. Every time I think I’m doing well, some new enemy suddenly pops up in a familiar location and kicks my butt. Frankly, if it hadn’t been for the extra Instant Vacations I’ve been able to loot from locations where I’ve died, I’m not sure I would have been able to make it this far. I think eventually a cycle of starvation and poverty would have put me in a permanent downward spiral. I’ve watched videos of the remake, and it looks like the developers took the edge off the difficulty level between the two, although the remake still seems challenging.

     The number of entries will be determined by the number of tasks, I guess. Ten would be just about perfect. I suspect the TaskMaker is going to turn out to be evil based on the things he’s having me do and how he reacts if I happen to pop by with a task unfinished.

      Time so far: 6 hours.

                source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-367-taskmaker-1989/

[lulzyfarms]

A Week at GPX, the Sequel

ORIGINALLY POSTED MAY 9, 2011.

SEE BELOW THE CUT FOR ARCHIVE LINKS, NOTES, AND SCREENSHOTS OF NOTEWORTHY COMMENTS.

This is some pretty interesting news. I came on this morning to another contact from Zerxer.

Turns out Kolink made another account on GPX, to continue his bot-building. It’s quite strange that the head admin of a similar site (which also bans people for using bots) is trying so hard to build a bot for GPX. Well, they’re competition, so maybe not that strange. But it is incredibly pathetic to think about. We know he has the ability to make a bot, but that doesn’t mean he actually has to. I’m sure Zerxer isn’t out making a bot for Pokéfarm.

Not only did he create another account (ban-evading), but it’s possible that he’s building the bot so that he can distribute it (either publicly for anyone or privately amongst certain people). An anonymous person contacted Zerxer, apparently yesterday before the new ban went down, with some chat logs of Kolink talking about it. Please note that it’s POSSIBLE these aren’t real, but judging by the way he’s talking about it, I have no doubt that it’s real. Zerxer also pointed out that what was said here is actually how his bots are running on the site.

Kolink: I’ve got two little bots here, happily running along Kolink: Currently the army is: PARTYD: Monitors the Party. If Eggs can hatch, they are hatched and boxed, and replacements are sought from (in order) the DayCare, the Shelter and the Lab. INTERACTD: Makes interactions with users who are online. Builds a queue, deals with 100 users, then adds Kolink: A bit more control over PARTYD – if you need a party space (for an Exploration, for instance) then you have to snag it quickly before PARTYD gets to it (or kill the bot first). Also I want to make PARTYD inform you of Exploration progress, as well as Underground missions and Walker status, using the convenient notification bar. Kolink: After that, it’s just User Interface that needs touching up, and it’ll be done.Maybe I can have CONFIGBOT that asks you for the username and password so it can log in for you, instead of having to provide a long explanation on how to get the correct cookie information.

How do we know he’s planning on releasing them? The last message. He’s touching up the User Interface, and adding a CONFIGBOT that asks “YOU” for your login information.

Now, some of you (most likely Kolink) are going to ask “How do you know Kolink actually had a second account?” Here’s a quote directly from the contact I got from Zerxer that explains how he found him right away after being contacted anonymously:

It wasn’t very hard to find him. I mean, his second account was using his regular IP, which sounds incredibly stupid. It was “distinct” from his original account’s IP in that the very last number was different, but dynamic IPs change like that frequently. It was obviously in the same IP range. Of course, once I found the account, it was a done deal. His status message was that he’s giving proper berry interactions to everyone (something his bot does) while his journal literally logged all of the account status (egg dex/poké dex completion, achievements unlocked, all the explorations that were completed). He even put very precise percentages for each of the completions, rather than rounding down to 2 decimal places, since we all know Kolink just loves to show off his smarts. That part there makes me think it was his bot that put that information into the journal. He even complained, in the journal, that there’s no BBCode for Overline to represent recursion, again another typical sign of him trying to point out that he knows things. All of that made it so incredibly obvious who it was. But, for good measure, I did apply some admin power and poke around the account and it was just as easy to see it was running a bot as Kolink’s original account was. Noticeably the same type of bot, too.

To back up what he said about the IPs, I took a look at all of the recent comments Kolink posted here, and while some of them (ones posted around the same time, for example) had the same exact IP, ones from different days had the same IP with the last digit being different. Just for those who don’t understand how IPs actually work. Zerxer also gave me the IP of the original account and the second account and both were identical to the IPs for his comments here.

Well, there you have it. Kolink made an account on GPX about a month ago, apparently got bored of it right away and started building two bots to cheat on the site, then got banned for it. Later, May 4th to be exact, he creates another account so that he can continue with creating his bots, which he plans on releasing for other people to use. He got banned again very early this morning.  That’s the short version.

Now, there’s one more thing. In recent comments, both Kolink and Wolfin have been stating that they have no problem with someone posting a thread on Pokéfarm about things that get posted here, so long as they do it maturely and not troll-like (don’t post it in the wrong or multiple sections, and keep the flaming out). I call upon one of you readers (please, not multiple of you) to take this opportunity to let the users of Pokéfarm know that the admin that bans users on his own site for using bots is up to all of this on GPX, almost like he’s again trying to start a war between the two sites, while GPX administration still does not do anything against him or his site. If I hear that someone has done this, and the thread was deleted right away and/or the user banned, expect another post here. I might even have to get my hands dirty, so to speak, myself. Note that I do not condone trolling, however, and that is NOT what I’m asking for here. Zerxer does not know I’m calling for this, either, as his staff does not wish for members to post on Pokéfarm for negative reasons.

Update: This has already been done by someone and the thread was since closed, though it did wear out its welcome and I feel satisfied enough to cross out the request so no new readers try to post a thread about this.

Archive of the general post

https://web.archive.org/web/20130727215354/http://lulzyfarm.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/a-week-at-gpx-the-sequel/

[ecotone99]

[SF] Alone on a planet (2/2)

Recording 17531:

“Day 9 ? or was it 8 ?

Whatever… turns out they can’t get no frigates inside the planet…

Ahahaha I was so lucky.

Let’s see how his stupid “purposely bred humanoids” perform against my Atlas models…

my perfect dolls… modelled after the most aesthetic statues able to withstand thousands of newtons of punishment, bullet proof, EMP proof, HAZMAT equipped, mobile jammers, anti-hacking, perfect image processing, hand to hand combat ready, 97.2% accuracy, efficient range of 100 kilometers…

I spent my entire life building them from nothing…

Countless simulations, millions of tests, thousands of prototypes, hundreds of AI engineers…

Let’s see how his cheap organics can deal with me…”

​

Recording 17532:

“They really are pushing hard…

He got new cybernetic augmentations on his organics they look like the fucking borg

They seem to know exactly what they are looking for and it’s stressing me out.

They outnumber my troops 3 to 1

But one of my automatas is worth 3 of his organics so it kinda balances out

Anyhow, they’ve been pushing for the last hour in one specific tunnel everything they got…

They’re trying to carve a path through my defenses into somewhere.

I kinda want to let them show me what they want but at the same time want to deplete his army…

I’ll just wait”

​

Recording 17533:

“Maaan I fucking loooveee watching combat footage from my automatas…

Especially when I send them into hand to hand combat cutting down these stupid mockery of flesh and metal…

That’s so fun I almost didn’t drink for two hours straight…

…

Oh yeah we were at their pathetic try…

My tarot AIs suggest a chance of 38% of them actually overcoming my forces.

Strange… I think I killed every assassin and spy he sent after me…

How did he know that there’s something inside here ?

Maybe his own planet is hollow, too

I don’t know I didn’t get the chance to explore mine fully

OH I KNOW!

I’ll exhaust his army so hard he retreats then Imma explore until the atmosphere finally clears off…”

Recording 17534:

“day 9 of fighting, I think we are at a stalemate casualties are almost 1.5 to 1…

I’ve been binging on combat footage I keep forgetting to record. “

​

Recording 17535:

“day 15 of fighting, I think 22 since the first day of attack, I can keep this up for about 160 more days including ammo, units and weapons.

He keeps flanking my forces but he can only advance so little”

Recording 17536:

“OH FUCK HE FOUND A WAY FOR HIS SPACE SHIPS TO ENTER!!

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK I AM DEAD

…

Oh my fu-

…

…

Orbital defenses are working as hard as they can…

Should I return back to the surface and pray the dust covers us?

