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Showing posts from February, 2016

Poly Bridge Impressions

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Poly Bridge is a game that I kept seeing gifs of on reddit.  In it you get a set of vehicles on the left and have to construct some type of bridge with the materials available to get them to the flags on the right. It starts out easy with unlimited resources but soon starts limiting you in interesting ways.  You won't have enough road sections so you'll have to build a jump instead.  Or you won't have enough material to make a bridge that goes up and over an income ship so you'll have to make a draw bridge with working hydraulics. It's been a really fun game to jump into for a few minutes at a time.  I think my average play session is ten to fifteen minutes, but I find myself coming back to it fairly regularly. I think most people who have fun building things would enjoy this game.  I grabbed it on sale on Steam for less than $10 and you probably should too.  We all know, there's always another Steam sale right around the corner.

The Flash Season 1 Review

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I marathoned The Flash Season 1 in three days.  I haven't had a show hook me like this in... I honestly don't know how long. In the first season The Flash is easily one of the best superhero shows I've ever seen.  Every single episode drives the overall season-spanning story arc forward.  And the show moves along at a really good pace within each episode as well.  Pacing is super important to me.  When shows get too slow I get bored, tune out, and give up on them.  That didn't happen at all throughout the first season of this show. It even ended on a cliffhanger that makes me really  want to jump into season 2 immediately.  So, I probably will. One of the coolest things about The Flash is how much fun Barry Allen has being The Flash.  It's not some grimdark angsty superhero like so often happens.  From the very first episode Barry thinks his powers are awesome.  He has fun with them while training and while saving people.  You can really tell that he loves

Stargate Universe Impressions

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If you haven't noticed by now I'm catching up on a lot of TV that's come out over the past 5-10 years.  I finally have time to catch back up after having kids.  It's just impossible when they're little. Anyway, Stargate Universe was one of the shows that I liked in my big pilot watching spree .  Unfortunately, this is another show that I gave up on after a handful of episodes. I think I watched five episodes before giving up.  The problem, for me, is that the show became too much of a slow paced mystery.  I like Sci-Fi shows that are about exploration and discovery.  In SGU there was just too much sitting around wondering about the ship that they're on to keep me interested. My brother mentioned that it also just doesn't feel  like Stargate.  The other Stargate shows are all about exploring new places through the Stargate every week.  In SGU they're just kinda on a ship.  Even the episode I saw where they visited a planet through their Stargate

Tsuro for Mobile Review

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This is an iOS game that I've been playing a lot lately when I have a spare minute or two.  It's actually the digital version of a board game that has been on my wishlist for awhile. In Tsuro you start with your stone on one end of the board and choose/lay a tile in front of you.  Your stone follows the path on the tile all the way to the end.  Everyone takes a turn and then on your turn you choose and lay another tile.  The goal of the game is to be the last stone still on the board. As the board fills up it gets harder and harder to lay a tile in front of your stone without it connecting to an already existing tile.  When that happens your stone follows that path all the way to the end as well, which might send it right off the board. It's been nice to finally play it a bunch against different AI levels.  It's fun and scalable.  I like how it's simple enough and complex enough at the same time. Now I really want to pick up the board game version of it.

Star Trek: Enterprise Review

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After really enjoying the pilot of Star Trek: Enterprise I was quickly let down by the following episodes. Although I have to say, I really like the show's intro that walks through the history of flight and space travel.  I know it gets a ton of hate too, but it's actually one of my favorite Star Trek openings.  It has some character to it. After not clicking with the first few episodes after the pilot, I did what I have with a couple other series lately... I looked up a "best episodes" list.  Doing so let me sample the best of what Star Trek: Enterprise has to offer.  And honestly, some of these episodes are just as good as any other Star Trek show. The problem is that there aren't many of them. Most of the best episodes in the series tend to break the normal formula of a Star Trek episode.  That's when you can tell both the actors and writers are truly at their best. It's kind of funny, I find myself once again drawn to some of the time tr

The Secret History of Star Wars Impressions

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The Secret History of Star Wars is a book I really wanted to like. The author approaches the behind the scenes history of George Lucas and the creation of the original trilogy with an in depth look at the process.  He uses historical documents and drafts of the screenplays along with a ton of interviews and testimony from Lucas and those who know him well. I made it about 40% into the book before getting frustrated and putting it down forever. The problem I had is that the author often retreads the same ground from multiple different sources.  He'll walk through an interesting historical note, back it up with quotes from relevant people, and then seem to start moving onto the next thing... but then go back to the beginning of the subject instead and use different quotes to say the exact same thing.  And then go back and do it a third or fourth time. I wonder if he had a word count that he promised his publisher because it truly feels like he's just adding fluff to m

