STG's

The Oil Blue is mostly a time management game. You have to take control of the machinery of abandoned oil rigs and produce oil. This is done by a mini game per oil machine type. One just consists of setting a speed and alternating cells to keep it going. Other requires pressing a pressure release from time to time, and guiding the drill to positions with oil. And so on. Meanwhile, you only have a tiny space for all that oil, so you need to sell it to make more room. The important thing is, you are not going through each machine. You have to control all of them at the same time. So you are constantly switching between screens to service each machine (plus selling the oil). To me, after the slower beginning this felt more like working against the interface than anything else. I imagine the game could be fun, but to me it felt more like work...

Dungeon of Elements is pretty much Dr Mario with some extra elements, as far as I can see. Mostly, you get into battles in dungeons with elementals of 4 different types (and thus colors), which you can defeat by joining 4 of the same color - using capsules with alchemical formulations. You can also get weapons that can be used to defeat them directly. There is more to the game, but quite frankly I really couldn't bear to keep going till those parts showed up. For whatever reason, I thought it would play a little more like Puzzle Quest (which I did enjoy a lot), but for me it really fell flat. Really not recommended.

I actually played the original (1994) XCOM: Enemy Unknown as brand new. I imagine it was the first turn-based tactical game I ever played. And it was pretty good, although it was very, very complicated. I even made a trainer for it! (it just maxed out the stats of all your soldiers). The rest of the series had good and lame moments. Terror from the Deep was just a re-skin. Several other were utterly unplayable. I liked XCOM: Aftermath, however. The new, 2013 version is as good as the original, if not better. And the whole interface system is a whole lot easier - and arguably better. The new scheme, instead of a numeric bunch of hit points, just allows you to move a certain range and perform an action, or run to a farther place and end the turn for that character. Gone are the complexities of counting individual steps (and subtracting stance changes on both ends) to find out the best move. Or figuring out how to fit another alien body or weapon in your backpack (the tiny space in ...

Lawful Interception is a novella by Cory Doctorow that take place just after Homeland . (as usual, Marcus Yallow fights corporations and the bought up government with cute tech that is either already available in real life or nearly there) If you liked the books, you will probably like this, and you can read it for free on Tor  . There is also a very nice pack of Tor stories you can get on Amazon for free  (it is available in other places such as iBooks too).