Movie Review: Enders Game

Spoiler Alert: as usual when I talk about a movie I talk about anything and everything, and that normally means spoilers if you have not seen it yet. You have been warned.

I did not hold out much hope for this movie. Short version of this review is I was not disappointed. There have been worse adaptations of beloved scifi books (iRobot I am looking at you) but Ender does a lot to give them a run for their money. That said, what I hope to provide here is an inkling of what was lost. Granted that is hard to do with this story. The story of ender is one that speaks to a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. Thus what was lost for me may not be what was lost for others. Be that as it may, here goes....

Disclaimers:
I am not going to get to deep into the thorny subject that is Orson Scott Card. Google his name and controversy and you will be provided more results than you would likely care to read on the subject. All in all I personally tend to separate the artist from the results of their labor. Thus I in no way support the mans personal views in loving some of his books.

The Good:
I know it is a cliche to say the visual effects of present movies are astounding... but they are. Ender's Game presented two primary challenges to any movie making attempt. The visual concepts presented and the almost continual inner monologue of Ender due to his multi faceted isolation from other characters. Thankfully they largely nailed the visuals... 1 out of 2 ain't bad in some things. I won't bother to nitpick the battle school layout. The book clearly indicates multiple battle rooms as opposed to the single one depicted in the movie but it wasn't a super critical element. However, dropping that kind of detail is a pretty common theme. Another minor issue introduced by this is the logical disconnect regarding how in the world Petra and Ender would ever have been in that battle room alone if it was the only place to practice for a whole station crammed full of type A over achieving wunderkids looking to one up each other.

Harrison Ford as Graf. This was a great selection in casting. And unlike the insurmountable challenge handed Asa Butterfield and the script writers in depicting Ender, the character of Graf translates well to screen. Mostly because he is a relatively thin character steeped in authority figure cliches, But Ford brings the needed gravitas and sensitivity to the role of the hard line 'do what it takes to survive' character without being utterly detestable in the process. Something that is largely lost in the transition to screen is how Graf was deliberately sacrificing the Battle School program in order to forge Ender as the weapon that was needed. Some of the lines are there... but not the exposition needed to put them in context. Part of the clean up in the book at the end was the fact Graf was put on trial (think Nuremberg tribunal) for his part in the war.

Asa Butterfield as Ender. As deplorable as I found the overall package, I think he did a great job with what he had. It isn't his fault nobody has figured out how to credibly do in depth inner monologue in a movie. It is a fundamental reason why a lot of books fail as movie translations. Books work great for inner strife. Movies have no real good way to portray it in a sensible manner. A good case in point here is the 'mind game'. Enders interaction with the game is a central salient point to the story, and to future stories in the series but it is largely chopped in favor of the battle sequences.... but without understanding how Ender is thinking in the mind game, his decisions in the battle room and in the Formic battles have very little context. In other words... in the book you understand what and why Ender does what he does. In the Movie all you have is the observation of what he does in one (albeit key) circumstance without the inner 'why'. Trying to parse the part where Ender goes through the eye of the giant from the movie without the benefit of the book you would probably just think he was a one hell of a cold fish calculating his options. In the book the sequence of events shows him to be anything but.

The So So:

Both of Enders primary physical confrontations with Bullies are oddly manipulated and they avoid having Ender kill them as he does in the book. They also leave out two other more minor skirmishes from the book,  the breaking of Bernard's arm in the shuttle and injuring of some kids trying to gang up on him and other launchies while practicing in the battle room. I think the manipulations amount to the same absurdity as the re-release of ET where the men in black had their shotguns replaced with walkie talkies. At least in ET it was a meaningless change to be more PC, it isn't like the guns were used in the original. Here it is a pretty critical change in how Ender perceives his own actions. Of the two depicted scenes, the interaction with Stilson (opening school bully) was more true to the book but it was tamed down. In the book Ender goes after more than just kicking him in the ribs when he is down. The fight with Bonzo was another story. In the book Ender thinks Bonzo is sent home. The odd thing is deciding to have Ender know Bonzo is possibly a vegetable. I assume the problem was they couldn't really figure out a way to have them go down without the audience either knowing they are definitely dead (the book does not reveal it until a bit after the fight with Bonzo) or not believe they died. People are clued to 'movie death'. It also would affect their perception of Ender as they would assume he knows he killed them if they 'dropped dead'. Thus if you clue the audience in during the fight they will think Ender knows, if you don't they will not like the 'bait and switch' of later being told they died. Again this was a story telling mechanism that worked in the book, but not on film. In the book Ender knows he hurt them both very badly (and possibly more...) but the response of the adults is to tell Ender he just hurt them instead of the fact they are both dead. Ender finds out at the end of the book when he is able to review testimony from Graf's trial after they made him an Admiral for his defeat of the Buggers (Formics).

The focus on the kids as the answer. Battle school is the start of training for the space fleet in the Book, not the end of training. Regardless of the 'master plan' to 'simulate' the encounters with the Formics, the kids do not go to the Battle school expecting to fight. They go thinking it is the first step. At least two other levels of training are listed in the book before they would expect to be in actual command in combat. And the ages line up more with typical expectations of military action (18+), if not with the expectation of command positions. From Ender's perspective in the book he is forced forward by circumstance, not by design. I put this in So So because this was something of a weak point in Cards story. After all they knew how long it would take the ships to get there. By all reasonable logic they would have gone with the best commander well before that time rather than continuing with trying to pluck the genius from the ranks of boys at battle school and risk having them not ready by the time they knew confrontation had to start. It was a thin plot device to have a young person get there at just the right time. The feel I get from the book is that they always intended to do the real battle as a simulation. But that the range of candidates was very wide. It was just that they didn't get the results they were looking for until the very end, and it still took Graf forcing the issue to get Ender to the battle in time.

The move of Mazer Rackam from battle fleet commander in a space battle to a fighter pilot in an atmospheric battle... and still calling him the commander. Non-sense. I guess someone thought the battle would look cooler if he was in a plane. To pile on more idiocy to this when he brings up his 'HUD' image for Ender to evaluate it is absolutely ludicrous to think someone was in a fighter jet yanking and banking in the furball to end all furballs and he picked through the random Rorschach blot of sensor images to pick out the 'subtle hint of a central ship'. On the fly. Sure he was a genius and that is the hand waving unspoken answer. But it is absurd. There was no reason to change it other than that is what Hollywood does. Anyway...

The Bad:

The time limit. 2 hours was just not enough. 3 hours might have given enough room to get some of it right with still leaving out the important Valentine/Peter subplot. Really it should have been two movies minimum. The first through the end of battle school. The second dealing with Valentine/Peter, Command School and the fall out of the Command School 'graduation' battle. This would have let them deal with the mind game/Hive queen link and expanded on the battle school environment enough to actually have folks understand it. As is they were so rushed they had no way to really show the way in which Ender grew. How he was beat down by the stress they put on him. How he struggled with becoming a weapon.

Why move Ender to the Alien system? This was a breakdown of epic proportions. After the Formic (Bugger) invasion, Earth makes two major technical leaps that are not general knowledge. Especially to the kids at battle school. One is the Ansible which is mentioned only in a horrible line that makes zero sense in the context of the book or in terms of how it is used. The Ansible is a McGuffin with a thin scientific backing. The basic idea is for FTL (faster than light) communications. Or in this case instant communication across any distance via some undefined method utilizing quantum entangled pairs. Google it... and if you then think you understand it you haven't read enough. Suffice it to say the effect exists, but the thought is there is no way to actually utilize it for communication (at least for now).  If the method for utilizing it is ever actually derived it has some interesting ramifications, one case of which Card was exploring in this and other books in the Ender series.  The line in the movie is that they moved Ender to the alien world so that they would be in 'Ansible range' implying... well I am not sure what they were implying because it makes no sense if you understand the concept Card had for the Ansible.


The failure of properly using the Bean character. This was humped by the 2 hour deal. In the Book Bean isn't in Ender's launch class. He is in a class behind Ender... which is ultimately important to his story. What kills me is they screwed it both for the newbies and the fans of the book. Not doing Bean right is a problem in the story, doing it wrong is sacrilege for the Fans. It honestly might have been better if they had just left him out and spent a bit more time developing Alai. As is they spent more time on Petra than either of them... probably because that let them have a Boy Girl interaction for audience targeting reasons. At least they didn't have to fabricate that training sequence. In the book Petra is important, but she is definitely secondary. Bean comes in late and grows fast. In a way he is Ender looking at and interacting with himself... and if you are familiar with the concept of cycles of violence in domestic violence (ie parent beats\abuses child who becomes a parent who beats\abuses child etc...) the Bean|Ender dynamic is particularly poignant as you see Ender doing to Bean what is\was being done to him. Bean ends up being the only person other than Valentine (his sister) that Ender ever confides in.

