iTunes Match

Several years ago, we bought a bit of music on iTunes.  After using the service a while, we stopped because it was just too difficult to listen to the music you'd paid for: you either had to use iTunes to do it (difficult if you were not using a Mac or Windows computer), and portability-wise you had to use an Apple device, like an iPod.

I've actually had an iPod shuffle for years and at the time was using an Apple base station to play music through my amp, so it worked.  But these days I prefer to use my Kindle (or more recently, my Kindle-converted-to-an-Android-tablet) and Chromecast, and I have never liked iTunes as a playback program on the PC.

When I saw that iTunes allowing those who subscribed to iTunes Match to get .m4a files rather than .m4p files of their purchases, I was hopeful.  .m4as are the unprotected versions of the files, meaning that they can be played on other devices and don't require iTunes.

I was a little irritated because it feels as though iTunes is holding the music you've bought hostage until you slip them more money, but considering the amount of music involved here, it would be the "cheapest" (legal) way to get the DRM off them. I  fronted up my $28 (Canadian) and began downloading.

Sad to say, there are parts of my library that are still in m4p and are unavailable in the unprotected format.   The notable pieces are Tom Waits's Real Gone, three whole albums by Jolie Holland, one album each by Lisa Germano and Shriekback, and a Liz Durrett EP.  How annoying.

I'm more committed than ever to only buying DRM-free music (and never giving Apple another dime).

Paperama

android version

Got a silly little game called Paperama on my Kindle and I thought I'd mention it here.  It's good as mobile games go and, unlike so many of them, it actually requires you to think a bit.

The pros:

• It's really soothing to play — origami with a mellow soundtrack.
• I haven't run into a timed level yet.
• It's great on a touch interface, though probably better on a tablet than on a phone just do to the space available and the precision of the folding necessary.
• It's pretty rewarding to get a complex shape right after trying to figure it out for a while.
• The puzzle solving aspect is great, as you're trying to take a square of paper and figure out how to fold it into a particular shape in a limited number of folds.

The cons:

• It's "free", which means you get shown an ad every so many levels (so far just static images advertising other games). 
• There are hints available, but each hint costs so many "hint points", and of course they want to sell you those points.
• I cannot find any "point to hint" ratio so I do not know if 1 point equals 1 hint, or if as your level increases the hints cost more, and so on.  This could really change the cost of hints.

A level in the game; the undo is very useful.

Small digression: Game devs really need to realize that there are those of us who will pay for games but will never pay for micro-transactions of this kind.  Honestly if a game company wants money from me they are going to have to sell me the game.  $3.99 would be good.  $6.99 OK, and $9.99 for this totally do-able.  But I'll never pay $0.99 for three "hint points"; I'd rather be stuck forever.  I'd even pay for "packs" that increase the number of puzzles but not for extra moves, hints, or whatever the hell else your marketing people told you was a great idea to charge for.

Anyway, the bottom line is that if you can stand that they flash ads at you, and that hints beyond the initial few are only available for cash, then it's an entertaining diversion for a few hours.

The 100 (pilot)

I noticed The 100 (the television show) had made it to Netflix here in Canada and watched the pilot on Thursday.

dvd/blu-ray | on demand

The concept is intriguing: Earth was devastated by a nuclear holocaust and the only surviving humans live on The Ark, a space station made up of other, smaller space stations that have banded together (literally and figuratively) for survival. 97 years after the devastation, The Ark is sending a hundred people back to Earth to see if they survive.

Unfortunately, the concept falls apart completely within the firsts several minutes of the show.  Those hundred being sent?  They're all convicts, and they're all teenagers in the 16 to 17 year-old range.  None have had the least training in survival.  And most remarkable of all (despite, sometimes, supposed years in solitary confinement, rough treatment from the guards, and the unexpected crash landing of their pod) all of them are impeccably coiffed, plucked, and made-up — and reasonably sane.  No, seriously: one of the main characters is a girl who spent the first sixteen years of her life being hidden in the floor of her house because, under the Ark's one-child policy, her very existence was a crime.  When she was discovered, her mother was immediately executed and she was placed in solitary confinement for a solid year.  Yet she's still entirely lucid, pretty gregarious, and happily chasing boys within ten minutes of crash landing.