I should probably pull out and play it guerrilla warfare, shoot down his space craft one by one I don’t know.

Why did it have t-

Was it all a distraction ?

Well fuck yeah it was!

… what a fucking show off with his stupid puny ground forces.”

​

Recording 17537:

“day 24 since it all began, so I took half my forces up in the subway systems, pushed through his unassisted forces and cleared a huge chunk of the underground system away from his space frigates…

Down there however, I can hold for 7 more days… I have no idea the numbers he is packing but his casualties are over 13 million by now, mine are 11”

​

Recording 17538:

“I knew exactly how his space ships made it through, he apparently hacked an ancient terminal which opened up a tunnel big enough…

Imm set orbital defences around that tunnel it’s near city D-67-5 and I bet my life it’s as defended as the gates to heaven itself. But there is a subway system 20 kms near it it’s the closest I can get before dealing with his air support.”

​

Recording 17538:

“day 27, nearing almost a month of conflict… I managed to clear the subways but the fucker planted 2 nukes collapsing the entire roof and taking out almost a thousand of my automatas…

That fucker is gonna pay I swear on my life...

Our heads are exposed to the sky once more… well the dusty sky that is…

I’m gonna take a small team of the heaviest and most fierce models, infiltrate the base and close the tunnel for good.”

​

Recording 17539:

“I trapped the fucker’s forces in there but they are still a formidable opponent I can’t keep dwelling in the subways for too long eventually he gonna nuke the entire roof off

Nor can’t I get back inside the planet

Nor can I stay on the surface…

But what I got though was a way to interface with the planet itself I need some time to calibrate my AIs though”

​

Recording 17540:

“day 33, I…

I have control over the planet…

Its defenses… its mechanisms…

The buried war-moon inside of it…

Yeah.. that’s fucking crazy…

They were after the war-moon all this time

All I need is to go down there, reach the moon, activate it and BOOM!

Pay-fucking-back

Fucking 5ivers gonna get a taste of it, now.

How dare they- how dare you, Apollo ?

Stupid blonde fucker im gonna get your entire planet.

All I got left are 10 million automatas and they are ready to rain down their asses

Fuck your stupid space frigates I’m gonna push no matter how many I lose

You better be ready to kiss my ass when I see you”

​

Recording 17541:

“9 million in the first two hours

The odds are not great

Im gonna push till I have no choice but pick up a gun and fight down there myself”

​

Recording 17542:

“The moon fucking moved…

They got control over it but I managed to take hold of one docking mechanism

This bitch isn’t going nowhere till I get on it!!”

​

Recording 17543:

“FUCKING FINALLY!

THE MOON IS MINEEEE!!!

First thing to do: kill off his entire fleet!

open up the planet, activate the moon then unleash this ancient machine!

4325 space frigates vs my war-moon

His fleet is split in half: one trapped inside the planet getting slaughtered and the rest is waiting out there

The moon is literally capable of blowing the inner sun without getting damaged itself… soooooo get ready to dine on some roasted frigats ahahhahahahahahah”

​

Recording 17537:

“ The planet fucking opens up like a fucking pacman spitting a moon at the enemy which immediately retreated like the pussies they are

Not before losing a hundred frigates or so

There are still some organics trying to pick up a fight on the moon’s surface itself but they are literally nothing…

What I’m worried about though, is the foreign space object detected 3 light minutes away… that thing is huge it’s almost as big as a moon…”

​

submitted by /u/saltyher0 [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2WcBkWw

[deck16]

Good Bad Ugly - Pit People

Pit People is a turn-based strategy/puzzle game by Behemoth. I played the PC version recently, finishing the main story in co-op mode.

Metacritic gives the game a 78. Read on for what I think…

The Good

Strategy Mechanics

Pit People has decent strategy mechanics. It’s not trying to be a simulation of small-scale infantry combat but rather has its own game-y mechanics which are fun in and of themselves.

(Normally I don’t like game-y mechanics, but it seems I tolerate them a lot more when they’ve got a cartoon paint-job. Arbitrary, I know.)

The mechanics have some depth but they are on the shallow side. There’s some rock-paper-scissors things going on with equipment, and the 19 different types of units have a few gimmicks each. The game walks you through these things slowly enough to not overwhelm.

A slightly shallow depth isn’t offset by the fact that this is a game designed to be played fast. It’s not a game where you can win or lose from a single silly mistake. Moreover, the interface encourages you not to fret the details, as turns are played out simultaneously for everyone on the same team. It’s easy to miss who-did-what unless you’re watching for it, but it also doesn’t really matter. Winning is more about applying generally-good strategies with consistency than executing amazing gambits.

The game keeps things varied, too. Some missions are simple team deathmatch. There are also missions around escort, escape, holding out, killing a key target, and even a few with a kind-of stealth puzzle.

It’s a balance that works well. Not overly cerebral, but zippy and varied enough to never be boring.

A large fight in an urban environment. Watch out for hazards: large rain-drops of green bear-blood and rampaging hordes of clueless city-dwellers.

Team-Building

I mentioned the 19 different types of units. A big part of Pit People is that you can “capture” the last-standing enemy of a battle. Apart from special bosses, anything the enemy can field you can field too.

Units have unchangeable randomly-picked names. And they also can be equipped with gear (both cosmetic and mechanic-changing). You hopefully can see the appeal.

The favourite of my team was a pixie called Flank Thicksauce who wore a backwards-turned baseball cap. He was captured from an enemy team of barbeque-meat enthusiasts. In my mind, he was a tiny Jesse Pinkman with pyrokinetic abilities. He’d zip around the battlefield doing loads of damage to foes (and often friends).

My co-op buddy had a vampiress called Lemongrass who stalked the field to finish off weakened targets. A little less damage than Flank Thicksauce but a whole lot more tactical.

It’s fun to capture units to bolster your reserves, play dress-ups with them, and then build awesome teams out of them!

The equipment system is fairly simple but does let you customise and tweak your team.

Replayability

The game itself is fairly short, but there’s plenty of replayability: side-quests, exploration, collections, various difficulty modes…

I’m not one for 100%-completionist play, but I do intend to do more side-quests. Each has a silly story behind it, and I want to see more of these.

Humour

I took one look at the art style of Pit People and thought to myself “this is going be a game full of awful juvenile humour, I can tell”.

I was very wrong. Pit People has a strong sense of humour, and it’s actually quite good! It’s on the silly side, sure, but it had me laughing out loud many times.

It doesn’t turn a disdainful, mocking eye on adventure/RPG game tropes but instead lovingly embraces them to use in its own silly way. Silly as it is, it’s actually quite compelling. So think more Terry Pratchett and less Wayans Brothers.

One telling example of this is the fact that the main characters are still heroes. In parodies like this, it must be tempting to make the main characters either unlikeable or incompetent to fully drive the absurdity home. But that’s not a good plan for a game where you play as these characters.

Sofia doesn’t have much to do with the story, but she explains the team’s desire to explore and capture new “recruits”.

Story Characters Alter Gameplay

This is a small thing, but worth mentioning.

While doing a quest’s final mission to save the town of Cityville (or was it the city of Townsville?), my co-op partner and I decided to take all the units we’d unlocked from previous missions in that chain. We thought it was just for our own amusement.

We were surprised when they actually had scripted behaviour/speech that made the mission easier.

Effective Talking Heads

This is another small thing, but worth mentioning.

While the main story has some fully animated cutscenes, most of the game’s narrative is revealed with “talking heads” as you might see in older RPGs. But in Pit People they’ve added a lot of charm to such a simple thing:

The characters talk. They aren’t reading the voice lines (that’s expensive). Instead, they talk a kind-of gibberish. Little snippts of gibberish and glued together randomly to form what they say. But… it’s fantastic gibberish, overflowing with character, and different for each type of unit.

The writing is good, or at least it seems good to me. It’s funny and breezy without trying too hard.

There’s little text touches, like colours and animation. When you see some words of a character’s speech written in a vibrating font you can’t help but imagine a strained tone of voice.

So much of my enjoyment came from these scenes. I find it very impressive they gave “talking heads” so much character with such little tweaks.

