essentialsaltes | Entries tagged with game

A Delicate Truth, by John Le Carre

Maybe not a great book, but a very good one, and an interesting wrinkle. Certain spylike shenanigans occur, and then rather than Le Carre's usual cast of spylike people, the attention focuses on civil servants who start pulling threads on something that just doesn't look right. And in fact isn't right. But will governments allow their amoral fiascoes to be exposed? Haha, of course not, silly.

Never, by Ken Follett

Chosen by the company book club. It's a great airplane read, with some more spylike people doing spylike things, and then geopolitical tensions increase until the Uberplot takes over, threatening the world. But will governments come to their senses rather than following tit for tat escalation until everything gets out of control? Haha, of course not, silly.

Playing with Reality: HOW GAMES HAVE SHAPED OUR WORLD By Kelly Clancy

Not quite what I expected, but fascinating nonetheless. A historical look at how games have done more than amuse, but change how we look at war, economy, intelligence, etc. Once upon a time, warlords played chess to hone their strategy. Then, in a bid to make it more pertinent as a simulation of battle, Kriegsspiel was developed, and that became a craze in the Prussian military (and beyond). I presume other wargames also developed out of this, but some people are going back to the original, including the Southern California Kriegsspiel Society, which meets at Strategicon according to Wikipedia. Game theory and how it is and isn't like the economic and political applications made of it in 'real life'. The development of game-playing software and its development from checkers to chess to Go to playing Atari 2600 games. DeepMind, which recently formed part of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for its protein folding solutions, also trained an AI to play Atari games.

Winter of the Gods, by Jordanna Max Brodsky

I gave it a chance, but I just couldn't get past the first few chapters. The Greek gods are alive and well in Manhattan. Just something about the overall tone and characterization -- not for me. Picked up for a pittance at a library sale -- I didn't realize then that it's a book 2 of a series, but that really wasn't the problem.

Bedlam: An Intimate Journey into America's Mental Health Crisis
by Kenneth Rosenberg, MD

A while back I watched the PBS documentary and Kristen mentioned there was a book. Dr. Rosenberg is not just a psychiatric expert, but also lived the experience of his sister struggling with severe mental illness. It was an interesting experience having seen the documentary first, as some of the same patients are profiled, and I could vividly picture some of the situations being described in text.

Disturbing and depressing as the book is, Rosenberg has a few recommendations. I'm not entirely sold on his idea to make it easier to commit people involuntarily, but it's also clear to see the problem of getting sick people to volunteer, due to the sickness itself, and the mind's ability to discount that it is sick. More obvious and acceptable is the idea to stop treating mental illness with criminal incarceration. I don't think it's anybody's intent, but the jails and prisons are the default 'care' in many cases. I think the one fact that sticks out most in my mind is that there are limits to how many beds a hospital can have dedicated for mental illness in order to qualify for Medicaid reimbursement. No more than 16 beds. Naturally this creates scarcity - when the beds are full (and they are) there is no way for new patients to get treatment.

However, there are no such limits on prison beds.

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A Master of Djinn
by P. Djèlí Clark

The book won the Nebula for Best Novel. I found it entertaining, but not that outstanding. In a world where the djinn have returned, an agent of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities has to deal with murders, secret societies, a mysterious figure, and magic being flung back and forth hither and yon. And possibly the end of the world. In some ways it recalled City of Stairs, which I faulted for having too perfect a heroine. And for somewhat the same reason, although at least Fatma gets beat up a bit more.

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

Merciful All-Father, this game is enormous. I usually explore every little sidequest and thingummy, but there's just too much. As absorbing as the game was, it literally started to wear out its welcome. I won't really knock it for that, because I got at least 2 games' worth of enjoyable content out of it. On we sweep with threshing oar.

And you can pet the cat. That's really all I need.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, by Walter Mosley.

I guess Apple made a miniseries with Sam Jackson in the lead role.

It's something of a Flowers for Algernon story. Ptolemy Grey is a 90-something black man in Los Angeles. He's getting very senile, but he dimly grasps he has something he has to take care of. His family and the neighborhood thugs take advantage of him, and he's virtually a shut-in. Two things radically change his life -- a young woman that begins to take care of him and an experimental treatment that will reverse his mental decline -- until it kills him. Definitely some really good writing to establish his hazy existence at the beginning, and slowly awakening and becoming more competent as the drug takes effect.

The Harp of the Grey Rose, by Charles de Lint.

An early novel from de Lint, from before the urban fantasy he's justly famous for. But even here, there's a hint of that. If the city dwellers in Newford find things a bit more magical than they expected, the main character in this finds there's a bit more fantasy than he expected in his fantasy world. A little jumbled, and the obligatory Tolkien nod that stands out like a sore thumb, but enjoyable.

Horizon Forbidden West

I enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn quite a bit, so I was excited about the sequel. They did a great job on this, keeping the feel pretty similar, but giving us a whole new Southwest to play in, including post-whoops Vegas and SF, and some other wrinkles. I think the first one had a better overall story and mystery to it, but I can see how it would be hard to graft a whole new even better story on to that, so I'll settle for the adequate one they provided. Not sure if this is a plus or minus, but for my tastes there were maybe too many new weapons and weapon types and ammo types. And they were all harder to upgrade (it seemed). But I do like the jai alai thingy. That at least was fun to use.