The main premise is that on this space station of about 2,400 people (I think?) — the very last of the human race — laws have gotten positively draconian, and the breaking of any rule, no matter how minor, results in imprisonment for minors and execution for adults.  There is no mercy.  The kids we meet are in for growing pot, taking a space walk, knowing a secret, or simply being born and most of them, it seems, have had one or both parents executed for being complicit in their various crimes.

And this is where any believability just gets stretched just a little too thin; people would not be hanging out all chill in a ruthless, authoritarian society where their fellows are executed and their children imprisoned and tortured for petty crimes.  Especially in a strictly one-child society.  Sure, in a giant faceless bureaucracy, all kinds of people fall through the cracks but — and this frequently irritates me in post-apocalyptic fiction — when there are so few people left, the idea that all they do is turn so viciously on each other, killing one another left and right and allowing the un-charismatic psychopaths among them to rule the roost, instead of, you know, cooperating, seems more a product of modern narcissism and individualistic exceptionalism than it does a product of a tiny band of humans on the brink of extinction.

There are a lot of problems along this line in the show.  If resources are so tight that there is a one-child rule and you can get stuck in prison for going on a spacewalk on a lark, then why are so many useless prisoners tolerated, you know, up to the point they pick out a hundred of them (how many are there, anyway?) and decide to shoot them at the Earth?  In the pilot alone, we see a gifted doctor condemned to death for giving an injured patient more than the "allowed amount" of blood during a surgery.  And this makes no sense: a community like this needs its surgeons.  They are expensive to train, have specialist knowledge, and are not disposable.  And really, this would be such a no-brainer to solve: a rule like this would be enforced by a petty (and far more disposable) bean-counter who was the only one able to dole out the valued resource and the only one held responsible if the allowed amount was exceeded.  A sane society (that is, one that had managed to survive 97 years in space after a nuclear holocaust) would take the decision to even violate the law out of the hands of the high-value and expensively-trained member of society and put it in the hands of someone whose only value was in controlling the flow of that resource.  (To anyone who grew up experiencing HMOs in the U.S., this sort of bureaucrat-induced health care rationing seems like it would be second nature.)

Irrationality is at every turn: At one point the pro tempore chancellor of the space station, a man made out to be both short-sighted and evil, takes his underling aside to explain that friendships are useless, mean nothing, and can have no sway on decisions.  So how does someone so unlikable and stupid get to such a position of power (let alone remain un-murdered) if not for the many friends who benefit from his position?

Oh, and this one might be a bit too nit-picky (feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph) but here it goes: these chosen Hundred are supposed to have been shot down to Earth somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains near Mount Weather, Virginia.  Why then are these kids running amok through (what looks to me) a Pacific Northwest rain forest?  Maybe that kind of observation is only possible to someone who grew up in one region or the other, but it's pretty glaring if you did.  (I suspect this show was filmed in Washington state or British Columbia, and that's why, but it looks silly, especially when they have shots of ragged snow-capped peaks instead of the gently rolling Blue Ridge Mountains.)  Sorry, I had to get that out there.  These instances were just one more thing piled onto the many other problems that made me turn to the person watching this with me and go, "Muh?"

And you know, all that might still be forgivable — from "not a one of our writers seems to know a thing about group dynamics" to "we have no idea what the Appalachian Mountains look like" — if the dialogue weren't mind-numbingly hackneyed.  All the scripting says to me is "Teen survival drama is hot right now, right?  We cranked this out as fast as we could.  Tweens won't know the difference!"  The actors do as best they can with the dialogue — I mean, they look as serious as possible when uttering lines that make them seem like the remains of humankind were educated solely by watching TV melodramas and action flicks — but it soon grates on the ear.

