And Now What Do We Do?

I haven't made many political rants about Spain lately, because there's almost anything new to say....However, today I've read some articles that showed what's the real situation in Spain, so it's worth commenting it now. 

First, for those who do not know, some years ago the bursar of the ruling party (PP) was accused of participating in a corruption case that implicated other members of this party, regional leaders mostly. Investigations were done, while PP and the bursar claimed together that it was all a a lie and they were innocent. However, some months ago, proofs were found about the bursar's culpability, and then PP tried to isolate him and say that what he did was not in the party's name and that he was a liar and bad person in general. 

A few months ago, some papers form this bursar surfaced. It may be that he made them surface himself. Whatever the origin, these papers indicated that, in the last 20 years or so, PP had been illegally financed using donations that surpassed the legal limit. The companies that gave these donations later on got public contracts for lots of money. The papers also showed secret payments to all the party leaders and lots of other people. The papers seem to be from the bursar, and seem to be a secret accounting of the party. 

PP answered saying that the papers were made up to wrongly accuse them. Different tests disproved this theory, and several people inside the party claimed that they received some of the lesser payments that appear on the papers. The bursar also claimed that he did not do these papers, but writing analysis disproved that too. Finally the bursar declared that the papers were real, that he made them himself, and that he paid to the party leaders all this undeclared money. PP is saying that the bursar lies (since, you know, he was lying before too), but there has not been any other explanations or resignations at all. 

Meanwhile, the papers have also shown that the current president of the Constitutional Court, made up by judges which should be independent from politics, since they decide important interpretations of the Spanish constitution, was paying a fee to the party, which is the fee that any party member needs to pay. The judge has admitted that he belongs to that party, but sees no problem in that, since he's not part of the party's directive, and will not resign because of this.

Kind of unrelated to that but also important, just now the Spanish Supreme Court has ruled that a member of PP that has been condemned to 6 years of prison because of a case of influence peddling, embezzlement and other such charges, should only have 9 months of prison and considered some of these charges to be void. This case also affects the king's son-in-law and daughter, but they haven't finished their judgment yet.

This same Supreme Court accused an independent judge of 3 different charges, and considered him guilty in one of them, preventing him from working in Spain. This judge was trying to investigate crimes done during Franco's dictatorship, and was also an important part of the investigations that cause the detention of the PP's bursar. This judge has been investigating and trying to condemn human right abuses around the world, among other things. 

Meanwhile, the other main Spanish party, PSOE, supposed to be from the left, has also a big corruption scandal in Andalucía, a region where they have been governing for the past 20 years or so. Important people inside the party are accused. This same party also gave lots of contracts to the same companies that appear on the PP bursar's papers. Even if there's no proof of anything illegal regarding these companies and PSOE, you can easily see what's more likely.

In Catalunya, it has been declared that the ruling party, CIU, got money from a scandal that has happened in a public institution. The director of the institution embezzled lots of funds, and it seems he used some of these funds to donate to the party. That same party has another 2 cases of corruption going on, where its leaders are implicated. Such leaders also have some Switzerland accounts, apparently. 

Both CIU and PP, one in Catalunya and the other in Spain, have been privatizing our public healthcare. Most of the private companies that are taking the contracts have in their directive ex-members of the party. Another group of companies that have ex-politicians (from PP and PSOE) in their directive are energy companies. This week a new law was created that says that if you want to use solar panels or any other source of electricity controlled by yourself, in order to store this electricity you will need to pay them.

We could continue all day long, and comment about the laws that have been created to lower salaries and make it easier to fire people. Or the incredible number of open corruption cases everywhere in Spain, with the judges that are really trying to uncover them getting dead threats and such things. Or the fact that most condemned corrupt politicians and police officers accused of brutality or torture usually get governmental pardons, bypassing the justice system and making them free. And let's not even get started with the banks and the house prices....

The conclusions are clear: The legislative power has been corrupted. The executive power is corrupted as well, and it's actually managed by the same people that in the legislative power. The judicial power is corrupted in the high courts, but there's some hope in there, since it seems there are still lots of independent judges. Most big companies are the ones corrupting things, and they don't allow competitors. 

Currently PP has absolute majority on the parliament, and therefore any initiative to change things will be cancelled right away. Any explanations that they may give will probably be all lies anyway, as their program showed (they did exactly the contrary of what their program said after elections). Other parties are not better, especially if they're big enough. 