I've solved the case in Disco Elysium (Final Cut), though that's probably the least exciting thing about the game. Part choose your own adventure; part Infocom plus some graphics; part psychopolitical meditation -- it's really sui generis and a great experience, if you're up for it. The game was originally "refused classification by the [Australian gam] Board, making it illegal to sell in the country, due to its depiction of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, and violence, as well as showing "revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency, and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults""

I could try to say more, but it's like the Matrix -- you have to experience it for yourself. Great voice acting. Bonkers writing. There's enough depth in the decision trees that my replay has uncovered all sorts of novel things already, but I doubt there's so much that you could play it endlessly.

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Segueing into books, Virtual Cities is a nice midpoint. Subtitled An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities, the book describes 45 game cities from 1983's Ant Attack to very recent games. The author has degrees in urban planning, so some of his commentary is an interesting take on how realistic the cities are as a place where humans could live. I guess I had hoped for more information on design, both the visual design of the cities from an art and graphics standpoint, and from a game design standpoint. While each entry has a short 'Design Insights' section that covers some of this, it's very brief. Most of the text is given up to sort of a in-world guidebook description of the cities. Sometimes this diegetic stance has some wry humor, especially if you know the game. But I can't say I've played a lot of these games, so often they come of as in-jokes you don't get.

Each city also has a pretty well-executed map. But where the book really fails is with the images. Rather than use in-game generated images -- perhaps there were legal and copyright issues -- everything is rendered by the same artist, in a somewhat similar (and not overly accomplished) style. For Gabiel Knight's New Orleans, they work well enough, but for most others they don't provide a good feel of what the game is really like. Which is a shame, because the book itself is well-made. A solid-hardback with full color pages throughout.

Such a great concept, but a miss on execution.

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The Light Ages poses as something of a rehabilitation of medieval science. The book follows the career and environment of English monk John Westwyk, author of The Equatorie of the Planetis, a work in English describing the astronomical instrument of his invention, a modification of the astrolabe. So there's a lot of timekeeping, sacred calendars, astrology and models of planetary motion. While interesting (I now have a much better idea of how to use an astrolabe, and why it has the shape it does with that off center circle) there's precious little science to get excited about [and why should there be, since there really wasn't such a thing as science yet]. Some of the history is very interesting on its own, such as the fact that Westwyk joined the unsuccessful Despenser's Crusade against the antipope. Here's a few tidbits from my Kindle notes:

Why the days of the week are ordered as they are:

On a Sunday, the first hour was ruled by the Sun. The second hour was then ruled by the next planet in the inward sequence, Venus; the third hour was ruled by Mercury, and the fourth by the Moon, which was considered the innermost planet. The sequence then immediately restarted at the outermost planet – Saturn – followed by Jupiter, then Mars. After those seven, the eighth hour of the day would again be governed by the Sun. So would the fifteenth hour, and the twenty-second. That just left two more hours, assigned to Venus and Mercury in turn, so that the following day began with the Moon – Monday. Each day was thus named for the third planet inwards after the previous day: Mars after the Moon, Mercury after Mars, and so on. This is why the Sun’s day still follows Saturn’s in modern English, and why, in most Romance languages, we see the midweek sequence of Mars (martes in Spanish), Mercury (miércoles), Jupiter (jueves) and Venus (viernes). We cannot be sure quite why the ancients chose a seven-day week, but the imperfect fit of seven days into twenty-four planetary hours explains why the days are in this order.

Bestiaries as moral teachings:

Some of those animal descriptions were accurate, others were utterly fanciful; but all conveyed a moral lesson to the reader. For this reason, bestiaries were also popular among preachers. On the virtue of chastity, for instance, the actions of the beaver were exemplary. This rare animal, according to bestiaries, has fur like an otter and a tail like a fish, and its testicles produce an oil of great medicinal power.

Knowing instinctively that that is why it is hunted, when a beaver finds itself in danger it will bite off its own testicles, throw them to the hunter and make its escape. If pursued a second time, it will rear up on its hind legs and show the hunter that he is wasting his efforts. This ability to self-castrate was, it seemed, the source of its Latin name castor.

In one bestiary, produced for a house of the Dominican preaching friars, readers could marvel at a graphic illustration of the amazing animal in the act of self-mutilation, chased by a hunter dressed in vivid green, blowing his horn and carrying a large club. Beneath the vibrant painting, readers were advised that ‘every man who inclines towards the commandment of God and wants to live chastely must cut himself off from all vices and all indecent acts – and must throw them in the Devil’s face’.

