Agents of SHIELD Season 1 Review

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There are a couple of reasons that I was really excited to watch Marvel's Agents of SHIELD when it was first announced: I had recently decided to embark on a quest to watch everything that Joss Whedon had laid his hands on, and because of The Avengers the Marvel Cinematic Universe had become my biggest ongoing fandom. I also tend to really like characters who have no special powers, but who can hold their own anyway; SHIELD was going to be all about those characters. I know a lot of other people were thinking similarly, because it was widely regarded as the show to watch last fall.

Unfortunately for the undedicated, the show had a pretty slow start. A lot of people stopped watching early in the series, but it started to pick up around the fifth or sixth episode. One of the biggest weaknesses the show had early on was how its characters were portrayed; many of them seemed pretty one-dimensional, and a couple of them I straight up didn't like. Over the course of the season all of them got a chance to come into their own, but it took a while.

One of the big appeals of watching Agents of SHIELD was the fact that it would tie into the other Marvel movies as they happened. The first time this happened was Thor: The Dark World, but the tie-in had to do with Asgardian technology that wasn't even in the movie. A more significant tie-in was when Lady Sif appeared on the show, but that was months away from the movie. Captain America: The Winter Soldier had a much more profound effect on SHIELD, as any of you who watched the movie will know. If you can help it, make the effort to watch the movies and the episodes of the show in the order that they were released; it's worth it.

The end of the season is where the show really shined, and they actually took it in a direction that I was not expecting. I was thrilled when I heard they were getting a second season, and a new show about Agent Carter is in the works as well. My advice is catch up on the first season over the summer (and make sure you watch the movies), and then keep up with the show as it moves forward next season. It is worth it.

Godzilla Review

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Given Legendary's awesome history and the fact that they were clearly drawing more from the old Japanese movies than the 1998 Godzilla, I had high hopes for this movie. Unfortunately it didn't really live up to my expectations.

My main complaint is how bad the science was. The premise of where these monsters get their energy from is of course "radioactive stuff" which seems reasonable at first. Detonating an atomic bomb to lure them to a particular area also seems pretty reasonable. It's when the monsters start eating undetonated bombs that I start thinking "wait a minute, those don't give off radiation until they go off." One of the monsters has the ability to give off an EMP, which poses several problems in my mind. Why would it develop that ability in the first place? It doesn't seem to affect any of the monsters it evolved to fight. What are the actual effects of an EMP? The movie states that it knocks out stuff that runs on electricity, but then we see gas-powered car and boat motors stopping as well, and jet planes come spiraling out of the sky even though I'm sure they have some ability to glide.

The story was also really slow. It took about half of the movie for the monsters to finally show up, and they only really fought in the last 15 minutes. I didn't feel very attached to any of the human characters, so most of the scenes involving long drawn-out conversations were pretty boring. I came for a Godzilla movie, I want more Godzilla! Come to think of it, let's do a movie that is mostly from Godzilla's perspective. Individual humans wouldn't even be distinguishable, we'd just get a nice big view of how many lives are being ruined.

The thing that I really liked about this movie was how well they gave us a sense of scale. The first few times Godzilla showed up, they had some brilliant shots of a skyscraper next to Godzilla's leg, and it was huge. Eventually of course we got to see its whole body, and at that point it didn't seem nearly so huge.

I can't really think of a reason to go to this movie. Fans of the old Japanese films won't get much out of it, as there wasn't much in the way of monster battles, and the rest of us just get a slow movie that ignores science.

The Walking Dead 2 Episode 3 Review

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This episode was structured very differently from the other episodes we've seen so far from The Walking Dead. It almost felt like the story it told could stand on its own, with some fleshing out of course. In particular the ending had so much closure I'm not sure where they are going to take the series next, other than the obvious problem of continuing to survive in a zombie apocalypse.

My favorite thing about this episode was how Clementine really came into her own. In previous episodes the writers came up with ways for her to influence events without being the main actor. Here she does almost everything that is needed for the group's plans to work. Of course one of the characters brings up how crazy this is, so the writers were not unaware of the stretch they were taking here. I hope this opens up the door for Clementine to do even more cool stuff.

I believe that I have now seen all of the characters from the 400 Days DLC, though most of them showed up briefly and had very few lines. I am looking forward to seeing them more in future episodes. If Telltale doesn't use them more I am going to be pretty disappointed.