There are twelve more episodes in season one, and the thing got sixteen episodes for season two, but the whole of the pilot just couldn't give me a good enough reason to stick it out and see where it goes.

Borderlands: The Pre-sequel

pc | pc download | xbox 360 |
ps3 | ps3 code | mac download  

I've been playing Borderlands: The Pre-sequel since its release in October with a co-op partner.  This past weekend, we finally finished the main game, and now have gone back again in True Vault Hunter Mode to see what that has in store for us.

We've been having a lot of fun with the game.  The game does not have a lot of big UI or engine differences from Borderlands 2, except for four, and those range from pretty fun to really fun.

The Additions
First, they've introduced cryo as an element type: after you freeze then melee-shatter your first enemy, you'll be hooked too.

Second, a large areas of the game are low gravity, which means your character can jump a long, long way.  In combination with the Oz kits (oxygen kits for breathing in those areas without air), the low gravity also allows for double-jumps (for extra floaty spacetime fun) and for gravity slams (which everyone really calls "butt slams"), where you power your character downward from a low-gravity jump by releasing oxygen from their kit and then slam into the ground, knocking back any nearby enemies.  (Oz Kits also come with elemental modifications so you can do, for example, electrical or corrosive butt slams.)

Looking out at Serenity's Waste
with my new favorite laser.

Third, they've included a new weapon type: lasers.  Lasers vary anywhere from single-shot and burst-shot varieties into a full, continuous beam mode I like to call "firehose mode", which can be a great deal of fun, too — just point and spray damage at your enemies.

Fourth, but not least, there is a new vehicle — the Stingray.  There is the standard two-person, four-wheeled vehicle which, in B:TPS, is called the Moon Buggy (or the Moon Zoomy). but the Stingray is a single-person hovercraft that can jump and slam; think of it like a space bike.

To quote Stig, "Don't tell me we get to use the space bikes!"

The Characters and Classes
There are four classes to play in the base game; as they introduce them, we have Athena as the Gladiator, Wilhelm as the Enforcer, Nisha as the Lawbringer, and Claptrap as a Mistake.

Athena's customization screen

Athena you may remember as an NPC from The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC.  Athena's skills focus on shotgun and SMG, with her special ability being the Aspis, a shield that absorbs damage coming from in front of her and can be thrown to deal damage — in fact, this shield is why her preferred weapons are the point-and-shoot variety rather than the precise-aiming variety since, with the Aspis out, she cannot zoom in for a scoped shot.

Wilhelm you may recall as an NPC from Borderlands 2 where he was the first major boss faced by the Vault Hunters in that game.  Wilhelm's skills focus on heavy weapons, especially lasers (but he's pretty good with all guns).  His special ability is Wolf and Saint: Wolf is an aggressive attack drone and Saint is a passive support drone, and they can get quite powerful.

Nisha may be remembered as the Sheriff of Lynchwood in Borderlands 2.  Her general focus is on pistols, and her special ability, Showdown, puts her in an auto-aim mode that drastically increases her gun damage, fire rate, accuracy, reload speed, and bullet speed.  Her skill tree allows her to dual wield pistols, as well, though she does loose the right-mouse aim mode when doing this.

Finally, there's CL4P-TP, who needs really no introduction as Claptrap.  Except he's actually FR4G-TP — the same Claptrap as the Interplanetary Ninja Assassin Claptrap from the Claptrap's New Robot Revolution DLC.  Was he meant as a serious character and class?  It's hard to say but do note that in choosing Claptrap as your character, you have to confirm  more than once that this is what you really want to do.  Claptrap's special ability is VaultHunter.EXE, a somewhat random collection of things that occur when the ability is triggered — some may be quite effective, others humorous, and some potentially disastrous.  His skill tree is equally ludicrous, with specializations of "Boomtrap" (explosive damage and guns), "I Love You Guys!" (support), and "Fragmented Fragtrap" (rewarding versatility and adaptability as his strengths and weaknesses periodically change).