And the date of the Great Flood:

The Alfonsine Tables provided root values of all the main planetary motions, for eras ranging from the Flood (Thursday, 17 February, 3102 BC) to the 1252 coronation of King Alfonso, via Alexander the Great, the Hijra and the Christian epoch.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/972394.html

The Puzzle Universe purports to be a History of Mathematics in 315 puzzles. While that's not wholly inaccurate, it's more of an exercise in frustration. It is a beautiful book with bold, colorful illustrations. Alas, one or two of them are inaccurate and ruin the puzzles. A number of the puzzles suffer from setups that are not clear and unambiguous, and many of the answers are gnomic without any explanation or solution. While these are hideous flaws, there are many things to like about the book. Lots of clever visual proofs and little historical asides. I think my favorite was the Malfatti Marble Problem. In 1803, Malfatti declared that three tangent circles always provided the maximal area in a certain geometric problem. In 1930, it was shown that that's not always true. And in 1967, it was finally proven that Malfatti's solution is never optimal.

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I can see why City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett, made several finalists lists for Best Fantasy Novel of the year. It's an engaging read, and the strange 'geopolitics' of its world are a big plus. The two main power-continents are an Indian-esque society and a Russian-oid society, at least so far as naming conventions and cultural touches are concerned. Oh, and there's a sort of barbaric Europe somewhere as well that doesn't come into the story much. There's something of a mystery of how some literal walking-the-earth gods have been slain, but echoes of the divine are still hidden here and there. The only drawback of the story is that our heroine and her burly companion are just too perfect. Too smart, too knowledgeable, too skilled, too fatally dangerous to be taken completely seriously. Or to fear for their safety at any point.

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On the Playstation, been enjoying the fact that Katamari Damacy (Reroll) has been released for PS4. Still as delightful as ever.

Spirit of the North was a pleasant game, letting your little foxy dude run around and leaping about. While some instructions and guidance might have been useful at times, I like that they stuck to their guns and just let you experience it and figure it all out for the most part.

PSPlus freebies Concrete Genie and Control have also been fun. Control's delightfully loopy mind-bending story is a blast.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/971383.html

Warm Worlds & Otherwise is a 1975 collection of science fiction short stories by James Tiptree, Jr. For those not in the know, Tiptree is a pen name for Alice Sheldon, from back in the days when many women authors of SF were still using initials. I guess I didn't realize the extent to which Sheldon disguised her real identity, which was only know after this collection was published. Which makes Bob Silverberg's introduction that much more amusing, as he discusses the speculation about 'Tiptree': "It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing." It's so over the top, one half suspects Silverberg is providing camouflage, except that he's probably some small part of the reason why female authors were disguising their names.

Anyway, to the stories. Some of them have a bit too much of the 1960s/1970s experimentation with language for my taste. I adore Stand on Zanzibar, so it's not an automatic turnoff, but not everyone is John Brunner.

"The Girl who was Plugged in" won the Hugo for novella, and deserved it. Some of the stuff we take for granted today -- say that if you were in a VR rig and 'controlled' an android, you would come to identify with the android -- is carefully earned here in the story. And while some of the setup is absurd (advertising becomes illegal), some of the details (that influencers 'advertise' the products they use to their fans) probably rings truer now than in 1970.

"The Women that Men Don't See" is pretty astonishing. I can see the Heart of Darkness-y or Hemingway-ish slant that might have confused Silverberg, but.... I'll stop short of saying that no man could have written this story, but I will say that no male science fiction author in 1975 could have written this story. It takes a special sort of genius to craft a story like this and choosing the narrator to be someone torn from the cover of a men's adventure magazine.

Both stories are decades old, but both still resonate.

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The House in the Cerulean Sea is a lighthearted look at a world where magical, human-ish creatures exist and when these children are located they are sent off to 'orphanages'. Really, they are more to keep them out of the sight of polite society. Our hero is a mild-mannered government functionary at the ministry of magical youth, who makes sure these orphanages are properly run and the children properly cared for. The best part of the book just sets up how meticulous and fair he is at his job. While many in society are prejudiced against magical youth, he just isn't. So he goes about his job assiduously, everything by the book. Great character study in the set-up and early parts of the book.

Ultimately, he's sent to inspect a facility on the extreme end of the spectrum, where some of the most difficult cases are housed. And now that the stage is set, the plot moves dutifully along to its necessary conclusion. Over time, his heart is warmed by his connection with the little inmates, and his heart is stirred still more by the mysterious proprietor of the home.

It has a bit of an Auntie Mame feel about it -- to accept and enjoy our differences in the face of conformity -- done with charm and warmth. But the predictability of the story is a bit of a let-down.

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The Last of Us Part II obviously picks up a bit after the events of The Last of Us. Let me quote a bit of that previous review: "[Ellie] slowly learns survival skills from you, and ultimately becomes a psychotic killing machine just like you"

In some ways, that's where the story takes off. In the sequel, you are now playing Ellie, and you are kind of a monster and grow more monstrous.

A lot of people complained that after about half the story, your viewpoint shifts to another character, an antagonist to the first. I guess I complain, too. I wanted some completion on Ellie's story, and the shift to someone else was not what I was looking for. Abby's story is also well-realized, and obviously you can sense the parallels being drawn, but it seemed a bit of a cheat.