This episode didn't let up on The Walking Dead's tendency to be emotionally taxing. I kept alternating between cheering characters on and cursing at the screen when things went wrong. And that's just the way I like it.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Review

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I missed a lot of television shows as a kid that people swear are the best things in the world. I always take that with a grain of salt, because let's face it: we liked anything that was placed in front of us, and nostalgia is a rose-tinted lense.

Luckily Avatar: The Last Airbender holds up pretty well for a sophisticated young adult like me. The character developments and motivations are believable and well-written, most of the jokes are funny (but man, some of them are so dumb), and the world they created for the show is really cool.

A cast of strong characters is the single most important thing that will determine if I get invested in a show or not. Avatar has a great cast, both among the main characters, supporting characters, and one-off characters. The best indication of strong character development to me is when a character that I initially dislike slowly turns around until I find myself smiling whenever they come on screen. The two examples of this in Avatar for me were Toph and Zuko. To go more into detail would spoil things, so I won't.

The show's sense of humor was another thing that grew on me over time. Obviously this is a children's show, so it features its fair share of slapstick comedy and nonsensical jokes. As the show progressed they seemed to improve over time, though I might have just been more sleep-deprived later in the series. The humor definitely evolved to include clever references to past events and jokes that only work once the audience is familiar with the world though.

Speaking of the world, this is one of the most interesting I have seen in a kid's show. There are a lot of hidden details that one could miss on their first pass. For example, each of the element bending techniques were based on a different real-world martial art that relates to the ideals of that element. One of the details that struck me as silly was the way that almost every animal they came across was a combination of two real-world animals: wolf-bats, badger-moles, etc. Even if these animals are combinations of real-world animals, it only makes sense for the people in the show to call them by the hyphenated name if they have both of those base animals in their world, which never seems to be the case. In any case, it is a minor complaint.

As a show with three seasons of 20 25-minute episodes, it is pretty easy to get through in a timely manner without killing yourself. I definitely recommend it for both kids and adults. I think I'll watch it with my little sisters soon.

Kentucky Route Zero Act III Review

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You should probably go read my thoughts on the first two acts of Kentucky Route Zero, because here I am just going to talk about the new things that Act III brings us.

It's been almost a year since Act II came out, with an interlude released in between. Normally I would be pretty miffed, but in this case I don't mind so much. The game is so strange, the waiting almost feels like a part of the experience. Speaking of the interludes, Act III is the first time that these have been clearly pulled into the main game. The Entertainment was originally built as an Oculus Rift experiment where the player was a part of a theater performance; in Act III you visit the bar where this play was set and find a pair of expensive-looking goggles. Limits and Demonstrations featured an interactive art installation; in Act III you meet a couple of people whose story was told in that art installation.

My favorite moment in Act III is pictured above, where you get to choose which lyrics are sung in a heart wrenching song.

A lot of old technology has been featured in Kentucky Route Zero, usually tube televisions or transistor radios. Act III takes it in a computer science direction: a computer simulation called Xanadu has a large role; I am fairly confident that it is a reference to the vaporware Project Xanadu.

Act III also hints at what may be in store for Conway after he completes this delivery run, and it isn't good. It isn't necessarily bad, it just has a vague sense of foreboding, which is a pretty good summary of the series as a whole.

Act III certainly does not disappoint, so I definitely recommend that you go pick this game up.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Review

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I am really glad with how The Amazing Spider-Man movies have turned out. They have been much better than the Spider-Man trilogy from ten years ago. Part of the appeal for me has been Peter Parker's relatability. He's always struggling to make those he loves happy, but he often fails horribly. Granted, that's usually because he is living a secret life, but if he were perfectly relatable it wouldn't be an interesting movie.

The thing that stood out to me about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was how much the movie focused on the relationship between Peter and Gwen Stacy. Most superhero movies place much more emphasis on the villains the hero must face, with the love interest seeming more like a distraction from the real action. They did a very good job getting me invested in their relationship. It wasn't until after I watched the movie that I found out that Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield are a couple in real life, which explains why their performances together felt so real. Honestly, I would have enjoyed the movie even if it didn't have any big villains in it.

