Dark Souls

So I decided to give Dark Souls a try.

Dark Souls is a game from some years ago now, that became (in)famous for its difficulty, but everybody said it was great.

That made me curious, but I don't have a lot of time so I didn't check if I could get it for a while....

However, I saw Yahtzee's review in Zero Punctuation and he claimed it was really good actually, once you passed some hard fights and started to learn how to play...this plus some posts on the Internet made me want to play it, and see if it was as hard as they said...

Well, the game it's hard, but not so hard. I'm not saying I'm that good, I die a lot and I still didn't get the hang of rolling at the right time (in part because my laptop sometimes slows down too much to time things properly), but my point is that the game helps you train.

When you die and restart, you can go back where you died and recover the experience/money you gained since last time you died, plus any extra you got from fighting people on the way. Also, you can grind your way up the levels, by killing monsters in one area and resting so they reappear, and repeat this until your stats are to your liking.

This means you can train a level until you do it well. Sure, when the boss kills you and you need to kill again  all the minions between the boss and the resting area it gets annoying, but you're getting extra experience after all, and training.

What is true is that the game doesn't hold your hand, but that's a refreshing change from current popular games. In most new games you don't have lives, checkpoints are everywhere and death is cheap, a small nuisance. Dark Souls makes you suffer instead, you really need to put effort.

However, that's just like more traditional games that had no saving points, like Mario or Sonic. You just had to get good at finishing everything, and if you died enough times, you had to start from the beginning. This poses a challenge.

Challenges are not for everyone, not everyone enjoys them and they are free to prefer a simpler game. It also depends on the challenge, there are some challenging games where I don't like to put the effort it would require to finish them...and who knows, Dark Souls may become like one of these eventually. But for the moment it is really addictive...

The game itself has little plot, and I'm fond of plots. Only very good games can get away with having no extra reward from advancing than the advancement itself...I'm not sure yet if Dark Souls achieves that..there is a plot, but it is very nebulous....the world feels half empty, a feeling I don't like, but it is for plot - related reasons, and it is true that the map is huge and it seems you can visit plenty of different areas...if you see something big and looming on the horizon , you will probably visit it...

The game itself consists of exploring the different areas, abandoned castles, silent ruins, graveyards, etc. while fighting monsters (mostly undeads). You have the traditional RPG classes (cleric, wizard, warrior, archer) with variations (so you actually have different classes than what I mentioned, but they are recombinations of those traditional stats).  Depending on your class gameplay varies, but in most types it is based on shielding/avoiding attacks and striking back afterwards. 

I decided to start with the Deprived class. At first glance that seems insane, but I read a review that explains quite well why this is not so weird....the Deprived basically start with nothing (very simple weapon and shield, no armour), but their stats are the same in every aspect. This means that 1-Any drop is usually better than your current equipment, so you appreciate them, 2-You can adapt better to your gameplay because you can increase your favourite stats first, and 3-The game is as hard as it gets at the beginning, so you will not reach a point that is harder and will just adapt to the difficulty, or not, early on. 

For example, I discovered I depend a lot on my shield but I also like to roll around, so the heavy knight may not be for me actually. I like to be fast, but I want to have enough endurance to do lots of things. I don't like slow weapons, but I want to do some damage which very light weapons do not provide.  I didn't experience any ranged attacks yet, but I've heard they are a little game-breaking (as it usually happens), but well, I may give it a try at some moment too. 

Ah, the game has 3 major annoying things, that is also true:

1-You cannot pause with one button. You can only exit the game and load again, but the time it takes to do this you may end up dead...We should have moved past this crap by now, all games should allow you to pause at any moment, including during cinematics, without having to skip anything or suffer for it. People that play videogames has changed a lot in these years, and lots of them are the same that started playing 20 years ago, and now they have families and things to do, sometimes you really need to stop the game at this moment and not having this option is just stupid. 

2-In theory you play always online. They say you do not enjoy the full experience if you don't, but I do not want to interact with other players so I disconnect my wifi when I play. This should be an option always as well, I'm not interested in PvP or interacting with unknown people.

3-The game sometimes "cheats" with fake difficulty. The game is hard enough as it is, but sometimes there's some surprise event that will kill you straight if you're not prepared for it, or wound you badly. This is nasty, because one thing is to suck at some point and get killed and another is to get into a trap you had no way to know it was there until it killed you. 

Anyway, at the moment I'm stuck at the gargoyle boss, and rather letting it kill me again and again I leveled up a little, to see if things are better...I'm also getting the hang of the two-handed use, because with such big monsters it is useless to cover....I still need to learn to time better my actions or I won't survive for long in this game...

I don't know how many hours it will require, to finish, or if I will give up, but for the moment it's being quite fun....

Creating Your Own Narrative In Rebellion

Warning: Geeky post ahead...

As I keep saying, I love to play games...however, we don't have much free time every day, so we tend to use it to do things together like watching a movie or series. Sometimes we play together, but it needs to be some special game, with a plot, interesting to watch too.

Anyway, that means I have a big waiting list for games....not necessarily new games, since I also love replaying. And just now I have been(and I haven't finished ) re-playing Star Wars: Rebellion.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I'm...well, cannot really say a Star Wars fan maybe, but well, a fan of the universe described in Star Wars, or fan of the original trilogy and of several of its games. Some people like the force and the lightsabres,  some people may like the story...but what attracted me since I was little were the spaceships.

I loved the spaceships. I loved the small fighter types, the transports, the capital ships..and I especially loved the Imperial ships.

I mean, look at an Imperial Star Destroyer..it's a city-sized monster with lasers. Look at a Super Star Destroyer dwarfing all the other ships....look at the Tie Interceptor, sleek and menacing, agile and fast...look at the spotless decks, the white polished ships, at the superior technology....of course I like the Imperials.

Also, the Imperial March kicks ass...

Anyway, that's something that I always remember being attracted to, the ships and the space combat, although it is in the games that I really started to love it...Games like X-Wing, Tie Fighter and the corresponding successors.

So imagine my emotions when, as a kid/teenager, I heard they were making a game,  a strategy game, where you could expand your side, conquer planets, make fleets, etc. I remember hearing about it and salivating, basically. Most other games made by LucasArts were pretty awesome, so a Star wars strategy game where you controlled all that seemed a dream come true.