In this mission, a beleagured rental tenant mopes on the sofa, despondent that his annoying flat-mate won’t clean up the piles of rubbish around the house. As we take out the trash, he regains his spirit, helping us clean and eventually ousting his evil flat-mate! Oh, and there’s monsters in his flat too, because the city is overrun with them.

Co-op

Pit People isn’t a game for which co-op play is an obvious requirement. All it seems to do is give you a team each and double the size of the enemy teams to compensate. The degree to which you co-ordinate with your co-op partner is up to you, and you can get away with “very little” if desired.

Co-op is implemented flawlessly, though:

Drop-in, drop-out, continue a story alone or pick up a friend part-way through. No shackles on when you can and can’t join your friend. (I think. Not sure about how a new player with no established team would join an in-progress game.)

In battle, turn-taking is simultaneous.

In town, you can see what your friend is doing (even down to the equipment they’re looking at), but aren’t limited to pursuing your own town activities.

Even miscellaneous tasks like overworld travel have both players doing stuff.

Art Style

The art style is simple and cartoony but not lazy. It packs a lot of character. And there’s no sacrifice on clarity: it’s easy to see what is what.

The cutscenes are very fluid.

Soundtrack

It’s good. Some energetic music.

In the final phase of this mission, a giant fella pops his head through the floor. You need to beat his head up so he goes away, allowing you to escape through the hole.

The Bad

Story Tie-in

The story is mostly self-contained but there are references to BattleBlock Theatre (made by the same people) which aren’t explained at all. It’s a minor thing but I found it did dent my enjoyment of the otherwise-fantastic final cut scene.

The Ugly

There’s nothing ugly about this game!

Conclusion

Rated Amazing ★★★★

Very few games I’ve enjoyed more. The strategy gameplay is quite good but the pitch-perfect silly humour is what kept me coming back for more. It would be fun single-player but the flawless co-op gives you the option to enjoy with a friend.

[keepmewithyourwords]

Documentary evidence submitted during the trial of Michael Walker. Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 04:44 PM From: michaelwalker1260@pimail.com To: yuki_yamamoto@suuji.co.jp Subject: Reading By Numbers 1 – I met your mother in a number garden in Hokkaido. 2 – When I was 5830 days old I saw a news report about Professor Sujimoto. He had made a virtual number garden for his students. 3 – I vowed I would study in Japan and started learning Japanese. 4 – I was accepted into the University of Sapporo and enrolled in their math department. Professor Sujimoto’s fame had increased after he had discovered what was, at the time, the largest prime number ever found. 5 – Sujimoto conducted all of his lectures online in a VR environment he had created himself. 6 – When I logged in, I was presented with a menu that allowed me to create an avatar to represent myself. I chose the symbol for pi. 7 – An oak tree stood in the center of the garden. It reached unending into the sky and its trunk was alive with an army of marching ants, each of them carrying a glowing neon digit. Together they formed the prime number Sujimoto had discovered — a number more than 42 million digits long. 8 – Twenty-three other students attended that lecture. Their avatars took the forms of anime characters, kawaii cats and other fantastic creatures. Sujimoto’s avatar was reminiscent of a monk — wearing brown robes and conical hat. 9 – A text bubble appeared in the air beside the monk. “Welcome to this year’s first class on number theory.” 10 – “Numbers have a purity that words cannot match.” 11 – “They are the building blocks of science. By studying them we can learn about ourselves and our place in the universe. I have created this garden to give you a chance to explore the world of numbers and their hidden beauty.” 12 – He pointed to the garden beds where different colored numbers grew. “There are transcendental numbers, abundant numbers, undulating numbers, pandigital numbers, deficient numbers, surreal numbers, happy numbers, weird numbers and my personal favorites, the 13 – vampire 14 – numbers.” A bed of numbers erupted from the ground in front of Sujimoto. It contained the numbers from 1 to 1000 arranged in orderly rows. The numbers were purple and had pale, green stems. “I want you to pick one integer. This is going to be your special number for the year. Then explore the garden.” 15 – The student avatars crowded around the purple numbers and started plucking them. I wanted to choose 3, 7, 22 or 227 because they are used when estimating pi, but some other students must have had the same idea. I chose 220 instead. 16 – I wandered past a garden of hyperreal numbers and came to a numberfall. A torrent of digits cascaded down shiny, black rocks and emptied into a gleaming, blue lake. I queried the VR interface and discovered the numberfall was displaying part of the infinite sequence of digits that makes up pi. I waded through the water until I stood underneath the numberfall. The digits crashed all about me. I was submerged in infinity. 17 – A unicorn splashed into the lake. It had the purple number 284 wrapped around its horn. When the unicorn saw the number stuck to my side, it started bouncing up and down in excitement. Someone was pressing the jump key too often. 18 – “Look at our numbers!!! We have to be friends. It’s fate!!!” 19 – That was how I met 20 – your mother. 21 – It took me a moment to grasp the significance of what she was saying. 220 and 284 are the smallest pair of amicable numbers. The sum of the proper divisors of 220 (1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55, 110) is 284. The sum of the proper divisors of 284 (1, 2, 4, 71, 142) is 220. The numbers are bound together. 22 – Your mother decided we were meant to be together. I had only just arrived in Japan and I didn’t have any friends. So I was happy to meet her after class. 23 – She was also interested in codes and sent me emails with hidden messages. A message with (32) at the end meant I had to read every thirty-second line to find the meaning. 24 – We fell in love. 25 – The next four years were the happiest of my life. I specialized in the process of random number generation. Computers usually only generate pseudorandom numbers. Deterministic algorithms can be recreated, so the numbers aren’t truly random. Eventually a pattern will emerge. To get true random numbers, computers have to rely on external sources, such as devices to measure atmospheric noise. 26 – We got married after we graduated. Some of my friends in Australia warned me about the difficulties of intercultural relationships. I thought our love for numbers would help us bypass that. 27 – Cultural differences sometimes even extend to numbers. In western countries we count in thousands, but in Japan they count in ten thousands. 20,000 is not 20 thousands, it is 2 ten thousands. I also learned other numbers have been polluted by superstition. 28 – The end came when I saw a documentary about an autistic savant who could perform astonishing feats of calculation and memory. He recited pi from memory to 22,514 digits. I could not do this. 29 – He said that in his mind numbers have different shapes and colors. I could not see this. The numbers I loved had 30 – betrayed me. 31 – They had shown themselves to others, but not to me. 32 – Kaori told me she was pregnant. 33 – At the time it was an unexpected and unwelcome 34 – addition. 35 – 1 + 1 should not equal 3. 36 – Your grandmother said we had to go to a 37 – fortune teller 38 – to help us choose your name. 39 – A fortune teller had chosen your mother’s name by selecting a kanji with a lucky number of strokes. 40 – Your grandmother poisoned your mother’s thinking with superstition. 41 – We argued. 42 – Then 43 – your grandmother 44 – became ill and was admitted to hospital. 45 – When I arrived at the hospital, 46 – she was asleep. 47 – Kaori sat by her bedside. 48 – She looked pale and tired. 49 – I had brought some flowers, 50 – so I 51 – put them on the table by the bed. 52 – Kaori stared at the flowers. “What are those?” she demanded. 53 – “I bought some flowers for your mother.” 54 – “They’re chrysanthemums!” 55 – The old woman stirred in her sleep. 56 – “What’s the matter? I thought your mother would appreciate them. They are Japan’s national flower.” 57 – “You never give chrysanthemums to someone in hospital! They’re only for funerals.” 58 – “How was I supposed to know that?” 59 – I picked up the flowers. “I will get rid of them. There’s no need to get upset. You’re acting like I 60 – killed 61 – her.” 62 – “That’s because you bought four of them! 63 – I’ve told you before, four is an unlucky number in Japan. 64 – It sounds like death. 65 – You want my mother to die, don’t you! You’ve always hated her.” 66 – “What are you talking about? That’s crazy.” 67 – “Then why did you bring her four chrysanthemums?” 68 – “The shop only had four left,” I replied. “They’re just flowers.” I threw the flowers in the bin. 69 – “I was only trying to help 70 – her.” 71 – Kaori stared at me for a long time. Then she reached into her handbag and took out her ATM card. 72 – “What about this?” She flung the card at me. “You changed the PIN on my card yesterday, didn’t you? I had to go into the bank to find out what the new number was. And you know what the new number was, don’t you? 1260!” 73 – “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. 74 – “1260 is a vampire number,” Kaori said. 75 – “I don’t know anything about that. The bank must have given you a new number for some reason. It was probably just chosen randomly.” 76 – “Don’t lie to me, Michael! I know all about your so-called random numbers! You chose that because you want to frighten me.” 77 – “Please calm down. Your mother isn’t well, and you’re pregnant. You’re very emotional.” 78 – “I don’t love you any more, Michael.” 79 – “That’s not true.” 80 – “You need to get help.” 81 – In case your mother has neglected your education I should explain about vampire numbers. They are numbers with an even number of digits that can be equally divided into two so-called fangs. These fangs are factors of the number and contain all of the digits of the original number. 82 – 1260’s fangs are 21 and 60 (21×60=1260). 83 – Your grandmother died that night. 84 – Kaori divorced me. 85 – Now, I sit in my small room and think about my mistakes. I thought numbers had betrayed me. But now I know it was not their fault. 86 – They are always true. It is superstitious people that sully the perfection of numbers. 87 – If someone tells you they love you, how do you prove it’s true? Even if it is true, how do you know it will be true tomorrow? 88 – Numbers are eternally perfect. The square root of 100 will always equal 10. 89 – Japanese law doesn’t recognize the custody rights of foreign parents. I have never even met you. But that will change one day soon. 90 – I will come for you and your mother. 91 – I have begun to make my own simple number garden. 92 – I have marked the walls with some of my favorite numbers. 93 – 220. 94 – 284. 95 – 1260. 96 – Sometimes numbers grow into things they shouldn’t. 97 – I am watching these numbers closely. One day they will grow into something very special. 98 – My health has been poor. To help me relax I perform simple integer divisions. 99 – But I am very careful about what numbers I choose to divide. 100 – I am always happier when there is no remainder. (10)