Let's talk about those villains then. I was totally expecting the Green Goblin to be the main antagonist, especially when Harry Osborn was introduced towards the beginning of the movie. However, I was much more interested in Electro (or as I like to call him, "Dubstep Man"). I was really digging his powers, and the way that they made one of his fight sequences look like an equalizer for the music that was playing was really cool. I wasn't really sold on the character's motivation though. He seemed pretty two-dimensional, focusing too much on the one phrase about being invisible. I suppose you can make an excuse about his transformation making him unstable, but that seems to be the cause behind a lot of Spider-Man's villains.

The best indicator for how much you will like this movie is how much you liked its predecessor. I enjoyed this one more, and I recommend it.

Borderlands 2 Review

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Borderlands 2 was one of the games that I was looking forward to the most in 2012. I was determined not to play though it solo the way I did in the original, so three friends and I pre-ordered the four pack and vowed to play through it together. Unfortunately it's really hard to coordinate schedules with four people in four different cities. +Ian Decker and I have been slowly plodding along, but in the last two weeks we have really picked it up and have now finished with the main story.

Let's get right down to it: Borderlands 2 is one of the best games I have played, especially in recent history. There is very little to dislike about it: it has a great soundtrack, the cel shading art style is still gorgeous, it has the best sense of humor of any game (besides The Stanley Parable), the balance is really tight, a variety of playable characters to match any playstyle. and all of the loot and skill trees an RPG fan will love. Throw in co-op with friends, and I can't think of a better recipe for a good time. It's really a modern take on the Diablo series.

Not a sophisticated sense of humor, but still hilarious!

One of the biggest complaints people had about the original Borderlands was that the story was nothing to write home about, and the end was a big disappointment. Gearbox very clearly went to great lengths to rectify this in Borderlands 2; they had a clear antagonist right from the beginning, and they did everything they could to make us hate his guts. I think they may have focused a little too much on this however, because there wasn't a whole lot else going on. The end boss was also really easy; it had a lot of health, but it dealt so little damage, I don't think my shields ever got depleted.

Thankfully those are really the only complaints that I have about the game. Everything else was a big improvement over the original: more enemy variety, more interesting characters (the characters you played as in the original take center stage and get a lot more development than I was expecting). Even if I hadn't had my best friend to play with, I would have had a great time with Borderlands 2. I'd say that a reasonable price to pay is $40, but it's been around for so long you will most certainly pay less than that. We will soon be diving into the DLCs, so you'll be hearing about those soon enough.

100th Blog Post!

I've hit a pretty exciting milestone here! And as is tradition on milestones, we must take a look back at where we have been and where we are headed in the future.

I started this blog 610 days (or 1 year, 8 months, 2 days) ago. That means that I have posted an average of one post every 6.1 days. I think that's a pretty good pace; it's enough to say that I'm pretty active, but it hasn't burned me out, and people haven't gotten fed up with me yet. At the time I thought I would be using it to talk about "any projects that I get myself into, reviews for games that I play, and anything else that I can think of." Let's see how true that ended up being.

47 posts have been video game reviews. I'm kind of surprised that this isn't higher, since it sometimes feels like that is all I do. Part of the reason I started this blog was because I realized that it would help to have my reviews written down before the podcast I review them on
16 posts have been about dreams I have had, which was something that I was not anticipating at all. So far all of my dream posts have been about current dreams. I'm planning on reaching back into some of the dreams that I had as a kid, because those are pretty great.
7 posts have been movie reviews. I don't watch many movies during their theater run, but that is changing since I have more disposable income now. You can bet that a lot of them will be Marvel movies, since I'm pretty heavily invested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
4 posts have been television reviews. There are a lot of classic shows that I need to watch, as well as one or two that I am keeping up with, so I expect to write about those.
Some miscellaneous posts have included building my desktop, my experiment with a biphasic sleep cycle, and some nostalgia trips.

Now some viewage statistics:
Fly, Catbug, Fly! First Impressions has 652 views; this is probably because Catbug is very popular with Bravest Warriors fans, but the game is not big enough to have reviews on large game journalism sites.
The Wolf Among Us Episode 1 Review has 436 views. Not sure why, there are lots of other places that have reviewed the game.
Yellowstone has 361 views, hopefully mostly from people who know me who wanted to see pictures from my vacation. It had the most views until the last couple of months, when the above two posts apparently got a bunch more views.
Dishonored Review has 298 views. I was really disheartened to find out that part of the reason this has gotten so many hits is because it shows up when you search for "dishonored porn." Good going, internet.
Starpocalypse Review has 291 views. SMBC is once again something with a lot of fans, but isn't big enough to get reviewed on most entertainment sites.

