STG's

I'm just amazed at how bad the Binary Domain demo is in so many ways. Just as you start, if you try to run the game it complains that you should run the configuration tool. First of all, why not just create the defaults yourself? And even worse, why bother showing me a message when you could just run it?!? It is quite normal to have menus that look made for consoles. But having no mouse control over the menus is just silly. Then the game starts, and the third-person view has the most annoying camera movement I've ever seen (no idea WHY it is third-person, as far as I played it'd be exactly the same game as a FPS). There is also zero tutorial, even though it has unusual features AND key choices. Completely unplayable as far as I am concerned. Too bad, because the game looked pretty good - before I tried it.

Toy Soldiers is a World War I - with toy soldiers - Tower Defense (TD) game. Interestingly, it carefully avoids saying so on its description anywhere, instead choosing to use strategy as the genre. But it is clearly TD, albeit with a single unusual change - you can use the towers (as well as some vehicles) yourself. Graphics are good, and sounds are OK. The music is WW 1 themed too, which was mostly annoying after a first chuckle. The camera angle seems always a bit off. There is a full top view, but it is so far away from the field that is hard to see anything other than the towers. There are the usual tower types - machine gun, mortal, cannon, anti-air. There is also a sniper tower, but you can't place that yourself - it comes pre-placed on levels. Overall, I found the gameplay to be too slow on the first levels. You just place the towers and wait, or get on one of the others for a mildly entertaining time shooting at your enemies. I am told that in the highest difficulty...

Just got Toy Soldiers, which comes quite well recommended. But when it starts, all menus are in Japonese. Well, I don't speak Japonese, so that is a problem. It is easy to fix it, though. From the start menu: - Choose item 4. - Choose item 3. - Click on the left arrow on item 3 till it is back in your language. Pretty annoying and it is the first time I've ever seen this happen!

Fireburst is a neat arcade racer with a gimmick - cars have something called Fireburst - which can both be used to destroy your enemies and to speed up. You can use it at any time, but it heats up your car - and if the car gets too hot, it explodes. You can cool your car on water barrels throughout the levels, or convenient places on the level - puddles, the sea, waterfalls, etc. There are several kind of Fireburst - one makes the car indestructible and on fire, and destroys any cars you bump into. Another leave fire tracks, which heat up and possibly explode other cars. There are quick races, as well as challenges, divided among several characters. Graphics really look great, and I was surprised by how good the music was. Gameplay is good, but either my reflexes are not what they used to be, or the challenges are too hard. Overall, recommended given the low price. 4/5 Stars.

The latest issue of Analog was good, but I'd say it was weaker than the average. Food Chained - Carl Frederick - A clever story about space travel and alien food chains and intelligence. Crooks - Paul Carlson - a nice story about robots and trucks. A Murmuration of Starlings - Joe Pitkin - Quite good. I can't tell the real theme of the story without it being a spoiler, though... Titanium Soul - Catherine Shaffer - very good short story about conscience - artificial or otherwise. An Ounce of Prevention - Jerry Oltion - didn't particularly like this one. Fine Print - Michael Alexander - nice short story (again, theme is too much of a spoiler) Darwin's Gambit - Emily Mah - this was nice, and the end did have a proper setup during the story. However, it was so much into the cute cliche of children being smarter than adults that I was annoyed by it... A Reasonable Expectation of Privacy - N.M. Cedeño - very nice story about a world without privacy and a murde...

Manhattan in Reverse is a book of short stories by Peter F. Hamilton . I'm a big fan of his CommonWealth universe, as well as many of his other works (albeit he does have an habit of pulling Deux in Machina endings) and most of the stories are in the CommonWealth. Watching Trees Grow - a murder mistery that takes hundreds of years to solve - was pretty good. It takes place in an universe where Rome never fell, and the Emperors turned from breeding gladiators to breeding for longevity (which I imagine is incredibly hard, given that whole generations will pass before you get any useful data about that coupling you made...). I also can't help but imagine that without the whole Dark Ages thing, they would have much more than the few decades of technology advance suggested. But overall, very good. Footvote - a very nice story of what happens when you can generate wormholes and move the dissatisfied population in droves out of a country. The constitution items mixed with th...

Prototype (video game) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Prototype is a very intense game. I'm not sure what genre it properly fits into - it uses an outside view, so it is not a really a FPS - which I usually dislike, but makes sense in this case. I've had this game for a while - purchased on a Steam sale, as usual - and I finally decided to try it out. The game is about Alex Mercer - who (apparently at this point of the story) was mutated by a virus that gives him super powers (in a very Neal Asher's Polity sort of way - it can consume enemies, adapt in seconds to new situations with a thought, etc). There are plenty of attacks and special moves, including just grabbing a car or large AC unit and throwing it. You can do enormous jumps and run up the walls of building - apparently by doing enough damage on contact that you just penetrate the wall (not sure how that would work on glass). You can also grab guns your enemies drop, but that feels just wrong and the aiming fee...

Angry Birds Space is the latest installment of the franchise. I found it interesting that it had a PC version - I certainly hadn't noticed one before. The game is basically the same as all Angry Bird games - a physics game where you have to hit something. The space theme adds some nice variety with making orbits around the various planets, and graphics are great. The gameplay is fun, but personally I few this is a game for a few minutes only - anything more than that and I grow bored of it. If you are a fan of the franchise, you probably should try this one.