Finally, the worst thing: even with the list of problems that we're mentioning, PP and PSOE would still be the most voted forces if there were elections now. Lots of people got disgusted by their actions, yes, but there is still a huge number of supporters. What's worse, lots of old supporters would rather not vote instead of trying to find a party that represents them better. With most newspapers and news agencies backing these two parties, it's also very difficult to give an alternative that actually reaches people. 

If there were elections right now, it would be messy, but PP could still rule with the help of CIU and probably UPD (another new party who has the same ideology as PP, and its leader also appeared sometimes in the bursar's papers). PSOE could also rule with help, maybe, but the whole point of the problem is that these 2 parties have been ruling for too long....

Some international criminal agencies like IMF and the World Bank are also saying that governments need to be strong, and therefore coalitions of parties are too unstable to rule, basically supporting PP and PSOE by scaring people predicting chaos (and by the way, this argument is also a great way to declare that dictatorships are the best type of government for the economy, you cannot get stronger than that).

After reaching this point, I again see only two solutions:

1-We need a party that is really independent and not corrupt. These parties exists, especially if they have not ruled much yet. This party would need to get enough votes to bypass PP and PSOE (and probably CIU, UPD and PNV too) and get a majority of votes, and then create a new constitution and new laws. In the process, it should also dissolve the current High Courts, and establish that these courts need to be created by the judges only (the constitutional court is formed by the parliament right now, which shows how "separated" are powers in Spain).

2-We do the same as in 1-, but in order to do so first we proceed to kill all the current party directives, courts, bank owners, etc. that have caused this situation. 

However, Spanish population seems to be...sedated, and both 1st and 2nd solution do not seem possible, because people do not seem to care, even when their unhappiness is a direct result of these rulers....Spanish people seem to care only about sports, and everybody is staying at home, voting the same parties, doing the same things, never reacting, never thinking....

This will continue as long as we allow it and support it by considering it "normal", or that it's "Spanish culture". 

Every day that Spanish people fail to react, I get the impression that Spain's solution to lots of its problems is a surgical nuclear strike...

New Graphic Adventures

Since I discovered the GOG page, I also discovered that graphic adventures, one of my favourite genres that has spent some years without new developments, actually have survived and there are some new ones available.

Made mostly by indie companies, these new graphic adventures may not be innovative regarding gameplay, but they transmit a similar feeling as the old ones, using today's graphics.

In the past months I have bought (always important to buy games if you want similar ones to be produced in the future) and played some of them. I have not finished them all, but all of them seem to be really great. I'd like to comment on a few of them:


Deponia: This is the first game I found in GOG that was mentioned as a very nice and new graphic adventure, while being funny like the original ones (Monkey Island, Day of The Tentacle) or some others (like Discworld). I was afraid I would find it childish or stupid, but there was an offer for this game, so I decided to get it and try it.

The game puts yourself in Deponia, a world made of trash. You're Rufus, an idiotic young guy who invents all kind of things, usually resulting in injuries and mayhem. He wishes to leave Deponia and reach the Elysium, a futuristic floating palace that has no contact with the Deponians.  After one of his latest inventions, he ends up causing Goal, a girl from Elysium who is exploring the planet, to fall into Deponia's surface, rendering her unconscious. From this point, Rufus will try hard to make her recover from her fall and bring her back to the palace together with him.

First, the graphics are rather awesome. Everything is made out of 2D drawings in high resolution, and I believe the animations are also very nice. The music is good, without being specially memorable. The gameplay is simple and traditional, point and click style, and you don't have any inventory limitation (which is also traditional and funny sometimes, considering the amount of clutter you carry around). All this is technical stuff, and even if it is nice to have good graphics and good interface, the most important things are other ones.

Graphic adventures are usually based and evaluated on their plots and their puzzles. Deponia's plot is a kind of traditional "Distress Damsel" plot, but it is well executed. The best part are the characters, clearly defined and interesting. The world setting itself is quite weird, impossible to actually be functional but still interesting. You're curious to learn all the little details of this society, and as the plot advances, you want to know what will happen next. The main character is idiotic, but he does try to do good things, even when making a couple of bad decisions.

The puzzles themselves are rather hard. The logic behind them is quite twisted, and some particular ones are too obscure or illogical for my taste, it's hard to think that certain actions will work as the solution of a particular problem. Nevertheless they are interesting. Mixed with the normal puzzles, there are sometimes "mini-game" puzzles, which you can skip if you want but that are usually very interesting, while possible to do.