Voyager Season 7 Review

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In this final season of Voyager it seems like the writers are finally having fun with the existing crew again.  I bet they feel confident that they can start wrapping up character arcs since it's the last season and it really shows. The characters all have moments that develop them further and it's great to see.  I love that two of the main characters, Tom and Be'lanna, finally get married.  It took basically the whole series, but that's ok.  They also get pregnant!  It's really good to see characters reach the completion of their arcs. It's great to slowly see the crew get more and more contact with Star Fleet as they get closer to home.  Some of my favorite episodes of the season were ones involving contact with Star Fleet after so much time apart. There's an episode where the Doctor gets to fight for his legal right to be acknowledged as a person and not an object.  While he doesn't get full legal acknowledgment as a person he does get legal

Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright Initial Impressions

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I downloaded the brand new Fire Emblem Fates earlier today when it released and after picking up the Birthright version I had enough time to sit down and play it for one full charge of my 3DS battery. My initial impressions are really good.  It has everything I loved about the first 3DS entry in the series, Fire Emblem Awakening, but it's been refined and added to.  The core of the combat system is still the same as is the relationship system and I'm really happy with that.  It didn't need big changes.  The minor tweaks they've done are for convenience. The biggest difference I've noticed right from the start is the attention paid to the story.  In Fire Emblem Awakening it had a very typical (and stereotypical) story that was easy to predict even though it was well executed.  In Fire Emblem Fates they've created three unique storylines depending on a key choice you make near the beginning of the game.  I'm already seeing huge ramifications and I can

Voyager Season 6 Review

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I think that after writing this story for six seasons the writers are mostly out of new ideas.  There's a ton of reset TV this season. I was able to fly through this season because so many of the episodes were fast-forwardable or skippable. Again, new characters are shoehorned in where they aren't needed, like the Borg children.  It feels like they ran out of new ideas for the existing crew so the need to tack on extra characters to have it feel fresh.  Instead, I just don't care about the new characters. That being said, there are now some episodes that feel like they will lead to the conclusion of the series.  There's an especially cool one that mostly takes place in San Fransico.  There's a Star Fleet officer obsessed with re-establishing contact with Voyager now that they know the crew is alive.  In the end he's able to make contact for a minute or two and Voyager gets to trade ship logs and information with Star Fleet. By the end of the season V

Voyager Season 5 Review

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This is the first season of Voyager that seems full of pointless episodes.  This is where "reset TV" rears it's ugly head. A lot of TV shows in the 80s and 90s were set up so that they basically wrapped up every episode so neatly that you could watch it the next week without having missed anything.  Up through season 4 I felt like most of the Voyager episodes at least had some character development that pushed things forward each episode.  For season 5 this isn't true at all. There are so many episodes in this season that don't move the story or characters forward at all.  You can easily watch the cold open and then the last 2 minutes and still understand everything you needed to get out of the episode.  In a lot of cases you could safely skip the episodes entirely. At this point I'm committed to finishing the series but season 5 put a damper on my enthusiasm.  At least I know that there are only 7 seasons and then the show wraps up. It's not l

Nintendo Accounts Are Live!

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I don't usually do breaking news, but Nintendo Accounts are live now in the US (and maybe worldwide).  They've been launched in Japan for awhile now but we're just getting them in the West. The Nintendo Account is what the company is using going forward instead of the old Nintendo Network ID (NNID) system.  It's what all their new consoles and mobile efforts will connect to. As a PSA go grab your preferred username before someone else does! And then go "pre-register" for the new Miitomo app to earn some of the new Nintendo reward currency on your account.  The new Nintendo Platinum is taking the place of the old Club Nintendo system. I'm really excited to have rewards back from Nintendo.  They've hinted all the rewards will be digital, but that's fine with me.  Discounts and money back for digital purchases would be great.