I remember the game took some time, was delayed, etc...and when it came out it was not a success.

This was because the game has big flaws.

The first one is the interface. Playing the game is more like managing windows and trying to copy files from one folder to another. Everything opens windows and plenty of times you need to rearrange then and move them around to do what you want. With a rather low resolution, this becomes a problem fast..

The available actions are not evident, and it is actually a bit annoying how you manage building things and assigning them to planets. Mission assignment is also not very clean, and movement without confirmation means that a mistake can send something the wrong way without you realizing it or being able to do anything about it.

Then you have the graphics. They are not good even  for the time, with plenty of low resolution images and less than stellar original drawings.

There is also the space combat area, which uses a different interface. It still is pretty clunky, not comfortable, and hard to operate efficiently. The graphics in this section are also not good, with 3D models without details and without realistic shapes and forms. To put an example, the SSDs should look impressive as hell, but they look kind of small and short. Also, the combat lacks detail, showing only the occasional laser. The internal engine maybe only does a combat simulation once every so much seconds, but only firing once in so much seconds looks bad. In the end you have the option to let the computer to take charge of the battle, and plenty of times this is better.

The game itself also has a lot of little annoying bugs, like needing to click several times to make someone start a mission and similar issues.

There is no plot, you just start after the first death start and continue your way, and the planet assignment and forces makes no sense, starting with a few planets and spaceships even if you're the Empire. The game mechanics have some flaws that you can abuse and make the game easier, and I think it's not especially hard once you figure a few things out.

However, I loved the game. Even with all these flaws, I enjoyed it a lot. I loved designing new advancements, building capital ships, fighting in space, performing missions, recruiting and using diplomacy...one of the things I liked most is that you can rename all the ships, so I could recreate fleets from the X-Wing games...

The game has sectors with around 10 planets each, and you have a few central sectors and lots of outer sectors. Central sectors are populated and can be neutral or support the rebels or the Empire, while outer sectors tend to have just a few populated planets, and you can colonize the rest. You can control a planet that doesn't support you by assaulting it and leaving troops in there, but it is better to maximize support by making a character do a diplomacy mission on it. You have characters from the movies and expanded universe, and you can make them command troops and ships or perform missions, with each character having its strengths and weaknesses. You have ships, ground troops and buildings. Resources are quite simple, you can have mines and refineries, and this gives you maintenance units. Everything uses maintenance units to be build and maintained. Factories can be built in planets, and the more you have the faster things are built, but planets have a limit on buildings they can have.

Building and moving around takes days, and you can change the speed of time passing. Usually the game is played by triggering movements, missions and constructions, and then speeding things up until something interesting happens.

The game is hard to win and hard to loose: you need to capture the 2 leaders of the rival side (the leaders cannot be killed) and destroy the rebel base (you only need to do it once but the base can move around) or capture the planet Coruscant (you need to maintained control of it but you always know its location). This means usually you will need to conquer everything or be very lucky to win the game.

In these games without plot, you create the plot. You create an internal narrative, and you get attached to squads and characters without there being a real plot, just based on random events. And there's plenty of those, that make the game extremely interesting, at least for me. I'm going to explain some of them....

For starters, one of the most common stories that motivates you to play this game is as follows: you have control of some planet with big support, and then the other side comes with a fleet and bombs the place. You have some fleet situated somewhere else, and you move it there. You arrive late, and meanwhile the enemy is now in another close planet, bombing it. You start a nice chase around the sector, but every time you encounter them they flee. Then you finally research the interdiction technology and create a ship that blocks hyperspace jumping, and when you finally catch again with them you disintegrate them and feel quite rewarded...

Another good one is when you send a diplomat to some neutral planet. Diplomats are usually the nicest characters, and some of them get really good at it, so you develop certain care for them, also because not so many characters can do this. However, this time the planet changes sides before they reach it, and when they arrive they get captured or even wounded.

Of course what follows is a epic rescue mission across the galaxy, searching for the fleet that had them and hoping you didn't blow them up in that last combat...and when the mission is successful you feel pretty awesome^^

To finish the post, one last story...

If you control the Empire, you can make death stars. They are very expensive, hard to maintain and take forever to build, but once you have one you can destroy planets. The downside is that this lowers Empire's support in all planets in the galaxy (usually your actions just increase or lower support in on planet or one sector, so this is a big deal, you can end up losing all planets).

The first time I played the game, I was having difficulties in capturing the enemy leaders and in convincing sectors to like the Empire. I had maintenance problems and ships were falling apart. Tired of this and just to see what happened, I managed to get a death star and I proceeded to visit planets that supported the rebels and blow them to pieces.

Fast enough I had whole sectors rebelling against me. Of course, I was a bastard leaving a path of destruction on my way...I even started to destroy planets that had slightly lost support, but I was leaving no land to hide.

And then something magical happened, that I don't know if it's a bug or was programmed like this....the sectors that I still controlled, not that many by that time, started being indifferent to me blowing up another planet. Not only that, support for the Empire started to increase galaxy - wide after each new destroyed planet. Planets were cheering around for every new explosion.

It was awesome,  I had manage to obtain support by pure fear somehow, or by tiredness. I think it was a bug maybe, but it was extremely funny.

With the support of these sectors too afraid to complain, I laid waste to half the galaxy, and eventually managed to capture the rebels (because they ran out of planets :D )

It was one of the best narratives I've ever seen in this type of game :D

The Last Discworld Novels

So I finished the Shepherd's Crown, and a lot has become clear.

The novel itself....could be better. Much better. Actually, it is similar to the last novels he wrote, and it is painfully sub-par compared with most of other Discworld.

I think his last novels that I read were Making Money (probably the less affected), I Shall Wear Midnight, Unseen Academicals, Snuff, Dodger, Raising Steam and The Shepherd's Crown. And all of them have several of these problems, although the worst offenders were the latest.

It would be a disservice to Terry Pratchett to say that his last novels were really good. They were not. The characters became Mary Sues, perfect, clearly without any problems to survive the story, with everybody agreeing with them or fighting them in a very peculiar way that made them even more correct and successful. And characters were not speaking any more, they were giving monologues,  they were offering speeches. Worst of all, in the last book all of a sudden magic could do everything and all witches had powers never before mentioned. There were even continuity errors with previous books. And it ended with a battle, a battle without soul, without casualties (well, one, but I would not count it), without doubts about who would win.