I get that in the time allotted they ditched the Peter (aka Machiavelli's 'Prince' incarnate) takes over  the world (with help from Valentine) story. But that should have been a reason to go... you know we really can't do this in one go, and damn sure can't do it in two hours. The problem is by doing so they pulled the Earth from the story and lost any sense of the bigger picture. Unforgivable.

Finally... the watering down of the complex issues. Enders Game the book was powerful because it was not black and white. Many folks read it and take different things away from it. The movie shortcuts it to a common perception instead of leaving the ugly shades of grey on the table for the audience to mull through on their own. Ender is by no means happy with what he has done. But he is not so sure it was the wrong thing to do either. That inner torment is the basis of the further stories with his character. Enders Game is just the setup to some serious Sci Fi based navel gazing on some pretty complicated issues. The movie trys to hand you a fully digested answer... again, unforgivable.

Conclusions:

The Movie is a mess both for the uninitiated and for fans of the book. For the uninitiated its like watching a movie built from every third page of the book... IE there is often no linking of materials, little to no context for some of the lines.  On second thought, make that every 10th page, and every other one is a bastardized script piece trying to fix the fact they are only showing a 10th of the material. For Fans it is a constant barrage of "hey cool they nailed something" followed by several "WTF?" moments.

Suggestions?

For once I really don't think I have any ideas how they could have done this one. To tell the story from Ender's point of view properly in a movie is going to take a break through movie concept that cracks the code of inner monologue. By remaining true to the perspective of the book the movie was doomed because Ender does not get to externalize his discussions with himself. No win scenario.

However.... if you give up on trying to do the story from Ender's perspective some interesting options pop up. Harrison Ford could have carried off the role of primary lighting rod for the story. While using his perspective as the focus would alter the story presentation to the audience considerably... it would afford much better opportunity to bring the various elements of what is happening to Ender out into more traditional dialog. In the story Graf is the one who sees Ender. He understands what is driving him. He knows he is not a stone cold killer etc... But in the book he does not have to spend time justifying it because we have Enders inner monologue while Graf's dialog is often just moving things along. Take Ender's monologue out of his head and re-script it as conversations Graf has to have to get Ender through the process while others want to pull him and you might have something.

Would that idea work? I dunno. It would be a HUGE leap to pitch "Ender's Game" as a movie only to tell the story largely from Graf's point of view with non cannon characters created to provide Ender's inner voice via dialog. The delivery becomes very different, but the content could have been much more true to the story. There is some precedent for it. Amadeus was a fantastic movie that externalized the genius of Amadeus and did so primarily via the use of a third party perspective.

Gravity: It is not just the law... it is now a major motion picture! *Spoilers*

As usual if you haven't seen the flick and don't want any spoilers you have been warned. 

So, someone finally decided to do a contemporary space movie. Apparently the director has held onto this idea as the special effects technology to properly portray it matured. Apollo 13 is the last time somone really tried to tackle a realistic micro G environment and the useage there was very limited in comparison to what was done here.

What is it: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in space, stuff goes wrong and they try to survive. No Aliens. No Traitor. No robots run amok. No evil coporation. No time travel... no to all the really tired cliche's that riddle almost all movies set in space. FINALLY

The Good:

This is a tour de force of current bad day scenarios facing folks that get shot into orbit. About the only thing they didn't bring into the picture was radiation exposure. For the most part they do not lay them on to thick.... for holywood that is. I think they could have done without the final Chineese station bit, or at least not the de-orbiting bit... more on that later. 

The effects are stunning and represent the first worthwhile use of 3d in my opinion. The depth of field adds a lot to give a better feel of space. Perhaps the highest praise I can add is this is the first movie I have seen in 3d that I think would be less of a movie in 2d. Epic vistas of earth are nothing new but here the earth is shown to great effect and the depth of field makes it something I haven't seen before... and that is damn rare in mainstream entertainment these days. Sign me up for watching this on an Oculus Rift where there would be no annoying 3d glasses crap.

Pacing is damn good. Reading some of the early reviews I expected 2 hours of Bullock screaming and hyperventillating. While there is a good dose of that I can't say it was excessive considering the situations depicted. Many complained no Astronaut would come so unglued. I can only imagine they ignored, or simply didn't catch the whole opening dialog (easy to understand with the visuals) establishing that she wasn't just green, she was primairly there because of her expertise regarding Hubble. To put this in perspective... most astronauts spend years in training before getting a mission. Bullock's character is supposedly up there after 6 months including vacation time. Mission control defers to her on matters of the Hubble. Translation, the mission was such the expert was on location with the absolute bare minimum training required to get her there as opposed to supporting the misssion from the ground (most realisitc situation). I imagine if this were a book you would have had plenty of exposition explaining why this was the case. For a movie you get a couple of lines in the middle of insane visual candy right before a major set piece action sequence. It is a more realistic situation than say Bruce Willis and his drilling buddies going through a montage... but it is in the same vein.

The So So:

For the most part I think I will use this to cover the more egregious goofs. For Holywood, especially for space flicks, this is very minor stuff in the grand scheme of things. Don't take the harping wrong... this movie was done VERY well. I point these particular issue out because I think there were better alternatives.

First up is the 'everything is right here' conjunction of the set pieces. We start off with a Hubble repair mission by a space shuttle. Real enough. But after our bad thing happens and Bullock is tumbling around and asked to call things out she points out ISS and a Chineese station as points of reference. Now Hubble is in an orbit at the outer limits of Shuttle capacity at around 400 miles up. ISS runs at around 200 miles up... so in other words if they were as close as they could possibly be it would be difficult to see ISS. Even if they were in the same orbit they would not maintain relative positions for very long. As it so happens they are not in the same orbital inclinations and any conjunctions would be extremely breif with a closest apporach of a couple hundred miles. The Chineese station would also be in a different inclination. While I suppose it is possible some strange conflux of timing could put them all within a few hundred miles or so of each other, in reality such a conjunction would be very fleeting. I believe it was theoretically possible for a shuttle to divert to station from Hubble. In fact I believe that was a requirement of the last Hubble service mission as a reaction to Columbia... but it was a prohibitive requirement to the point that it is laughable to think an EVA jetpack could be used to match orbits between the two. Great story bit... not so good on the realism. How could it have been made to work? Really couldn't have if the idea was to bridge the orbits with the EVA pack. Even if it had the delta V to make the orbital change the precision needed is on the order of shooting a bullet with a bullet at insane range. How about a shuttle that is depressurized and damaged (ie no comms) but still has a functional OMS ? They could  have used the gimped shuttle unable to survive re-entry to make it over to ISS. Once they got there they could have been unable to dock for any number of reasons... and thus would have had a reasonable situation for Clooney and Bullock to use the MMU pack to make it the 'last mile'. Of course that ruins Clooney's running gag about the EVA record but at a small cost for realism. You still get to have him sacrifice himself on the final translation etc... This also would  have allowed for dealing with more realistic orbits and have them talking about catching ISS on the next orbit and burning at the right time etc... Real stuff... same story. Think Apollo 13 when they had to manually burn to make the return from the moon. I think it would have worked but I'm biased I suppose. 

Second up is the super debris field. This provided the big bad 'thing' that could never really be prepared for. The catalyst is that the Russians blow up their own sattelite in orbit and that the debris of that explosion causes a chain reaction of other sattelites being hit and thus creating a bigger and bigger debris field.  The threat of this is realistic enough.... even the idea of a nation shooting down their own sattelite (China and the US both did it a few years back). In fact the basic idea here is real enough... just not the timescale or manner in which it is depicted occuring in.  A pretty common Holywood conciet. In reality such a debris field would not remain so concentrated. Newton's first law at work would keep the cloud expanding. Still dangerous and there is a strong theory about a critical level of space debris after which such collisions would lead to a level of debris making space flight far more dangerous. That aside, the most egregious mistake here was the idea of the comm sats being knocked out by the same event that leads to the destruction of the shuttle. Comm sats in general, and particularly those used for space communications for NASA, are in geo syncronous orbit. The escalating debris field is used as an excuse to cut communications from the ground in addition to destroying the shuttle. This is particularly absurd as geo sync orbit is some 22k miles away from earth where our story is taking place at 300 or so miles up. An event at one orbital plane would not significantly impact what is happening in the other.  All in all I think they would have done better just to have severed comm with the ground based on the destruction of the shuttle's comm system. The astronaut EVA comm system is a short range UHF system that relys on the shuttle/ISS comm links for relay to the ground. In short they are walkie talkies, not sattelite cell phones. Killing the shuttle's comm system is more realistic, and creates the same effect. As for the short fuse of the escalating situation.... don't have the first call saying it isn't an issue. Have the initial event cause the emergency evac and problem. That leaves you having to think about how you then escalate the situation into an immediate issue for ISS. But the idea that the initial event could impact both ISS and shuttle in Hubble's orbit is a lot less far fectched than the idea of taking out geo sync comm sats just minutes after the initial event in a low earth orbit. 

