I'm in the middle of several different books at the moment. I wound up reading the entirety of Boss Fight Books' Soft and Cuddly, which was damned entertaining, actually. I learned a lot about Sinclair computers of the 80s in the UK. For instance, they used cassette tapes as storage, and a fifteen-year-old could shake the foundations of the UK video game scene in that day, which a hacked together shock horror maso-core game inspired by Alice Cooper.
I have since moved on to Derek Yu's book about Spelunky in the same series. This one is much more about the development of the game, being by the game's creator rather than a third party. Spelunky is one of my favorite games, so the book is pretty interesting.
As a political dissident and leftist by American standards, I have had a good time listening to the Chapo Trap House podcast, and so I thought I would pick up their book. I can hear the podcasters' voices as I read through it, but I'm not sure the entirety of that raucus schtick plays as well in the medium of print. Sarcasm and bite come through much more clearly when spoken aloud, but the same statements just appear odd in print, minus the tone, inflection, and other context clues you get from a spoken statement. I think it's still worth a read, though.
With regards to the 41st millennium, I picked up a set of four anthologies of stories about Space Marines. I finished Treacheries of the Space Marines already, and have begun Heroes of the Space Marines. I have read comparatively few stories about Space Marines set in 40K as opposed to 30K. It's interesting to see how, for instance, the Night Lords or Iron Warriors have changed in 10,000 years, and the ways in which they have not. September has nothing new that I am interested in releasing from Black Library, but there are several things coming in October I want to get, so between now and then I want to get through as many of these ...Of the Space Marines anthologies as I can.
Showing posts with label Soft and Cuddly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Soft and Cuddly. Show all posts
Monday, September 10, 2018
Friday, August 31, 2018
More Twaddling
On the reading front, which has really come to the fore this year, I have come to the end of my 30K supply, and for a while I will be reading 40K. That will, however, be somewhat backgrounded because of the fact that I'll be reading paperback anthologies, rather than on my Kindle phone app.
What I'll be reading there will instead be a bunch of non-fiction. For my first couple, I have decided to look in on the Boss Fight Books collection I picked up a while ago. I started with the two I thought I might never read, Kingdom Hearts II, and one about a game I had never heard of before, called Soft and Cuddly.
The Kingdom Hearts II book was a personal analysis of a game I could not care less about if I tried. The parts where the author described her experience playing the game and how that fit into her personal life were nice, but the parts where she summarized the game plot and characters were pretty dull, I must admit. I skimmed through a lot of that.
Soft and Cuddly, and I'm only a chapter in, seems to be about placing the game of the same name in time and context. It seems to have been an accidental inflection point in the interactions between UK games and politics. I'm eager to learn more of this game I know next to nothing of and will never play.
When it comes to games, I've kept waffling back and forth between things lately. At first I thought I was kind of in the mood for some Mega Man X, but rather than hook up my SNES Classic to play that, I thought I would reinstall A.R.E.S. Exctinction Agenda and play a little more of game very much inspired by the old Mega Man games. There are some differences, of course. Ares doesn't seem to come together as nicely. Polygonal 2D games pretty much always look awful, and this is no real exception.
Next, I thought I could maybe actually get into La-Mulana in a real way, but that game continues to elude me. I admire it a lot, but it turns out I'd rather play Spelunky, after all. So I did just that.
Waking Mars I tried out because it begins with W. It seems OK, but I'm not sure I'll play any further past the 25% mark that my save has me at. It plays with jetpacking around subterranian Mars, and encouraging native plant life to grow, but something about it just wasn't quite hooking me.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is free for new players at the moment, and so the multiplayer mode is experiencing a bit of a revival, which is nice. The last time I tried to play, no one else was. And that's a shame, because this is the best 40K action game out there. I got in a few rounds last night, and I'll continue checking in for as long as the audience holds out this time. It may be the last time the game is really playable online.
I have also begun a subscription to FFXIV. I haven't made much progress in the last couple of weeks, but I am committed to seeing it through to the endgame. Going into Labor Day weekend 2018, this is what I am most focused on.
What I'll be reading there will instead be a bunch of non-fiction. For my first couple, I have decided to look in on the Boss Fight Books collection I picked up a while ago. I started with the two I thought I might never read, Kingdom Hearts II, and one about a game I had never heard of before, called Soft and Cuddly.
The Kingdom Hearts II book was a personal analysis of a game I could not care less about if I tried. The parts where the author described her experience playing the game and how that fit into her personal life were nice, but the parts where she summarized the game plot and characters were pretty dull, I must admit. I skimmed through a lot of that.
Soft and Cuddly, and I'm only a chapter in, seems to be about placing the game of the same name in time and context. It seems to have been an accidental inflection point in the interactions between UK games and politics. I'm eager to learn more of this game I know next to nothing of and will never play.
When it comes to games, I've kept waffling back and forth between things lately. At first I thought I was kind of in the mood for some Mega Man X, but rather than hook up my SNES Classic to play that, I thought I would reinstall A.R.E.S. Exctinction Agenda and play a little more of game very much inspired by the old Mega Man games. There are some differences, of course. Ares doesn't seem to come together as nicely. Polygonal 2D games pretty much always look awful, and this is no real exception.
Next, I thought I could maybe actually get into La-Mulana in a real way, but that game continues to elude me. I admire it a lot, but it turns out I'd rather play Spelunky, after all. So I did just that.
Waking Mars I tried out because it begins with W. It seems OK, but I'm not sure I'll play any further past the 25% mark that my save has me at. It plays with jetpacking around subterranian Mars, and encouraging native plant life to grow, but something about it just wasn't quite hooking me.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is free for new players at the moment, and so the multiplayer mode is experiencing a bit of a revival, which is nice. The last time I tried to play, no one else was. And that's a shame, because this is the best 40K action game out there. I got in a few rounds last night, and I'll continue checking in for as long as the audience holds out this time. It may be the last time the game is really playable online.
I have also begun a subscription to FFXIV. I haven't made much progress in the last couple of weeks, but I am committed to seeing it through to the endgame. Going into Labor Day weekend 2018, this is what I am most focused on.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)