Bands of Mourning Review

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Bands of Mourning is the third book in the second set of the Mistborn series.  It follows Waxilliam six months after the events of Shadows of Self .  It directly deals with the fallout from that book and it picks up really quickly. I think Bands of Mourning was the best paced and most consistently interesting in this set of Mistborn books.  I'm sure that part of that is because it ties into the previous book so well and builds on it.  I didn't feel that way nearly as much between the first and second book. Bands of Mourning finds the main characters needing to leave the central city where they've spent the last book and go investigate what's happening in the wider world.  They're looking for a legendary item, the Bands of Mourning, because it could have a power that would change the world. While I still don't love this alternate history early 1900s type of setting at this point I really like the main characters and I want to know what happens to them.

Persona 4 Golden Review

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Persona 4 Golden is one of the greatest JRPGs that I've ever played.  It's amazing.  I was blown away.  I haven't had a game hook me like Persona 4 did in such a long time, it was absolutely a treat. The game is extremely story driven.  If you don't like story in your RPGs then this one isn't for you.  The whole game encompasses a year in the life of the unnamed protagonist (you) as you spend a year in a new town as a transfer student. You move in with your uncle and cousin in the small town of Inaba and start the school year.  You begin to make friends with other students when a series of murders happens in the local community and things take off from there. It turns out there's a whole other world that this one is connected to and inside of it are shadows (enemies) and Personas (positive super-powered versions of people).  A lot of the fun is the mystery of finding out what is going on with the connection between worlds as you and your widening gr

Parks and Recreation Review

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I marathoned Parks and Recreation with my wife over the course of about a week and a half.  We had never tried the show but after watching the first few episodes we were hooked and flew through all seven seasons really fast. It's a really funny modern sitcom.  It's in the style of a lot of modern sitcoms where the people know they're being recorded for whatever reason and often look at or play to the camera.  The style is a bit of an acquired taste, but if you've seen it before you probably know if you like it or not. It's an ensemble cast of government employees, mostly in the Parks and Recreation department.  It sounds super boring which is probably why I never checked it out before, but the characters make it hilarious.  I finally see why everyone loves Ron Swanson. The seasons are also really consistently good.  It falters a bit in season 5 but manages to find it's legs again by the end of the season.  Even then it's not bad, it's just

The Witness Review

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I have an un-popular opinion on The Witness.  I really didn't like it that much. I keep seeing it be lauded with praise but I found the core of the game frustrating and boring at the same time. You see, The Witness looks like it's going to be a gorgeous game of exploring a beautiful island.  And in a way it is.  And I love that part of the game... I wanted that to be  the game.  Exploration is a huge motivator for me in the games I play. But The Witness, at it's core, is a series of line puzzles.  They come in different shapes and varieties but the whole game is line puzzle after line puzzle after line puzzle.  I was bored of it so fast. I honestly would have had more fun with the game if every puzzle were able to be solved by a simple left click.  That way I could have wandered the island to my heart's content. I even held out hope to the very end that maybe the ending of the game would tie the story of the island together and give me some narrative payof

Trying to Stop Being Completionist

One of my biggest goals for last year with media was to stop always being completionist.  I have the habit of feeling like I started something so I should finish it. I did pretty good last year.  From sampling all my Steam games in my library to finally being able to walk away from a book partway through.  I'm trying to continue the trend this year too. It's allowed me to sort through so many games, books, movies, and TV shows while actually spending time on the good stuff once I find it. Recently, I tried reading a different series by an author that I like and got about a quarter of the way into the first book when I realized I wasn't enjoying it at all.  It wasn't for me.  And that's ok.  Being ok with it is the biggest accomplishment of this for me.  It used to be that if I was a quarter of the way into a book I was already committed and would finish it even if I didn't like it. You can probably tell how fast I've flying through different kinds of

Duelyst Impressions

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I played a bunch of Duelyst and it's a fun mix of strategy, turn based games, and deck building.   I really like the potential here. The battle system has a general who can use abilities and summon monsters from your deck.  You draw new abilities and monsters every turn so your options are constantly changing and evolving.  Instead of these being cards they turn into actual characters that go on a board.  The game mixes current digital card games with turn based strategy games on a grid based field.  It's a really fun combination. It honestly reminds me of a fresh modern version of Hero Academy which I loved when it came out.  Except with Duelyst the battles happen much faster because it's not asynchronous. Duelyst is still early access but it's obvious that this game has lots of potential.  I played enough to know that I like it and that I'll want to play it when it actually releases.  But, I don't like pouring a lot of time into early access game