The Milieu
B:TPS takes place on Pandora's moon, Elpis, and on the Hyperion space station that you can see in the sky in the other Borderlands games (you know, that giant H-shaped satellite by the moon).  Time-wise, the story takes place between Borderlands and Borderlands 2 — in playing B:TPS you get to find out what happened to Brick, Mordecai, Lilith, and Roland from the original game in the immediate aftermath of the Vault's opening, and what made Handsome Jack (and Wilhelm and Nisha) into the characters you meet in Borderlands 2.  Some old favorites make appearances as well — Moxxi in particular shows up as the proprietor of Moxxi's Up Over (a pub on the moon).  It can be a little confusing at first, though, because the story you're experiencing is actually being told to Lilith by Athena after the events of Borderlands 2.

While the bulk of Pandora's denizens in the first two games are voiced with American accents, Elpis is, apparently, Pandora's Oceania.  A good many of the accents are Australian, and a lot of the jokes and references are Australian, too.  This is fairly pervasive, from the O² kits being called "Oz Kits", place names such as Burraburra, and "Springy Shiela" grenade mods, to talk of billabongs, jumbucks, and tuckerbags, and a roving enemy known as the Swagman.  While some people seem to really hate this aspect of the voice acting and find the thick Aussie accents distracting or annoying, I find it pretty charming and a nice change from the North American hicks and rednecks of Borderlands and Borderlands 2.

One of the many (many many) references to Australia.

The Game
The game itself seemed a little short to me, but not so short that it's "just another DLC" as some complain.  It can actually take a lot of time to do all the side quests and to work on challenges and achievements, if you're a die-hard completionist like me.  The extra game features and four new classes add enough that it's definitely a whole new game in the franchise.  I think the "too short" impression mostly comes about because the writing in the latter third or fourth of the game seems rushed and a little disjointed, and those story missions are prone to push, push, push you through too quickly if you let their intense urgency get to you.

There are some annoying aspects.  There are bugs that really should've been worked out by now, and by this I primarily mean mobs clipping into walls where they can shoot your character but not, apparently, be shot by your toon.  And it's bad that it's so damned easy to fall through the scenery and die that I've done it at least a dozen times just in the course of normal hunt-for-Vault-symbols style exploration.  Yesterday my co-op partner and I took down one of the "secret" boss mobs only to find that it was bugged, and didn't spawn the exit it was supposed to, and so our characters had to die to get out of its lair which shouldn't happen.  My co-op partner and I also found a too-large number of Challenges that could only be triggered by one character in the zone (we had to reload the zone for the other of us to be able to get it) and at least one that I have not been able to complete even though he got the completion on it when my character picked up the fifth of the five necessary items.

Still, if you like the Borderlands series, this is more of the same and you will enjoy it, and it's a very fun ride to boot.

The Synchronicity War Part 1

Kindle | Paperback

I finished The Synchronicity War Part 1 by Dietmar Arthur Wehr about a week ago, and have since been (in the back of my mind) wondering just what to write about it.

I can say that it mostly kept me interested, and that I did want to find out what was going on and what would happen; I can say that the writing a fairly high standard for a free, self-published book (and I really appreciated that after some of the other self-published works that I read this Summer).  I can also say that I'm leaning toward buying the next book in the series to find out what's going on and how it turns out (only my already-extensive "to read" list is slowing me down).

The story itself is about Victor Shiloh, a commander in the United Earth Space Force, whose exploration frigate has come across signs of alien life — very hostile alien life.  It follows his, and Space Force's, preparations to meet the enemy and a few of the subsequent encounters with them.

My criticisms come down to two, primarily.  First, the characters in the book do not have a lot of development.  After finishing the book, I still know very little about them and even though I spent nearly the entire thing in the mind of Victor Shiloh and "listening" to him talk, at length, about the alien foe, I still don't know a thing about his past or what made him who he is.  Second, a very large portion of the books is "tell" rather than "show" — that is, the characters themselves talk and explain things to one another, or even offer chapter-long speeches to describe their plans.  It's almost more like a transcript at points than a novel.