The humor in this game is ok, maybe not very smart, or maybe not that good, but good enough that I enjoyed it while playing. Comedy is a very subjective thing, and evidently it's not the same as some of the works that advertisements says this game resembles (like Discworld), but it's still good.

The game ends in the middle of the action, since this is supposed to be the first out of 3 games, but I enjoyed it very much in the end. Since I wanted to know how the story continued, I got the second part too.

Chaos on Deponia: This is the second Deponia game. It has mostly all the strengths and weakness of the previous one, with a few differences: First, in this game we see more of Goal, who was unconscious most of the time in the previous one, and we can get a better idea of her character. This makes her more interesting, before that we didn't know anything about her. Some other characters are given also more definition, and the plot becomes more complex and important. All this is good. The bad parts of this game are that some jokes and puzzles are...cruel. They make the main character a stupid mean person, while during the first game he was just stupid, but with good intentions. Some things are not really funny, even considering black humour, and I didn't like that part. I will talk about later, but Harvey's New Eyes manages to do cruel things while making sense, being funny using black humour, and keeping the characters interesting. This one does not achieve such things. Still, the plot remains interesting, the puzzles and worlds to explore are quite nice, and I definitely want to play the third and final part, whenever they release it.

A New Beginning: In contrast with Deponia, this game has a more serious approach, while still having humour in it. The company that developed it is the same, but in this case they tried to made a morality tale, to give awareness about environmental problems. However, the game does not feel preachy, and is interesting and compelling.

I haven't finished this game, but what I've seen and played has given me great sensations. The animations and graphics are all very detailed and high resolution 2D drawings, but not as cartoonish as with Deponia. The music is nice, the voice acting is good, and in general it seems a very good game.

The plot is interesting, involving time travel and surviving in a post-apocalyptic environment (at least, that's what I've seen so far). The puzzles are logical so far, while still being hard, and there is also an occasional "mini-game" puzzle, which are always fun to solve. I don't know if this will be true during all of it, but it's certainly worth to play.

Edna & Harvey: This is actually two games, "The Breakout" and "Harvey's New Eyes". I finished the Breakout and I'm currently at the beginning of the second one.

The Breakout explains the story of Edna, a mental patient who wants to escape the clinic, together with her imaginary friend Harvey, a bunny toy. Edna does not remember anything, but believes that she's quite sane. While trying to escape, she will interact with other patients and doctors, while remembering more and more about her past with the help of Harvey.

The graphics and animation in this game are 2D, cartoonish and very simple (compared with Deponia). However, the voice acting is very good. The puzzles are quite logical, which is surprising for an asylum, but it makes the game less frustrating, since what you need to do makes sense if you speak with the people around you. The music is great, very simple while managing to transmit lots of emotions, specially in the most serious parts of the game, or in the flashbacks.

The plot is amazing. You can guess what's going on and what will happen in the end after the first 5-10 minutes, but it doesn't stop it from being amazingly done. The gameplay makes you do things that clearly show that Edna is insane, and it's stuff that you do yourself, a nice touch to provide immersion. I liked a lot the humour used in the game, crazy and surreal sometimes. However, the game has quite serious moments, and it's not only some whacky adventure. The game is not very hard or long, but the experience of playing is really a great one, very recommended.

Harvey's New Eyes follows the adventures of Lilli, a little girl in a convent. There are elements in common with the Breakout, but it cannot be considered a direct sequel. It works in a very similar way, with improved graphics and animation. I have not finished the game yet, but so far it's also great, with lots of really really dark and black comedy. As I was commenting before, Chaos in Deponia has black comedy, but it seems cruel in there. In Havery's New Eyes, on the other hand, it fits quite well with the game, showing that something very dark and twisted is going on, in this world and in the twisted mind of the main character, who seems quite innocent while being clearly disturbed somehow. The gameplay also helps in the experience, in which you're doing terrible things yourself. The game so far manages to be funny while being very, VERY dark. Just as an example, a narrator explains everything that is happening in a kid-friendly and excited way, while you can see that reality does not match that description at all, like when you find an active bomb buried in the ground.