It saddens me to say so, but Terry's novels died before he did. And well, what would one expect? He had Alzheimer's disease, which made writing hard, and a very limited timetable (his life expectancy after the diagnostic was extremely short). He wanted to write some stories still, but the end result was that he "rushed" his last novels, I guess in fear of not finishing them. This is the hard truth, what my First Sight is telling me.

In the last pages of the book they explained that in 2007 he was diagnosed, after finishing Nation. It is the year when Making Money was published, and you can see that all the books written after this moment decrease in quality. Apart of what I've said, they cram social issues in there in a way that doesn't work, because it is not subtle or woven with the rest of the plot. I'm not saying you cannot explicitly defend social issues in a story, just that you need to know how to fit them inside, and the last books did not manage to do that very well.

The thing is, remembering Terry Pratchett by these books is also a disservice, a huge one. If you want to know Terry Pratchett and why he was one of the greatest writers that have existed, you need to read all his other books.

You can start with Nation, one of the last he wrote, a book that grips your emotions and manages to express sorrows, fears, determination, brutality, love and plenty of other things in its characters and in you. A book that questions who's the uncivilized, the savage, the one without important culture. A book about science and discovery, about survival, about growing up.

You can continue with his early works, Johny Maxwell, the Bromeliad Trilogy, Strata, etc. They may be minor, or smaller in scope, but they teach you about humanity, about youth, about beliefs and traditions.

You can see the genius of Good Omens, genius shared with Neil Gaiman, a book about the apocalypse that laughs at religion while defending belief, spiritual and in humanity, and in our inner goodness.

And you can tackle Discworld. Discworld is huge. The first books are small jokes, good but without a point. But the rest is simply awesome. You can analyze traditions in Pyramids. You can consider revolutions in Nightwatch. You can understand life and death in the Reaper Man. You can see the problem with blind belief in Small Gods. You can enjoy the primordial energy of Rock in Soul Music. You can understand stories and the evils of Christmas in Hogfather. You can see what a good teacher is while pondering about the nature of time in Thief of Time. You can talk about integration in Men at Arms. You can see racial problems and stereotypes in Thud! or Jingo. You can experience that, and a thousand times more, if you immerse yourself in his books. You can experience poetry that leaves marks in your soul, and right afterwards  enjoy a vulgar joke that makes you laugh without control while in the subway. You can ponder deep philosophy while being entertained. You can see that wars are not meant to be fought, and that true heroes do not fight but prevent the fight from happening. You can learn that good people, if they think you should die, won't waste time gloating and will kill you straight. You can see that being human is a state of mind and a matter of choice.YOU CAN HAVE FUN WITH DEATH. You can experience a different world that is exactly like our own.

Terry Pratchett has all this to offer, and I'm not going to insult his memory by saying his last rushed books done while terribly ill are good. I will say that the books before that moment are beyond good. They are amazing. They are incredible. They are mind-blowing. They are hilarious. They are dead-serious. They are totally worth your time, and you should read them. All of them. Even the last ones. And then reread them.

That's how we do proper service to his memory.

Videogames, Sexism and Idiots

For a while now I wanted to write a little about GamerGate and Feminist Frequency, but I was not inspired and time passed.

However, I have seen some post recently that still talk about it, and I though I should finally write about it even if a lot of time has passed and it is no longer in the news.

So, for those who do not know, in a  summarized version: a while ago Zoë Quinn, a girl that has developed videogames, left her boyfriend. The guy was bitter and made a false claim saying that she had slept with some reporter in exchange for favourable reviews. That's it. That's the whole original story.

Of course, the situation quickly worsened when, all of a sudden, lots of self-proclaimed "Gamers" (usually guys, but I guess maybe some women joined this as well) started to say this was shameful, that she had slept with a guy for a good review showed she was a bad person/slut/etc., that the reporter was immoral, that these practices were immoral, that she should be punished, etc. Things got to the point of death threats to her, and brutal harassment. They stalled calling this "GamerGate", imitating the "Watergate" scandal name format. (People keep calling scandals "somethinggate", as if "Watergate" was referring to some water scandal or "gate" meant scandal, when it is just a hotel name and it is stupid to use "somethingate", but oh well....)

The thing here is that there has been lots of other cases of confirmed corruption in videogame reviews, but nobody made such a fuss about integrity and other topics when it was big publishers and big magazines. So the whole complains were less about integrity and more about the one blamed being a woman,, who did a video game not very mainstream.

Then lots of these "Gamers" started to complain also about how feminist women, progressives and other such groups were trying to change videogames for the worse,  and started to threaten other women related to games development. They also threatened a feminist activist, Anita Sarkeesian, that had started an online video series where she talked about sexism in videogames. The "Gamers" accused Queen, other women and Sarkeesian of trying to ruin videogames and such other things.

Feminist Frequency, the website that Sarkeesian has, explains with examples, videos and interesting facts why games are sexist sometimes, and proposes changes in games stories and game play,  sometimes, to try and change that, while recognising that a game can still be fun to play if it has these issues. Some of the points raised may be questionable or debatable,, and she may be wrong in some aspects, but plenty of times it manages to make valid points and the videos tend to make you think about certain sexism that is given for granted in games. 

People reacted as if she was personally raping each one of their relatives.

The whole thing is ridiculous and shows that a worrisome amount of gamers do not understand games, women, or higher thought processes (I'm amazed they don't suffocate the moment they try to play and breathe at the same time, since clearly their brains cannot handle such complexities). Some people said that the complain was against political correctness, ethics in reporters and other higher goals, but the reality is that most complains were hysterical fits against games not meant for or done by white heterosexual males. 

In Zoë games and Saarkesian videos somehow "Gamers" got threatened by the idea that games could be something else than ultramasculine action games. This also matches the idea of a lot of publishers that, unless the main character is male and white, white males won't relate to them and won't buy the game (even when white males are not, by far, all the people that buy and play such games).