My biggest disappointment? No Road Trip. The first game took us on a journey halfway across America. This one is largely a tour of Seattle. There's a lot of great variation in Seattle, but I missed that. I perked up when there was a mention of Santa Barbara. But I figured the plot was too far advanced for a trip down the coast from Seattle to California to be coming. And I was right. BUT I WOULD HAVE EATEN THAT SHIT UP WITH A CORDYCEPS FUNGUS COVERED SPOON.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/970195.html

Jesmyn Ward (I really liked her Sing, Unburied, Sing) edited The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race, which was chosen for a different book club. The book is an homage to Baldwin's the Fire Next Time, incorporating poetry and essays generally on the topic of race.

On the whole, it didn't captivate me or reveal anything that hasn't been made obvious to anyone paying the least amount of attention. I will point out my particular favorite: 'The Dear Pledges of Our Love': A Defense of Phillis Wheatley's Husband, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. It's something of a literary detective story and I feel a definite kinship to the author. Wheatley is recognized as the first African American to publish a book of poems. The literary gossip that has come down to us is that her husband was no good. But Jeffers finds this rests really on the recollection of one woman, who may have had her own axe to grind, much as some views of Washington are colored by Parson Weems' fanciful storytelling.

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Witchmark, by CL Polk, won the World Fantasy Award, and I did enjoy it quite a lot. It had a little vibe of Deryni with magic users hiding among ordinary folk. A dribble of steampunk. A dash of gay romance. Aristocratic skull-duggery. Not quite enough for me to absorb the full trilogy.

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How Long 'Til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin pulls together 20+ short stories by the multi-Hugo-winning author. They are quite varied and a lot of good ones. Despite the provocative title, the content is not 100% racial justice warrior-bard (not that there's anything wrong with that).

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Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has one great thing going for it -- immersion in the Star Wars universe. Yes, you get to be a Jedi and have a droid sidekick, and yes it is awesome. That said, there are some really annoying bits, like these parts where you slide on ice or whatever and die in a pit a hundred times in a row (if you're me, anyway). Also, I actually found the game too hard. This is the first game I can think of where I had to bump the difficulty down.

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But getting some melee practice in was good for segueing to Ghost of Tsushima. I'm not finished with it yet, but really enjoying it from beginning to end. If Fallen Order let you be in your own SW movie, this puts you into an epic samurai film. Glorious look and feel, and some of the rethinking of game mechanics is clever. Instead of having a map with radar to lead you to your goal, the wind blows in that direction, and you can follow the scatter of cherry blossoms to your destination.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/968711.html

Death Stranding is hard to describe, possibly even hard to love, but I found it lovable. Yes, if you've heard that you mostly go around schlepping stuff from place to place, that's quite true. But that's not all... there's also a nonsensical story that unrolls in long cut-scenes. There are some points in the end-game where the cut-scenes were so obtrusive, I longed to schlepp some things from place to place.

OK, I'm not selling it, I can tell. But if you're up for something really well-made and really out-of-the-box, this is it.

It's interesting to me that an important theme of the game is a very pro-social message of help and cooperation that comes across as affecting and sincere. Not only to help the NPCs in the game, but also fellow players, with whom you can tangentially interact. They don't appear in the world, but structures and thingummies that they build in the world show up in your own and vice versa. And there's some gamification to it in the form of 'likes' a la social media. If someone uses a ladder you placed to scale a cliff, you get a like.

I could attempt to summarize more of the game, but I think it's best as a new world to be explored. Just go jump in.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/967749.html

As usual, I'm behind the times. The World Fantasy Convention just ended in Los Angeles, and the World Fantasy Awards for 2019 have been announced.

And here I am catching up with "Paper Dragons," which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story in 1986. Originally published in Imaginary Lands, I have the standalone version from Axolotl Press with the intro by Blaylock's pal Tim Powers.

The story has a lovely dream-y feel of Northern California with a lot of what makes Blaylock Blaylock. Animals behaving strangely. People behaving strangely. And the petty foibles of human society -- like tossing tomato worms into a neighbor's yard. Not much of a story, but more a prose poem on the possibility of the magical being just around the bend, or behind a passing cloud.

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The Sinking City is a Lovecraftian videogame. Lovecraft doesn't translate well to films or videogames, where most people just add tentacles to make it 'Lovecraftian'. But the Sinking City does a pretty fine job of capturing more of the spirit, so on that level it's successful. Your hard-boiled, ex-Navy diver investigator finds his way around a decrepit town beset by a flood (yes and the occasional tentacled monster). He's been told he can find the answers to his nightmares and visions, and various people around town are happy to pay him to solve their own particular problems.

Perhaps the most novel and 'Lovecraftian' gimmick is the Mind Palace, which provides a concrete game mechanic that corresponds to a mind 'correlating its contents'. Clues that you find on a case can be matched together two-by-two to form deductions that get you closer to the ultimate solution of the case.

Not very novel is a SAN meter that when it gets low results in additional visions and hallucinations. Sometimes, it's handled pretty ham-fistedly, but other times it creates some pretty vistas. I consciously avoided getting the sanity upgrades because I enjoyed the phantasmagoria.