Reading by Numbers by AIDAN DOYLE

[gottalamb]

The scary thing about old manuscripts

🔪💾 Since my computer is doing an extensive clean-up (for 3 hours!), guess I could post something mildly irrelevant to the whole of the purpose of this journal. 

Recently I have been thinking about updating old manuscripts. They date from around December 2015, when a certain set of circumstances rendered one of my “beta-readers” to be MIA for a year. Putting all the wave of uncomfortable feelings aside, which emerged after getting wind of this fact about my missing “beta-reader”, all my manuscripts (including all the comic-book-like mock-ups of certain scenarios) were loaded with a hefty amount of content.

In that time I had no idea about the virtues of Office, nor its companion app thingie, OneNote. All my main ideas were condensed on very “dense” chapters (oh!) made in OpenOffice, which looked more like archives of lore rather than chapters per se. This happened because I had no means to record and categorise in a more “friendly” interface all the amount of data within the universe of my novel, so literally all the characters who were “savvy” about certain subjects rambled for very tall walls of text (of course, after the protagonist uttered the proper questions), not even Eren Jaeger could surmount with full gear.

💦 This makes most of my old manuscripts pre-OneNote to be really cumbersome to read, even to me. Moreover, back then I had no idea about how to make proper narrative and the segments between narrative and dialogue were very obscure, even null, to the point now that I peruse over them, I have difficulties remembering who said what. Couple this with other novice writer blunders, and you have the recipe for a headache and “facepalm-ache” (not enough palms to hide shame they end falling off the wrist).

Supposing that I am not alone with this scary feeling of backtracking to old work and see how shameful they are compared to your current skills. The obvious course of action is to update with all the new shiny focus and skills you currently have, and correct all those blunders. But the more important part of this is to know when and where to “chop”. What I mean about “chop”? 🔪 You could say it is the same as “scrubbing” or “cropping” a work, but not in order to make it more “lean” and “sleek” to the readers. It gets more complicated than going wild with the garden shears until it looks 🆗 with your word count and other editorial standards.

The complicated thing is to get to know (and note down) all the data that was being communicated in those old manuscripts. Obviously you need to spot all the information regarding lore, facts and trivia which are “out of date” 🚨. These things need to be updated to the new lore you were cooking since then, and learn when to keep something as it was, when to update it (minor tweak or heavy update) and when to “scrap”. 🗑️

As I mentioned on my previous entry, personally I don’t like to “scrap” or “delete” permanently. My folder of “scrapped” content is full of things that get there and out of there on the basis as I need them, because ideas should be stored, regardless of how crazy or dumb they look, they might get the chance to shine some day in a different context (or even just as plain silly memorandums which to talk about in conventions or future symposiums).

👁️ Talking about old lore or old content is a killer in your mind, because you are somehow “forced” to reoccupy your mind with old stuff which was deemed forgotten. You might even see something you plainly forgot after 2 years and that sounded too cool for words, and then you headdesk for your oversight.

You now can note down those cool things too, and see when they would be deemed proper to resurface in the new redesign of your chapters. Don’t lose hope.

There is also an “uncanny valley” in which you see the prototype of how your characters behaved back in that time. Dull, plain, robotic, too repetitive, perhaps not reacting with the full emotional intensity as how those same characters behave today in your head. When that happens, a rewriting of their dialogues is in order too. Noting down those dull nuances of your prototype characters, even in those manuscripts in which those certain characters make their first appearance in front of the protagonist (and readers), will help you improve the scene and avoid to fall backwards in time to that same point in which you knew nil about your own protagonist. This happens the same when you are used to draw a character on a regular basis, and then you find those awful concept arts of their prototypes you want to torch to crisp 🔥 Fortunately, it is more useful and productive to STORE ALL PROTOTYPES rather than to burn them down. You will not know when that early sketch of your protagonist could end up in a charity auction of sorts. Even manuscripts could shot for hundreds, after their proper ageing of course.

🏅 When forced to peruse those old manuscripts that make your brain and heart to wring in an uncomfortable coil of shame, one could say “Hey, I was bad and inexperienced then - now everything is much better.”, and recognising those improvements helps building up more confidence in your story and in the soundness of your lore and your characters, as well as in your current writer skills. Learning from past mistakes and such pushes forth creativity and productivity, and the feeling of being impaired as a writer fades when your Word says you have 100 pages of new content, mixed with 135 pages of updated old scenarios in less than a week. 

⚡ Lets not forget, updating is all fine and encouraged if you want to keep your scenes catching up with all the new happenings in future events within your story. The part that is harder is to administrate all those updates. That is when the “chop” comes 🔪. I tend to think people usually writes “too much” content in the first manuscripts because they want to communicate a lot of messages and information in a short span of time (and use those manuscripts as some sort of “archive” to recall themselves about important data). That’s not good, as it bloats the scenes needlessly, but is totally UNAVOIDABLE to go for hours on a topic that is crucial to the plot and forget that there are going to be more chapters in where to make that data relevant, instead of drowning the readers on a single chapter. When you are starting, manuscripts with copious amounts of data tend to “drain” the action from other chapters and the interest, either from the reader and even from yourself as you write. When a protagonist should know about certain plot-device? Since the start? (and fatally creating a MacGuffin) After 5 chapters? 10? 20? When should the protagonist know the real meaning of the plot-device? 

❔ That’s why re-reading your old manuscripts will take you more time than anticipated, as you see there are tons of data that could actually be used elsewhere, and be replaced with sly foreshadowing.* Note down those, because they are key-elements of your narrative (even if it comes from your old narrative) and you will need them later. If you don’t have the proper scenes and scenarios set-up yet to assimilate those elements, don’t fret as they would appear eventually, but also don’t force a chapter on the sole purpose of giving that key-element of your plot a place to sit its beautiful head. Remember, the plot is important, but the characters are WHO must live through it, and I tend to recall myself, if that character has no real purpose in that scene, don’t drop it there without a proper explanation, or you will kill the WSoD of your readers too soon for sanity.

📜 When that sacred invisible contract between you and the belief of your readers is starting to show any signs of wear or tearing, run for the hills. That’s one of the reasons you as a writer must make a great effort to keep it sound and hale, because once a reader starts to question the clarity of your plot, their prognosis (usually from veteran readers) might spell doom on all your work, no matter how much effort you put in it. If it lacks coherence, the plot is not yet ready for the public. If you have difficulties or are unsure about the coherence of your plot, you might as well try to find “beta-readers” (usually family, very close friends or teachers, who will remain silent about your work until your final published chapter or after the book hits the store). If you are like me you would end cross-examining the plot more times than actually finishing it, which it is not wrong, but perfectionism can damage productivity (as I’m always told...).