It is funny, but most games that are very masculine, I find them kind of....gay. Nothing wrong with that, but I find it funny that a lot of these "Gamers" would find it offensive if they heard that, for example, Gears of War seems really gay. As an heterosexual male, I don't see the point of controlling a muscled warrior around. It is usually also boring and uninteresting, unless the character has some depth on it, or some funny trait. But by preference I'd rather control other type of characters. For sure I  prefer a female character because I like their appearance, but it is much more than that.

I know how to be a white heterosexual male because I am one, and I do not need games where I control white heterosexual males to feel empathy towards them. Games allow you to play at being someone else, so I'd rather embrace this opportunity by being something else and relating to that.

I'd rather be a teenage girl of unclear sexuality, like in Life is Strange. I'd rather be a murderous female human-alien hybrid with complex motivations, like Kerrigan in Starcraft. I like to play as a female special ops. soldier like in Dino Crisis. I prefer to be represented as a renegade female Sheppard than a goodie-two-shoes male one in Mass Effect (I played both ways and the other one is more interesting). I'd take Claire over Chris Redfield anytime in Resident Evil. I would even argue that Master Chief and Cortana (don't be fooled, plenty of times you play as both in one body) are much more interesting than just Master Chief.

Sure, maybe some of these games are still very sexist in some aspects, but by just putting yourself in the position  of a female, they already do something slightly different than a lot of other games.

Hell, opening the scope to race and species, I'd prefer to be anything apart from the typical, boring, white heterosexual male. I'd rather be a Dark Elf, a Zerg,  an Asari, a Quarian, a Geth Platform, an Orc, part of the Chaos, a Gene Stealer, a Monster, a Zombie, a Dungeon Master....

THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT OF GAMES!

Going on and talking about game play.  I am happy with destruction and slaughter, and some days that's what I want, but I love a good implementation of time control and conversation-based puzzles and stories, or platformers where the simplest game mechanic gets new spins. I love scary games where you cannot kill the thing that follows you,  and games where the puzzle solutions are not evident but still (usually) logical.

And continuing with the story, I love games where the traditional tropes are not used. Games where the damsel does not need rescuing, or games where your actions are not always good and nice, games where you may be the villain, games that question the "you must" approach. Games that punish you for playing. Games that mess with your mind and your feelings.

Games are full of potential, and capable of amazing diversity. And to create such diversity,  we need diverse minds and people changing the shape of games, developing games and analysing games. 

Complaining that women should not complain when they are not represented in them or treated as objects,  complaining that the traditional "rescue the damsel" works fine and doesn't need to change, complaining that some games now are trying to explore game plays that you find boring because you're not killing things while playing, complaining that games should appeal to your sexual tastes, complaining that games can be ruined by increasing diversity and possibilities....it is not just missing the point. 

It is missing it so hard that you shot yourself in the head instead (which could explain your clearly diminished cognitive abilities).

Power and Choice

Nowadays at work I have managed to get into a position a little higher than before. This is normal once you acquire experience. Once you have experience, there's plenty that does not surprise you, and you have more solutions to things, so people ask you more and more and depend more on you than before.

This gives you a certain power. They say power corrupts, and well, there's some truth...it is not that it corrupts so much as that it is fun to use power. For example, knowing a second language is a great power. It allows you to expand your communications and meet new people. So it is fun to have this power. Once you have it, you want to use it.

In the IT world, depending on the complexity of the company, one of the great ways of having power is when you can influence what is being done at several levels. In the end, most IT is based on a guy somewhere doing code, and this guy usually has the ultimate power of screwing the whole thing or making it work fine. Companies should remember to treat this guy VERY well, but they don't always do.

However, apart from this guy, there's usually a big list of other people deciding on what the guy will need to do and how the code will be used. Currently I'm one of these people, and hell, it feels nice....

It feels nice to get the extra attention, to be consulted and considered. Very often in big companies your voice gets lost in the middle of the mess that they are, so it is nice to reach a position where you can be heard, even if just a little.

It is amazing to finally be able to influence monolithic things, and see them change slightly. It feels nice. And I understand that it is easy to get addicted and want more. Not only to influence, but to direct and manage.

However, of course, not all is just fun. As the movie said, power comes with responsibility. You need to use it wisely. And part of having power in a company means that you have power over other people, and choices to make. Power to have to ask someone to come on Saturday. Power to tell off someone if they did a bad job, Power to keep everyone working one extra hour because it is needed. And this part sucks, of course...

We all create a narrative in our lives. We imagine ourselves in our story, and we tell ourselves stories about it. We play parts, we follow patterns that we detect in real life.

Recently, I had a person on my team fired. Not really fired fired, but he did not pass the selection period. He did not do anything wrong. He was not someone who got upset, or complained too much, or someone lazy. He was just...not smart enough.

It would have been easier if he had been a bad person. We had one of those too, in another team, and firing him was not a problem. But this guy in my team was just not good for this job, nothing else. So in any stories, this is the part for the bastard,the bad guy, the boss that fires the innocent worker.

Life is never that simple, but still, it's a shame I had to fire him.

With power should come also a higher awareness of consequences, Anything that I needed this guy to do I would have ended up doing myself, which means I would have had double the work. I was not willing to go through that, so I made my choice.

After all, obtaining power is giving you the possibility for more choices, and some of them are the hard ones....

Life Is Strange

A few weeks ago, while checking a list of recommended games on Steam I came across Life Is Strange.

I watched the trailer, and it seemed to me like a very interesting premise. I researched a little more, and I though the idea was really awesome, so I decided to buy it, and I would recommend anyone to do so too.

In the game, you are a young 18-years old girl studying in some academy in a small town. Because of a confrontation, you discover you can go back in time for a couple of minutes, giving you the ability to change actions and conversation, and to obtain clues and knowledge to use after rewinding time.

This is the basic premise, and then you need to explore this world with the small town and the academy, investigating certain dark occurrences and a disappearance.

From the start, the game gave me a very strong "Twin Peaks" atmosphere. The setting is quite similar, a small town with power plays, secrets and some supernatural occurrences. You can even find a "Fire walk with me" graffiti at some moment, so this similarity is done on purpose. The atmosphere becomes quite mysterious and interesting thanks to that.

At the same time, the calm indie soundtrack makes you feel relaxed and sad, slowing down the pace and making you sometimes to just sit and observe the scenery. You want to read and observer every little detail of each of the places you can visit, to make sure you don't miss a thing. The process is incredibly immersive, and you get easily lost in this world.