I ended up feeling that Part 1 here just really set the stage for the story and more is probably coming. Probably.  I would say that the narrative it isn't typical of modern Sci-Fi, but rather harks back to writings from three or four decades ago in terms of style and pacing — and that isn't a bad thing, though it's good to be in that mindset when picking the book up.  Overall, the book's flaws certainly do not outweigh its merits, and it could end up being a very good story by the end,

This book has lending enabled on the Kindle.  If you actually know me and you'd like a loan of it, get in touch (though, as of the writing of this, the book is currently free on Kindle).

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Hardcover | Kindle | Audiobook

Earlier this month I read Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty.

I will start by saying that this book probably isn't for everyone — though it likely should be.

Doughty is the proprietor of  the Order of the Good Death website and the creator-host of the Ask a Mortician YouTube series. So, as you can probably guess, her work tends to focus on things most of us would rather not think about: dying, decay, cremation, and burial.

Nevertheless, it's a good read.  Doughty goes through the various steps of her life which led her to become not only a crematory operator and a licensed mortician, but also a proponent of "death positivity".

Her writing is witty and engaging, even when the subject matter might be otherwise disgusting, off putting, or taboo.  The book, overall, is conversational in tone and you can hear the author's voice (if you know it from her videos) as you read.

The only thing is, it may be uncomfortable for some readers: it deals very frankly with death, with Doughty's own struggles with OCD and depression, and, most importantly, with the death industry as most of us have never known it.  It goes into some detail about what it takes to make your average corpse as "presentable" as most of us think it should be, and it's not pretty.

But it's a very good read and I do recommend it highly; it will almost certainly teach you things you didn't know before.

Modern hieroglyphs

Something that often interests me is design, and especially non-verbal design intended to help us language-using monkeys figure out how to use, do, or build things.  I'm not sure if it's quite right to call this UX (user experience), but I'm not sure what else to name it.

So, that out of the way, the image here is an interesting piece of instruction I received this week from HP, inside an envelope that also contained a laptop power cable.

I don't know how long I stared at it before finally figuring out what they were trying to tell me to do.

There has to be a better way to give people this instruction.  Does it really cost that much to have simple instructions written up and translated?  Does it cost more than this set of pictograms cost?  I can't really say.

But this isn't the first time I've received baffling instructions from HP.

Back when I bought my laptop, it came packed in a bag with a series of pictures on it that, I'm pretty sure, meant "Autoerotic asphyxiation strictly not allowed".

Or maybe that was just my interpretation.  Someone else has said they thought that it meant "No playing spaceman!"

Goblin Quest

Hardback |  Paperback | Kindle

I picked up Goblin Quest by Jim C. Hines because I'd happened by the author's blog (on a completely unrelated topic) and liked what he had to say and so decided to pick up one of his books.

Goblin Quest was really very enjoyable.  It follows Jig, who is a goblin.  And if goblins are the lowest of all the species, I'm afraid poor Jig is the lowest of the low — he's small, scrawny, terribly near-sighted, and cowardly (even for a goblin).  After being bullied into "scouting" for his cousin's guard patrol, Jig and his pet spider, Smudge, end up captured by four adventurers who are seeking the fabled Rod of Creation.  And since Jig lives in the dungeon where the rod is hidden, they reckon, he ought to be a good guide for them.

Here, the traditional heroic quest is turned on its head and viewed through eyes of a goblin.  Will they find the Rod of Creation before the party's mage goes (even more) insane?  Will the warrior of the group get sick of Jig and dispose of him just as adventurers of his ilk dispose of so many other goblins?  Why is there a miserable elven girl with the party?  And just why does the dwarven priest put up with any of them?

The book is actually a light and pleasant read, and while it's not written in a comic style it still has plenty of humor and wit.  It's a quick read, and would likely be good for both adult and young adult readers.  Those of us who have enjoyed our own D&D campaigns over the years (perhaps, even, with captured goblin scouts, ahem) will certainly enjoy the story and the perspective.

Animal Wise

Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle | Audiobook

This week, I read Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of our Fellow Creatures by Virginia Morell.

