FTL: This Game is Incredible

Today I'd like to talk about a success story from Kickstarter. Basically for those who haven't heard of it, Kickstarter is one of the better known crowd funding sites. Here, people promote their product and ask for donations so that they can successfully fund their projects. Without Kickstarter, many smaller, independently owned companies and groups would not have been able to see their ideas come to fruition. A good example would be Brian and Brandon's book.

Another would be the game Faster Than Light.

The game revolves you, your crew and your ship. The Galactic Federation has been all but destroyed by Rebels but you have critical data that can defeat them. Somehow, you have to jump across enough sectors using your faster than light warp drive to deliver this data in one piece.

And this is all while the Rebel fleet is right behind you, trying to catch up and stop you. Each sector contains an exit that will allow you to jump to the next sector, and every sector is broken up by various waypoints which your ship can jump between.

Everytime you play the sectors are randomly generated so it's a new and unique experience each time. 

Sound simple so far? Here's where it gets tricky.

Here we go...

I know I have several Sci-Fi fans, people who loved shows like Firefly, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. Who's ever wanted to command their own crew? Yell at someone to fix the engines because a volley of enemy missiles have damaged them. Meanwhile you divert power to the shields to protect the ship but intruders have boarded so you need to to stop them too. You target your own lasers to destroy the enemy weapon's array but by now the boarding party has already destroyed the oxygen generators (causing your crew to slowly asphyxiate).

At least someone is extinguishing the fire in the medbay.

FTL lets you do all that and more. Every possible function and upgrade in a starship is available to you. Every system of your ship requires power to work, upgrading a system means it needs more power and with limited power you have to balance and make sacrifices to survive. I play extremely defensively, maxing out my shields, grabbing cloaking abilities, and using weaponry that disable enemy systems. My friend prefers to max out on offensive weapons, destroy your enemy before he touches you. I've see other people use automated drones or send their own crew to infiltrate other ships.

Every waypoint you travel to has a chance of an event happening. It can range from a simple automated Rebel scout attacking you, to answering a distress signal, or entering an asteroid field with Pirates waiting. And you could just decide to run away from a fight, sometimes distress signals are traps, and maybe the Pirates upon realizing it was a bad idea to attack you, beg for their lives. But it's up to you to spare them or not.

Every jump is random!

I'd recommend FTL to anyone with any interest in the Sci-fi genre. It is not an easy game and it's not a forgiving game either. If any of your crew members die, it's permanent, shops and repairs are uncommon and who says you can afford their wares anyways? All it takes is one bad encounter to cripple your ship for the rest of the mission and if you die, you have to start over.

And you'll want to start over. Just one more time, maybe you'll be luckier, maybe you have a better idea of how to do things, or you could be just masochistic. Whatever your reason, FTL has additional unlockable ships, achievements, high score recordings and potential for modding. Available on PC, Mac and Linux for only $10 on Steam I thought it was well worth my money. I even ended up buying the soundtrack but that's because I liked the electronic music in it.

Sherlock: This Show is Amazing

Apologies to The Golden Eagle who recently also did a post about Sherlock.

I hadn't intended on talking about this show. I had no intentions of watching it either. For the longest time my sister Bree had been badgering me to watch BBC's Sherlock. But I had other shows to watch, games to play and so Sherlock was left on the backburner.

But one evening I decided on a whim to watch an episode and see what all the fuss was about. Just one episode before bed.

I ended up watching the entire first season in one sitting. And it took all my willpower not to start the second and go to sleep.

Unless you've lived under a rock your entire life you probably know of Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective with his assistant Dr. John Watson. They run around and solve mysteries. But the stories were originally from the 19th century. So, what if it took place in the 21st Century? The BBC series does just that, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in modern day London.

And together they solve crimes using both Holmes' incredible mind and modern technology.