The time-travel skill is really useful, and there are several nice puzzles where you need to play with the ability to extract information, or fix an action that caused unexpected effects (like breaking something by accident). Lots of actions show a small butterfly afterwards, indicating to you that the action will have consequences. Most of the time those key actions are based on conversations, about what you decide to tell or do with someone. And there's way too many to easily control them, so plenty of times you set for a certain course and hope for the best.

Of course here a big point is that you know you're in a game, so sometimes some action may seem weird if you would be in real life. Since you're in the narrative of the game, where you are extra aware of being in a story that follows certain tropes, you need to guess if sometimes the game is playing a trope straight with you or is trying to subvert it (or if it is trying to make you think they subverted it when they played it straight actually), so it is quite a fun mental exercise of deciding which action will have the best outcome in such a story, the usual "I know you know I know you know", and trying to guess in which step we need to stop. Hopefully you can always rewind and see the direct outcomes, but the ripples these create are hard to predict.

The game comes in episodes, and last episode (episode 5) has not come out yet and is expected in October. I finished the first 2 episodes and I'm in the middle of the third, delaying it a little bit so I don't need to wait for the 5th one.I don't want to get caught in a cliffhanger or very tense situation, waiting to see the final outcome of everything....

The story turns very serious quite fast and punches you in the gut repeatedly, reminding you that it was your choices the ones that created this situation. It is clearly dramatic, and we still don't know how it will end, but even with time-travelling, the situation you put yourself in is quite complicated and hard to solve....

I will say that it is true that every single thing you do may affect greatly the outcome of the game, and that some plot points that I have seen would not have been possible using other choices. The game itself does not have hard puzzles, but the overall puzzle of making the best choice selection is not an easy one, and it makes you obsess about past actions while considering things very carefully.

I believe it is a very innovative game (even if other games have done the time-travel thing already), also in the aspect of characters used and the story it tells. Not many games really commit to the idea that your choice matters, triggering completely different outcomes based on that and in this way creating not a single story, but the possibility for thousands.

This game was recommended by Feminist Frequency because of its use of female characters, and I was appalled to know some publishers wanted to convert the main character into a boy. The story works perfectly as it is because it is a girl, and I cannot understand how some people, in this day an age, still believe such a game cannot work. However, I want to dedicate another post about these topics, soon...

For the moment, I'll just finish saying that this is an amazing game that will suck you into its world, and you need to give it a try, it is totally worth it.

At Independence's Doors

Again, elections are coming, and again it seems like a nice moment to make a post.

Last elections were to decide government in cities around Spain. In Barcelona and Madrid these went very, very well, and the next mayors of both cities were people from the left, with good ideas and that have been implementing good and reasonable policies since then.

I was not able to vote last time. Living abroad means that you're never fully sure of what you need to do and when do you need to do it. When we arrived to Rio, I registered myself with the Spanish consulate (which is conveniently located 10 minutes away from our house on foot), but I was unsure if I needed to do some paperwork. Since for Barcelona's elections I did not receive anything, I believed I had failed to register to vote.

For this elections I wanted to make sure, and I was told I could inscribe myself during august. However, then I heard inscriptions closed at the end of July. Feeling again left out by the idiotic Spanish system for voters abroad (made on purpose so we don't vote), one day checking the mail I found out I had received the paper to ask for the voter for these elections. So I did my paperwork correctly this time, and now I'm waiting for another letter that I will use to vote. I may not receive it, since the system is in place to increase mistakes and late deliveries, but at least I have a chance.

During Barcelona's elections, I was sure about what to vote. Barcelona en Comu(a coalition that includes Podemos, IcV and other leftist parties), I believed, offered the best chance to finally move things around and produce some important changes to improve politics and make Barcelona a better city. I could not vote, but I'm really proud of the fact that they won enough votes to rule the city...through pacts and negotiations, but that is not something bad, that should be the norm everywhere. If I could vote for them in Barcelona again, I would do so without doubts.

For the current elections I had some doubts for a very long time. Plenty of times I keep getting doubts about independence, since I do believe Spain is currently a political cesspit but I also believe that maybe we should fight to convert it to something else. And I know I would never vote CIU, since they are corrupt to the bone. They may believe in independence, but more likely than not they want to make their own country just to make some new laws for their rich friends. ERC showed too much willingness to pact with CIU for a leftist party, and that worried me. PP and Ciutadans will always be out of the question, those are parties for people who would enjoy to go back to the 1950s with Franco. PSC is lost completely because depends too much from central PSOE, and they are dissolving between the new parties around them, without clear ideas. This basically leaved me with the options of ERC, CUP, IcV and Podemos.

However, several things have happened that have made it really easy for me to decide. First thing is that CIU, which is made of CDC and Unio, separated. Unio is the part more to the right in CIU, so the fact that they are separated now is really good, because it reduces strength in the Catalan right parties. These parties have been ruling for way too long, they have too many "friends" in charge of big companies and there's plenty of cases of corruption and of laws that reduce rights. CIU is the main responsible for budget cuts in education and healthcare. Sure, Spain is not giving funds to Catalunya, but before you cut these two things there's plenty of other points that could be reduced, like government salaries, help to private healthcare and education (The public ones are the ones being cut brutally while help to private companies is mantained),  and plenty of other things. Unio alone will never get my vote either, they are slightly less dictatorial and disgusting than PP and Ciutadans, but just slightly.

Then, CDC convinced ERC and other organizations to join forces in a single party for independence. This allowed CDC to cover their corruption cases and all their problems under the mantle of independence. Even if I support independence, I will never vote for them because they are forgiving CDC some things that are just unforgivable, and need to be remembered.  However, I will not make the mistake that Podemos and IcV did: They joined forces as well (which is fine), but then started attacking the new independence party focusing on the fact that CDC is there. This is way too simplistic, and follows central Spain's idea that independence is something CDC has invented and people have been tricked into believing. This theory ignores centuries of repression and hard work from the Spanish government to eliminate Catalunya's institutions and culture while sucking it dry of money without investing back. This is not something you can just ignore, and simplifying the message is idiotic. Also, while the principles behind Podemos are quite good and I would still vote them in Spanish general elections, their leaders have done some stupid mistakes lately. Sometimes people fail to understand that one person being stupid does not imply that the whole party needs to be dismissed as stupid, and as I said I would vote them also in Barcelona. But in Catalunya's case they don't understand the region, which has positioned me in favour of independence (unilaterally declared).