In all the blog has gotten 22,888 views, which averages out to 37.5 views per day. I'm pretty happy with that, but of course I want to improve on it. Since viewage naturally spikes whenever I write a post, the easiest way to do that would be to post more often. I thought about monetizing my blog at one point (I put a lot of time and effort into it) but apparently I need to prove my identification to Google with like five different forms.
Countries: United States of course leads by far (17828), then Canada (529), UK (485), Russia (472), Germany (434), and Latvia (391). Wait, Latvia??
Browser/OS: Most of my viewers use Chrome (64%) or Firefox (18%), which makes me really happy. Windows only accounts for 54% of my views, which is surprisingly lower than their ~90% market share. Linux is really high at 30%, which to me means that I have a pretty tech-savvy audience.

Looking to the future, I anticipate continuing the dream journals and game reviews, probably with more movie and television reviews as well. Next fall I will be studying abroad in Sweden, so I might have a mini series about overseas shenanigans. In any case, you can be sure that I'll continue blogging for the foreseeable future, unlike some people I know.

Dreams: Splinters of the Mind's Eye

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Dreams are easiest to remember and make sense of right after you wake up, so I usually try to write them down in detail right away. Sometimes I don't have time though, and so I end up quickly jotting something down before going to breakfast. I have several of these stacked up, and I present them here as they were worded by my half-asleep mind.

Video Game Idea
Medieval poverty simulator-the game gives you practically nothing, throws you out in a world that is not easy to live in for a peasant.

Sure, it can be a social commentary on current economic crappiness.

A Normal Day at Camp
I was with a bunch of camp staff, playing games together (such as hiding two people in a barrel and making someone who didn't know what was going on look for them). I could bounce up onto the roof to oversee everything. Some guy came to do some construction work or something. He found what appeared to be some take-out boxes, but they actually contained a couple of talking crickets that were our pets. Somehow he mistook them for food. I tried to stop him, but another staff (who looked a lot like the neighbor in Captain America Winter Soldier) was into him and told him that the rest of us were crazy to make herself look good.

Cast in Doctor Who
I was cast in Doctor Who as the Master (apparently he was going to make a return in the next season). My family was really excited and supportive, and it didn't seem odd to anyone that BBC was casting an American.

I Have No Idea
Midnight chicken nugget run turns into time travel, expose another time traveler.

Worst Podcast Ever
We were recording an episode of the podcast at +Dominick Benedetto's house. +Rachel Wolters was on the show as well. We were using my phone to record it and all of the show notes were handwritten. There were lots of errant noises that were loud and unacceptable. I kept my enthusiasm up though.

Hammurabi's Borderlands
Note: I was a passive observer in this dream.
The characters from Borderlands 2 were sitting around reminiscing over all of the glorious bloodshed they have caused. It comes back to bite them in the butt when someone comes and pays them back eye for an eye. In particular I got to watch Krieg get cut open with his own hacksaw. His insides looked cartoony, like the Heavy when you operate on him in Surgeon Simulator 2013.

The Walking Dead
Again, passive observer
The characters from the first season of The Walking Dead (the game, not the show) were all running from Larry. They split up, and Larry started chasing Mark down this weird set of stairs.

The Grumpster
Passive Observer
A movie about a group of aliens who have disguised themselves as a family going to summer camp. The part that stuck out at me was not the aliens. One of the other parents was played by Jeff Goldblum. One of the children called him a "Big ol' grumpster." He got all indignant and said with the grumpiest face you ever did see "Who you callin' a grumpster? I'm not a grumpster." And he proceeded to grumble for a good long while.

The Wolf Among Us Episode 3 Review

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You should probably read my reviews of episodes one and two to get a sense of what the game is about and how it plays. I will focus on the story in this review because the gameplay is familiar by now.

The plot of The Wolf Among Us seems to be falling into a pattern; the majority of each episode is spent dealing with whatever shocking revelation was the cliffhanger of the previous episode, then they turn around and give us a new cliffhanger. The end of A Crooked Mile wasn't quite as shocking because they hinted at it a couple of times throughout the episode.

I have been trying to have Bigby be as good a person as possible, which has been pretty difficult up until now because violence is a pretty natural shortcut. I believe I succeeded this time, mostly due to the fact that Telltale had Snow White present for many of the scenes. She has taken on the role of the moral compass the way Clementine did in The Walking Dead. The difference is that Clementine was a moral compass because Lee wanted to teach her right and wrong, while Snow White is a moral compass because Bigby is romantically interested in her.