Drawbacks are long load times and some glitchiness, and some extreme logic gates. You the player can have figured out where to go next, but unless your character has schlepped over to the newspaper morgue to confirm the location, the clues won't be there. They only magically appear once they've been unlocked by the schlepping. Sometimes you have to look at this clue before you look at that clue, or it won't give up all its secrets.

The combat system is not very good. If you're looking for combat as the point of a game, this is not it. But if you want some moody investigating, it has something going for it. Probably a C+/B- for a gamer, but an B+/A- for me.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/966141.html

Perhaps unwisely, I picked two of my thickest books on my to-read shelf, so... instead let's do videogames.

Days Gone let's you be a biker after the zombie apocalypse, chasing down clues to what happened to your wife, shooting zombies of various sorts, scrounging for spare parts, and making friends and enemies of the locals. Game play is a bit like Far Cry, but distinct enough. Good clean fun.

I remember downloading a demo of Heavy Rain and finding the controls so annoying that I gave up. But now it returned along with Detroit (both products of Quantic Dream) as free PS downloads. So I tried again. The controls are STILL annoying, but I persevered and it's a clever sadistic-mass-murder mystery distributed across several main characters. The game-play is sort of choose-your-own adventure style, and there are multiple outcomes and endings. I didn't feel the need to try it over, but liked it.

Detroit is a refined version of the distributed choose your own adventure, with a much better control configuration. Three androids separately see different aspects of a future world where androids are virtual slaves, but have suddenly been running amok. Like Heavy Rain, the narratives railroad you into extreme situations, with extreme choices to make. Enjoyed this enough that I'm playing a second time to see some of the outcomes I missed. But I doubt I'll need to become a completist.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/965067.html

Five Strokes to Midnight is a World Fantasy Award nominated anthology of horror/dark fiction stories by five authors: Gary A. Braunbeck & Hank Schwaeble (which duo also edited), Tom Piccirilli, Deborah LeBlanc, and Christopher Golden. Each contributed two or three stories, loosely bound to a theme particular for each author. All pretty good stuff, many with a vein of deep personal emotion -- as a robot, this is not always my thing, but here it is handled generally really well.

The book starts out strong with Piccirilli's "Loss", as some out-of-left-field fantastic elements add some mystery to the regret. Tom's second story seems overlong, but now that he himself is gone, I'll take all the words I can get.

Leblanc's Curses gives us some vivid pictures of backwoods Louisiana - voodoo and worse.

Schwaeble's "Bone Daddy" is an agreeably nasty bit of work -- Lap dances for liches never turn out well.

Golden's Folklore stories take on Lost Miners, Goat Suckers and Ghost Trains. The last of which ends with a satisfying note that helps you close the book without shuddering.

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The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book collects a few of the longer verses Tolkien used in the Lord of the Rings, some related poems not in LotR, and others.

Many of them are rather somber in tone, while others are quite, well, Tom Bombadilly.

"The Mewlips" is delightfully creepy

The Shadows where the Mewlips dwell
Are dark and wet as ink,
And slow and softly rings their bell,
As in the slime you sink.
...

And how can I not love "Cat"?

The fat cat on the mat
   may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
   for him, or cream;
but he free, maybe,
   walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
   roared and fought
his kin, lean and slim,
   or deep in den
in the East feasted on beasts
   and tender men.
...

His love of internal rhyme is on full display here, something I often find appealing.

The art by Pauline Baynes is amusing, hearkening to medieval illustrations, but it makes for a good segue into my last little review

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Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons and Dragons

This is a documentary film about the artists behind some of the iconic images of D&D. In many ways, it is exactly as nerdy as it sounds. As a documentary, it's maybe not the best, but there are some neat insights, and plenty of dragons (and dungeons) on display.

Once upon a time, a lot of fantasy art looked like Pauline Baynes work -- somewhat tame. And then Frazetta and Vallejo showed up and went bonkers. D&D artists all wanted to be Frazetta and Boris. And this is their story.

It's interesting to see some of the inside history of how TSR grew, and went from amusing (and sometimes somewhat crudely executed) B&W images done on the cheap, and quickly turned into big colorful professional works. And then (to my eye) it drifted into something very 'corporate'. Alas, I think this final phase has, as the film I think correctly points out, informed a lot of current fantasy art (from novels to film to videogames to everything) making it derivative of a particular TSR corporate look. I mean it's commercial art, so it is what it is. And the stuff I'm nostalgic for was commercial art as well. But that original Players Handbook cover, which is rightly lauded in the documentary, just sets you thinking in exactly the right way to explain the game.

What just happened? Who are these people? What are they doing? Some people are doing this, and other people are doing that, and then there's those people over there -- what is going on? Did the lizard things live here and worship here? What's going to happen when they pop that jewel out? What will they do then?

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/963418.html

How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect

Mick West helped found the videogame company Neversoft, and after Tony Hawk's Pro Skater made him a bajillionaire, he could turn his time to more important things, like fighting conspiracies about chemtrails on the internet.