First off, the characters are played by great actors. Sherlock is observant, inconsiderate, brilliant, cold, witty, and eccentric. There were speculations that Arthur Conan Doyle based Sherlock on individuals with Aspergers and BBC's Sherlock certainly has it. It's convincing and it feels real, not artificial and forced like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Basically, if upgraded Sheldon enough times, you would get Sherlock.

Watson is exasperated, loyal, and does an excellent straight man for all of Sherlock's antics. There are a lot of discussing online claiming that Watson and Holmes are gay. I don't see that at all. Just because two men hang around each other a lot, care for one another in times of danger, and live together in an apartment does not automatically mean they're gay.

Moriarty on the other hand is a completely different story but I'm not going to delve into that too much.

Each season only has 3 episodes but with each episode being an hour and a half long, each episode is like a mini movie. There is a lot of thought put into each episode, the writing is excellent, almost every joke presented required me to pause the show because I was laughing too hard to keep watching. I've never had a show force me to the edge of my seat in anticipation with what happens next. It's an amazing feeling.

Each crime is loosely based on the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. For example, A Study in Pink is based off of A Study in Scarlet. The crimes are also supposed to be solved in a similar way to the original. Apparently there are tons of little references to the books hidden in the show. This series was clearly made for fans, from fans. So fans of the original Sherlock Holmes story are going to pick up on these things. I didn't. I'm just going to use Wikipedia to find them.

I'm going to watch the second season with Theresa as soon as possible. And then we will sit and wait for the third one to come out. I highly recommend everyone else do the same.

Note: If anyone has things they want me to try and review go ahead and suggest it. Games, books, shows and even recipes. As long as you think I could do something interesting with it, I will try it.

Second note: If you think my reviews suck let me know. :(

The Game of Thrones: This Series is Excellent

University has a way of stealing all your reading time. After reading pages upon pages of notes and textbook materials most people don't want to do more reading. But Theresa has been bugging me to read some of the books she's reading so I grabbed the first 4 novels as the beginning of the month.

And in my spare time I'm nearly done all 4 of them. From my understanding, there's a 5th book out right now and a 6th and 7th in the future. So if my impression of the series changes I might do another review then.

But for now, here's my thoughts on the first 4 books.

A smart person would have turned this into 4 blog posts with 4 book reviews.

The series takes place in a somewhat medieval era where most magic has died. Most of the story thus far takes place on the continent of Westeros which mostly consists of the Seven Kingdoms. Whoever sits on The Iron Throne rules all of the Seven Kingdoms. And this is which much of the conflict of the story pertains to. The Game of Thrones refers to the fight for said Iron Throne.

No seriously, you'd have to be completely blind to not see where most of the conflict and plot is coming from. What happens when you cram a bunch of people into a room and tell them only one person can rule over the others? The ambitious people start killing and backstabbing each other, the uninterested get dragged into the conflict anyways, and crazy people are going to be crazy.

Lots of this.

The Game of Thrones is unique in the way that the story is told, utilizing multiple protagonists. Each chapter is distinguished by a different character and is told from his or her point of view at that specific time in the story. You are given a look into their very thoughts, motivations and feelings of ongoing events. Each book has both old and new characters each time, mostly to replace dead people but we'll get to that later.

The first book mostly focuses on characters from the House of Stark, a family of people from the North who are dragged into the fight for the Iron Throne against their will. By the 4th book the number of characters we have is completely diverse and unique in terms of their role is in the Game of Thrones. Several which aren't even from Westeros but on 1 of the other 3 continents.

I am told that book 5 takes place at the exact same time as book 4 but told from the perspective of additional characters, but I wouldn't know. I haven't read that far yet.

As of writing, I haven't seen any copies in paperback in my area.

The writing is excellent, the characters are usually interesting and entertaining in their own ways. Myself, I find Tyrion and Jaime Lannister hilarious and I can't stand Eddard, Catelyn or Sansa Stark. The story continues to evolve and hint at things for future books which is nice. I don't like having random plot devices inserted into my stories that conveniently help one random person.