I can tell that I am doing a good job because there are several characters who used to be quite hostile towards Bigby who are now rather amiable. Now that I think about it there were a few people that I pissed off more. But they were people I didn't like anyway.

A Crooked Mile is the first time I have seen Telltale make a self-referential joke. Conversations in their games will often have messages that say "So-and-so will remember that" when you have backed them up or opposed them. One scene involved a character who was on painkillers and decided to have a few drinks. After a while he passed out and the game said "He won't remember this." I was laughing so hard I was too late to take a good screenshot.

Overall I think this was my favorite episode so far, especially since the end scene suggests that we are much closer to getting to the bottom of the whole thing. If you've been on the fence about The Wolf Among Us, I feel confident in recommending it now.

Burial at Sea Ep 2 Review

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This is the biggest departure from the established Bioshock formula that we have ever seen; don't worry, in this case that is a very good thing. And don't get me wrong, I loved the rest of the Bioshock games.

Let's get right into it: in Burial at Sea Episode 2 we play as Elizabeth, which is the first time we have played as a woman in the series. I believe this is why Irrational chose to mix up the gameplay as well. This episode is very stealth-oriented, taking some queues from the recently released Thief. The only weapon that I used throughout the game was the crossbow, which can shoot tranquilizers, smoke bombs, or noisemakers.

Being able to sneak up behind people and knock them out is handy. And because it is extremely important to be aware of your surroundings when playing a stealth game, they introduced the "Peeping Tom" plasmid, which lets you see people through walls. In order to encourage players to take the stealth approach, the rest of the weapons are extremely underpowered; I can see this being annoying to some, but I prefer stealth anyway.

In terms of story I thought this was the easiest to follow story we have seen in Bioshock, and that gives it a lot of strength. The previous games reveled in being vague to keep us wondering, and then throwing a huge curveball at the last possible moment. The core story of Bioshock Infinite and the first episode of Burial at Sea were especially guilty of this. As long as you are familiar with the previous stories of the Bioshock series you will understand what is going on the whole time. That's not to say that you won't be surprised, but you will understand what is happening, which makes these moments all the more powerful.

One moment in particular was probably the most disturbing scene I have ever witnessed in a video game. Let's just say that transorbital lobotomies are pretty effective as a torture method.

I'm really glad that Bioshock is ending on such a strong note. Playing through Burial at Sea only makes sense if you have played the rest of the Bioshock games. Buying both episodes together as part of the season pass is definitely the way to go, and they are worth $10 each for sure. And don't forget to grab the songs from the episode. The pie song was my personal favorite.

Dream: The Computers are Messed Up

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I had this dream this morning in that stage where I had already woken up once, decided not to get out of bed, and went back to sleep. Weird dreams tend to come out of that stage of sleep.

In my dream my roommate +Declan Mccrory came in and woke me up by turning on our computers. He managed to log in to mine (no idea how he knew my password,) but then goes "What is going on here??" That got my attention so I jump up and have a look. At first I thought he just changed the wallpaper to mess with me, but I noticed that the taskbar went off the screen, the user settings were all gibberish, and I couldn't figure anything out. I do remember trying to update the graphics driver to see if that fixed anything.

Then I suddenly realized that there were toddlers in the apartment because our apartment mate +Brenan Cain was babysitting for someone. I remember thinking that we really should have vacuumed before agreeing to babysit.

Then +Nic McPhee showed up for no reason complaining about the weather (he said it was snowing again.) I took out my phone to check the weather and I noticed that my phone was acting strange as well; it was as though Project Hera had suddenly come out overnight and changed everything about how the phone worked. I couldn't even figure out how to look up the weather. At this point I started really freaking out because nothing was working the way it was supposed to. Luckily I woke up, and my computer and phone are working like they should.

Yeah, I have hardcore nightmares.

Amnesia Fortnight 2014

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Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight is a two-week period where they drop everything they are working on, get into small teams, and make four or five prototype games. Last year's Amnesia Fortnight resulted in a couple of games that will have full releases: Spacebase DF-9 and Hack n' Slash.

This year they made four prototypes: Dear Leader, Mnemonic, Steed, and Little Pink Best Buds. By contributing through Humble I got access to those prototypes when they were completed, as well as their soundtracks.