The book is intended as a real How-To guide in helping someone out conspiracy theories. It's a little idiosyncratic (in a good way) in that it is really intended as a guide for you to use on "your friend". West literally crafts this as how to help a close friend or loved one, so it's more intended that way instead of dealing with random people on the internet (though that's where many of his ideas were honed).

In the briefest sense, his advice is to foster honesty and respect -- understand that just as you know what's true and want to convince your friend to discard his false ideas, your friend also knows (or thinks he knows) what's true and wants to convince you to discard your false ideas. So just standing on I'm right and you're wrong doesn't get you anywhere. He suggests fostering more discussion where you explore the matter together and then...

Stick to the facts. Find something key to your friend's worldview that you can address in black and white.

One of the excellent details in the book are a few personal stories from people who have put their conspiracy theories aside and they describe how it happened to them. Or at least to move where they are on the conspiratorial scale.

My personal interest in not so much in conspiracy theories, per se, but scientific nonsense and political 'fake news'. But obviously there is a lot of overlap. If 9/11 was a conspiracy carried out by George W Bush, that has political overtones. If the schools are indoctrinating children with EVILution, and fluoridating their brains, or vaccinating them with poisons, there's a scientific conspiracy afoot. So I think the techniques and insights in West's book can easily apply to related situations.

Escapes by sudden realization come only after a build-up of new information that is initially strongly resisted. While they are learning new things, they are rejecting those things as false disinformation. Eventually their knowledge of the evidence against their theory builds up and leads to a more sudden realization they were wrong, a breaking of the dam, and a rapid movement over their own demarcation line. But there’s a single prime mover here in both routes: exposure to new information. Conspiracy theorists flourish in walled gardens. When asked where they get their news they will often point only to alternative fringe sites like Alex Jones’ Infowars, or more esoteric conspiracy theory sites like Rense.com, or even David Icke’s reptilian Illuminati related news.

Something I see on occasion in the creation/evolution battles is that a creationist has finally decided to accept the gauntlet. He's going to defeat evolution using the power of science by studying science the honest way and showing where the mistakes are. Most creationists are happy to play it safe and just listen to the professional creationists who just feed them what they want to hear. But these brave souls who venture into science expose themselves to new information, and sometimes the dam breaks. A recent case involving a former creationist now astronomer has been making the rounds. So in my own involvement in these debates online, I try to help spread information and facts, hoping to be part of the solution for some of them. Most of the frequent participants are pretty set in their ways. West sees that as well, but sometimes there's still hope:

There’s some people you definitely cannot get through to, there’s just too much ego, too many Thanksgiving dinners they have invested in. There was one guy I was just explaining how claims have counterclaims, and there was this great process of critical thinking. I had been showing him the NIST 9/11 slides and he realized he was wrong at that moment. This guy just started screaming. It stuck in his head that he would have to go back to his family and explain that he was incorrect. He almost had a nervous breakdown.

Although he's ultimately hopeful, he sees a lot of dangers in the online world. First off... YouTube:

Sometimes they watch the same video over and over again. You get the sense from talking to them that it’s something like a drug, that the “truth” they feel is in the video is activating some kind of function in their brain, resonating with them
...
The data-driven algorithm has evolved to recognize that the way to get people to watch more videos is to direct them downhill, down the path of least resistance. Without human intervention the algorithm has evolved to perfect a method of gently stepping up the intensity of the conspiracy videos that it shows you so that you don’t get turned off, and so you continue to watch. They get more intense because the algorithm has found (not in any human sense, but found nonetheless) that the deeper it can guide people down the rabbit hole, the more revenue it can make.

Obviously, we've seen a lot of false propaganda being spread as facts recently, and West thinks it will get worse as AI improves and fake people and bots start to spread more and more disinformation. We've seen just this week how some crudely slowed video of Nancy Pelosi can be used to suggest she's drunk, and you'll get a retweet from the President. Imagine how things will get when 'deep fakes' become possible. Seeing is believing, they say, but it will become more and more important to source your photo and video evidence.

Or am I just being paranoid? [Cue Twilight Zone music]

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/963177.html

On the international business trip of mystery, I finished reasing Less, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Andrew Sean Greer (and also a NYT/PBS Now Read This book choice). A gay novelist approaching 50, Greer chose to write a novel about a gay novelist approaching 50. While amusing but not hilarious, the book's best quality may be the slow burning build of pathos for its initially unlikeable protagonist. Hey, I realize I'm not the Pulitzer Committee, and the prize sets some expectations. This didn't meet them, for me. But maybe if that wasn't emblazoned on the cover, I would feel better about what is certainly a finely crafted novel.

On the plane back, I watched Clint Eastwood's fictionalized film of the incident where 3 Americans on holiday take down a terrorist on a French train. What it resembles more than anything else is that Traveller game where you show up and start character creation and there is only time for one encounter before you have to go home. We get the elaborate backstories of the Americans, and boy is this Clint at his hamfisted worst. 'I'm the kid who doesn't school good, but guns will complete me.' 'I'm the one with a problem with authority, but the service will make me a fine human being.' 'I'm the black one.' It is propaganda, and only became watchable to hate it and its obviousness.