The low altitude of the Chineese station. It adds the final bit of drama on getting down from space but it is patently absurd and the flimsiest bit of the movie. I suppose they went there instead of going back to the debris field as a threat to keep Bullock moving to avoid repetition. Or perhaps it was just more dramatic. I won't even go into the fire extinguisher and silly soyuz separation sequence while in the middle of re-entry non-sense. Certainly makes for a good yarn though. Alternative? Avoid the Chinese station to begin with.

The spare Soyuz at ISS. This one is a bit of nitpick but as I know a bit about ISS ops (pays my bills actually) I have to point out there has never been or is there likely to ever be a situation where there would be a 'surplus' capacity of Soyuz seats in an ISS evacuation scenario. If the crew of ISS successfully evacuated there would not be a Soyuz left. A more realistic and really crazy Hollywood style solution to this would have been to make use of a SpaceX dragon capsule. Musk designed them with the idea of them being man rated. They are pressurized and designed to return and be re-useable. That is a possibility just begging for a Mgyver solution that gets a crewmemeber back safely in a semi realistic manner. Honestly the idea of using an EVA suit inside a dragon to return to earth is far more reaslitic than not one, but two man rated vehicles being left in orbit at two unmanned stations.

Lastly... nobody trained for space would float by a fire of any size without re-acting to it. Related... the soyuz hatch opened inwards to station and the fire depicted is massive. Look up the Apollo 1 disaster details. Air pressure would have skyrocketed and opening the hatch would likely have been impossible. The fire didn't have to be so showy to be dramatic. And it could still have provided ample reason for why ISS wasn't a suitable safe haven.

So... to re-cap. In an alternate reality where I was the technical consultant for this movie I would have the opening sequence unaltered except for having the initial event causing direct danger to the repair mission. In the initial debris incident the shuttle would have been largely incapacitated, dead crew etc... and no comm. But the core flight functions and OMS (orbital manouevering system) would have been intact. Clooney retrieves Bullock and Clooney gets shuttle from Hubbles Orbit to ISS orbit. Once there ISS has been abanndoned and struck by debris. It suffered some, but not as much damage as shuttle, Comunications with the ground are out, solar panels are not providing power, battery power is running out. Clooney is unable to dock the shuttle with station for any number of reasons forcing them to translate from shuttle to station by using the MMU (jetpack). Something goes wrong and Clooney is lost leaving Bullock to do her unassisted station EVA. There is no Soyuz left, damaged or otherwise. Once inside she fights off issues with the stations encounter with the debris field... puts out a fire etc... realizes there are no options at station for getting home. IE it isn't going to work as a life boat and she still does not have comm with the ground. So she still gives up and has her dog howling conversation via HAM radio and hallucination etc... But her revelation is not using the Soyuz soft landing jets to perform an orbital maneuver, but realizing the Dragon module still attached to station is designed to surive re-entry, it just does not have a life support system. Then she uses her supposed computer skills established in the opening to hacking the Dragon module to initiate a reuturn sequence with her inside it using a space suit for life support. No change to the ending other than substituting the dragon for the splash down in place of the Shenzou.

This is by no means making the movie hyper realistic, just gets it a fair amount closer to plausible. But as I said, in the grand scheme of movie magic nonsense this one is pretty tolerable as is. 

The bad: 

Nothing super awful... The Milf scene with Bullock shucking her suit in a few seconds was pretty out there but certainly made for a nice visual. Cheesecake shot vs reality... Yeah we know which way Holywood is going with that one. To be fair it was a powerful image and I did not get the sense it was there just for titillation. And if the worst I have to complain is getting to oggle Bullock in her undies I hope that helps you appreciate just how good I think this flick is.

Conclusion: 

This one will be one I own when it comes out. It is worth the price of admission. 

The Last of Us: Review (Spoilers Galore)

If you didn't catch it in the title, I aim to talk about many different areas of the game and give away key points of the story. If that is something you care about stop now.

Anyway... so the game world is somewhat alight with a critical love for this game. I liked it... a lot. But I have problem with listing this game as something 'different'. In my first complete run through I killed just over 500 people and considering the story line and the vibe on the game prior to release I just didn't like it. They could have done something pretty special here and I think they (Naughty Dog) may have pulled their punches a bit and stuck with the successful formula they established with the Nathan Drake Uncharted series.

So first off the good:

The art is incredible. 7 Years of work with the PS3 by Naughty Dog is shown off to good effect. The environments and characters look pretty awesome, just wish they were not so linear in nature but more on that later.

The character control is adequate. It rarely feels 'clunky' but overall your interaction with the environment is pretty limited. But considering how many great games have been generally ruined by awful character control this is definitely an achievement. The one stand out here to me is the 'listen' mode. The ability of the character to sit and give you a basic idea of where MOBs are in the immediate vicinity that are making noise is very effective and not much is given away as you only have relative location information in the 'see through walls' nature, you can't actually determine structures etc... in this mode. Ultimately I think it is underutilized.

The Story is engaging... if you like Walking Dead or any post apocalyptic story line Zombie based or otherwise you will find a LOT to like here. It is not a black and white morality tail nor is it completely bereft of a compass. The distinction between the good guys and bad guys here (as pointed out in countless professional reviews) is pretty damn fuzzy. Basically the whole story is a series of escalations of this point. I will dissect the process in a bit more detail down below... last warning regarding spoilers.

The Sound is VERY well done. Between environmental noise and sound track cues there is rarely anything sounding out of place. The infected in enclosed spaces are genuinely freaky. Turn out the lights and turn up the volume!

The So So:

Ammunition and Melee breakage. Ok, its a game and I get game 'mechanics'. But this is an area they really broke with the idea of 'you are there'. Enemies that are holding a gun more often than not fail to drop a weapon or ammo. I never heard an enemy go 'click' on an empty chamber and give up shooting and they are definitely playing by 'spray and pray' once they have you in sight. If you want ammo to be scarce then dammit make it scarce for everyone. To add insult to injury they added this notion of melee tools with 'expirations' based on the number of hits you put it through. A 2x4 breaks in 4 hits, a lead pipe breaks in 6 etc... The 2x4 I could be down with experiencing a random splintering, even a wooden baseball bat. But a lead pipe? Used on flesh and blood? Really? A machete that breaks? An Axe? In part this was to promote the crafting, you could essentially keep a melee weapon going by modding it, using the mod and re-modding it but it cost valuable supplies to do so. Also for the edge weapons like the machete and axe they were insta kills without modification so the limited uses was a way of limiting your ability to just hack your way to a full ammo belt. Finally... infected dropping ammo? Really? not to mention towards the end of my play through it seemed the infected were generally much more likely to drop ammo than say a soldier/hunter. As a game mechanic this s a well established way of getting things done, but here where so much effort was made with the storyline it presents a constant break with the idea of you are in the story as opposed to playing a 'game'. I put it here in the so so because as a game mechanic it generally works. It isn't like this is Doom with glowing ammo packs spinning around. Just wish they had gone a bit more 'Fallout' style on this where if someone had a weapon visible and you killed them it would be there on their corpse and animals/non gun wielding mobs dropped appropriate items rather than ammo.

Stealth. This is where I think the pulled the most punches. Many areas really do not have a good stealth solution. The game forces you into firefights requiring high ammo expenditure and hand to hand desperation moves despite having very stealthy story elements. The steal aspect rarely comes to the fore with a couple of exceptions. Where it works it is enjoyable. But there were many times I found it very frustrating not having a real option. A lot of this had to do with checkpoint based linear 'levels'. I am keeping this in so so because again the mechanics make for pretty solid 'last stand' encounters. Just seems in way to many cases that is the only solution.