Voyager Season 4 Review

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Right near the beginning of the season some big changes happen on Voyager.  Kes leaves the ship in a blaze of telepathic glory that superspeeds the ship another 10 years closer to the Alpha Quadrant.  Right around the same time Seven of Nine comes aboard. Seven of Nine is a Borg who is freed from the collective and quickly becomes one of the most interesting characters on the ship.  She brings into question what it means to be human and how to discover your humanity after being raised without it.  The episodes that focus on her are some of the best of the season. There's also a lot of development between Tom and B'elanna.  It's the first real romantic relationship on the ship that we see consistently being developed.  This is the season where they finally come together and have an official relationship.  It's a nice common thread that keeps moving forward throughout most of the episodes in Season 4. Not to mention that the Doctor once again gets a couple cool

Tharsis Impressions

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I played a bunch of Tharsis after hearing about it a few weeks ago.  I thought it was still early access, but it turns out it's a "full game".  It sure doesn't feel like it though. The core of the gameplay system is there but it feels like it needs options, missions, difficulty settings, and more fleshed out gameplay.  But, I really like what's there. Tharsis is a game about traveling to Mars and everything goes wrong.  It's a crisis management game.  Every turn you decide where your crew goes in the space traveling vessel and you roll dice for the crew to try to complete objectives. It's honestly like a board game made to be a video game.  I love board games and video games these days, which is what attracted me to Tharsis in the first place. Honestly, I really like it, but it feels incomplete. This one is going to go on the backburner for awhile until they add more to the game.  It's obvious that they intend to add more to the game and

Firewatch Review

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I just played through Firewatch and loved it.  The game only clocked it around the 4 hour mark for me, but it was wonderful.  I'm so happy when a dev tells their story and then wraps up the game.  This is the perfect example of a game that doesn't need to be 8+ hours to be worth the money. In Firewatch you get a little bit of backstory about your character and then start your first day on the job of watching for forest fires from your tower.  Your only line of communication is through a walkie-talkie to your direct supervisor and that's where the majority of the narrative takes place. But things quickly start to happen that you need to go investigate.  Most of the game finds you wandering the wilderness around your tower digging into things that are going on.  You use an actual compass and map along with a limited gear set to traverse the terrain. Not to mention the in-game disposable camera!  It only has around 20 shots, so make them count.  At the end of your

Voyager Season 3 Review

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Voyager is still going strong in season 3.  I don't have a ton to add to my initial impressions of the first two seasons, but it's worth noting that the show has remained consistently good.  I'm happy I've been able to find a Star Trek to enjoy... I was starting to worry that I wouldn't be able to recapture my ability to like the series. Season 3 finds the crew still on their roughly 70 year voyager home after getting flung into the Delta Quadrant of the galaxy. All the characters continue to develop but this season had particularly good episodes for The Doctor and Kes. The Doctor keeps evolving from his initial holo-programming and after one weird time travel episode he gets the technology to have a portable holo-emitter which allows him to finally walk wherever he wants.  It's used to great effect and he has some fantastic episodes.  I love seeing his personality continue to grow and I'm convinced that he's one of the best actors on the entir

Perfect State Review

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Perfect State is a Brandon Sanderson novella.  As such it has a unique world and fantastic worldbuilding, just like all of his writing.  I really liked it. In Perfect State each person is in their own version of the matrix but they know about it.  The computer generated world adapts to them as they live their lives.  The worlds can be anything from a modern setting, to a fantasy realm with magic, or super futuristic high tech. In the end the human race is basically brains in jars.  They've generally come to terms with it. The really interesting parts occur when these humans interact with people from other "states".  Essentially people from other matrixes.  Someone who has lived their entire life in a realm of magic can suddenly find themselves dealing with future tech and robots.  It's a very interesting culture clash. Since it's a novella it's a quick read.  I listened to it on Audible and it was about a 3 hour listen. Perfect State is the best

Final Fantasy Explorers Impressions

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Over the past couple days I've gotten to start digging into Final Fantasy Explorers.  It's a Final Fantasy spin-off game for the 3DS. It's basically Monster Hunter by way of Final Fantasy. After somewhere in the 6 to 8 hour range with the game I'm feeling very "meh" towards it.  I love the premise, getting to use Final Fantasy classes against monsters in the world.  But the game itself feels slow and directionless. It has really bad messaging to player.  It's hard to know what to focus on or what to do to improve your character.  There's also almost no story, which is typically something that keeps me invested in Final Fantasy games. I've finding Explorers less fun than I hoped it would be.  But it's not a straight up bad game.  There can be moments of fun against enemies or fighting giant eidolons out of the Final Fantasy lexicon like Ifrit and Shiva. I think I'm going to put this one on the backburner.  It might be better su