Dear Leader sets the player as the new dictator of a soviet nation that has just gone through a revolution. You have to make decisions and hand down edicts as you see fit. The game was created in the same engine as Broken Age, which makes a lot of sense because the art played a big role in the inspiration for the game and everything that you do is accomplished by clicking on things on your desk. I had a lot of fun with the prototype, spending over an hour leading my country and giving them slogans like "having fun isn't hard when you've got a library card" to support my five-year plan for education. I could definitely see this getting made into a full game.

Mnemonic deals with memories in a curious fashion; you start in a hub with doors leading to different memories. Each memory will pause at a particular point because your character cannot remember what happened next. In order to progress you find items in other memories that allow him to remember what happened next. It is an interesting concept, but I got stuck for a long time, which was frustrating because the game only took half an hour. It is an interesting idea, but it would need to be handled carefully if they made a game out of it.

Steed takes the trope of a boy and his horse and flips it around: you play as the horse, and the human is mostly along for the ride. Pun intended. I was really curious to see what kinds of interesting stories they could explore this way, but unfortunately the demo was extremely short; it only took me 10 minutes to play through it. With an idea as unique as this I was hoping to have a more interesting control scheme than "you can kick backwards as well as forwards!" I did amuse myself by pooping a few times though.

Little Pink Best Buds is easily the strangest of the bunch, which isn't too surprising considering it comes straight from the mind of Pendleton Ward. Actually I think the best way for you to get a sense of what the game is about would be to watch his pitch video:

I was definitely expecting to be able to pick which Little Pink Dude becomes my best friend, but apparently they didn't have enough time to implement all of that. The only one you can choose is Big Leg, and the whole thing is pretty scripted. This idea would require a lot of work to become fully realized in a game, but I really want to see it happen because it was hilarious. Oh, and the voice acting was simply the best.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Review

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The Marvel Cinematic Universe has become my biggest ongoing fandom this year, mostly thanks to the excellent show Agents of SHIELD that serves to whet my appetite between movie releases. As they have demonstrated before, they are very good at making sequels that are better than their predecessors, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier continues that trend. Granted, the first Captain America movie was inherently limited because it was an origin story; even so, The Winter Soldier blew it out of the water. I'll even go so far as to say that it is my favorite apart from The Avengers.

Part of the reason that I like it so much is because it ties into the grander story they are telling more than any of the other individual heroes' movies. Thor tends to deal with large cosmic threats, but doesn't have as much bearing on the lay of the land here on Earth. Even the Iron Man movies only deal with adversaries that matter to Tony Stark. With The Winter Soldier however, I don't think the world will ever be the same. I'm kind of worried about watching the next episode of SHIELD because I'm not sure how the show will change as a result of this movie. Bottom line: if you are invested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is a must-see.

The two main twists in the story were executed well, though I figured out one of them before it happened.
Because of the nature of the way the Cinematic Universe takes concepts from the comic books and reapplies them to this new context, it would be very easy to accidentally spoil things for yourself by looking up things that already exist but we have not yet seen in the movies. Luckily I managed to avoid anything like that.

The dialogue was spot-on (I laughed obnoxiously loud at more than a few jokes) and the action was so good that Sonja had to hold my hand to stop me from getting too riled up. There weren't even any secondary characters that I hated. Man, everything about this movie was good.

Obviously this is Captain America's movie, but Black Widow has a large part to play as well. I was really glad to see this, because I think that she and Hawkeye deserve more screentime than they have been given so far. I wish they could have a movie all to themselves, but that probably isn't going to happen. Honestly though, why does Ant-Man get a movie and they don't?

Dream: Aliens Invade a Board Game

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The really interesting thing about this dream is that nothing happens that I can't see happening in real life.

I walk in to find several of my friends playing a variation of the board game Axis and Allies. Now the traditional Axis and Allies is a strategy game that takes place in the middle of World War II. It appears that +Ian Decker had come up with a version that introduces an alien invasion in the middle of the whole thing, and the human nations have to start working together to fight them off. Wait, haven't I read a book with that premise?

I believe that +Caleb Buck and +Jonas Buck were controlling the human factions, and +Anna Haslow was controlling the aliens. Since I didn't have any units to control, I decided to create a civilian unit for me to essentially play an RPG with. My goal was to avoid the alien forces as they took over the world, which means that I was trying to get to Alaska.