Therefore, I'm left with CUP. CUP is a party from the left, in favour of more democracy and social policies. They fight corruption. They believe in referendums and consulting people about important issues. They also want Catalunya's independence. And they have understood quite well, by not joining ERC and CDC, that even if independence is the main point of their program, it is not good to achieve it t any cost. They will support it, but they will not be constrained by joining forces with CDC. And if they feel they need to vote against CDC and ERC because these two parties are doing wrong things, I believe they will do so.

And the point is, after the latest issues, if CDC and ERC's coalition, together with CUP, get enough votes to add up to a majority of parliament members in Catalunya, they will declare independence. Just like that.

And then hell will break loose.

And it is about time for that. 

Ciudadanos and Cognitive Problems In Spain

Again, I found motivation to write something from the sorry state that Spain is showing.

This Sunday there will be elections in most towns and cities of Spain, and also in plenty of regions. Catalunya is not one of them and will have elections later on, on September, but Barcelona will vote this week.

The polls around Spain show weird results. New parties have appeared and have gained an incredible amount of support in a very short time. On one side we have Podemos, CUP, and other parties and organizations from the left that are trying to remove the traditional parties from power to improve life conditions and increase social policies. Most of these parties are getting support from people that used to vote PSOE, but since PSOE has done really stupid things that have situated its central power in the center-right rather than the left, several of those voters have abandoned PSOE as an option. This is understandable: If you support the left, currently in plenty of regions PSOE does not represent the ideas from the left, and is involved in several important corruption cases. There may be regions where PSOE is still defending the right ideas, but central POSE and lots of other regions are corrupted by having had the power for too long, and own too much to the banks and big companies to really work for the people.

What does not stop surprising me is still the massive support that PP has. Half its leaders are being judged or already condemned for corruption. Where they go corruption appears around them constantly. They have openly said they had a secret accountability book, even if legal (or not really illegal but unclear). They have failed to comply with all their program. They have increased taxes for the big majority of the population. They have modified laws that have reduced salaries, and new jobs are mostly temporary contracts. And even after all that and more, still people supports them in embarrassing numbers.

And what is even worse, the people that have stopped supporting them apparently have decided to vote Ciudadanos.

Ciudadanos is a new Spanish party, but before it became nation-wide it was a Catalan party (Ciutadans) for a long time. In Catalunya, they defined themselves as anti-catalanist, basically defending the idea that there are more important things to worry right now than catalanism, independence and defending Catalan language. This is a perfectly valid posture, but they followed it by centering all their program in anti-catalan proposals: instead of really focusing in other topics (like unemployment, or corruption), they centered all their campaign in being against Catalan language and Catalan independence…Which basically is still wasting time and not trying to do anything for all these things that they said were more important than catalanism (like unemployment, or corruption).

They also tried to say they were not a party from the right, and several times skipped talking about it or claiming they were center-left, or center. However, they sounded suspiciously similar than PP, and several of their members were ex-PP, or ex-PSOE with ideas from the right.  I always considered them from the right, but they were ambiguous about it.

After the initial success of Podemos, Ciudadanos decided to go national, and presented candidates all around Spain. They presented themselves as another new party, an alternative to the corrupt old parties. And then they declared themselves as a right-center party, and basically took as candidates politicians mostly from PP but also some from PSOE or IU, that had not won before any important position and took this as their chance to enter a parliament and get paid for life.

They have won quite a lot of support. And I keep realizing there's no hope for Spain as long as 25%-33% are raging fascist or mentally disabled. Even if they're not truly aware, that's what they are. PP has lost lots of votes, but most of those votes have gone to Ciudadanos, which is made by the same people with the same ideas.

I will make a prediction: during these elections, PP and Ciudadanos will pact in lots of regions and cities to rule together. Because there's an embarrasing number of mentally handicapped that keep voting PP. But the rest of the mentally handicapped that had voted PP will go ahead and vote for PP2, Ciudadanos. You can see it in Valencia or Madrid. According to the polls, the loses of PP are gains for Ciudadanos, almost to the decimal in estimation of vote.

The only solution is to have enough parties from the left to win over these two parties (and also to win over PSOE in some regions where PSOE is not doing very different things than PP).

I will just finish saying that Catalunya's situation is more complex, because there's the independence factor as well...but, to not avoid the chance to offend some more people, I will say this: This Spanish mental handicap that seems so common in the population also affects Catalunya, to all the people that believe independence is more important that the state of the country when it becomes independent. To explain it to these same people with cognitive problems: CIU governing an independent Catalunya is not very different than PP governing Spain, and one of the the only differences is the language and culture that will be promoted.

If you don't see a problem with that, well....as I said, cognitive problems.

True Horror

We have been playing Alien Isolation for a bit now, in small doses.

It's one of the greatest games I've played in a while.

It's also mind-numbingly terrifying, to the point of nervous breakdowns.

Alien is one of the greatest horror movies ever created. The other movies are not true horror movies any more. There are good action movies there (well, in some of the cases), but they are no longer pure horror. The first movie manages to be scary every time you see it.

The secret for a movie, and for anything, to be scary, is to not reveal too much. Our imagination fills the voids quite nicely, and we can always imagine really bad things. I think Stephen King mentions that if you fully show a 10 meter mutant monster, people will always breathe relieved and think "well, it could have been worse. It could have been a 100 meter mutant monster".

To do good horror movies, you need to know this and to know about atmosphere. You need to hide the scary things, because our minds will do the rest, but you also need a situation where we, the spectators, feel always tension in the air, danger close by. The place needs to be claustrophobic, as if there's no escape from whatever lurks in the dark.

Alien did all this perfectly, while also being gory for the time, and I believe it's an example of movies as art, an example to follow.

Games, as a new media, are still evolving. However, they tried to make horror as well, now for some time.

Horror in games is achieved slightly different than from movies.

