STG's

Intergalactic Medicine Show issue 23 was - as usual - good but not great. The main story, The Discriminating Monster's Guide to the Perils of Princess Snatching , by Scott M. Roberts, looked interesting from the moment I saw the title, and didn't disappoint. Four Wizards and a Funeral by Mike Rimar - was a nice short story. This Is My Corporation, Eat by Lon Prater is a story about profiteering from religion going amok. The Hanged Poet by Jeffrey Lyman was pretty much beautiful. Into the West by Eric James Stone is based on a clever (even if a bit silly) premise about time stopping on a certain condition (avoiding spoilers here), and explores the consequences. Pretty good. Interview With Larry Niven - I've read many of Niven's books and I'm a fan. The interview was mostly about the changes in the status of current mainstream SF and why they happened.

I played Duke Nukem 3D (and the 2D games before it) back when they were brand new. It was the gold standard in FPS for a while. So everybody was pretty excited about a new release. That is, before the years passed and it became a standard joke... Of course, having Forever in the title was pretty much begging for it. Not to mention the horrible stories of bad planning, and constantly switching from one game engine to another (instead of just getting a simple, nice game out). And now, even after being cancelled, it is out. Every review I've seen says that it is just like the old Duke in new graphics - outdated gameplay and humor. I lost interest pretty fast. But when the demo came out, I just had to see it myself. Having played it, I have to admit that there is some point to all these complaints. It feels like old style gameplay, and not in the pleasant sense. The old humor is a bit grating, although I still like it. But it is still somewhat playable, even if it is not go...

Solar 2 is an interesting game. If you play flash games, you might have seem the type - absorb (or shoot and then absorb) other particles to get bigger (or the beginning of Spore). Solar 2 is similar to this in a sense, but you start as an asteroid and grow into a planet by bumping other asteroids. You then absorb asteroids till you get life - which is useful and a nuisance, as you get a shield and ships that attack enemies, but they also destroy asteroids and planets when you don't want them to. You can them grow into a sun, and absorb whole planets and suns. While the description might make it sound lame, I very much enjoyed the gameplay. The graphics are beautiful, and the songs are OK, albeit repetitive (as a funny side note, the first song that came up when I switched to my MP3 player was Shivaree's Goodnight Moon - very adequate). You also get some missions, such as protecting planets, cleaning asteroids and such. I didn't like these as much as the open play. ...

A few neat items on this one: - Love, Cayce, By Marie Brennan. The kids of a group of adventure's - RPG style - go on together to quest around the world. The story consists of a series of letters to the parents. Pretty funny. - Exodus tides, by Alliette de Bodard. Unusual fantasy about the adaptation of merfolk to land life. - A very interesting interview with Robert Silverberg.

Asimov's always had more fantasy in it than Analog's, and this issue is no exception, which explains why I took so much time to finish this issue (and stopped in the middle to read The Line War). There were plenty of enjoyable stories in the middle of the slow ones: - Clockworks, by William Preston, was an interesting mistery with a sociopath surgeon building a doomsday weapon... but getting a conscience introduced surgically and going to the other side. - The Homecoming, by Mike Resnick. Resnick can be counted for interesting aliens, and this is no exception. A very nice short story. - The Fnoor Hen, By Rudy Rucker. Rucker's stories are always well in the weird side (I'm viewing his Wetware and Software books, in the bookcase behind my computer, as I write this - a very good example). Somewhat entertaining. - A Response for EST17 - Tom Purdom. Pretty good. Remote first contact (only first for one side, though...) with very interesting premises. The tiny solar...

A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda is an old school platform shooter. As far as graphics and music goes, I felt a little bit like if I was in the 90s. But not in a good way... The game is pretty standard for the genre. You go around jumping, shooting, and collecting materials for upgrades or new weapons. The levels, the weapon speed and the enemies all seemed wrong somehow to me. I didn't like it this one at all.

Beep is a neat 2D platform game, with plenty of simple physics puzzles. I've only played the demo. The graphics are pleasant enough, although I've seen a lot of texture artifacts (banding, flickering transparency and the like), and tends toward the cute, like the sounds. Those are borderline annoying, however. The starting gaming sequence (as well as between levels) seems mostly pointless - you just point and click a ship to get to the levels. It looks cute enough, but gameplay-wise, you could just as well have a list of levels and do an animation. Then you have the main levels, where you jump (a lot - it IS a platform game), shoot and move objects around. To move objects around, you just drag them using your anti-gravity tool (which does remind me of Half-Life 2). There are a few kinds of puzzles that use this, such as jumping puzzles (move objects to get a height), sliding platform puzzles, etc. Overall, I didn't enjoy it. There was just not enough fun on the de...

Vertex Dispenser is an interesting abstract arcade game with puzzle aspects. It has a retro vectorial style, and you capture triangles by setting vertexes. You use the same controls to destroy your enemies. You also have interesting powers such as teleporting, launching missiles, creating fortifications or attack robots. Apparently you get plenty more on the full game.

Nimbus is an interesting concept as a puzzle game - a ship that has very limited propulsion. Thus, it has to use what is available on each level to reach the exit (such as conveniently placed cannons, inclined planes and wheels). While the premise is original, I didn't find the gameplay or level design to be any fun. Also worthy of note is how minimalist the game instructions were... Not recommended.

I've just finished the last of Ian Cormac Series - Line War , by Neal Asher . I have reviewed every other one in the series, and liked them all. This one is the best. Probably not on the sense of clever plot twists (although there were a few) or major new inventions, but in the great sense of completion. Unfortunately, this is followed by a bit of sadness, because the series was great, memorable and among my favorites. As the events of last book continue, the Line war with Erebus continues, and it threatens to go to a full war with the Polity. Surprisingly, Cormac has a minor role in the conflict, while getting full control of his powers. Plenty of revelations about the Polity AIs in the end of the book. And an interesting side adventure where Asher makes it look like he is pulling a Deus Ex Machina to solve the plot (he even mentions describes it as one!). That immediately reminds of Peter F. Hamilton, which closed at least a couple of otherwise great series (Night's ...

I've recently tried to play Master of Orion II for the first time in my Windows 7 64-bit computer. I got an error message complaining that it couldn't find DPLAY.DLL . Looking around the net, I found the suggestion that you could copy DPLAYX.DLL from Windows\System32 directory into DPLAY.DLL. While doing so on System32 didn't work, copying it to the MOO2 folder did work. However, in the end I tried the version I got from Impulse some time ago. It uses DOSBox and looks a whole lot better than the old 95 version did (which had bad palette issues). So if MOO2 doesn't look right, I recommend getting it at GOG.com or Impulse. It's cheap enough (US$6 for MOO1+2 on GOG).