And yes, there is lots of sex but it's done almost tastefully. Well, it's the most tasteful I've ever read it. None of that over-the-top nonsense that you'd see in something trashy like Fifty Shades of Grey. Yes the book contains violence but it also isn't over excessive and overly gory.

The incest aspect wasn't that prominent either. I think people just like to blow things out of proportion. Same thing with dying characters. Yes, usually at least one main character will die in each book but most people generally will come out at alive.

But that's only because the series isn't done yet.

I haven't watched the TV series yet but my friend has and he complains a lot about the deviations from the book. That, and much of the events in the story are quickly glossed over. I'd recommend reading the books first before watching the show.

You know what, read the books regardless even if you have no intention of watching the show. It's a great series and I normally cannot stand the fantasy genre. Game of Thrones is the first exception I've made in years.

BONUS PICTURE FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE READ THE BOOKS:

The Binding of Isaac: This Game is Horrifying

Theresa gifted me many things from the Steam Summer Sale while I was away in China. Now my backlog of games grows even larger and I have no idea how I'm going to get through all of these. In the meantime, I seem to have a preference for games by independent developers so today let's talk about The Binding of Isaac.

And while it is an excellent game, it is also easily one of the most disturbing games out there as well. Created by the same man who made Super Meatboy, some readers may be offended by this game's religious content. Anyone who may be offended can just scroll to the bottom and talk about their pet cat or something.

Yep, nothing out of the ordinary here.

The game is about a young boy named Isaac who lives with his Mother. However, his Mother begins to hear the voice of "God" and is ordered to sacrifice Isaac to prove her devotion. Yes, this mimics the Biblical story of the same name.

Isaac attempts to flee from his Mother by escaping through a trapdoor found in his bedroom. From there he must try and survive mazes filled with monstrous creatures and eventually face his Mother. The game has 11 different possible endings (13 with the Wrath of the Lamb expansion pack) each shedding light on Isaac's fate.

You play the game as Isaac, a small boy who is depicted as constantly crying. And that's actually how he fights the monsters in the mazes, by firing his tears at enemies. It is also possible to unlock other characters sharing the names of other Biblical characters such as Samson and Magdalene who have their own attributes. For example, Judas starts the game with very low health but the highest attack, whereas Cain has a much greater chance of finding better items.

 Again, the Wrath of the Lamb expansion gives additional characters.

The game differentiates itself from other dungeon crawlers in two ways, the maze creations and the items. Each playthrough is completely different in terms of mazes explored, monsters encountered, and items obtained. There are no saves and each time you play, you're either going to die or beat it. Dying involves you starting all over. As you progress and beat the game, additional items, bosses and even levels unlock giving another layer of depth to the game.

There are over 100 items that can randomly appear in the game, with an additional hundred items with the Wrath of the Lamb expansion. You have items ranging from basic health upgrades, attack upgrades to items that grant you wings, change your tears into lazers or give Isaac bad gas.

Oh on top of that, most items will cause your character to change his appearance. A tub of lard makes you fat, coat hangers will go through your head, diseases make you appear infected and sick, chemicals will burn off half your face.

A guy on Deviantart has drawn depictions of his character after each game, and remember that each playthrough is going to give you different items resulting in completely unique experiences:

You can view the rest of his gallery here.

Despite its cartoony appearance, The Binding of Isaac is NOT a game I'd would recommend for younger children. The monsters range from bizarre to disturbing and there is an exceptional amount of blood and gore in the game. The game is also quite difficult and often unforgiving. You are not required to explore the entire map and in fact can just go and fight bosses as soon as you find them. 

HOWEVER, by doing so you risk missing items that will make the rest of your playthrough easier. Or maybe you won't find anything at all and you'll end up fighting a boss half crippled. That constant threat of risk vs. reward is another well done feature of the game. Any mistakes are done because you decided to do them and you have no one else to blame.

For only $5 and an additional $3 for the expansion pack on Steam, this game is well worth its cost. Lots of content, plenty of replay value, and a unique experience and different challenge each time you play, I highly recommend this game.

