Posts

Showing posts from June, 2020

The Last Emperox - Book Review

The Last Emperox, by John Scalzi, is the last book in The Interdependency trilogy. The flow (the FTL of this universe) paths are failing, and civilization will suffer as a result. But the current Emperox and her boyfriend are working in the problem, trying to save everyone. Meanwhile, Nadashe and a lot of nobles are plotting to kill her, and only try to save the other nobles. Obvious trouble ensue. Scalzi recently posted a tweet that mentioned that people were swearing at him at a certain point of a book. I wondered which. After reading this, it is pretty obvious. Technically this is a spoiler. If you read the book, you too will know when you read it. Overall, pretty good, and the plot ends well (while it could still be milked for more books, it would be unnecessary). Very well worth reading the trilogy, I think it took me about a week and a half.

Snake Pass - Flickering Problem

Just had a nasty flickering bug with Snake Pass. The screen got green and started flickering. The scary part was that it continued it after I closed the game!!! I got the solution from a post: OrbWeaver73 has Snake Pass 4 Feb, 2018 @ 8:37pm To fix this if you are using Nvidia, Open Nvidia control panel (Not Geforce Experiance) under "Display" on the left hand side click "Resolution", Scroll down to option 3 and select use nVidia color settings, Hit apply and this should resolve the green flickering from all games that suffer from it.

AI War 2 - PC Game "Review"

This is mostly a note because very soon I will probably forget I tried this. This seems to be clever in some ways, but one of the most painful designs I have ever seen. For starters, if you want a window, you have to type in the size. I have been gaming since 8-bit computers and I can't recall this ever happening. Then there are tutorials, which are very reasonable but show that the game is just crazy complicated, much more than any other strategy game I've tried. At this point I've decided to give up on the thing and uninstall.

Zombotron - PC Game Review

Zombotron is a platform shooter. It looks pretty nice, and I do enjoy all the physics actions you can do, such as dropping things on enemies' heads to kill them. What I didn't like it is the bosses, and how different they are from the rest of the game. So for the first one, I had to look it up on the net how to kill it, for example. Overall, good.

The Consuming Fire - Book Review

The Consuming Fire is the middle book in The Interdependency trilogy, by John Scalzi. Not a lot goes on, on a macro level - mostly more plotting against the Emperox, and an expedition to a planet that had fallen off the Flow, which does get important information and some important revelations - including about why the Flow is collapsing. Overall, very good.

The Collapsing Empire - Book Review

The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi, is a SF novel. It is the first book in a trilogy, The Interdependency. This fictional universe has its own kind of hyperspace-like FTL - called the Flow, which starts to fail, which is obviously a big deal. Specially as their own imperial government, the Interdependency was designed so that every planet connected by the flow would have to depend on each other. Plus they mostly live in habitats, not planets, which are bound to fail if left alone. In something very relevant for the current days, everyone doubts the scientists that say their FTL is going to stop working (Scalzi nicely didn't have anyone saying "fake news" directly), which just like right now, adds to the disaster. Being an empire, it is not surprising that there is a lot of intrigue and several assassination attempts on the emperox. Overall, very entertaining. I'm already halfway into the second volume.

Project Warlock - PC Game Review

Project Warlock is a retro FPS for PC. Graphics are very adequate, given the retro label, this might not please new players. What I did miss (but, again is adequate for the period being replicated) is the lack of a tutorial. You are just thrown in and nothing is explained. There are a few features not common for FPS of the time, like a RPG progression. But frankly I haven't spent much time with the game. Overall, somewhat entertaining. Not sure if I will play it more, though.

The Human - Book Review

The Human, by Neal Asher, is the finale of the Jain Trilogy. As usual, it was great. There was a bit of new tech, and a lot of insight into the Jain, and why they behaved like they did, as well as the why of their tech remnant. Overall, strongly recommended, but you might want to start elsewhere (and you really want to start the trilogy at the beginning) if you are not familiar with the Neal Asher Polity universe.