The Bad:

Lack of options. Everywhere I went I spent the time to explore every nook and cranny... especially postmortem after a failed stealth attempt bloodbath to see if I just missed an option. Did not find one so I think I faced pretty close to the minimum number of shootout situations. Many force you to kill all enemies to trigger the advancement... same thing marred the Uncharted games as good as they are. I didn't find all the goodies in the first run through but I found better than 75%. By comparison my first run through on stuff like Tomb Raider rarely nets more than 25% of the hidden items.

Same problem I have with the Walking Dead I have with the behavior in this game. Multiple times you are in areas that get over run by 'just one unlocked door' or something similar. Yet as you go through doors and barricades that you could leave blocked behind you they are left open with no option for you to choose otherwise.

Linear tunnel levels. They looked great... really great. But the 3rd time I was forced through some funky only one path unblocked option through a massive tumbled/decayed building it got old... and there were a LOT of those kinds of environments. Bills Town could have been much more open ended on the options, especially with some smart usage of the map ideas. Some of the best sequences had the most open areas. Ellie's fight with the Hunter community while caring for Joel was probably one of the better sequences and hinted strongly at what this game (or a future Naughty Dog Title) could have been. Another good example was the Sniper level.

And last... surprise... the Story. You may be wondering, how can the story be both good and bad. Well as a story it is awesome. And it is very well told, and like the Uncharted series it plays damn near like a movie. I am honestly looking forward to sitting down and doing a play through all the cinematics with the 'play all' option. Unfortunately as with most cases where the story is so well told and so well voice acted etc.... there are no branches. The story advances along its path and the only real option seems to be whether or not you engage your various companions and Ellie in optional side dialog as you move along.  So is there really a moral quandary if all you are doing is executing the steps to trigger the cut scenes? The story is powerful and it is ugly in a good way. But you take no active role in determining how it plays out. Tess will Die, Bill will not, The Man and his younger brother will die, Ellie gets taken by the hunters, You tell Tommy to go back to his wife, and lastly when you get to the end of that long hall Joel will choose Ellie over the possibility of a cure and end the tale with a Lie. I'd like the book. But this is where games have the chance to build you paths through these kinds of morality questions.

Suggestions:

If you want to make Ammo rare then be prepared to make shooting rare period. Don't make me get shot at like everyone I face is strapped on par with Arnold in an 80's Action flick and then after I kill them have 2 bullets to salvage and no gun. And this was on Normal. I presume this un-logical divergence in ammo supply and enemies ready to unload at you only gets worse the higher you go. Stealth, Melee and forcing your opponents out of ammo with stuff like bottle tosses etc... could have been a very welcome change from the typical shooter mechanic. But it isn't a well paved road.

If you are going to have a bottle/brick throwing mechanic do not litter your world with bottles you can't throw. For some reason you could only chuck brown bottles. I mean seriously... you couldn't enable holding any debris of roughly a given size?

Do not have melee equipment have such a pre-determined scheduled breakage... Why exactly is an axe going to break because I swing it at someone 6 times? I'd rather see melee get less effective than have this idiotic mechanic in there.

Add some critical branch points to the story. This one didn't need the mess of options like Fall out had. But some branches leading to keeping Tess alive, Getting Tommy killed or his wife, Happy ending solution for The Brothers rather than the mercy kill & suicide and of course... the biggie, do you choose Ellie's life over the possibility of a cure? A three way answer at that critical juncture could have been pretty Epic. Get to the ER, have the Doctor plead with you and give you your first chance to choose... Kill the Dr. and Take Ellie, Kill yourself because you couldn't live with letting it happen? Go down to the encounter with Marlene perhaps with a different set of choices. Kill her and continue with Ellie, Get her to agree to ask Ellie for her choice before making a decision? Get to the last scene and choose to Tell Ellie the decision you made for her or to give her the Lie. Naughty Dog could have taken some pages out of the Mass Effect playbook here, or Fall Out, or plenty of other options. Rather than a 'conversation dialog choice' I would suggest this branching mechanic could have been provided by a 'Pull the trigger' or Choose to interact (Ear icon used for optional conversations). IE shoot the doctor or choose to listen. Shoot Marlene or choose to listen.

Conclusion:

If you are a game nut you already have it right? If not it is worth the price of admission. If it pops up on used/classics cut rates and you haven't played it this one is a no-brainer. They only drawback from my perspective is this is basically a kickass movie with average move along mechanics in an outstandingly rendered game world. Re-play to me is pretty limited. I understand the online is a bit different but that aspect of games rarely interests me these days. I hope in a future effort Naughty Dog will be a bit more willing to break a bit more with the established action interaction formulas in search of mechanics that work to enhance the story telling rather than work against it or are at best neutral.

Google Glass

How does the concept of growing acceptance of government surveillance and common negative reactions to Google glass mesh? I mean really. One of the growing stories from Boston is the perception regarding the surveillance cameras. While they certainly did not prevent the event there is little denying that the pervasive series of government and private cameras played a key role in swiftly identifying the suspects involved. While it is a controversial topic it is a technology with widespread support.

So why the outcry over the supposed lack of privacy due to Google's new 'glass'? Reading through the same news sources you would come to two different conclusions regarding Glass and Surveillance technologies even though at their heart they are both about ubiquitous  cameras in public. One seems to have begrudging and even ardent supporters while the other has many going... well its cool... But. And the But is privacy.

I suppose the problem is the personal nature of an individual taking a picture or video vs a company/agency doing so. But the possible consequences are essentially the same. IE someone can track and irrevocably prove your guilt/embarrassment if they have access.

In theory Google glass is something of a wet dream for surveillance schemes. Imagine the Boston bombing in this manner. A large percentage of the folks are wearing glass in place of smart phones/video cameras etc... to capture the event for their personal use. Pictures are stored on Googles servers. Minutes after the bomb google or government agency of your desire is querying time stamps of all pictures\video against time, location and direction of pointing and soon a chronological series of images of the point of the explosion is captured from numerous angles. Tracking back through time it becomes less well covered. But as more information becomes apparent like when the bag appeared and who was present they begin tracking all movement of individuals in the area looking for the next link... All people with backpacks matching color/size etc... looking to link someone with a bag before and without a bag after. One team begins back tracking as far as possible while the next team is moving forward looking for the trail of the perpetrator.

It is all a bit Minority Report. But... it is something a technology like glass and permanent connections to a cloud service like Google could make a reality. If you are ok with permanent camera installations what is the big deal about people walking around with permanently connected cameras?

Personally I am not a huge fan of surveillance by governments. I am not a huge fan of people experiencing by photography... IE the act of taking so many pictures you are never actually there because you just spend your whole time taking pictures. It is like you are trying to take it with you without even actually enjoying it while you are there. But a lot of that problem is due to the interface with the device. The idea of having something like Glass taking a time lapse of something I am doing so that I can later browse through it and select some to remember the event by is actually pretty appealing to me. And of course it is that concept of a device perpetually recording everything I see which causes such a stir. Logically (which I admit has little to do with this concern) there should be effectively no difference in common public areas between the possibility that at any given point you are being recorded by someone shooting a camera from somewhere and knowing that everyone is recording all the time. Realistically it makes a difference because that is how we are wired. "Might be recorded" is not the same as "Are being recorded". And the assumption for a Cellphone falls to one side while the assumption for someone wearing Glass seems to fall to the other. It will be very interesting to see where the technology goes from here.

Star Trek Into Darkness: One Fans Take

Spoilers Aplenty ahead, if you care do not read further.

As has been pointed out by many this film is more of the same from JJ Abrams and my original thought for his first Trek movie holds true here. Good Flick, Bad Trek... but it was better than the first go around. Mostly because there was no time travel and red matter shenanigans. Before I get started I would like to say most of what I am going on about should not in any way be misconstrued as me not liking the movie. I thought it was damned sharp and entertaining. What I am going on about is the lack of something... the something that most seem to think is the reason why the original series was so loved that people dress up and go to conventions etc... This movie does not really have any real connection with the substance that drove that fanatical fan base. What it has is a leveraged character set that drives a really good action flick... branded adrenaline fare if you will. 

I think we have here a new kind of Parody. Instead of Space Balls what we have here is a caricature of the original with the intent to improve? No, that isn't it, I think to concentrate? Yes... to concentrate specific elements. Typical parodies exaggerate aspects of their subject matter for comedic affect... IE calling attention to flaws etc. However here I think we are capturing elements and honing them for a different reason and the result is as I mentioned... Good flick bad Trek. That said it is going to make money and anything that kicks some life into the corpse of the Trek franchise at least gives us a good chance that sooner or later we will get a deeper look that is not all desert and no meal. Abrams has the chops to give us something a bit more meaty than these two action flicks and perhaps he will now have the freedom to do so.