The book is a fairly short (about 300 pages in its print edition) non-fiction work covering some of the latest studies in animal cognition.  In a series of chapters, each generally dedicated to one animal or a pair of animals, it covers ants, fish, parrots, rats, elephants, dolphins (captive and wild), chimpanzees, dogs, and wolves.

In essence, the book is a very approachable look at the current state of animal cognition research.  It does not go into depth on any of the topics — you would likely need to read the scientists' own papers for that — but rather contains a series of discussions, interviews, and anecdotes mostly resulting from the author's work as a science writer for various magazines.

I've seen some criticism of the book from the perspective that it does not acknowledge humans as "specially created" and therefore is hostile to that view.  I wouldn't say it's hostile to to that view per se, but rather the author does not really accommodate that view, and rather relies on science.  The point is closer to being that we should not really be surprised by animals having emotions and being able to do certain things that we can do since we have, essentially many of the same physical structures and motivations that they do.

I actually found it a very interesting read and learned of some studies I had not known were taking place, particularly around the thinking abilities of birds, fish, and ants.  (Really, it's a good jumping off point for looking deeper into some of the studies.)  My only wish really was that it was longer and that it filled in more detail on some of its assertions (e.g., that butterflies remember being caterpillars).

Last Woman

I spent a couple nights last week reading Jaqueline Druga's Last Woman, which I'd picked up on (yet another) Amazon sale.

Paperback | Kindle

For what I paid, it was a good enough read and enough entertainment for two nights.  The story is about Faye.  The last thing Faye remembers is going out drinking with some friends, having a bit too much, and passing out — and then she wakes up in a mass grave some weeks later as, quite possibly, the last woman on earth.

As premises go for  post-apocalyptic fiction it's a pretty interesting start; and overall I was entertained enough by the book to keep reading.  The story is not heart-pounding (this is not a thriller!), and the characters are a little difficult to get a real grasp on or liking for, but the pace kept things developing and I was happy to go along for the ride and find out what happened.

My main criticism is that it is in desperate need of an editor.  A too-hefty portion of it is written in sentence fragments and lone subordinate clauses, and even when it's not comma splices are commonplace.  This is combined with several cases where a word has been used incorrectly (it's often hard to tell if these are malapropisms or the result of autocorrect gone horribly awry).  As a result,  the reader has to spend time actively deciphering just what the author may have actually intended, and that can seriously detract from both immersion and enjoyment.

Nevertheless, the story has promise.  Like a lot of self-published Kindle books, though, it seems like it just really gets started when it ends and (lo and behold) there's a second book to buy in order to continue. I haven't decided if I'll buy its sequel yet, but very likely not unless it, too, goes on sale.

This book has lending enabled on the Kindle.  If you know me and you'd like a loan of it, just get in touch.

State of Decay

PC Digital Key | XBox Digital Key

I've been playing Undead Labs's State of Decay for the past several weeks after nabbing it on a Steam sale. The game is a single-player third-person zombie apocalypse sandbox of sorts: while the main game has a storyline to follow, you certainly don't need to follow it and the story won't advance until you do, giving you a lot of time to just poke around.

I have enjoyed the game very much.  It's certainly interesting enough to play and while it starts out reasonably tame, it can get quite difficult.

The main game begins with your character and a buddy returning to the more civilization-adjacent parts of a national park after a two-week fishing trip only to find that, while you were gone, civilization kind of had a major meltdown.

From there, the game focuses on steath and survival by building up friendships with others and establishing a base from which to operate and outposts to reinforce that base and provide small "safe zones".

Ed and Marcus, returning from their fishing trip.

Criticisms

The criticisms I have are few.  To start, the story is very simple and somewhat shallow — it would be easy to play through it relatively quickly and then be just done with the game.  A lot more could have been done, but, as I understand it this was Undead Labs's first game, so we will perhaps see more story development in their next full release.

