STG's

Company Town, by Madeline Ashby, is a very nice SF novel. The main character is Hwa, which starts as a bodyguard for sex workers in an oil rig in the future, in the Canada coast. I enjoyed the action, and particularly the pacing and the tech used throughout the novel. Overall, recommended.

War Factory - by Neal Asher - is the second book in the Transformation trilogy, which takes part on the Polity. I liked the first book in the series - Dark Intelligence (as well as all that take place in the Polity universe) and War Factory too. Sverl troubles continue to mount, and Penny Royal is still creating a lot of chaos in its machinations. Overall, pretty good, although I liked Dark Intelligence better, I'm not sure why.

Shadow Warrior (2013) is a very nice PC FPS. I actually almost bought it again on a bundle. After I realized it looked very nice (and that I already had it), I downloaded my previously purchased copy and started playing. It is a very nice old school FPS, where you shoot your enemies (demons, without a lot of strategy involved, although there is some in the choice of weapons) or cut them with your ninja sword. There are lots of secret areas. You have plenty of upgrades - including for your guns, extra skills and powers. It is a bit more violent than most games - you can dismember/behead enemies with your gun or swords, and get extra karma with it. You have plenty of special moves, too - including healing, spinning around with your sword, dropping everyone around with a power wave, etc. Graphics are very good, specially when you consider the game is a few years old now, and not an AAA title. Bosses are somewhat interesting. What I don't like is that it ...

Mini-Metro is a very clever semi-abstract metro design simulator. You have to tie together a metro system by linking stations (that pop-up by themselves) and connecting them so that they don't have extreme waits (at which point you lose). Your tools are metro lines, trains (regular and fast), tunnels and carriages. You get limited quantities of each, and must choose carefully what you do with them. It is very nice to see what can be done with a minimalist graphics approach.

Dark Intelligence: Transformation Book One - by Neal Asher - is a SF novel that takes place in the Polity universe. It has been a while since I read one of Asher's books, and this one really reminded me of how much I like them. I was a bit surprised to not get a notice from Amazon, as I've bought most of his books there already. There are some of the old characters - specially Penny Royal, which is a main focus and really shows what it can do - and several interesting new ones, specially Thorvald Spear - which was killed a century before and was just being revived. Of course, not everything is what it seems... The book was just great, and I can't wait for the sequel!

Mushroom 11 is a PC platformer. Quite common, right? Yes, but you are some kind of green ooze, which moves when you erase parts of it, by multiplying elsewhere. That, and with great graphics. It is very clever, and very innovative, but I only felt it was somewhat fun. Interesting, though.

The Light of Other Days - by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter - is a great SF book about wormholes from the quantum foam being used to watch the present and past, and transfer data. I've read plenty of complaints that the characters are pretty flat and undeveloped, and I can't disagree. Almost all of the focus is in the tech and its consequences, and some interesting imagined visions of the past. The focus on the tech and on what happens what privacy disappears (plus when you can really watch history), however more than made up for it for me. Meanwhile, it also wonders about what would happen to people if they knew a mountain sized asteroid was coming to Earth in 500 years. That part felt a little silly to me - it is hard to believe no one would be able to design some sort of Von Neumann machine (self-replicators) with mass drivers to change the trajectory or just mine the asteroid with all that lead time. What happens to the human race in the end, and their big proj...