Bastion: This Game is Glorious

It's been ages since I've done a review of anything but I've finally had a moment to dip into my backlog of books/games and decided to play Bastion.

I reviewed LIMBO many months ago and you might start noticing a trend. I'm generally only going to be reviewing Indie or uncommon games. I don't want to be discussing something like Battlefield, Diablo, or anything else that gets enough attention as it is.

I think this makes me a hipster though.

Nevermind, I only have 2 Xs on this thing. I'm still safe.

Bastion is the story of a boy know only as "The Kid" who wakes up, finds his entire world destroyed, torn up, and spat out by an event known as The Calamity. Guided only by a Stranger's voice he sets off to explore what's left of his world and find a way to start-up a structure called the Bastion. In doing so, hopefully the events of the Calamity can be reversed.

It's a 2D Adventure Role-Playing Game (or ARPG) with an isometric viewpoint. In other words, you control a character and make him do things in a 2D world that's made to look 3D. If you're confused by my description of how the world looks, take a look at the picture below. The world is done in this beautiful hand-drawn style and is a mix of both Steampunk and Fantasy.

But the visual presentation isn't what makes this game so wonderful, it's how everything else is presented.

Everything looks so pretty!

First, the story. A lot of games have trouble weaving a story with gameplay. Some games present massive blocks of texts, others have unskippable cutscenes, or wordy and boring dialogue sessions. All of these interrupt gameplay. Bastion gets around this by simply having the Stranger narrate chunks of the story as you play along.

For example, let's say you enter a new area. As you walk around, the Stranger will give a little bit of information, just a few sentences as you're running around. And then that's it. And he won't say anything else until you've done something worth saying. With this, you get a rich and unique narrative that's not overwhelming or intrusive.

Anything and everything you do can get a line from the Stranger. Doing well in a fight can get him to comment on how you breezed through, whereas nearly dying will prompt him to say how it was a hard fight, but you still did it. And this extends to the weapons you chose, the tasks you complete, the way you die, so on and so forth.

I know this sounds odd. But imagine if you could have Morgan Freeman follow you around for a day and give random commentary on everything you do, where you go, and give justification for why you did that. That is exactly what the narration feels like.

Every word this man says is liquid gold.

But this is also an action game so how does combat fare? Combat is also excellent. You are given a wide variety of upgradable weapons and skills to use so there is a large variety of customization. Nothing is better than the other, it all comes down to personal preference which is good. The enemies encountered are also unique and present their own challenges.

But there will be a point where you feel ridiculously overpowered and the game becomes too easy. Some people are going to like this but others are going to want a challenge. However, instead of a difficulty setting you eventually get access to a Shrine.

In Bastion, praying to the Gods will benefit your enemies, not you. Depending on who you pray to your enemies may gain increased defense, health regeneration, dropping explosives on death and many more. In return, you get an experience bonus which will help you level up faster if you can survive.

Why do the Gods hate us so much?!

Any problems with the game? Some of the challenges I found were very challenging unless certain upgrades were purchases which can be frustrating, but I guess that's what makes it a challenge. Another feature of the game is that the world pieces itself together as you explore it. A path will literally form in from empty space in front of you. This can be disorientating at times, running around, trying to find the trigger to activate the next chunk of world to form.

Other than that, I can't think of any other complaints.

The music is lovely, the art is lovely, the story could be considered cliched but the way it's presented should be applauded, and combat works great. The game is only $15 on Steam for PCs or 1200 Microsoft Points in the Xbox Live Arcade. You're looking at anywhere from 8 to 15 hours of gameplay depending on whether you do the challenges and/or the Story+ mode upon beating the game.

I highly recommend this game, one of the best I've played as of late. Trailer is down below:

And that's the voice of The Stranger in case you were wondering.

And I know this post is a few hours late. Still going to try and stick with my every third day posting schedule. Next post will be on Saturday.