🚪 As closure, old manuscripts, no matter how you put them away and forgot about them like some sort of in-breed cousin you don’t want to see ever again, you will need to check them up and fish for all what is worth in it. It is not a matter of avoiding your disgraceful and unworthy self from years apart, who could not distinguish a proper narrative from the scrawls of an earthworm squirming on the sand. It is a matter of capturing the “allure” of what made you to actually start writing, tame it and polish it. To rediscover the person who typed for hours on end about something, impatient to make all those ideas to stand out, not worrying about length, coherence or to make those stick-figures of characters to be fleshed yet. Remember the first struggles and embrace your new improved skills, which came out after such mess!

*Foreshadowing must be one of my favourite concepts and tools in narrative, as I tend to “overindulge” myself too much into brooding about them. Sleepless nights of theory could go for days on a week until disproved or being included in canon, which causes massive bliss within the mind after being proved correct. If my story ends becoming a “foreshadowing-fest”, call me a sinner (or a gardener of Epileptic Trees). That or either call it like the narrative version of “tenebrism”, in which playing with the emotional pathos of the reader is part of the story itself. 

[reactsharing-blog]

50+Best articles and videos guide step by step of React Native

React Native brings the React paradigm to mobile app development. It’s goal isn’t to write the code once and run it on any platform. The goal is to learn-once (the React way) and write-anywhere. An important distinction to make. In this React Native tutorial you’ll learn how to build native apps through 50+ articles and videos guide step by step of React Native.

1. How to build a basic application with React Native

These articles below will show you how to do that:

React Native Tutorial: Building Apps with JavaScript

In this React Native tutorial you’ll learn about a framework for building native iOS and Android applications from Facebook, based on the same principals behind their hugely popular React Javascript Framework for building declarative user interfaces.

>>> Learn more: Here

Getting Started with React Native in 20 Minutes

Nearly every type of app you’ll want to build will involve a login screen with cookies- this app will therefore serve as a perfect foundation for whatever you want to create. We’ll also take a tour of the basics of React Native, building basic views and components and getting familiar with React Native’s baked-in routing solution, the Navigator. If you’re familiar with React, you’ll have an easy time reading the code- but by the end of this tutorial, you should be comfortable enough with React Native’s structure to move on to more advanced topics.

>>> learn more: Here

Cold Dive into React Native: A Beginner’s Tutorial

In this tutorial, we will take a look at React Native’s architecture, the philosophy behind React Native, and how it differs from other solutions in the same space. By the end of the article, we will have transformed a React “Hello World” application into a React Native one.

>>> Learn more: Here

React Native Tutorial Part 1: Hello, React ; Part 2: Designing a Calculator ; Part 3: Developing a Calculator

The following tutorial will guide you through developing your first React Native application for both Android and iOS. It’s written using React Native version 0.31, the latest at time of writing, and is broken into three parts:

Part 1 of the tutorial will demonstrate project setup, writing a traditional “Hello World” application, and organizing the code prior to heading into Part 2. In Part 2, I’ll be guiding you through the process of designing a calculator app that runs on both platforms, using the latest and greatest that React Native has to offer. The goal is to get you up to speed on the basics of React Native, including flexbox and style sheets, and to give you a starting point from which we can continue to actually develop the calculator’s functionality. In Part 3, we’ll develop the actual calculator implementation, including listening to touch events, performing the arithmetic, and updating the UI using React Native’s state.

Movie Fetcher

In this tutorial we’ll be building a simple version of a Movies app that fetches 25 movies that are in theaters and displays them in a ListView.

>>> Learn more: Here

Free React Native components/apps to build your first mobile app

Instead of wasting your time trying to build completely a React native mobile app, you killed time on your commute learning how to build a mobile app? Well, getting the five best free React native apps for your first mobile app, and you’ll be on your way to develop mobile apps.

>>> Learn more: Here

2. React Native Navigation examples for your learning

React Native navigation very important you must to know about it. these articles below will help you know React Native navigation.

Routing and Navigation in React Native

In this tutorial we will show you the basic knowledge about React Native navigation.

>>> Learn more: Here

React Native Example App: Navigation

The app itself is vaguely like twitter and/or tumblr. There are users that make posts. They follow other users. You can look at users they follow follows and those users’ posts. And on and on! The features (or styling) isn’t the main point. At this time, we’re mostly demonstrating architectural concepts.

>>> Learn more: Here

React Native Navigation

React Native Navigation provides 100% native platform navigation on both iOS and Android for React Native apps. The JavaScript API is simple and cross-platform – just install it in your app and give your users the native feel they deserve. Using redux? No problem: React Native Navigation comes with optional redux support out of the box. Ready to get started?

>>> Learn more: Here

3. React Native layout system flexbox

React Native Layout System

The layout system is a fundamental concept that needs to be mastered in order to create great layouts and UIs. React Native uses Flexbox to create the layouts, which is great when we need to accommodate our components and views in different screen sizes or even different devices.

>>> Learn more: Here

Understanding React Native flexbox layout

Working with flexbox layout can be tricky, especially in React Native. But there is nothing to scare. It’s easy to understand, just take a closer look not just on how it works but on why it works this way.

>>> Learn more: Here

Layout with Flexbox

A component can specify the layout of its children using the flexbox algorithm. Flexbox is designed to provide a consistent layout on different screen sizes.

You will normally use a combination of flexDirection, alignItems, and justifyContent to achieve the right layout.

>>> Learn more: Here

4. React Native networking

Make HTTP Requests In iOS With React Native

The Facebook documentation for React Native has (or had at the time of writing this) a tutorial for getting movie data from a remote API. However, it hardly explained how to customize the HTTP request. In fact, I found that a lot of the internet was missing clear cut documentation for RESTful requests with React.

This article should clear things up!

>>> Learn more: Here

Lets fetch some fresh data for our React Native apps

One of the basic concept for any modern App is Networking. In your React Native Apps you’re going to be provided with some alternatives, but here we’ll boil them down to a single one, let’s go through them.

>>> Learn more: Here

How to Create a News Reader With React Native: Setup and News Item Component

In this tutorial, we’ll be creating a news reader app with React Native. In this two-part series, I’m going to assume that this isn’t your first React Native app and I won’t go too much into detail regarding setting up your machine and running the app on a device. That said, I explain the actual development process in detail.

>>> Learn more: Here

Networking

Many mobile apps need to load resources from a remote URL. You may want to make a POST request to a REST API, or you may simply need to fetch a chunk of static content from another server.

>>> Learn more: Here

5. React native Animated

React Native Animations Using the Animated API

Getting up and running with React Native Animations. The recommended way to animate in React Native for most cases is by using the Animated API.

>>> Learn more: Here

React Native’s LayoutAnimation is Awesome

For n number of layout changes in your view, one line does it all. Set your state, allow your view to re-render, and LayoutAnimation handles all interpolation for you. For large and complex views, this is POWERFUL. In this example, I have a complex view with three possible states. Heights, widths, and item counts are rendered based on the state `index`, determined by which button is selected.

>>> Learn more: Here

Dynamic Animated Lists in React Native

Every time you want to add or remove something from your list to have the option to apply an animation transition to your elements.

>>> Learn more: Here

6. Real app tutorial

Build a Messaging App Using React Native

React and React Native is gaining a lot of momentum these days. For this tutorial, we’ll quickly build a messaging app using React Native with SendBird’s JavaScript SDK.

>>> Learn more: Here

How to make facebook reactions in React Native

Do you think you can keep up the pace with React Native and its community? We just recently talked about react-native-emoji and today we’re learning that we’re getting inline image support in React Native. We also mentioned Facebook’s Reactions, and a couple of days after we have a great tutorial straight from the man who animates all the things: Jason Brown!

>>> Learn more: Here

React Native – How to create Twitter exploding hearts

So we’re going to build this exploding heart, except just know Twitter kind of cheated. Not really but they used an image and played each frame adjusting background-position so it looked animated. Okay not cheated they used a really smart technique but what’s the fun in doing that when we can build it for real!