I kind of want to try this out in real life, probably minus the RPG part.

Dream: I Am (Almost) Iron Man

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At the beginning of this dream I was basically a pilot in Titanfall: I could run endlessly, double jump, wall run, and generally just be awesome. The only thing missing was a weapon.

As I ran around it became pretty obvious that I was being chased, so I tried to speed up a bit. Unfortunately it wasn't enough, and someone grabbed me from behind. I tumbled to the ground as he landed on his feet in front of me. Luckily I suddenly realized that I had Jango Fett's jetpack on as well as the jump pack. I lined myself up and activated the jetpack, slamming into the guy and carrying him up a ways before dropping him.

I knew that there were still others chasing me, so I kept going along the path I had been following before (it looked suspiciously like a linear video game map.) To conserve fuel I used the jetpack sparingly and started gliding with the wingsuit I was apparently wearing. I think I even had small jets attached to my feet to make navigational adjustments. Then a voice started talking to me, which turned out to be the wingsuit's artificial intelligence. At that point I was basically Iron Man without the iron, but I woke up before I got that far.

Indie Game: The Movie Review

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The struggling artist is a trope that we're all familiar with, but most of us don't associate it with video game developers. That is pretty understandable because until 2009 or so the only games we saw were big-budget games being put out by large corporations. With the indie game scene exploding in the last few years, it became much more obvious that there were people making games purely out of passion; people who put their financial stability and reputations on the line to create something beautiful. And that's art.

Enter Indie Game: The Movie, a documentary that sets out to tell a few of these developers' stories. It focuses on Jonathan Blow (Braid), Phil Fish (Fez), and Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes (Super Meat Boy). In the case of Fez and Super Meat Boy, they interview the developers at several important points during the creation of their games. Fez faced a very long development and legal issues that drained Fish. McMillen and Refenes had to crunch to get Super Meat Boy out in time for an Xbox promotion. For all of them, the failure of their games would mean they would probably be finished with game development. Braid was already out by the time the movie was filmed, so Blow mostly talked about what is important to him about independent development. It wasn't nearly as emotionally intense as the other developers' stories, but it helped to frame them.

Even the music was indie game related. Most of it was by Jim Guthrie, and a lot of it was taken straight from Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery. Being that I listen to that soundtrack on a fairly regular basis, it was pretty cool to hear them using the music in such an effecting way.

I was hoping that Indie Game: The Movie would be the kind of documentary I could show my parents to convince them that game development is an art form, but I'm not sure it would work for that. The best audience are definitely gamers; those of us who are already invested in the indie scene will get a lot out of the movie, and gamers who have previously only been exposed to AAA games could be encouraged to expand their horizons. Obviously all three games that were featured have been successful and are very well-known, but during the credits they show many other indie games; even I hadn't heard of most of them, and you can bet I will be looking into them.

This movie is definitely worth a look for anyone who is remotely interested in video games.

Stargate SG-1: Unleashed Review

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The Stargate franchise has had a pretty tumultuous relationship with the video game world. I remember hearing about an MMO called Stargate Worlds in development years ago, but their money ran out and the game was never released. A third-person shooter called Stargate: Resistance came out in 2010, but less than a year later they pulled the game from stores and shut down the servers. I was really disappointed that I missed out on it, but Stargate SG-1: Unleashed looks like it is here to stay.

Unleashed is a third-person adventure game for iOS and Android. I can understand the desire to bring console-grade gaming to mobile devices, but despite the fact that the power in our phones is increasing at an incredible rate I don't think this will ever be a viable option.

One very obvious reason is graphics. Unleashed tried to go for photorealism, and as you can see it's pretty bad. This could easily have been avoided if they went with a different art style; for example, some nice cel shading could have given it a comic book feel similar to The Walking Dead. My Nexus 5's Snapdragon 800 is about as high-end as they come right now, so the game ran smooth as butter. Even so, it drained my battery pretty fast so I usually only played when I knew I had access to a charger.

The other big reason that console-like gaming doesn't work on mobile is the way the game is consumed. When I play something on my computer, I have probably made sure that I have a decent chunk of time available. I play mobile games when I am out and about and I have a few minutes to kill. Unleashed acts like a console game in this area, expecting me to sit down and play it for an extended period of time. It doesn't let you save manually, instead relying on checkpoints. I ended up replaying quite a few sections because I had to step away before hitting the next checkpoint.