 The Cat Lady: I have only played 5-10 minutes of this game, but I already love it. I read it's a psychological horror graphic adventure, and it seems exactly that. The graphics may not be the best, but they're creepy and beautifully detailed, also 2D drawing-based. The interface is a little weird, and the animations are a little bit clunky. However, the voice acting, the atmosphere, the music and images seem great, really really creepy. Another example of a game that should be considered "art", I believe.  I'm at the very beginning, but as I mentioned, with just 5 minutes I got all these sensations, and not many games can pull something like that.


And that's all for the moment. I haven't tried yet Book of Unwritten Tales, which seems that it's also going to be very nice, and I need to really play and finish Harvey's New Eyes, A New Beginning and The Cat Lady. There's also the third part of Deponia in the near future, some other games that may not be a traditional graphic adventure but that I will try, plus the Double Fine new graphic adventure still in development, that may be really awesome, we'll see...

In any way, it seems that this "dead" genre (according to the big publishers) is still offering great titles that are totally worth buying...

Democracy in Egypt

Last days we've had a hell of a lot of work at the office, and I'm not very aware of what's going on around the world, but I do have read about the fact that in Egypt there was a military coup that removed the president (or prime minister, or whatever was his title) and put another guy in charge, to prepare new elections.

Since the guy who was in charge before was proposing some changes to make Egypt law follow islamist, I believe that lots of people and reporters from the right approved this action. Meanwhile, I've heard some people from the left (not many people were talking about it but I've heard some) saying that the guy had been elected with a democratic vote, and therefore removing him with a military coup is bad for the democracy.

In this case, I find myself agreeing with anyone thinking that this was a good thing. First of all, violence against the people of a country is always bad, and therefore if the army starts killing pacific islamist supporters of the ex-president, that is clearly bad. However, the problem here was that the ex-president tried to made laws that would turn Egypt into another Saudi Arabia, another Yemen....

Basically, I believe that religion and politics should never ever be together. One thing is how a country is governed, and another thing is what you may or may not believe when it come to religion, which I believe can be categorised as "Morals". I think I read some time ago about the difference between "Moral" and "Ethical". I'm still unclear about the differences in some specific cases, but I believe that an ethical behaviour tries to be fair with everybody and tries to give everybody as much freedom as possible without denying freedom to someone else. By difference, a moral behaviour tries to establish a number of things that are considered right and wrong, and then delimitate the freedom of the people based on these categories.

The most clear and easy example would be the topic of marriage. Marriages that go against ethical principles, in my opinion, are done between parts where one of them does not want or cannot have their saying while getting married. For example, the famous argument of marrying dogs would be unethical, because dogs cannot express their opinion on the matter. The same happens with arranged marriages, if families force a marriage, this is unethical. Any other marriage done between two adult people that are consensual and wanted to do so are ethical. Meanwhile, if we use moral to decide what is a correct marriage, we may get to the conclusion that the only possible marriage is between a man and a woman, or that forcing a daughter to marry a man is morally correct.

I am of the opinion that all laws should try to be as ethical as possible. Governments actions should also be as ethical as possible. And I believe that people, as a whole, should not have anything to say about it. Let me clarify that....

In Egypt, the guy who got elected wanted to use the Islamic law as the basis of the laws. Islamic law, as any religious-based law, uses morals. Some things are moral, some things are immoral, and the immoral ones are legally punished. I believe this is wrong. However, you may say that it was something democratically chosen by the people, right? Well, first thing here is that, even with lots of supporters, I believe that the percentage of people that voted for this guy was around 25%. It may be more than any other option, but this still leaves 75% out.

But even ignoring that....by applying a moral code of laws, you're forcing your morals into lots of people that may not share them and may not agree with them. Even if a huge majority, 90% wanted this, there's that 10% of people who basically were forced to "convert" to these unshared morals. Therefore, I believe this is clearly wrong and should not be done. Instead, if you make ethical laws, everybody keeps their morals. Then, if 90% of the people have certain morals, they can still apply these morals with themselves, and avoid immoral things. They're free to do so, while leaving the people with different morals free to act differently. Ethics gives you freedom, even the freedom to have the morals you want.

Therefore, whatever the votes, whatever the support, the guy who got elected was doing something wrong in my opinion. Sometimes it may be hard to differentiate between something ethical and something moral, but basing all your laws on religion is quite clear a moral thing. Religion is not the only thing that can add morals to laws, though, and one needs to be always careful and try to stay on ethical grounds when making rules for everybody.