Resolutions Update 3

I still can't believe I'm following through with this. People generally stop trying or forget by this point but here I am trudging on. I deserve a gold star, a cookie, or something.

Even though I've been kind of too busy since the last update to have made much progress.

I'm giving myself a high-five anyways...

Goal #1:

Yeah... It's not easy to do push-ups when you're sleep deprived. I would know, I've tried. I'm still stuck on week 4 of the 100 push-ups challenge. I'm finding that my wrists are getting sore and that a way to get around this is to use fists instead of open palms.

The problem with this is that now the push-ups are significantly harder and my nails are digging into my palms. I guess I can alternate between the two methods until I find something better.

Oh, and I've joined up with a site called Fitocracy. Basically, you do various exercises, you get points for doing them, achievements, and level up. It works based on an honor system as no one can really prove that you've done the exercises but lying about it only hurts yourself. I find it's a good way to keep track of what you're doing and even though all I do is sporadic push-ups, it's still something.

You can follow me if you want. Just search for DWei and we can encourage each other in our bid to become more healthy.

Could be worse I guess.

Goal #2:

The job hunt has not gone well. There is virtually nothing for Psychology students. Nothing. I have looked all over and in my city, all they want are Engineers. You know it's bad when you search for "Psychology Internship" and the top results come back as "Engineer Internships".

Right now, this is the only kind of Engineer I want to see.

I've extended my search to neighboring cities and I'm even considering the Canadian Army. Apparently, if you have a degree that matters more to them and you start off better. So I've heard. I'll give more details into this as I look into it, my courses have been eating up a lot of my time.

A fellow Psychology student suggested that I look into Speech Pathology or a similar career route. All I'd be required to do is take a few more years of courses in Linguistics. I've never even considered this but I'll certainly look into it when time permits.

Also, has anyone else been getting paid significantly less from advertising? My traffic has gone up but my earnings have dwindled. Seeing as this blog is major part of my current income I'm a bit concerned.

Oh and current debt to parents is currently $5200 Canadian.

Goal #3:

Looks like I'm just really bad for finishing things. I have a project on hiatus with my friend Jean, my hollow book is almost done however, just need to make a few more cuts and I'll post pictures of the finished thing.

I've also decided to finally get my full driving license. I've had my probational one for long enough so I can take the test but I want to get more practice first. Getting the full driver's license counts for this goal as it is something I've wanted to do for a while.

And Theresa has been hinting that I should get it so I can drive her around. So yay, more encouragement. Though I won't take the test until after finals most likely.

And let's hope this doesn't happen.

Goal #4:

This is probably my worst goal so far. I've only done one book review so far and I haven't had time to finish other books or games thanks to my workload exploding. I'll probably make up for it in the future by doing two a month or something. Same applies to Goal #3.

And now I need to run off and continue studying for a midterm. I'll see you guys on Friday. A lot of people asked questions for my last post and I'll try and answer them as soon as I have a chance to properly read them all.

Pygmy:This Book is Awkward

It's about time I got around to doing this book review. I mean I finished this thing back in January and look, almost the end of Febuary until I get around to talking about it. Better late than never I guess.

But yes, the book I'm going to be reviewing today is Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk. You may recognize that name because he's the same guy who wrote the Fight Club.

I've never actually read Fight Club and I've only seen half the movie.

The book takes place in present time and follows the story of a boy from an unnamed totalitarian country which feels like a mash-up of the USSR, North Korea and Communist China. The boy has been trained as an elite spy and with his colleagues have been "adopted" by various families in an unknown small town in the United States.

Their goal is to perform an act of terrorism only referred to as "Operation Havoc" and kill as many people as possible.

Meanwhile, my readers are questioning my tastes in books.

The book is narrated by the boy who is called Agent 67 but later goes by the name Pygmy, a nickname given by his adoptive family. This is where the book for me was very painful to read. Imagine if a robot with a poor grasp of the English language and understanding of Western culture and objects was giving reports on his how his day was. That's what Pygmy feels like.