>>> Learn more: Here

The essential boilerplate to authenticate users on your React-Native app

It’s essential to many apps, and I myself have been wondering how I could provide a secure way for my users to register and authenticate to my apps without third-party strategies. Finding working examples online has been tough, so I have decided to implement my own based on the few examples I could find. The main goal of this article is to show you how to create and setup a few useful services to improve the life cycle of your app, to authenticate a user and access protected resources.

>>> Learn more: Here

7. Tools for tracking React Native

Native Directory

Native Directory is a curated list of 254 React Native libraries to help you build your projects.

Native Directory lets developers order the list of libraries by last update, most recommended, compatibility, health, downloads, issues and GitHub stars. Each listed item provides bar graphs for platform compatibility and health, platform targets, screenshots, last update, issues and more, pulling much of its data from GitHub repositories and the npm site for Node.js. Along the right-hand side, many different “topics” of the libraries are listed, ranging from actionbutton to webgl.

Awesome React Native

An awesome style list that curates the best React Native libraries, tools, tutorials, articles and more.

JS.coach

This is an opinionated catalog of open source JS packages.

Libraries come and go. The ecosystem evolves rapidly, and that’s a good thing. But it means you can’t rely on your bookmarks. Google may not be your best friend either, since it focuses on popular results — established solutions that may not be the best fit for your project.

This website indexes new packages and is updated roughly once per day, by using both automated scripts and manual curation. It is a complete rewrite and grown-up version of React.parts, a tiny project that started 2 years ago. Even if you are implementing your own solution for your particular problem, this can be a good place to find interesting code to learn from.

8. React native videos for learning react native

Introduction to React Native – Building a React Native app from scratch

https://youtu.be/r5OPRhelEIU

  Navigating React Native Navigation – Kurtis Kemple

https://youtu.be/42ogpJVwtw0

  React Native Crash Course

https://youtu.be/mkualZPRZCs

  React.js Conf 2015 Keynote – Introducing React Native

https://youtu.be/KVZ-P-ZI6W4

  How to Create An App in React Native and Use React Native Navigation

https://youtu.be/GdnZIs3kDNg

  Eric Vicenti – Native Navigation for Every Platform at ReactEurope 2016

https://youtu.be/dOSwHABLvdM

Compilation by Atom ID @Reactsharing.com

Via https://reactsharing.com/50best-articles-and-videos-guide-step-by-step-of-react-native.html

[goldlink44]

Top 10 Games of 2016

Wow, what a great year for games (and not much else…). Seriously, though, 2016 produced some of the most fun gaming experiences that I’ve ever had. There was emotional wrenching, arcadey shooters, and games that put a smile on my face throughout their duration. I didn’t think that I was going to compile a list of my top ten games, as I wasn’t sure that there were 10 games that I could expound upon. But upon reflection, I found quite a few that I remember very fondly.

That said, there were also a bunch of games that won’t make the list for various reasons. Her Story and Until Dawn came out last year, but are both very very good for what they seek to accomplish.

I don’t own Hyper Light Drifter or Thumper, but they both look amazing and I can’t wait to play them in 2017.

I bought Inside, Oxenfree, Dishonored 2, and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, but haven’t put much time into any of them for me to have any strong feelings that I could back up.

Rimworld is still in early access, but shows some of the most promise I’ve seen in an indie game in years.

Orwell narrowly missed the list, but it is amazing in its own right. It’s a lot like one of my other favourite games from recent years, Papers, Please! but uses social media as its interface, and makes it fun to investigate potential law breakers. You can see my full review of it here. 

And so, without further adieu, here’s my Top Ten Games of 2016!

10. Battlefield 1

I learned all about the atrocities that occurred from 1914-1918 when I travelled with my family to The Netherlands and Belgium on a cycling trip that literally took us through the Western Front. It was humbling to see how, 100 years later, the land and the people never forget the seemingly pointless orders sending millions of men to their graves. I gained an appreciation, not only for the soldiers and support personnel that occupied that area of Europe during WWI, but also for the beauty of the land that was torn asunder from the battles.

Returning home weeks before BF1’s release, I was anticipating reviews, knowing that DICE can render fantastic environments and realistic war scenery. Most people were positive on the game pre-release, so I picked up a copy, and was not disappointed. The game is gorgeous, nailing the scenery of what I had seen first-hand, and depicting other fronts of the war in stunning detail. The campaign is incredibly well handled, showcasing the human stories behind the war, never glorifying or over exaggerating the heroics of the soldiers, but insisting that there was a great loss of humanity in The Great War. It’s emotionally on-point, and much better than I ever expected.

In any other year, I most likely would have passed over Battlefield 1, but given my trip to Europe, and the care with which DICE handles the story telling, it definitely makes my list of recommended games this year.

9. Overcooked!

While I may not have played hours upon hours of this co-op cooking game, the time I have spent with it has been incredibly entertaining. Anyone who has played Space Team in the past knows the mayhem that happens while trying to coordinate yourself and three other friends into executing on multiple goals at the same time. Throw this framework into a “too many cooks in the kitchen” premise, and it becomes a fun, delicious adventure that never gets stale.

Made by the team behind the Worms games, Overcooked! has a delightful art style and charming sense of humour that reduces the chance of getting bored with it. That, and each level has different mechanics that keep players on their toes, never letting them rest on their laurels and keep learning and moving to progress.

If I had 3 other friends always at the ready, I would definitely play Overcooked! every chance I got. Alas, I have enjoyed my extended bursts with the game, and can’t wait to get back in their and make some delicious soups.

8. Stardew Valley

While some people may spend their down time trying to relax by reading a book or watching a TV show, I found myself diving into Stardew Valley to destress. In its simplest terms, Stardew is a farming simulator that lets players crawl through dungeons and interact with fellow villagers, to almost simulate a second life (not in that creepy way though…). While this may not sound like everyone’s version of fun, Stardew Valley has such a delicate craft to it that everything feels good and rewarding to do. The kicker: it was made entirely by one person.

The premise revolves around you, the player character (customized any way you want, of course), inheriting your grandfather’s farm in Stardew Valley when you’ve grown tired of the hustle and bustle of working in the city. You hop on a bus and learn the basics of farming and slowly get acquainted with everyone in town.

From there, there’s not too much else to say, as there are so many different options available that it’s nearly impossible for two players to have the same experience. It’s surprisingly relaxing to plant and harvest, fight monsters, and woo potential dates. Checking off tasks feels great, and the music provides a soothing tone to everything. While it may not be for everyone, and I haven’t spent the hundreds of hours playing it that others have, I can’t wait to dive back in on chill weekends and vicariously put my digital life in order to help me deal with my IRL problems.

7. Hitman

Another game that I wish I had spent more time playing this year was IO interactive’s episodic Hitman. I watched a LOT of people playing Hitman, most notably Giant Bomb’s various escapdes with it, but only recently purchased it myself. From what I have played, I really, really like it. So far, I’ve only gotten to two of the available six missions, but I’ve replayed them both several times, trying to master each assassination mission.

The set up isn’t very complex: you are an expert hitman, contracted out to assassinate dangerous targets. The gameplay itself though has a ridiculous comedy to it, that allows players to do nearly anything imaginable to accomplish their tasks. Beat them over the head with a golf club? Sure. Two-hand toss a fire extinguisher into their head? You got it. Sneak up behind, choke them out, and toss them off a bridge? Child’s play.

It may sound like incredibly poor taste to casually mention such gruesome methods of killing, but given the vast amount of murder simulators that inhabit the video game space, Hitman holds a special place for its use of comedy. While many games try to evoke a serious tone, or real repercussions for killing, Hitman knows exactly what it is, and accounts for the uncanny valley aspects inherent in video games. It leans into the silly ways of killing, and rewards players for their creativity. Again, it’s hard to get a handle on why this game works just by reading words, or even by watching it. The magic is only truly woven over those who play it themselves, and even as I type, I’m trying to allocate my upcoming Hitman time. If none of this has convinced you, perhaps this might. 

6. SUPERHOT

When I first heard about this game several years ago, it pretty much consisted of one mechanic: time moves when you move. I watched the demo, chuckled to myself, and hoped that the developers didn’t take their neat trick too seriously. Cut to this year, when SUPERHOT was finally released. I had almost forgotten about it, but the distinctive glass-like art style brought back memories of the cool mechanic, and again, I hoped that the game was able to improve on this simple-but-brilliant idea.