Red Sparrow was about 75% stolen from La Femme Nikita, but there were a few nuggets of originality in the other 25%. Hard to really enjoy films on a plane, especially as you develop a cramp in your thumb from pressing on the headphone jack to keep the audio in stereo. But I can safely say it was a finer film than the steaming pile of crap that was 'the 15:17 to Paris'.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/958225.html

Educated , by Tara Westover, is another book pick of the NYT/PBS Now Read This book club.

Westover grew up in Idaho in a strict Mormon family that stands out even among Mormon families in Idaho. Her father was not merely religious, but mistrustful of the government, doctors, vaccinations, medicine, education. Tara (after the fact) diagnoses him with bipolar disorder, but it's hard to separate mental illness from the extremes of conspiratorial antigovernment survivalist thinking. At any rate, while some of her older siblings had some schooling, Tara as the youngest grew up during the most extreme era of dad's thinking. She didn't go to school at all, and it would be charitable to call her home life 'unschooling'. Not only that, but she didn't have a birth certificate until she was 9.

Mom makes herbal remedies and gets training as a midwife. Dad makes a living at scrap dealing. Much of her childhood reminiscences are of horrible industrial accidents caused by willful negligence on her father's part, usually with her or her siblings as the victims. One brother somehow studies enough to go to college, and form a role model for her. She studies enough to get a decent ACT score and get admitted to BYU, where she is soon a fish out of water, even moreso than you or I would be at BYU, but for different reasons.

One significant event is a lecture class where she has to ask what the word "Holocaust" means. That's how profound her ignorance was. And although her ignorance was 'honest', being ignorant of the Holocaust was probably too close to Holocaust-denial, so she faced a certain amount of moral censure from the class.

I wish there were more details like this included, that track the change from ignorance to knowledge, or from false knowledge to true knowledge (as when she slowly comes to understand that aspirin and antibiotics are not, in fact, poisons.)

But while her life story is certainly one of gaining degrees at BYU and Cambridge and Harvard, there is not enough insight (to satisfy me) about how her worldview changes. The actual story she's telling is more about the increasing distance between her and her parents (and the shifting alliances among siblings and other relations).

Perfect segue into Far Cry 5, set in the Mountain West, where a religious cult with doomsday prepper attitudes takes over a county. It's not much of a stretch to cast Tara's family as the bad guys. As a rookie law enforcement agent, you get sent in to arrest the head of the cult. Let's just say it doesn't go well, and pretty soon, you're in Far Cry mode. Hiding in the bushes with a bow and arrow, slowly taking out the bad guys and liberating territory for decent folk.

Now coming from a series which has been justly criticized for regressive attitudes, this entry sends some subliminal prosocial attitudes. Sure, it's violent as fuck as you kill bad guys with bigger and larger explody things (although the bow and arrow combat system is still extremely satisfying). But the bad guys are anti-government forces. And you slowly gather allies among the good honest folk. When you take over an outpost, you literally put up an American flag. Now, if this were set in the Middle East or Africa, it would be jingoistic colonialism (and most of the rest of the Far Cry series has been set in remote parts of the world where it's been easy to see it as white dude versus nonwhite dudes.) But here they've twisted it around, and made the treasonous rebel scum the enemy. America, Fuck Yeah!

Lots of good stuff to flesh out the game. Some good creepy music from the cult. A few hilarious characters ("I've been shot!... In the wiener!"). Recreating the stunts of daredevil Clutch Nixon. And the simple joy of slinking around a compound with Peaches the mountain lion, slaughtering cultists.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/957442.html

Life is Strange is a choose your own adventure style video game, with the added bonus that your protagonist has a rewind power so that some mistakes can be undone. There are also some puzzles and meddling kids detection to be done. What starts with classroom bullies ends up in much deeper and darker territory. The game quite intentionally jerks you around, but it does so pretty effectively. The load screen talks about how the choices you make effect the past, present and future, and I remember mocking the idea that the game allows you to tinker with much more than five seconds of the past. Then 15 minutes later, I was gibbering in remorse at what I'd done to the timeline.

Ultimately, the game builds to a crescendo that it just can't support well in the last episode, which I didn't find very satisfying. But the middle was pretty strong. I'm curious to see what different choices and actions would do to the story, but like Until Dawn, I'm not sure I can stand to sit through that much teen dialogue again.

Apparently there will be a prequel soon, and later a 'sequel' with different characters and setting.

Crossposts: http://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/949422.html

Prey has some roots in Bioshock, and I love me some Bioshock. It even starts with kindofa callback - getting on a helicopter. Unlike the planecrash in Bioshock, the helicopter arrives safely at its destination. Or does it?

Ultimately, you find yourself on a sprawling spacestation, overrun by nasty aliens and beset by some significant maintenance issues. As the game progresses, you inject alien goo into your head to give yourself superhuman and alien powers. Nice doses of funny and scary and a thin thread of story.