Second, there just isn't enough information in the tutorial; you feel bombarded with information (because a lot comes in through your Journal) that you can't make much sense of — and then lost because basic information (such as the benefits of establishing an Outpost, or whether it's wise to leave resources in Outposts or loot them thoroughly before setting one up in a location) can be a little difficult to find (so much so that I took notes as I played and figured them out and ended up writing a Quick Start Guide)

Third, there are too few voice actors, meaning that you end up with the same voice actors' lines being used for several different characters who end up sounding exactly the same while they say (verbatim) the same things; get two of them with the same voice together on a mission and it can get kind of confusing.

Finally: the driving physics and UI need some work.  The game was set up for XBox, so maybe this is where PC players like me start to have problems.  But while I can play Saints Row and Grand Theft Auto and drive just fine, I find the driving in State of Decay frustrating — especially because the smallest mistake can send a car sailing through the air as though it suddenly weighs nothing.  And cars that turn over always explode, so there's that.

Praise

Meanwhile, though, State of Decay is nice to look at: the colors are just muted enough to evoke the proper autumn at the end-of-the-world feeling, and there has been a lot of attention to detail in filling out the large area (Trumbull Valley) in which your character gets to roam.  There are three small towns to explore, as well as a lot of countryside, with a lot of interesting things to look at if you appreciate the details.

Ed, Marcus, and Maya, talking stuff through at the river.

The game also makes you take a step back and figure out how to survive.  Your character can go stealth or maniac, or pretty much anything in between.  But don't count on the zombies to cooperate since that's sure to get your favorite character eaten nearly every time.  And since death is final, that really makes a difference.

Strategy and sound are important, which I really enjoy, and on top of that there is also resource management to deal with: you've got a base full of survivors who need food, medicine, and ammunition to remain survivors, and construction materials to keep their base up.  Scavenging through the zombie-infested, burnt-out world is a constant necessity.

An homage to Plants vs. Zombies

In the end, the game is definitely worth a few bucks (especially if you can catch it on sale), and I look forward to other games from Undead Labs.

Breakdown DLC

I've played several hours of the Breakdown DLC (at level 5, currently), and it's been a lot of fun and a lot of frustration, but the frustration really seems to be the point of it.  It's primarily the sandbox version of the base game, with a couple simple tasks to do to "move to the next level".  Each level, the zombies get more numerous and more difficult to deal with and the scavenge-able resources get harder to find.

If you don't mind that sort of challenge — the one where you are pretty sure you'll ultimately fail — it can end up being a lot of fun.

Lifeline DLC

I haven't gotten to the Lifeline DLC yet.  I'll be writing more when I do!

Happy Birthday to Meeeeeee!

Received three new games for my birthday:  Assassin's Creed: Black Flag and Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece from mom and dad, and a pre-purchase of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel from my dear love.

I'm looking forward to a lot of good gaming, and I'll keep you updated about how it goes.

The Dead

This past week I finished reading The Dead by Mark E Rogers.

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The story centers on Gary Holland who returns home to the Jersey Shore for his father's funeral and ends up facing the end of the world (somewhat) zombie-apocalypse style.

Initially, I enjoyed the book quite a bit.  The author writes very well and the horror really is there for the first few chapters.  I did read all the way through to the end, and it wasn't terrible — I did stay interested in just exactly how it would end, though it's not long before anyone who has some familiarity with the Bible can predict at least the general ending.

And that's really where the author left me behind and left me feeling duped.  I was set for a good and proper horror novel — and there is some horror there — but the horror dissipated once I realized what the story was he was telling.

There is a lot of dialogue in this book — and while that's not a bad thing, this dialogue means that the reader has to sit through a lot of entry-level theological debate which always ends up as god-fearing folk good, everyone else (and especially atheists) petty, childish, violent, perverse, and insanely selfish.

By the end I felt preached to rather than entertained, and as though someone had stolen my good apocalypse novel and given me an anti-abortion Chick Tract instead.  The book still might be worth it if you can deal with that kind of proselytizing.  For me, though, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

This book has lending enabled on the Kindle.  If you know me and you'd like a loan of it, just get in touch.