They did not disappoint.

I only played through all of SUPERHOT near the very end of 2016, but it was well worth the wait. The level design and player controls all lent to the feeling of playing like some sort of god. The narrative wrapper is also perfectly messed-up and suits this god-like feeling quite well. To fully immerse yourself in the game is to intuit where and when to shoot, throw your weapons, and move so that all of your split-second planning pays off. In total, the game took me about 3 hours, with an insanely difficult final level that outs all of your skills to the test, and succeeds on the initial promise in a way that I never imagined possible. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, and rewards those who stay with it all the way. I loved it. It’s the most innovative shooter I’ve played in years.

5. The Witness

How do I sum up my thoughts on The Witness? For starters, I haven’t finished it yet, and feel like if I were to go back to it, I’d have to start all over again. That said, my time with it felt like school, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Playing Jonathan Blow’s previous game, Braid, hurt my head, but had a touching story that kept me going. With The Witness, there’s not much of a “story” but what fuelled my need to play it was the satisfaction of playing the game. Which is ridiculous when the game is basically just made up of hundreds or thousands of line puzzles. The puzzles start out simple enough, asking players to snake their way through mazes, creating lines in certain patterns that can’t cross over each other. Progressively, the game adds more and more elements to the puzzles, slowly training the player to think in different ways. It never prompts or looks down on you, but instead has an attitude of, “You can do it, just keep going.” There is no praise other than progression, but let me tell you, solving some of the more challenging puzzles makes you feel like the smartest motherfucker on the planet.

I should also mention that I played this with my girlfriend, Rosalie, passing the controller back and forth when we conquered a section, or got stumped by a puzzle. This definitely reduced the frustration, as getting a fresh pair of eyes didn’t let us bash our heads against a wall for too long. It’s hard to describe The Witness as “fun”, but it is beautiful and engaging, and never makes it too easy. The puzzles all build off of each other in such intricate ways, that there are too many “Eureka!” moments to count, all of which feel better than the last. There was definitely a lot of frustration with it too, but when I think back on it, all I can remember is the feeling of solving a puzzle, and feeling like I could conquer the whole damn island. It’s a different kind of pleasure than I normally experience in games, and in some ways, more potent than any other I’ve felt. Overall, it’s great.

4. Destiny: Rise of Iron

This is the third year that I’ve been playing Destiny, and I must admit, I think I’m a lifer. After being disappointed with its original release in 2014 (as seen in my Top Ten of 2014 list), The Taken King expansion from 2015 changed a lot of what I didn’t like about the game, and made it incredibly addictive. Combine that with a group of friends that I can consistently play with, and Destiny was the game I would usually fire up in 2016. To date, I’ve played 444 hours of Destiny since its release. It’s a fantastic game, made better with teammates.

2016’s expansion Rise of Iron was conceived as a way to tide fans over while Destiny 2 got delayed, and unfortunately, it shows. Don’t get me wrong, I loved a lot about getting more content for Destiny, but I feel like I went through it fairly quickly, and didn’t feel the need to keep going the way I did with The Taken King.

That all said, I still loved my time with it. The raid, Wrath of the Machine, is excellent, and the new crucible mode, supremacy, is a ton of fun for my main class and weapon load out - Shotgun Titan. The story was a bit of a let down, but I still enjoyed it. While this particular expansion wasn’t my favourite, Destiny solidified itself in my heart as a game that I will always return to. The shooting feels incredible, and the thrill of raiding is unlike any other experience I’ve had in games. I can’t wait for more content, and to see what else I can do with an already solid base. Here’s hoping Destiny 2 is 2017’s GOTY!

3. Overwatch

I was very late to the party on this game, and never played the betas. I’ve never been great at online multiplayer shooters. I even thought that I had my all-time-shooter in Destiny, but when I finally got my hands on Overwatch during a free weekend in October, I pulled the trigger (nice) and have loved every second that I’ve spent with it so far. Like Destiny, Overwatch is better with friends, as you casually shoot the shit while you shoot the shit (read: opposing team). Each character is unique, and I can play a variety of different ways that I never thought I would enjoy.

There’s been a lot said and hyperbolized about Overwatch, but I honestly think it deserves it. Like a lot of Blizzard’s past games, it perfects a formula, and adds a level of polish that makes everything feel accessible. I could go on and on about specific things to love, but it won’t make sense until you get your own hands on it. It’s fun, fast, and rewarding in the best ways - literally. It only shows positive accomplishments at the end of every match. The K/D ratio isn’t displayed, as killing n00bs isn’t the point. It’s about working together and having fun. To prove my point, I usually play as Reinhardt and don’t get many kills in each game, but I always feel valuable.

For changing my perception of competitive shooters, and for providing so many ways to play, Overwatch has earned a spot in my top 3, despite only playing it for 2 months of the year.

2. Firewatch

When I first heard about Firewatch, I knew that some of the guys behind the Idle Thumbs Podcast and The Walking Dead Season 1 were working on it. As I had been working my way through the Giant Bombcast, Idle Thumbs seemed like the obvious next choice for gaming podcasts. I resolved myself to try and listen to as much of it as I could before Firewatch’s release, so that I could better understand its creators (I guess). I was also a big fan of Olly Moss’s art for movie and game posters, and after listening to hours and hours of Idle Thumbs, I was brimming with anticipation for the release of the game.

When it finally came out on February 9th, 2016, I got home from my closing shift at Starbucks around 11pm. I waited for my girlfriend to fall asleep, and dove in around midnight. From there, i played through the whole thing in one sitting, finishing around 4:30am. My drive to do this was fueled by many things: 1) I loved the atmosphere and the music 2) I was on the edge of my seat, eagerly anticipating what would come next and 3) I was afraid that if I waited to finish it, I would miss something, or the tension would be lost.

My experience with Firewatch is very personal and unique, and I understand people’s resistance to its ending, or some of the tension that is built up throughout the game. For me, it is a fantastic story, full of relatable themes and story beats that pulls on my heart strings in so many ways. By the end, I was an emotional wreck, and I couldn’t have asked for more from such a tight, beautiful experience. I’m grateful to have learned about Idle Thumbs in the process, and will always recommend this game to people who enjoy a good story.

I also ended up playing through this with my friend Alex as part of my 24 hour live stream benefitting pancreas cancer research in November. You can watch it here: Part 1 Part 2

1. DOOM

Video games are supposed to be fun, right? If I had to picture myself as a third party, observing Chris Townley playing video games in 2016, I would have to definitively say that he had the most fun playing DOOM this year. Why? Because the majority of my time with it was spent with a big dumb grin on my face, giggling to myself as I bounced around and plowed through monsters. From the opening 5 minutes of DOOM, I knew that it was going to be an experience that I would treasure forever.

Growing up, we always had Apple computers with very few games on them. It was always a treat when my dad would bring home his laptop with a copy of Doom on it that I could mess around with. I might not have spent a large part of my childhood gaming time with Doom, but it is seared into my heart as a treasured memory. For example, my ringtone for the past 3 years has been the theme for 1-1.

Hearing that a new Doom game was coming out, I dove into nostalgia, and eagerly anticipated playing it, even if I thought it would be bad. Prodded by this interest, I picked up a copy of Masters of Doom by Dave Kushner, a book about the early days of id Software. It’s an incredible book, and one that I think most gamers should read. It also pumped me up for a new Doom. Just to swim around in familiar demonic territory would be good enough for me.

When it was announced that no review outlets had gotten a copy of it before release, I was skeptical but still hopeful. I didn’t play the multiplayer beta, because I knew that wasn’t where I was going to spend my time with it. When the reviews finally started flooding in, everyone raved about the single player. Shortly after, I spent the full price of $80 CAD to play it. I don’t regret it one bit, even though the game has had dozens of sale offerings since then.

Why do I like it so much? It’s dumb and it’s fun and it knows what it is. The original premise for Doom was along the lines of, you shoot demons, and you’re badass. DOOM (2016) keeps this theme alive, along with the speed and ridiculous humour that made the first game so fun. This is especially amazing considering only one person from the original team worked on the new one. It looks gorgeous, the music is perfect, and the mechanics urge you forward, punching and shooting through demons in sprays of blood and guts.