Gameplay and controls is another area where third-person mobile games struggle. Unleashed uses the expected twin-stick emulation in most areas where you move around, and it works pretty well. Combat is pretty simple: you are crouched behind cover and have to strategically decide when to pop out and shoot at enemies. If you get hit you can just stay behind cover until your character stops panting. Almost everything else in the game is based on quick time events. Seriously. Shimmying along a ledge? Quick time event. Taking out a guard from behind? Quick time event. Drawing a bucket of water out of a freaking well? You'd better be ready for a quick time event, my friend! Ugh.

Let's talk about some positive stuff! The story was well-written and interesting. Most of the voice acting was by the actors from the show, so it was both congruent with my expectations and it was quality voice acting. If the story or acting had been worse you can bet that I would not have finished the game.

Ultimately Stargate SG-1: Unleashed is only worth playing if you are a super fan of Stargate. I am interested in the story enough to get the second episode, but I am seriously disappointed in its quality as a game.

The Walking Dead 2 Episode 2 Review

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I wasn't really sure what to expect from the second episode of The Walking Dead 2 because the first episode didn't have much going on in it. I didn't know enough about the group of people I met to make predictions about what was going to happen. Luckily the second episode picks things up; well, it's not lucky for the characters in the game, but you know what I mean.

The most important thing that happens in this episode is the people in your new group get fleshed out more in a big way. The Walking Dead would fail completely if it didn't have strong characters that you care about. I found myself drawn to the people in the group to varying degrees, much as I would in real life.

The biggest challenge Telltale faces in this game is finding ways to give the player agency in ways that make sense for an 11 year old girl. For the most part I think they succeeded, though there were a few exceptions; for example, who would leave Clementine alone to figure out how to turn off a wind turbine?

Unfortunately I cannot go into the best things about this episode without spoiling everything, but trust me: The Walking Dead 2 is officially now worth getting. There were a lot of surprises, which I was not expecting. I thought I was prepared for anything that Telltale could throw at me, but I was very wrong.

Much like the first episode, they end with a huge cliffhanger. If you hate dealing with those, you might want to wait until the third episode comes out, but that will probably end on a cliffhanger as well. I'm enjoying playing it one episode at a time, but I wish I had somebody I could discuss things with.

Fives Review

Fives is a mobile game that's all about combining like numbers. Numbers are arranged on a 4x4 grid, and your score is determined by how many you can combine before you have no more moves left. Here is an example of what the board might look like at the end of a game:

That might look a little confusing until you understand what you do in the game. On each turn you can slide the board up, down, left, or right. Every number on the board will move in that direction if it can (they will not slide off the end of the board). Twos will combine with threes to make fives, and every number after that will combine with like numbers (fives with fives, tens with tens, etc). When numbers combine the new number is the addition of the two old numbers. Also when you make your move a new number will slide in on the side of the board you are pulling from. So if you slide everything down, a new number will appear in one of the slots at the top of the board. As you can see above, there were no more moves I could make because there were no numbers adjacent to numbers they could combine with.

The board starts out will all twos and threes, and your score is determined by how many moves you made and how large the numbers are on the board by the end. It is a very good idea to pay attention to what the next number is, so that you can pull in a direction that will place it near other numbers like it. Otherwise the board fills up very quickly. Take the below screenshot as an example: Although pulling left here only allows me to combine one pair of numbers, they are the largest numbers on the board, and on the next turn I will be able to pull down and combine three numbers at once. Furthermore, I know that the next number is a twenty, so I am positioning it near several tens that will soon become twenties.

Fives has several monetization models; you can play the game for free with ads. These ads show up in a small banner below the next number indicator, and a large ad pops up after each game. You can get rid of these ads by paying $2, which I did. You also have a limited number of undos and chances to change the next number. You can earn these by scoring over 10,000 points (which takes a long time) or you can buy them for $1 a piece. This is not worth it in my mind, and I am sure that some of the global high scores exist because people spent a lot more money than they should have in order to get up there. Fives appears to only be available on Android.

I've enjoyed playing Fives but other than +Ryan Rampersad I don't know anyone who plays it, and he will never get anywhere near my high score. Much like Dots, I think I am done with this game.

Update: Fives is most certainly a clone of Threes! which is now available on Android, so I recommend checking that out instead.