First of all, the game needs to be immersive. If you feel detached from the protagonists, you will not be scared much. You need to stop noticing glitches, bad graphics, and acting issues. If the game does not manage to do that, it will hardly be scary.

For example, in the first Silent Hill graphics were laughable, and the fog was a method to avoid having to show you a full map that the game was unable to draw. However, the game managed to make you forget about all this details by being really scary and immersive.

A second point, very important, is that you need to feel threatened. Resident Evil games (the original ones, not the ones after 4 were they became action films like so many other Hollywood productions) were supposed to be scary. However, some of them failed in that, especially the second one. Most of the time you had abundance of ammunition and powerful weapons that could take care of most enemies in 2 or 3 shots.

Silent Hill 2 is  a great game, and its horror is mind horror, very psychological. The game leaves you exhausted and broken (but in a good way!). However, I was not scared as much after noticing most enemies were not very dangerous, some of them didn't even hurt you sometimes and your weapons and health items were also more than enough most of the time. The game is great, and part of the psychological effect was based on that too, but your personal safety of the character does not seem to be very threatened.

Third and fourth points are the same as in movies: You need to show little, and you need to have great atmosphere. For example, Resident Evil shows you the gory zombies, and they may jump-scare you, but looking at them is not threatening. Hunters are another topic related to the second point, but their looks are not scary, because you just see them hanging around. Silent Hill is much better at this: You can see the monsters more clearly, but it's hard to figure out what they are. Faces are covered, movements are erratic, the whole thing seems blurry. By the end of the game, some enemies are merely shadows, hardly visible but deadly.

As per the atmosphere, Resident Evil goes for the use of creepy music and sound effects, while Silent hill uses some jump-scares, noises in the background and really creepy scenery.

So, what about Alien Isolation?

Well, for a start, the game is beautiful, and its on 1st person, so you are quite immersed on it form the start.

Second, you have no effective weapons against the alien. Against some enemies you could be successful, but not like in a proper shooter, mowing down waves of critters. You need to sneak around, you need to keep your items, and you need to avoid encounters whenever possible. And you need to keep well away from the alien. It will kill you, period.

Third point, in this game, was masterfully done: In most situations, if you see the alien up and close is way too late for you. Just now we were playing, and we were running from the alien in plenty of places. But in all these places, we never saw it. We could hear it, crawling on the tubes above us. Walking on some floor. Bleeping on the motion detector, running around and advancing us using shortcuts. At one point we saw its slime pouring slowly from one conduct on the ceiling, while the motion sensor indicated us something was right around the corner, and we could hear it reacting to the bleeping noises, coming closer to us. And we never saw it, not even once. The first time we had a good look on it, in a cinematic, it was not a scary. It went down a tunnel, it killed some stupid humans that were making noise, and it left. and you could see it moving, like some kind of big cat, and from far away it was not especially scary. However, these last minutes where the bleeping and the steps kept following us were absolutely terrifying.

We hid in a closet for a moment, to gain some seconds of air, and when we checked the motion sensor to see if it was close, we could hear the bastard reacting to it and moving. When we left the closet I was sure it would jump on us from one side, but it was even worse...we never saw it. We had to wait for a car to arrive, and the alien was running around, and never saw it. But we were expecting it all this time....it was fucking terrifying.

Finally, the atmosphere. In this game, everything imitates the original ship from the movie, the Nostromo. The technology around you is from the eighties, and everything bleeps and makes modem noises. The ship is dark, and is full of shadowy corridors, ventilation shafts and ceiling openings. You can hear steps, you can hear doors opening, under you, behind you, on top of you...you can hear the ventilators of the air system, and the consoles, and the elevators.

You feel inside the ship. And you have no escape. And something is hunting you.

It's awesome.

Summer in Rio and Buzios

We're reaching the end of Summer in the south hemisphere, and I wanted to comment a few things.

First of all, Rio gets really really hot.

I commented before that in "Winter" we could already reach 30 degrees in the sun. However, that was Winter still.

In Summer, in the sun, it's closer to about 40-45.

However, since humans adapt to everything, we're already rather fine with the situation. When temperature goes back to 32 or around in the street, we can already tell that it's "fresh", or "not so bad today". And at night we consider them "cold" if it is less than 26.

Anyway, it does feels hot. And here the pool comes into action.

Let me tell you: It is fucking awesome.

Elay and my wife enjoy it almost every hot day, and I only go there during the weekends, but when the heat is almost unbearable, when the simplest task makes you sweat, being able to just submerge yourself and cool your body is great. Especially because I go to the pool from my apartment in my swimsuit, without needing to change, and in 2 minutes I can be back taking a shower. We pay more condominio than other people because of the pool, but it's totally worth it.

As a side effect, Elay has learned how to hold his breath underwater and how to swim with floaters (even if he doesn't speak any language that we understand). And we are developing a brownish skin tone as well, which maybe its not the healthiest thing, but it seems better than the nuclear "pc-screen-at-night glow" white that we usually have.

While all this was happening, we reached February, and the city went crazy. We were told, and it feels like this, that the new year only starts after Carnival, and it is a quite accurate description.

Offices closed earlier, and all buildings put extra protection against their glass to avoid accidents. Streets were cut, and crime rised worrisomely.

We missed the worst of it because we went to Buzios for 3 nights.

Buzios is a resort town in the lake  area east of Rio. It is not far in distance, but with the current infrastructure of roads it takes still 3 hours at least, if you do not find traffic jams. We found traffic jams and it took us quite longer to get there.

The place is a tourist area, full of little houses and hotels but with lots of greenery and space between them, and with plenty of Atlantic beaches. It reminded us of plenty of other resort areas we had visited. It had touches of Eivissa (not many people,a few small streets, you can always see a house or hotel around...), Adler (small streets with dirt, tacky souvenir shops, shady tours all around, physics-defying 5D cinemas...) or other typical resort/beach towns.

Our hotel was in a hill, 10 minutes away from a very big and calm beach. We were not very happy with it. It could have been great, but it was advertised as a 4 star hotel with several services, and it was not 4 stars and it didn't have those services. Going with lower expectations, we would have had no problems with it, but you cannot promise what you don't have and expect people to be happy.

It did have great views, an awesome pool and quite a calm atmosphere, that is true. We ended up going to the hotel pool most of the days (it had great views too), and walking for a bit in the centre at night, to have dinner.