Pygmy often refers to himself as "Operative Me", goes into long and descriptive comments on even the most mundane of tasks and occurrences. He gives unique phrases for various thing for example, crying is "bleed eye water". The grammar and the syntax of all his sentences are like that. Short, concise and but colorful. He also describes his environment in the same way, able to identify specific chemicals and compounds simply based off what he smells or sees.

I wasn't even aware you could smell Viagra off someone's breath...

It's a contrast of two cultures. The decadent, materialistic and free USA compared to the strict, militaristic and controlled Unknown nation. I didn't really enjoy this aspect either, it's kind of cliched, and felt really forced to the point where it was cartoonish.

Oh and as with any of Palahniuk's books expect violence and sexual content, this book is not for children. Not that they'd be interested, I also found the text to be kind of dense. Probably just because of Pygmy's speaking quirk.

It's not a bad read, but it certainly wasn't my favorite book ever. I've actually had this book for years but stopped reading halfway. Now I remember why.

And I'll be honest, I only bought it because I heard good things about the author, and the cover looked hilarious.

Best weapon ever.

So that concludes my first book review, any comments or suggestions for things to do in the future? Or even other books to read. I generally prefer dark humor or satire.

LIMBO: This Game is Depressing

If it wasn't obvious enough that I'm a gamer (and that I would give internal organs to Valve if they asked) I'm not sure what else I need to do. However, I know a lot of you aren't like this and can't understand the appeal. That's fine, but whenever I do make comments on a game I will do my best to make the commentary more accessible to non-gamers.

Preemptive apologies to Beth because this isn't a book review.

Thanks to finals being done I can actually enjoy myself. So today we'll be talking about LIMBO, a game about a boy who wakes up in a forest and needs to go find his missing sister. It's a 2D platformer with physics puzzles, in layman's terms you run and jump around and manipulate the properties of the environment to move to the next stage. Sounds pretty standard so far.

And now why LIMBO is horrifying and how only a serial killer could smile during a playthrough.

This is not a happy game.

The entire game is set in black and white environments. Utilizing that grainy film effect and clever lighting it creates a ominous, dark and unwelcoming world. To further help this, the only sound effects in the game are faint background noises such as the sound of flies and soft crunching of questionable objects.

The puzzles generally take a bit of thinking and timing to figure out. Most of them consist of some variation of timed jumps, operating switches and machines as well as pulling and moving objects to help you advance. The game particularly enjoys having you desecrate the bodies of the dead.

Oh and did I mention? The entire world hates you. Everything, anything and everyone can and will kill you at a whim. Whether it be like falling from too high, drowning, cut into pieces by a sawblade.

Being eviscerated by massive spider.

And the boy dies in the saddest ways possible. You feel bad every time you watch his tiny body go limp or fly in all directions of the wind. Afterall, it is your fault he missed that jump or electrocuted himself. That being said, you do come back in a safe and reasonable location in respect to where you died. You're not going to have to redo every puzzle upon your death.

The story is sparse and is left almost entirely to the player to figure out. Some people think this is a problem but I personally found it added to the unnerving atmosphere of the game. You don't really have a sense of what's going on or why. Some people question if the boy and his sister are even alive.

It's a mystery!

That being said, it is a very solid puzzle game and has won many awards. I love supporting the independent developers because they don't produce bland and repetitive games. These guys are willing to take steps in new and unique ways and they should be rewarded for it. Unlike companies such as Electronic Arts.

(By the way, I will take as many opportunities as possible to bash EA because I hate them with every fiber of my being).

This is technically my first review of ANYTHING ever. Any comments or suggestions would be great whether it be about the post or potential future reviews. I'm really open to anything, as long as I can make it entertaining.

You can pick up LIMBO on Steam for $9.99 or try the demo for free. HOWEVER, Steam is currently having their 2011 Holiday sale so LIMBO is $4.99 until January 2nd.