So what is the problem? In the series debates about things like the Prime Directive had some substance... here it is the butt of a joke. The opening sequence has Kirk placed in the crucible of Prime Directive decision making with regards to the life of Spock and not violating the directive. Obviously, it being the opening sequence, he chooses Spock's life. While Kirks actions breaking the prime directive have consequences they are wiped out before they even have a chance to settle in. I mean he literally loses his command and is busted all the way back to Cadet at the Academy, in the next scene is re-promoted to first officer of the Enterprise under re-instated Captain Pike and in the next scene (haven't even returned to the Enterprise) Pike is killed and Kirk re-elevated to Captain and sent on a mission that is the antithesis of the vision of Gene Rodenberry's  Federation. If possible this is an even more absurd sequence of events than the one that put him in the Enterprises captains chair in the first place. The only saving grace in this whole mess (with regards to it being an actual Trek story) is that Kirk does not blindly follow through on this mission. But a major opportunity to explore this issue of vengeance, of pre-emptive strikes, is left on the table and largely un-explored. Similarly the whole issue of Kahn and his genetic super men team and the issue of intentional genetic manipulation is completely ignored... reduced to a devine intervention device for saving dead or almost dead people.

So I hate to 'cast stones' and not at least attempt to make a suggestion for how it might have worked differently. The slow in depth review of the issues is not something that would work in the blockbuster movie format. I accept that. But I do think there is some middle ground here.

Missed opportunity #1. The debate about the prime directive. I like the opening sequence even with the unexplained reason they are leaving with an artifact in the first place. Hijinks, something went awry and we pick up in the middle of it. Kirk is going to save Spock so continue on through. In fact follow through the whole sequence up to the leader of the white 'natives' (nice touch I thought) drawing the figure of the enterprise on the ground for them to start worshiping. Now going forward do not go to Pike's office for a surprise dressing down. Go in front of StarFleet high command (similar to scenes in earlier movies) and turn it into a rapid fire 'court/inquiry' scene exploring the issue of the Prime Directive vs an issue like allowing a new form of life to be wiped out by the random eruption of a super volcano when possessing the technology to save them and whether or not it was right to do so at the expense of exposing them to ideas they may not be ready for. The script wrongly makes this an issue of the life of the captains friend and lying to cover it up (or not as the case may be with Spock) where it could have had two warring ideological issues AND the choice of which is 'right' for the circumstances deciding the fate of a crew members life.. Classic Trek. You have a lot of the same comedic foils with regards to Spock and Kirk as Kirk would fall to the side of saving the civilization at the expense of the Prime Directive (and save his Friend as a side benefit) and Spock could have fallen to the side of the Prime Directive and the whole saw about the needs of the many vs the one etc.... This could have been a grown up version of the whole Kobayashi Maru debate in the first film (best part of that movie by far... and it was cut short). And to cap it off you still have the whole issue of whether or not Kirk was doing something right, or just justifying saving the life of his friend.

Missed opportunity #2. The ridiculous demotion back to the academy with an instant 'just kidding' sequence. The result of the hearing in front of the Star Fleet high command suggested above should have been the demotion of Kirk to first officer and placed him back under Pike with some time to have it sink in he suffered a major blow for his decision and show that there is a level of debate among the Federation of how best to proceed out into the unknown. IE you threaten him with out right court marshal (or whatever equivalent) and settle on the demotion to 1st officer. This could have set the stage for the whole debate hinted at regarding whether or not the Federation needed to militarize or remain focused on peaceful exploration.

That sets the stage for the main plot of this movie. The terrorist attack (or was it?), the response -  Pre-emptive strike. Assassination. Revenge. Versus the concept of rule of law, Justice, Fair Trial. And you do it with Pike at the Helm. Perhaps he is someone who cannot make the adjustment to questioning the actions/orders of Admiral Marcus. Think Crimson Tide (Denzel vs Gene Hackman) and you have the idea. Ultimately Kirk leads what is either Mutiny or a Heroic overthrow of Pike/Marcus to maintain the integrity of the Federation. At the end you would be left with a Kirk who had actually earned his chair... unlike the lucky kid from the first movie.

Missed opportunity #3. Cumberbatch does a fantastic job with what he was given... and he was given far to little. Hopefully in the next or another future movie he will be given much more ample opportunity to stretch his legs in the magnificent character vehicle that is Kahn Noonian Sung. Where was the debate regarding genetic superiority? The beliefe one race is suprerior to the other is very different from the possibility of an indisputably superior (from a physical/mental stand point at least) form of being through intentional genetic manipulation. You can approach it from the issue of superiority. You can approach it from the idea of inteligent design... ie conscious evolutionary choices. So many possibilities here. In this alternative timeline you could have pitted Kahn vs Kirk as who makes a better captain of a star ship. You could have had Kahn under Marcus serving as the forefront of a coalition to militarize star fleet with Kirk under Pike supporting the alternative peaceful exploration mission and then kick off the series of orders Pike cannot come to question and Kirk having to Relieve him of command (or some alternative of that). A fight for the future of the federation and what its place will be in the universe. Pike can end up dead, disgraced, or even promoted to Admiral in place of Marcus when he is exposed/defeated etc...

Missed opportunity #4. Uhura's chance to shine. They should have written her to succeed. Not to end up getting saved by guys with blasters. That would have been a proper way to uphold the legacy of Nichelle Nichols and Gene Roddenberry. Instead she is undercut in her one moment and otherwise placed in a role of 'harpy girlfriend'. One of the few things I found very distasteful even as I laughed my ass off at the 'Vulcan Boyfriend' harping.

What kills me is I think you could have done some combination of the above without killing the pace of the film. You could have had a whirlwind ride full of action AND serious ideas lending even more weight to the importance of their actions\decisions. I did think for just a moment when the Enterprise burst out of the ocean and we are left with the scene of the natives sketching out the space ship in the dirt that we might get such a rare combination of entertainment and deep thought... only to have that hope crushed by the insane demotion/promotion shuffle of Kirk.

And a final set of niggles. The falling enterprise would not have exhibited gravity on the occupants. As the ship was falling to earth with no artificial gravity field the crew would have been experiencing micro-g. Instead it acts like many might expect it to with gravity pulling the crew towards the earth regardless of the orientation of the ship. That only happens if the ship is actively resisting the pull of the earth. Instead they were all (ship and crew) falling at the same rate. The other one was something I found really idiotic. They shoot Kahn and Kirk out of the airlock into correctly silent space. Then immediately cut to them with rushing air sounds. Abrams had a chance here to do correct soundless action sequence that essentially stood Kubrick's iconic 2001 space station sequence docking on its head.

I do want to leave on a positive note. The cinematography is outstanding. The sequences of seeing the enterprise in action are memorable and all fans could ever have dreamed of back when special effects were so laughable. Finally that vision of the power and majesty of an interstellar vessel really made it to the big screen with no need for apologies .. and all you idiots screaming lens flare can go take a long walk off a very short pier. Considering the realities of Blockbuster film making I do think this movie does more good than harm. And as I said it is immensely entertaining.

Robie Jr. Lives... sorta

So I know this whole post is one that goes down as a bit of " You might be a geek if..." but hey, I am one, so whatever. For those not old enough to know what a Robie Jr is here is a pic...

Pic from: http://theoldrobots.com/omnijr2.html

After a few days...weeks... ummm months (I am certain I was an insufferable little brat about it) of begging and pleading my wonderful parents got me one of these for christmas many years ago. I would have to say it ranks up there as probably one of the best gifts I ever got, excited was not the word.  For a few joyous months I enjoyed the hell out of having a 'Robot' of my very own. You could tell it were to go, it apologized if it bumped into something, it followed you (the remote at least) around etc... Granted it was really just a cheesy R/C toy that made some noise but you have to consider what the level of tech was at the time. This would have been around the time Nintendo hit the scene. Of course, all good things come to an end and one of the battery terminals broke ending my 'robotic' bliss much sooner than I would have chosen for it to of my own accord :-( So, Robie went on a shelf with a vague plan of repair. As I got older and started fiddling with computers I kept eying the ever more grimy little plastic minion perched on my shelf and thinking "one day I will be able to actually make that into a real robot instead of a cheap R/C doo dad". And time went by. Robie survived several aborted surgeries. More time went by, many moves, many life changes... and yet Robie survived. Always staying above the line when I started rummaging around my clutter with a mind to clean things up. And finally the time has come. The first steps have been taken.