We also went to the beach once, to mark it as "done", but we realised we don't enjoy beach that much. Especially a beach with no services like showers or toilets...but also the beach atmosphere was not that good. Tacky is the word to use again, a little bit like in Adler. The sand was awesome, though, very fine grains that felt quite good to step on (although we ended up with sand everywhere, another thing we don't enjoy). The water felt cold after being used to our building pool of 26-30 degrees, thanks to the sun, but we discovered Elay doesn't mind at all (to the point of craziness, because he was clearly cold but still running towards deeper water and getting mad when we had to grab him back and dry him).

Anyway, it was actually quite relaxing, in a "doing nothing" kind of way, having a beer from time to time, swimming and just relaxing far away from the city. The natural aspects of the area are awesome, with lots of exuberant vegetation, clean beaches and little hills and mountains for you to explore.

I don't know if we will return to this area (because with Elay there are not that many things to do for his age there, later on he could actually enjoy it), but we had 3 good nights there, and we managed to avoid the chaos that ensued in Rio during the carnival.

All in all, we're happy with the experience

Watching The Hobbit

Lots of things have happened while here in Rio and back in Barcelona during Christmas, but I will comment them only if I feel like it...

What I want to comment today is about the Hobbit, and also about Lord of the Rings movies, because we recently watched this edition of The Hobbit. I have to say we enjoyed it very much, even if some things didn't make much sense...and I'm not talking about missing things because this edit removed plenty of them, I'm talking about added things.

I have always been a fan of Lord of The Rings. And I'm not saying "always" lightly.

When I could not read on my own, my parents had talked about these books, and had read fragments to me. I remember they read Shelob's chapter, and I could not help but want to know more about what was happening, seeing how creepy but interesting it was, and seeing how there was a giant spider (I was also quite fond of big spiders). Considering I started to read when I was 4, this should have happened some time sooner than that.

I don't remember when I first read the hobbit, but I know it was in preparation for the Lord of The Rings. And I was warned: The hobbit is much lighter in comparison, and much easier to read. However I wanted to give these books a try. I believe I tried to read a more serious Tolkien book with some short stories also in preparation, but they were depressing or uninteresting and I did not finish them.  I do know when I read Lord of the Rings, and I was eight. It was not an easy book, and the beginning was incredibly slow, but I finished all 3 books and I loved them. Tolkien's books have its flaws, but they are also pretty awesome, and I was completely addicted to its world and story. I actually convinced at least 2 people of my similar age to try and read it, after "selling" to them the story.

After a few years, I know I decided to read them again. And again. And one more time. I didn't really repeated The Hobbit, but I read Lord of the Rings 4 times, and every time I read the initial verses (were the rings of power are mentioned) I had goosebumps. I believe it started to be a yearly tradition. However, when I was 16, I was starting to practice and use English more and more. I started reading some small books in English. And then I decided, as a challenge, to try to read Lord of the Rings in the original language.

This was almost like reading it for the first time again. It was hard, it was slow, but it was an incredibly learning experience. Tolkien does not write in an easy way, and I remember reading a whole page and realising I had understood two things from there. Anyway, I managed to finish it. And then, in later years, I re-read it again, also in English. I believe I read it a total of 4 times too, and maybe I'm missing one....

During the general exam to determine university entrance after high school, the English section had an experimental listening part (it was the first year they did something like this) where you were supposed to listen to a conversation and answer some questions. Funny enough, the topic of the conversation was the Lord of the Rings. I answered 70% of the listening part, correctly, before hearing a single English voice in the room.

And then (well, actually after my second time of reading it in English), the first movie came out. The first one was not so bad. There were some changes, that you can understand because lack of time, and some extra things that, while annoying, didn't really detract much (some people got really angry about Arwen saving Frodo, but that's small details.I find more troubling the fact that they turned Gimli into an idiot and other such things). However, the second and third movies (although enjoyable) resulted in plenty of things that made no sense and denied huge important ideas that were in the books.

After watching extended editions and the interviews with writers and creators, I'm surprised at the stupidity of the people behind it. They did a good job, and then they screwed up huge basic principles. For example, the ring is not the ultimate evil: The ring is the ultimate temptation. Therefore, you can wear it to escape enemies and even kill them while you're invisible, and as long as you don't claim it for yourself, nothing really bad happens to you, no whispering, no fire eye. The ring acts slow and over time, but it can be beaten. Not all humans will act stupidly and demand it (Faramir gets over it from the start, not after dragging the hobbits almost to Gondor). Frodo is weak from carrying the ring, but that does not mean he's a mumbling mess without wisdom that will believe Gollum before Sam, and he's spiritually powerful. 100 Humans cannot beat 10000 orcs, a big fucking forest of living trees does that for them, killing close to 8000 of the orcs, and there were actually close to a 1000 humans in the first place. Ents are slow deciding, that's why they decide correctly on the first place, and they don't rush to action after just seeing some fires around the forest, as if they were not aware of that. Merry injured a spectre because his fucking sword was an ancient magical dagger, otherwise he would have just died. The good guys do not always need to fight, and plenty of times their victory is spiritual, without violence involved, and they respect ambassadors and Mouths of Sauron enough to not kill them when they're just discussing things. And so many other things....

Anyway, I did enjoy the movies, but plenty of these points make my blood boil, because they show such lack of basic reading comprehension, such idiocy, that it's hard to believes. Extra love stories and action scenes can be almost forgiven because it's Hollywood, but some things add nothing, mess shit up and make the story a lot worse.  

So, when the hobbit movie was announced, especially after hearing they would make three of them, I was not especially thrilled, to say the truth. I saw it as a cash grab, and I didn't want to waste so many hours of my life and ticket money in that.

However, recently I saw a post mentioning this Tolkien edit. After reading what was removed, it seemed like it could be quite a nice movie, so we gave it a try.

There is still bullshit. There are moments that make no sense. There are modifications made by people who were checking their mobiles or driving while reading the original book, apparently, But the end result is a very entertaining film, long but not stretched, that manages to explain quite well what happened in the original book while keeping you interested all the way.

Don't watch the three bloated movies, download this version and watch something much more close to what the hobbit was.

(And to finish this geeky post let's put some music )