I could go on and on about how much there is to love about DOOM, but perhaps I will sum it up this way: after 11 hours of gameplay, and nearing the final mission, my save was corrupted and I lost everything. I’m not even mad, because I know I get to play through it all over again. Maybe this hyperbole will colour your version of DOOM, but for me, it was the best game I played in 2016.

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Game 358: Ishar: Legend of the Fortress (1992)

             Ishar: Legend of the Fortress

France

Silmarils (developer and publisher)

Released 1992 for DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST

Date Started: 22 February 2020

I’ve been wanting to play Ishar for a while now, partly because I bought the entire series in 2014, and partly because while I thought Crystals of Arborea (1990) was pretty awful, I also thought it had some lovely graphics. Until they reach a certain point, I don’t get excited about graphics. I mostly want them to be functional–show me where the enemies are and help me figure out what door I need to enter. If your graphics are just repeating textures, to me they’re not much better than wireframes.              

Walking through some pretty beach trees.

       When we get to the era in which graphics actually establish an ambiance and pull me into the setting, that’s when I get excited. And Ishar‘s are almost there. Like Arborea‘s, they border on impressionistic. The opening screen shows a field lush with grass and flowers, a tree filled with branches and leaves, wispy clouds on the horizon, and other trees, dimmer, further away, partly hidden in a mist. I’m not prepared to say that they’re the best graphics we’ve seen, but they certainly come close.              

Some of the best water graphics we’ve seen so far. They don’t move or anything.

            Ishar is first of a trilogy for which Arborea was a kind-of prologue. In that game, you play Jarel, Prince of the Elves, and your goal was to find four crystals and use them to raise the island of Arborea–the only land left after the gods destroyed the world. Along the way, you had to kill the fallen angel Morgoth. You were aided by five companions.

The backstory of Ishar tells us that Jarel renamed the land Kendoria. He ruled for a while but was killed in a hunting accident. After his death, the land fell into anarchy. A “shady and powerful figure” named Krogh took advantage of the chaos, gathered wealth and power, and built a temple on the borders of Kendoria. The temple’s name, Ishar, means “unknown” in Elvish. Your mission is, I guess, to stop Krogh. Honestly, the backstory took the bloom off the graphics almost immediately. Aside from being overly derivative of Tolkien (I don’t know what I expected from a developer called “Silmarils”), it explained essentially nothing, including who the main character is.              

The starting character.

           There is no character creation process. You start as a human warrior called Aramir, presumably the third son of Denethor. He carries a sword, 2000 gold, and has no other inventory. He has 16 strength, 14 constitution, 16 agility, 12 intelligence, 11 wisdom, and 12 vitality. Temporary statistics are physical power and mental power. Statistics for “level” and “experience” at least assure me there will be some character development. Clicking around, I find that I also have skills: lockpicking, orientation, first aid, one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, throwing, shooting, and languages. Aramir is best at the two weapon categories and worst at “Languages.”

The game comes with no kind of map or even description of the world. Am I on an island? Are there towns? There’s a guy standing in front of me in the field, so I head towards him. He greets me with a nonsensical phrase (“Warm Tear!”) and tells me about a village to the south, “in Angarahn country,” where there’s a tavern called “The Thirsty Barbarian.” I try to recruit him and it works. His name is Borminh, and he comes with a dagger, single-digit attributes, and strong skill in lockpicking. The manual suggests that micromanaging the relationships among my NPC companions is a big part of the game. They can reject and dismiss each other and apparently murder each other.            

The first NPC has a nonsensical greeting.

          Following Borminh’s instructions, I head south and soon come to a town. In the first shop, my 2000 gold suddenly doesn’t seem all that much. A light helmet sells for 1,200 and a suit of leather armor sells for 1,800. Even a loaf of bread is 320, which makes me think the economy is really out of whack. The shopkeeper also bids me “warm tear” when I leave the shop. What the hell.             

These prices don’t make a lot of sense in proportion.

           Orcs attack as I explore the village, and I’m disappointed to see that the series has changed the flawed-but-intriguing tactical grid used in Arborea for real-time combat in the style of Dungeon Master. There’s nothing particularly wrong with Dungeon Master combat, I hasten to add, but it’s not well-adapted here. The spell menu is harder to get into than it should be, and cool-down periods are not made obvious by the graphics. I also soon find that the famous “combat waltz” doesn’t work at all; enemies don’t even appear if they’re not facing you.              

First-person combat means hitting the “attack” buttons repeatedly.

              Nonetheless, I successfully kill the orcs and loot their gold, spending some of it to rest at the tavern and recover some lost hit points. The tavern serves as a location for rumors; this one tells me that one of Jarel’s companions lives in the village. You can also recruit NPCs in taverns; this one offers only one, a warrior named Kyrian. When I select him, Aramir and Borminh both “vote” and agree to let him into the party.

The town has a place where I can train strength, and later I find another one where I can train agility. I also find a hut occupied by Akeer, who seems to give me the main quest:           

My name is Akeer. I am one of Jarel’s mates, who once braved, then destroyed the evil dark lord Morgoth. But today, we have to face a brand new danger . . . This threat has a name: Krogh. He murdered our good prince Jarel [so much for him dying in a hunting accident] and sat on his throne in Ishar, an evil temple unleashing hordes of monsters all over our beloved land. Now the time has come for revenge. If you manage to destroy Krogh, you’ll be able to use Ishar’s tremendous powers, and soon you will reign over the whole kingdom . . . The companions are old, but they still may help you. In Lotharia, near the Four Birches, Azalghorm the Spirit could give you some advice . . . Warm tear, my friends . . .

             When I’m king, I’m going to abolish that stupid phrase, whatever it’s supposed to mean.

I spend some time trying to get oriented. The “action” menu allows me to bring up a map of Kendoria, but it doesn’t show our current place on it. It does show the starting position, on the far west side of either an island or peninsula crisscrossed by rivers. It looks like the starting are has two bridges that cross an eastern river to new territories.

I soon find that one of the bridges leads to another town, and this one is guarded by a hulking barbarian. But my party of three manages to defeat him.             

A tough enemy, but it was three-on-one.

             The town consists of a bunch of building situated on docks. In the tavern, I learn that Krogh may be Morgoth’s son. As Morgoth was a withered skeletal creature, ick. This tavern has five NPCs to recruit. I first try a lizard-looking thing named Xylaz but everyone votes “no.” I’m not sure how I feel about my own characters overriding my orders. I try again and everyone agrees to a mage named Dorian and a warrior named Golnal.               

A bunch of damned racists, that’s what you guys are.

            I explore the area a while longer, killing some orcs and bandits and bears, finding loose gold strewn in bushes and empty huts. I walk into a teleporter at one point, but it didn’t take me very far because I soon found myself in the same basic area. I lose some characters in a fight against werewolves and then I suffer a full-party death against some bandits.             

Is that supposed to be Krogh? That’s messed up.

           Dying has significant consequences in this game because you have to pay 1,000 gold pieces to save. We just left a game where it cost experience points to save (Blade of Destiny) and I’m concurrently playing another game with saving limited by turns (Ragnarok). It’s interesting to see three different approaches in three consecutive games. I’m all for making things more challenging in this way, but it cuts particular deep here where things cost so much and you start with comparatively so little gold. From what I can tell, monsters do seem to respawn, so at least there’s some way to keep earning money.           

Ouch.

           I can also report positive things about the interface. The developers clearly want you to use the mouse, but unlike Arborea, they’ve given an analogous keyboard command to every mouse click. The commands aren’t as intuitive as some games, but they’re there. I’ve complained repeatedly about having to click the buttons in Dungeon Master-style combat, and here finally is a game where you just have to hit a series of F-keys in quick succession if you prefer not to use the mouse.

Also, the sound complements the graphics superbly. I’m a sucker for a game that offers good ambient sound, and here we have it: the chirping of birds, the swell of water near the river, the croaks of frogs, the murmur of background conversation when I enter the tavern. Even if I don’t end up liking gameplay much, Ishar at least looks and sounds pretty.

I think I’ll start over and see about mapping the island. A rough estimate based on the map would put the island at around 100 x 400. That’s big but not unmappable. I want to be able to annotate what I find and what I don’t understand. After the first few hours, it’s clear that it’s more of a game than Arborea, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily a better one.

Time so far: 3 hours

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