This is the original circuit board. Really is amazing what they did considering the tech of the time. 

Wider shot of the base. Unfortunately the wheels have not really survived. The grey rubber separated from the rest of the wheel carcas on the left... you can kind of see it here. In the video below you can see where it stops rotating. 

Test run with new brain (Arduino Uno and Motor Shield). Motors still work... but man is this thing noisy.

I never really wanted to just revive Robie Jr... I wanted to transform him into an actual robotic test bed for tinkering with. Every now and then I would check the availability of new widgets and gizmos to use to Frankenstein Robie but never found a solution I liked in terms of what I could accomplish vs. what it would cost. Micro controllers were cost effective but had some limitations and were (still are in many cases) difficult to program for. Small format computers were heavy, power hungry and expensive. But no more. Systems like Arduino and Rasberry Pi have taken a lot of the sting out of trying to do smaller electronic designs and enable tinkering on the cheap. The above concoction was out and running in minutes after I got home from the store running a basic program example. I also managed to connect power to the old circuit board along with most of the response generating contacts (arm, head button) and get him to speak again for the first time in more than 20 years. Kind of surprised the memory is still intact for programming and audio. Anyway, I recorded most of his responses to put to use later in the project. Haven't figured out how to re-connect the sensor for the front contact bumper... may have goofed that wiring to much.

I am not sure if the original base is going to serve my purpose or not. If I cannot figure out how to repair/replace the wheels I will probably rig up a replacement. May do that anyway as the cheap gearing solution in the base is very noisy... not to mention the omni directional ball bearing front 'wheel' didn't work all that well when it was brand new... needless to say the years have not been kind. Perhaps now that I have sorted out some brains I can save up for the lynx motion tracked base. Should let Robie roam around a bit more freely than his original designers ever envisioned :-). Also have a notion to rig the original arms and maybe the hands (if I can find some small enough) with some servos. Kind of split between a non functional 2DOF setup that will let him wave his hands a bit, or perhaps just replacing the arms with a bit more functional 5/6 DOF arm/gripper solution. Cost is the biggest issue there, the simple 2DOF solution would probably be less than 50 bucks... the Lynx motion sight has some arms similar to what I am thinking of and they are not cheap.  New base and arms are down the road at any rate.

The thing I want to do is rig a communication link With my laptop. It just so happens I do have a zigbee system lying around (yes I know... another you might be a geek if...). Anyway, The goal is to make the Arduino setup in the chassis mostly a core nervous system that reports back and gets marching orders from a program running on my laptop. That way I can futz around with some autonomous behavior programming without constantly butting up against the Arduino limits. Or course to do anything interesting I am going to need to get some sensors. The motor shield I got uses the seeeduino grove system so that should be pretty simple to put together.

Anyway I will post updates as I get to them... could be days, months, even years before it happens though. If you are interested or have questions then use the comments... might motivate me to keep at this more steadily.

Tomb Raider 2013: Rebirth or Backbirth?

Both. This is the best and worst Tomb Raider game to date.

*there are many spoilers in this, do not read further if you do not wish to encounter plot twists etc...*

The good? The controls are magnificent. The graphics are stellar. The environments lush and pretty varied. The story is fast paced and lasts a solid 12-15 hours of gameplay for a well versed gamer, longer for newbies. All good things. So what is the problem? Mostly that to enjoy all that good stuff you have to pretty much turn your brain off, ignore gaping holes in the story and silly set pieces that make no sense and just go with it. If you can do that then there is a very fun and well executed combat platforming game in the package you buy. As for the story???

It is a disjointed mess. A fun and enjoyable disjointed mess mind you... but a disjointed mess all the same. On top of that it doesn't have any fricking tombs. The so called side quest tombs are a laughable joke to anyone versed in the series and the main story has no real big set piece multi level interaction environments that have been the hallmark of the series.

Let us start with the so called open ended environment. I will grant that most of the individual levels are in some sense of the word non linear and open. But just because they do not have you tunnled through a set of tree walls does not make them open ended either. There really is only one progression through the majority of the levels. The only non-linear choices are some of the side quests such as finding all of a level specific item, or one of the side tombs. The act of going after these 'non-linear' options are completely out of character for the story line. For example one level has you rushing to the aid of a downed rescue flight pilot... and your so called non-linear choices are to poach eggs in nests hidden around the zone or to go explore a couple of side tombs. The run through the level following the story is fun, seeking out the extras is pretty fun but together they make no sense. And unlike a truly open environment where you have the option to NOT trigger major plot points in favor of pursuing side quests, here you still have to progress from area to area with a mandatory cut scene/story progression angle that you cannot avoid.

Let me harp on that issue of the side tombs a bit more. This is a Tomb Raider game... and yet the Tomb puzzles are all non-essential side quests. The meat of the game is a combat system with the mad island brigade that keeps you and your friends separated most of the game and provide never ending cannon fodder for Laura to hone her 'survival skills'. The game has completely flipped from its roots where combat was a comparatively small part of the game. There was obviously an effort to inject some of the formula employed by naughty dog in the uncharted games here... and in my opinion they went to far. To make it worse, the most recent Nathan Drake adventure had better tomb raider game play (in addition to its absurd but fun combat) than this tomb raider reboot. And the combat and set pieces here come off as more of an uncharted rip off than a proven franchise restamping its dominance in a genre.

Why do I say copycatting? Ill give you the most obvious example. In the most recent uncharted there was a massive and super impressive set piece designed around a 'ship' where you go through the ship as a ship, then go through it Posiden adventure style as it capsizes and changes orientations on you. It is an impressive re-use of the environments that transform as you rotated it. In Tomb Raider you encounter this random ship carcass suspended in an elaborate cable car setup in some mountains (just trust me... its really in there) and in the process of hopping around it in a pretty bog standard platforming combat sequence the baddies shoot out some of the rigging causing the ship to hang differently and pushing you to move around it in different ways. It is not even a 10th of the sequence in the uncharted game yet it is supposed to be a pretty major point in the game. It comes off as a poor and obvious ripoff shoved into the game for no other reason I can surmise than to be a rip off. I have this vision of some horrible meeting with executives giving the order to put in something like the boat sequence in Uncharted regardless of whether it makes any sense or not. The developers then 'protested' by putting it in and making it as absurd as they possibly could and then being dumbfounded when the idea gets accepted...

Another area they sadly take from the uncharted games is the practice of massive waves of moderately differentiated enemies that you must dispatch in order to advance. It drove me nutz as an idiotic game mechanic in the uncharted games and it is even worse here.

So in the end you have a masterpiece of a control scheme, marvelous environmental interaction all set to a poor uncharted ripoff story with no real central showpieces to call its own. The open ended island isn't, the combat is fun but repetitive and largely unimaginative, the tombs are essentially non-existent and the story makes no sense.

Makes no sense I say? Let me give you and example. The key element of the story is that no one entering the range of the storms of this island can leave. Yet you spend a large amount of your time crawling all over a WWII base that was obviously not built by crash survivors but by a functioning war effort with fortifications on the scale of the Normandy coast and pacific island strong holds. And yet the island is supposed to be unknown... a myth etc... that our epic heroine has to argue for her party to go in search of. Yet you encounter lots of evidence this base was in communications to the outside world in WWII. And this is one of the milder examples of nonsensical story telling. Yet I can overlook most of that as typical game idiocy. The thing that really bugged me was the botched main story line. The other Tomb Raider stories generally had at least a coherent central myth that was built up and eventually explained to some extent. Perhaps some think the big reveal of a trapped soul of an ancient queen sufficient... can't say I do. Based on prior games I was expecting some kind of massive structural system and a conflux of weather patterns and changing elements of the structure configuration to be involved in how the weather was being controlled... possibly driven by said trapped soul. That could have been epic. Massive wind gates allowing an ancient civilization control of weather as a defense of their island empire or something. Certainly would have been no more silly than the idea that a WWII or group of madmen would construct cable cars out of derelict shipwrecks.