I would add a comment about democracy. Democracy is not voting every 4-5 years and letting the elected government do as they please. Democracy is not governing for your supporters only. Democracy is not denying rights, even when a majority of people actually wants to deny those rights. True democracy is to let everybody have a voice, an opinion. And true democracy is deciding all together what to do next, hearing at least every side of an opinion, and letting each side influence the outcome, while at the same time never imposing subjective things even when a majority would like to do so. I don't believe it is democratic to, for example, ban dancing, even if a majority of people agrees. If the action is not limiting another's person freedom (basically, not hurting anyone), even a  majority of people should have nothing to say about it.

When this does not happen, it doesn't matter how it is done, but the government needs to be kicked out (and kicked hard).

And kicking out the government is always going to be a good action in this case.

Faster Than Light

Lately I've been playing with different games, and at some moment I may make one post about them. For the moment I want to talk about one in particular.

Some weeks ago I decided to get another indie game that I'd heard very good things about: Faster Than Light. It seems it was a kickstarter project, and lots of people really liked the idea and it became quite popular.

The basis of the game is rather simple: You have a spaceship with a crew and a certain equipment, and you need to escape a rebel fleet following you, contact your allies with important information and finally defeat the rebel mothership.

The thing that is rather refreshing for a videogame is that you do not pilot the spaceship, or aim its weapons. What you do is manage the tasks that the crew does, reassign power, select targets and weapons, and manage in general some basic aspects of the ship.

You start in a space location, in a randomly generated universe, and you need to navigate through several sectors. In each sector you need to jump between several locations, and in each locations you may have random encounters with other people and ships, you may have combats or you may shop and repair your ship.

Everything except the initial ship configuration is randomized. Even when you found the same event decsription twice, the outcome of the event may be different. Sometimes you have crew or equipment that gives better options in these random encounters, and sometimes you can get huge rewards or huge drawbacks.

Apart form that, you usually combat lots of ships, including rebels, pirates, slavers, automated droids and other aggressive species. You start with some weapons and some power, and by buying upgrades and equipment you need to add and distribute power to increase your ship capabilities, until you reach the final sector and fight the mothership.

The game is....well, hard. You cannot permanently save one point in time, if you continue playing after saving you will lose that save, and if you get killed, you need to start from the begginning. There are lots of options, and the wrong configuration can kill you pretty fast. After several games, you learn what works best, but still it's rather hard to get to the final sector. Once you're in the final sector, the Mothership, which requires 3 combats, one after the other, can quite easily destroy you in the first fight without you landing a shot, even when you were winning all previous combats.

Even while being a difficult game, and depending a lot on your luck given the randomness of the encounters, it's very easy to grasp the basics. It's also a game where a round till the last sector takes at max around 2 hours, which means that you can play 10 minutes, save, and continue later. This is a thing that I really appreciate, since you don't always have time to dedicate 1 hour to one game, and some games require that hour just to advance a little bit.

It kind of follows the idea of old games, where the difficulty was hard, and where if you got killed, that was it and you had to start again. It makes things more interesting after all, since each gameplay does not take very long anyway, and then you can just restart. Most modern games let you fail as many times as you need until you get the hang of it and pass that spot. This makes it easier to play, specially if you don't have much time to dedicate to it, but it also makes things much less interesting, since it's just a matter of reloading to the last 5 minutes, with no penalizations. FTL is much more severe in the penalization, and that makes you more involved during a playthrough. 

Becasue of all these properties, the game is incredibly addictive. You always want to get further, to try some new configuration, some new weapon. While playing, some special events give you access to other ships, and in each ship you can also unlock a different basic configuration, so the replaying value is huge. Some ships may be a little overpowered if you know how to use them, but oh well...after being destroyed so many times, it's also good to have some ship that can rip to pieces most of the obstacles you'll find.

I have finished the game in easy, once. Let's just say the Mothersip is quite the big bastard. However, depending on your luck, it can also turn into a curbstomp battle...this single time I won, I had managed to grab 3 burst laser 2 plus one ion bomb. The end result was that I did not even have to repair the ship between battles, and the first 2 of them were done really really fast. Then again, it was mostly luck to find a shop that sold that weapon, since the items in the shop are rather random too.

Summing it up, this is a really addictive game, really good while keeping things simple and fast, and really hard. I highly recommend it, and since the prices is quite low, I'd say to buy it, since you're supporting this style of game that tries to innovate in original ways.