Punch Club Impressions

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I heard some good things about Punch Club so without really knowing what it was I picked it up on iOS since it was only a couple bucks. Punch Club is about training, improving stats, getting new abilities, and then using all that against other opponents in a fighting league.  It kinda has a Rocky vibe to it.  That underground old school boxing training.  Kinda. But really, at it's heart, Punch Club is an optimization engine.  It's for people who love to optimize everything.  If you're a theorycrafter or optimizer I can't think of a better game for you. While I like RPGs that allow me to find efficient ways to do things... there really isn't much more here.  It's just an optimization engine.  That's not enough to hook me.  It doesn't help that the setting and themes are ones that particularly appeal to me. But if you're someone who loves to optimize the hell out of your RPGs, you really should take a look at Punch Club.

Desert Golfing Review

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Desert Golfing is a mobile game I've heard about off and on for awhile.  It's a deceptively simple concept.  You use trajectory aiming on a 2D plane to hit a golf ball into a hole... in the desert.  Hence the name. The complexity comes in because some of the holes get extremely tricky.  And holes never repeat. I was really confused after hole 18... there was no menu, no stats screen, no selection options... it just went to hole 19.  Then 20.  Now I'm on hole 503 and I thought it was time to write some thoughts on the game. Honestly, this isn't ever going to be a game that you monotask.  That is to say, this is a perfect game to play while doing something else like listening to a podcast or watching TV.  It's great as a second activity when you're doing something that doesn't take up all your mental RAM. It seems like this desert goes on forever.  So, it's a game I'll keep picking away at over time.  It's pleasantly simple. Oh!  And

The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt Review

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Yeah, ok, I'm late to the party. I went back and forth about picking up this game ever since it released.  I had tried the first two Witcher games and they didn't click with me, but I kept hearing rave reviews about the series.  Then this third game launched and it's ended up on so many game of the year lists that it's crazy. One of the biggest Witcher advocates I've seen is Syl .  She's a long time blogging and twitter friend of mine (she's awesome, you should follow her on twitter ) and I think she finally got sick enough of my indecision that she grabbed the game for me when it was on Steam sale. I have to say, thank you so much Syl!  This game is great! I didn't think I was in a mood for another open world game, but this game has been fantastic.  The story hooked me within the first hour and I went almost entirely critical path ever since then. Even going critical path through this game I could see the detail to worldbuilding and dedica

Shadows of Self Review

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This is another in the long line of Brandon Sanderson novels I've read.  Wow, he's good at staying productive and getting his books completed.  This is the latest in his Mistborn series. The Mistborn world has great worldbuilding (as does all Sanderson writing) and a really cool magic system.  Magic users are able to burn specific metals inside their body to produce very specific effects.  It ends up being weirdly precise and scientific while being awesome at the same time. The last book in this series, Alloy of Law, was a jump forward from the original trilogy.  The events of the first trilogy are mostly myths and legends now.  The world has advanced past the medieval setting and is made up of mostly western and early 1900s type settings.  Basically an entire set of new characters were introduced. This book, Shadows of Self, starts to bring the old and new series together.  Characters and events from the first trilogy begin interacting with the new cast. I didn'

Joss Whedon: The Biography

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This book hooked me.  I started it not really expecting much and ended up finishing it over the course of one weekend. It's a biography but it's mostly about his history of creation in media.  It doesn't focus much on his childhood, and it's all the better for it.  Instead, it's broken down by what he was working on and when that happened.  There are multiple chapters devoted to some of the longer works, like Buffy, but it covers all of his film, video, TV, and comics up through The Avengers and prepping for Age of Ultron. The book gives lots more context for his work and it's made me appreciate things I already liked, but in a new light.  I have to admit, as soon as I finished it I re-watched Dr. Horrible.  It's probably my favorite made for the internet thing ever. Mostly, it just makes me excited to see what his next project will be.  I understand Joss Whedon as a creator so much more now and I'm definitely already interested in all  of his