And finally... something they should just be flogged for. The massively idiotic level of gore, especially considering there was really no good explanation for where all those freshly killed bodies would be coming from. You are talking 1000s if not 10s of 10000s of fresh flayed/chopped up bodies and guts. Skulls are a constant decoration employed almost everywhere in the game. Absurd is not the word, that is to tame for what they did here. Less would have been more. About 2 hours into the game I hit a point where I stopped even noticing it. About the only notable moment past that is Laura's bloody baptism. The use of bloody elements was like a rock song where the lead guitarist hit a sustained whammy bar wail from the beginning to end. Put another way it is like a cook serving you a dish that is primarily spice/garnish instead of an actual meal. I am not some shrieking violet who thinks you shouldn't have gore in a video game. I just think they were silly in what they did. The bloody baptism thing would have been so much more powerful if it had not had so much to de-sensitize you to the gore leading up to it. As it was when she rises out of that pool of blood I was like 'meh... whatever'.

Don't let me griping fool you. It is a good game and they have plenty of good stuff here to salvage going forward. But as a long time Tomb Raider fan I was very disappointed with the swing towards combat as the primary advancement mechanism and shoddy inconsistent/incomplete plot lines. Those kinds of problems are very uncharacteristic of the series to date. Here is hoping it was brought about by the difficulty of trying get lots of folks to agree on how to reboot the cash cow character that is Laura Croft.

Real Racing 3: Freemium done WRONG

The title pretty much says it. EA has recently begun moving all of its game to the 'freemium' model. If real racing 3 is any indication I think it means I will be abstaining from their content. Shame really. The racing engine and graphics in real racing 3 are one of the best so far on the iPad. I would happily race the lower tier cars in freemium grind mode and probably shell out some real money to get at better cars sooner... but I absolutely REFUSE to stare at an artificial load screen basically saying 'pay or wait'. If they would offer a one time buy the game fee I would probably pay it... and I would pay more than the average mobile game cost. This is easily on par with most full console arcade type racing games, 30-60$ would not be an unreasonable one time cost for access to their launch content. Instead they went so whole hog to the freemium side that they costed the entire purchased content of the game at ~500$ (or almost 500 hours of game play some have estimated). Truly absurd. So if I have to choose between freemium grind and wait screens, or absurd content costs I choose c) none of the above and I hope many others do as well. Despite the fact I enjoyed the 'demo' (IE before you run out of included gold) a lot I deleted the game once I saw the asking rate for gold compared to the burn rate the game required to stay ahead of the 'that will be ready in 5 min or pay x gold' screens.

This is Freemium done WRONG.

Political Musings: The insanity of our current US politics at work...

There are a few thoughts on some issues bouncing around in my head.

First lets look at a favorite of the past few years.... the birther issue. Is Obama a 'naturalized' citizen of the US and thus fit to be president or not? For me this is a non-issue. Once upon a time it was viewed as natural that the leader of a nation be derived from the genetic stock of the existing ruling class. And if no such heir was available it could mean civil war. I think many in this day and age laugh at the old idea of the Devine right of kings... at the same time they turn their nose up at the idea a non-natural (that is someone not born to it) citizen could be President of the US. Whether the pool is 300 million, or a single royal bloodline... the idea is equally silly. Especially considering that the first and most notable presidents of this nation were not born to it. They had to create it first. Of course ' thats different' as the old saw goes. Fine it is different. But what of this notion that only those born here can make a good leader? That truly is no different from the old notion that only an heir of the current leader can peacefully continue the leadership of the country without risking civil war scrabbling for the 'crown'. In fact this whole debate has arisen in me a desire not to see a birth certificate for Obama... but instead to freshen up the language of the constitution to address this absurdity, and others like it (the 3/5th person clause for slaves comes to mind....). Citizenry is a good requirement for those that would seek to lead us. Also requiring they have something out of their control (their birth) enter into the equation should be excised. And I don't think anyone is arguing Obama isn't a citizen.

Let us continue along this same vein to another topic that is often intertwined... that of the notion that Obama is Muslim and that is somehow a bad thing in and of itself. Last I checked those same said rules regarding citizenship say zilch regarding the faith of said candidate. And in the first amendment to the constitution, The first item of the 'bill of rights' is a list of express freedoms upon which the government is not allowed to infringe. Chief among them is the freedom of religion. Not freedom of Christianity. Freedom of religion. It is the freedom to follow the faith of your choice. It is the freedom to follow no faith at all. If it is to you individually important that the leader of the nation be 'Christian' then by all means do not cast your vote for a candidate who does not follow that doctrine. But do not begrudge your fellow citizens right to cast their votes as they choose. This is the process of freedom and in the choosing of a leader by the masses. It means you may not get your way. And at such times you may be VERY glad that we have a system of government in which your individual freedom is protected by fundamental design by some men of vision some 200+ years ago who could envision a system that could last beyond the common practices of their time.

Regarding the 'Fiscal Cliff': This is both a simple and yet horribly complex issue. Simple in that it is a rather simple fact that the US has gotten into a horrible habit of allowing its government to spend far more money than it collects in taxes. Done for short periods of time with clear plans for rectifying the imbalance this is Ok. But we are now heading into a second decade of consistently allowing this to happen. We have racked up more debt under the past two presidents than was accrued in our previous history combined. And like some misguided seriously irresponsible individual who has lived large on borrowed money we are headed for the brink from which there is no easy solution. I am reminded of a character in the movie 'The Full Monty'. A manager with a good life lost his job along with his workers. However he never told his wife and he allowed them to continue to live as if nothing had happened right up to the point the credit ran out and the whole illusion came crashing down. He felt it was better to keep the illusion and hope some unknown solution would come in time to save him from his lies rather than simply tell his Wife he had no job and they would have to make changes. Loosing ones house and goods etc... is bad enough. But what happens when one of the worlds leading powers reaches the same point?

That is the simple part... the complex part is the insanity of our current politics that has made it all but impossible to make real changes in our fiscal choices despite the fact it seems clear to all parties that change must occur. The problem is that the currency of such change is at the heart of the problem. Change is paid for by pork. Big change is paid for by massive pork. So what happens when the change you need is to spend less which means there is no source of funds for all the Pork items needed to fund the concessions that lead to significant changes? The answer is playing out daily on C-Span and it is not pretty. Dig into any of the big recent changes like health care and all the last minute budget cliff talks and you find a lot of 'talk' about savings but when you read the fine print you find all meaningful savings are listed in the future, often beyond the term limits of the existing officials. And you will notice that the cuts scheduled to begin on their watch often are also deferred as well. Then we in effect hit the snooze button by raising the debt ceiling... effectively granting a higher credit card limit to ourselves and continuing down the path that will utilize the newly increased limit. Sometimes we even enact NEW spending because that is what 'had to happen' to get the right votes to pass a budget. You have to save... so of course you agree to save money on this by spending as much or more on that. It is in a word INSANE. Sometimes I think our government is broken and the great experiment has failed. In the words of one of Heinlien's chracters... once the masses in a democracy realize they can vote themselves "bread and circuses" the game is up... full quote...

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’

‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.” 
― Robert A. Heinlein

Cellular Unlocking Petition

So the White House petition site just had a petition cross the 100k signature threshold for a WH response regarding the Library of Congress decision to let the DMCA exemption for owners of cell phones to legally unlock them expire. Why is this important?

Currently many carriers subsidize the cost of the hardware when you buy it. IE that super duper smart phone does not really cost nothing, 99$ or even $199. The reality is that most cutting edge phones retail at $600-800. That is a LOT of technology packed in a very small device. So based on this the phone companies think they can control what you do with the device. They want it to be illegal to modify the device so that you can load different software or *gasp* use it on someone else's network. You might do things for free they want to charge you for, or pay less for service in certain situations than if you were forced to use their option.

Now I fully grant they have the right to enforce a contract so far as payment of their service goes. And that includes the built in hardware subsidizing that goes on. Trust me you pay ever penny of the value of those hot new smart phones by the time that two year contract is up... and THEN some. But so long as you pay your monthly contract then they should have no say in whether or not you choose to pay for another service in addition to theirs... or run a different version of software on your device. Why would you want to pay for additional service when you already have a contract? Because a lot of cellular services costs are out right extortion if you ask me. To me one of the best examples the kinds of extortion imposed by carriers championing locked cell phones  are international calling rates for anyone traveling abroad. You can easily pay service charges for a few minutes of talking ( or a Mb or 20 of e-mail downloads) in a foreign country far exceeding what you would for a month of service at home... or paying for a month of service in local economy rates by just buying a pre-paid sim from a cell provider in that country. Very easy to do in most European countries if you have a GSM based phone... but not if the phone is carrier locked. Txt messaging rates are a similar racket. Many providers block alternative texting services from being used on their devices to force you to use their texting services at highway robbery costs. You did know that text messaging works by sending messages across network traffic used to keep your cell phone in contact with the cell towers right??? This means the traffic occurs constantly whether you send a text or not... and they charge typically $.25 per instance when you actually send a msg in one. Go google the equivalent data rate charges if they charged for data usage like they do texts. It is amusing.