<HR>

Trouble is My Business is a collection of four longer Marlowe short stories by Raymond Chandler. All good stuff, written with his characteristic verve. Golddiggers, casinos, fish-fanciers, and cops on the make, all in a Los Angeles you can still catch out of the corner of your eye when the light is just right.

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.

Crossposts: http://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/946856.html

I enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn quite a bit. It looks beautiful from beginning to end, and remains challenging even as you become more and more deadly.

After the Big Whoops, the earth is covered with angry quasi-zoomorphic machines. Their half-familiar half-machine design is one of the delights of the game, I think. Human civilization has fallen apart to the level of tribalism. As a young huntress/Chosen One, you go out and shoot them and lay snares for them, and ultimately slowly learn all the background of the Big Whoops. How all of it came to pass is a wildly implausible, but satisfying story, that you get in dribs and drabs as you progress.

Crossposts: http://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/946204.html

It's a pretty game, and the story does a good job of showing the bond forming between you (as the kid) and the giant feathered cat with a chihuahua head. You can definitely see the influence of Ico on the gameplay, but instead of two equal human type people cooperating to traverse obstacles, there's a lot of freshness to having cooperation between big and small. Trico (the giant featered cat with a chihuahua head) can be an annoyance -- it moves slowly and even when you're trying to tell it where to go, the little hamster in a wheel brain (or rather the AI) is not very reliable. Not a hardcore game, but an enjoyable experience with some challenging puzzles.

Each year, The Strong National Museum of Play inducts a new group of toys to the National Toy Hall of Fame. This year, the museum inducted three new toys: Dungeons & Dragons, Fisher-Price’s Little People figures, and the classic swing. The recognition for fantasy roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons is long overdue, as its innovative approach to playing complicated, creative games has had an outsized impact on the larger gaming world.

I love the inclusion of a non-commercial thing like the swing. It's also adorable that one of the previous inductees is the cardboard box.

But I confess this is the first I can recall hearing of the Strong. Or its benefactress, Margaret Woodbury Strong, who may well have married into some distant part of Dr. Pookie's family.

"Developing her youthful interests, Margaret became a skilled competitor in golf, archery, bowling, flower arranging, and collecting. She recalled later that her collecting began with miniatures, when she was allowed “to carry a small bag to put my dolls and toys in, and to add anything I acquired on the trips.” That small beginning led to an expansive task that dominated her later life. Margaret’s collecting included everything from fine art to the ordinary, all linked by the common themes of play, imagination, “let’s pretend,” and fun."

Another great detail is her father's perspicacity in selling high: "Margaret travelled the world with her parents beginning around 1907 after her father retired and sold the business started by Margaret's grandfather, The Strong and Woodbury Whip Company."

Buggy whips have become one of the go-to examples for product obsolescence. Getting out in 1907 was a pretty good move. (As was subsequently investing in Eastman Kodak.)

Anyway... field trip? Rochester, NY is a ways away, but maybe someday.

Game 3 of the Risk Legacy campaign was pretty short. Gray hosted, and since Smaug scratched due to illness, Rob was available to fill in.

Rob did the Australia thing, Chun did the S. America thing, I did the Africa thing, Giantsdance wanted as little to do with us as possible and started in Yakutsk, while Gray cramped my style in SW Europe. I punched into Brazil -- despite Gray's closeness -- hobbling Chun, and Giantsdance hobbled himself smashing into Rob with lousy dice. So it was the Rob and Gray show for a while, but Rob was more cautious, allowing Gray the opportunity to grab Chun's HQ by going though me, and then grabbing my HQ by going through what was left of me. So Chief Gray added his name to the board of victors.

As for the board, Africa is a hot mess, but it's my hot mess (not that people are likely to let me get cosy there). Stickers all over including a new bunker in East Africa, and a Mercenary spawner in North Africa (both likely to be popular warzones). But fortunately, there are also some other attractive areas, there's a mercenary spot in SE Asia, adding a bit more to the lure of Australia, and the third mercenary spot is in Yakutsk, where Giantsdance put a small city. Gray put his major city in Greenland, which is already home to a bunker.

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Journal of No. 118

Entries tagged with game

A Delicate Truth, Never, Playing with Reality, Winter of the Gods

Bedlam; A Master of Djinn; Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

2 Greys & an Aloy

Disco Elysium - Virtual Cities - The Light Ages

The Puzzle Universe, City of Stairs, games

Warm Worlds & Otherwise, The House in the Cerulean Sea, The Last of Us II

Book & Videogame medley

Death Stranding

Paper Dragons, By James P Blaylock & The Sinking City

Days Gone - Heavy Rain - Detroit: Become Human

Five Strokes To Midnight - Tom Bombadil - Eye of the Beholder

Escaping the Rabbit Hole, by Mick West

Less, the something or other to Paris, Red Sparrow

Educated & Far Cry 5

Life is Strange

Prey & Trouble Is My Busines

Horizon Zero Dawn

The Last Guardian

Dungeons & Dragons has been inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame

The war continues...