All that aside... tinkering with electronics you buy should not be illegal. And if this clause expires anyone jailbreaking an iPhone, or rooting an Android phone becomes a criminal. This idea of carriers controlling what you do with the hardware once you purchase it from them (and you make your payments on time) is silly and it needs to be stopped. The DMCA is mostly a pile of steaming bull crap and the rest is simply unmentionable in polite company. Fighting for keeping cell phone unlocking protected from its insanity is the least the current WH admin could do for us after that piece of crap legislation passed back in the Bush admin.

Google Pixel

So Google announced the Pixel today… the punchline? New Chromebook for just $1300. You want to read some funny posts and see some funny images go check “The Verge” comments on the announcement story. Got that out of your system? Good. Now let us take a serious look at this. 

….Ok…. fine…. keep laughing. After all you just saw that there is a second version launching in a month or so for $1500 with a bit more storage (a whopping 64Gb instead of 32GB) and LTE. Laughter is understandable. You are talking about a category of device that has slowly carved out a niche as a super cheap option (sub $400, down to even $250). So how is Google honestly thinking they are going to sell Chrome books at this stratospheric price point? Well after you get over laughing you might consider that the $1300 purchase also comes with 1TB of Google drive space included for 3 years. At current prices that is an $1800 dollar value. And that is not a misprint. 1TB service for drive runs $49.99 per month. This is 1Tb service for 36 months. In other words, if Google drive space at the 1TB level is something you plan to have for the next three years then ordering a Google Pixel is a quick way to save $500 and get a super high rez (2560x1700 wowza), sexy aluminum build low hard drive capacity (32Gb) laptop for free. That should suppress some of the chuckles at least.

 By the way… it is not really dignified to be rolling around laughing on the floor like that… just saying...

 So if you are not laughing you might be asking why I think you should be. It is because that still leaves you with a 3.5 pound powerful intel i5 CPU 4GB RAM touchscreen 2560x1700 resolution laptop running Chrome OS with 32GB of storage. Translation: $1300 buys you a 1TB service for 36months and a pretty nifty paperweight unless you are a VERY casual computer user. If all you do is e-mail and browse for cute kitty pictures then last I checked g-mail storage was pretty sufficient for a large majority of folks in that category and they also don’t often care a whole lot about casing materials, screen hinges and screen resolutions. What exactly are casual users that Chrome is currently aimed at going to fill that 1TB of Google Drive storage up with? Now… load a touch enabled Ubuntu on there and plug in a largish SD card for additional onboard storage and you have a more interesting proposition. Whats that you say? A macbook air costs less with more storage? You are correct but I must once again raise that $1800 in freebie Google Drive service. Mac air ownership brings a paltry 5gb complementary iCloud service in comparison. How much would 1TB cost? Not currently an option. The top is 50GB at $100 a year… extrapolated it would be $2000 per year for 1TB of iCloud service, $6000 for 3 years of service. It would probably be cheaper if Apple actually offered it. Compare to Amazon Cloud 1TB service which is currently available for $500 per year it is available a bit cheaper than Google Drive offerings, but that is in the right ballpark for a quality cloud service in this range. In any case this included Google Drive service for the Pixel is not to be sneezed at. But the market for 1TB cloud service is still pretty weak at the average consumer level. Mostly I think this ahead of its time.

 Suffice it to say the pixel is Google’s declaration of what they view the future of computing to be and lets just say it isn’t centered around local storage. It is not meant to be a huge seller by most accounts. It is simply there to demonstrate their vision and commitment to that vision. Bringing this level of technology to market is not something done lightly and there is no question the folks in Mountain View are painfully aware just how awkward a price point this is for the current image of a Chromebook. In my humble opinion that is actually a fundamental reason why they produced the device. Consider it a marketing expense aimed at raising the level of Chrombook’s image. And marketing by way of cutting edge new hardware (no matter how questionable the OS) seems to me much more useful than paying Jerry Seinfeld to take awkward rides in cabs (just an example…)

Yes… I know…. more laughing. Continue if you must I shan’t judge. However, I will bring this up… when the iPad was launched about all you could find any of the multitudes of early adopter communities commenting about it was the name being more suitable for a new revolutionary feminine hygiene product rather than a must have tech device. Makes for some fun reading to go find the slashdot comments for the iPad reveal today in light of the millions of devices sold, new market opened, and billions in the bank for Apple. Granted… I am fairly certain the Pixel is no iPad. There… that covers all bases for future examinations of this article. I am equally hedged in all directions ☺ Ok, I’ll commit to a view point. 

The main market for the Pixel seems to be anyone in need of 1 TB level G-drive cloud storage and who has an e-bay account with a good seller reputation. $500 off the cost of 3 years of service just for buying the Pixel. Then sell the Pixel on e-bay to a curious geek for say $500. Voila, 36Months of 1TB Google Drive service for $800 (savings of $1000). The remaining market are those that want to run some flavor of GNU/Linux on it that value the 1TB cloud storage advantage over the on board storage and OSX option of a Macbook air or similar Windows Ultra-book. Any poor schmucks actually spending this much money to run Chrome I think are masochists. To be more kind I will say anyone willing to plunk down $1300 for the ‘privilege’ of a premium Chrome OS device is making an investment in the future of Chrome OS. I wish them many happy returns. Myself? I prefer bird in the hand options to the ones in the bush when it comes to hardware this pricey. So, to use a popular meme of the moment. Keep calm and carry on… laughing. At least for now. This is some seriously sexy hardware in desperate need of a better OS option. I think an x86 android port would be more appealing than Chrome OS at the moment.

 Looking ahead? I am going to keep an eye out for the 2nd gen Haswell version (should push battery life past 8 Hours vs the current ho hum 5) of this curious creation with BT 4, USB 3, and a Sim Card driven version of the cellular radio. Combine with strait talk unlimited plan and a Linux distro of choice and you have a very capable sexy laptop with a nice cloud service. However, still not sure if I want to give up OSX and go back to the pain of dealing with config files and finicky driver support. Haswell RMBP 15” is still my first choice for replacing my 17” MBP. I have no real hope that Chrome will mature enough to be a serious consideration for a second generation of this device… assuming Google is willing to plunk out for a second take.

ZAGGkeys PRO&PROplus iPAD 2-4 keyboard case

The Good:

Battery life is much improved over previous models (matches ultra thin) thanks to use of Bluetooth 4. 20% life indicated ~ 2 weeks more usage... so 10 weeks per charge seems to be the useable life of a fully charged device. Less when using the backlight.

Keyboard is improved once again though double strikes remain a bit of an issue.

New mini lip & magnet closure design seems to be the perfect compromise evolution of this design. Now remains securely together even inside a jostling backpack. Ultra thin often slips apart due to magnets being the only securing element.

Losing the hinge was a good idea, it was mostly fiddly and useless... no point in using the device between closed and docked.

New battery and caps lock indicators.

The So So:
Backlighting is awesome... when you need it. Thankfully it automatically disables when below 20% battery and usage at 20% is still expected to be ~2 weeks. BT 4 really rocks!

Keys are much higher quality but double strikes are still annoyingly common (writing this review with the keyboard). Having experience with more than 20 keyboards of this nature due to some work I do professionally I can say this is not an isolated issue in past designs which does not bode well that this is a sporadic problem with the PRO and PROplus. If this were as bad as the past models I have used personally I would send the device back. As is it seems to be much less common and more useable... for now.

Lack of magnets in the typing trey. The ultra thin had this and I found it very useful for keepingg the device more secure in the docked layout

The Bad:
Cost. This is early adopter pricing at 100$ for the PRO and 130$ for the PROplus (backlit keyboard). If they drop this to 50$ and 75$ I think it would be more reasonable... and actually pretty likely considering past models pricing history. Well.. maybe 75-100.

Conclusions:
Don't let my concerns about the double strike and cost fool you... this is probably the best Keyboard/Case out there for the iPad. This is the 3rd or 4th generation of Zagg's design and I think they have just about nailed it. Short of putting magnets in the trey like they had with the ultra thin and finally ironing out the double strike issue there does not seem to be much left to do to improve this.