Soon I Will Be Invincible…
I went to see The Dark Knight the other day, which is a good film that has the trade-off of exchanging fast, tight dialogue and speed with a complex, epic feel. Before I went in to the film I bought two books. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester and Soon I will be invincible by Austin Grossman.
I just finished reading the latter and have just started the former. Invincible is a really great book about superheroes and supervillains. The main premise is that the most powerful hero in the world has disappeared and the most intelligent villain is on the loose. A new team of superheroes assemble to meet the threat, but have issues of their own to deal with.
The writing is short and snappy, jumping around a lot to give details of the backstory at the same time as moving the plot forwards. The chapters alternate too – first you have a chapter from the villain, Doctor Impossible, then a chapter from the rookie hero, the cybernetic Fatale.
Most interesting of all is the fact that, although I didn’t know it until after I’d already got halfway through the book, is that the author also worked as a game designer and programmer for Looking Glass Studios. He worked on some of my very favourite games – Deus Ex, System Shock and Thief: Deadly Shadows to name a few.
All in all, Soon I will be invincible is an excellent and highly recommended book. It’s not too long, quick and punch and fluctuates between wildly funny and very exciting. It may not be to everyone’s taste by the sound of it, but it’s very accessible and far from the involved comic plottings of DC and Marvel. Just a good book.
In other news, I went to EA the other day to preview Red Alert 3 and Crysis: Warhead. Here’s a quote from my published preview of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3:
The Empire of the Rising Sun however has unit types built more around the idea of Japanes
e culture and Beatles songs. That means you can expect Hello Kitty tanks and lots of ninjas screaming “I am the Walrus!” as they charge into battle and hop into bed with Yoko…or at least you could expect that if it weren’t for the fact that we are joking.
What you can really expect from the Empire though is lots of units inspired by the Japanese mecha culture – ninja mecha especially. And if you’re wondering what that little squealing sound is then it was the sound of Richard and Jamie exploding with barely contained excitement.
The Japanese units then are probably best described as a jack of all trades and many of units can transform between two or more modes, but are unable to excel in either or require short periods of time to flick between the two. Tanks that can move on land and water, infantry with the ability to launch into the air or helicopters that can become mounted guns – these are the staples of the Imperial Army.
Out, Joe.
The Secrets of Deus Ex…
I’m playing Deus Ex again, for about the billionth time. I’ve done the game with so many different approaches over the year it is kind of unreal – you know you’re in trouble when you can literally recall half of the door codes by heart.
It is one of my favourite games and since I was sure that I knew everything there was to know about it, I figured I’d play it once more and properly explore and harvest every single piece of info, just in case there was something I’d missed before. I didn’t expect to find much. Once again, the game wowed me.
There’s so much redundancy built into Deus Ex it is scary. There was stuff that I didn’t find until I played the game eight or so times – like the hidden phone call with Icarus in the French Embassy, or the different conversation paths based on whether or not you kill the Private who comes to collect the NSF commander in the first mission. Once I’d found that stuff, I though I’d found it all. Turns out I was wrong.
It really is remarkable that I’m still finding stuff. Like the safe behind Manderley’s bookcase (accessible only with cheats). Or the extra lines of dialog that you can unearth if you make sure you keep clicking on everyone you meet.
There’s a load of stuff I feel I should have found before too. Extra paths and gameplay routes. I usually go for the sneaky-explorer path, using a pimped up stealth pistol to clean house as I go, so I thought I knew all the route. Then I find things like the extra routes onto the PRC Wallcloud. I normally would jump from the crane above the dock, or swim under the ship and climb the ladder to deck level. I’d avoid lowering the ramp to stop reinforcements getting on-board and making me waste ammo.
Turns out though that you can swim under the boat and climb the crane cable that dips down close to the water instead. Climb that and you can get up much, much higher and sit atop the tallest crane on the ship. You get 20 exploration points for that, plus you can snipe everyone from safety and jump atop the cargo containers on the way down to find the extra supplies. Using these and the Speed Enhancement you can get on top of the command deck and enter the ship at the top level and not the bottom.
Purely amazing – though the amount of redundant content built into the game must have made it a real bitch to make.
Also, here’s a quote from my review of Zombie Fluxx.
Players decide the rules of the game for themselves by placing down Rule cards, change goals by playing Goals and they complicate matters with Actions. By the end of the first turn you’ll have gone from ‘Draw one, Play one’ to ‘Draw five, Play two, with a hand limit of zero and a goal which sees you trying to escape the Zombies by collecting a Car and a Chainsaw’.
By the midpoint of a game it can be harder than trying to get smoke into a coke bottle with a cricket bat and it’s at that point in our lunchtime tournaments that Hiren usually gets flustered and plays the ‘Reset Rule’ card, taking everything back to basics and prolonging the game even more.
Out, Joe
A Wee Problem…
Yesterday I was on the train from Sunningdale to Martin’s Heron, which is no big surprise. I catch that train every day and fully expected myself to be there.
I was standing next to the First Class carriage and, having just finished re-reading the graphic adaptation of Philip Auster’s City of Glass I looked through and saw a copy of the Metro on the table. I let a man in a business suit come out of the First Class carriage first, then went in to get the abandoned newspaper.
“Mmmhmhmmahmzomf” said a woman sat on the other side of the carriage, behind me. I took my headphones out.
“Sorry?”
“I said I wouldn’t sit there if I were you,” she said. I was confused. Was this a threat? I slipped my keys between my fingers in my pocket, ready to brawl with this 40-something housewife and her bad attitude.
“…Why?” I said.
“The man who just left was sat there and he pissed himself,” She said nonchalantly. My nose was blocked so I just looked down at the seat next to the paper and saw that the chair and the floor were both sodden with what must have been urine. The man in the business suit? Must have been.
“I think I’ll leave the paper then. He may have done a sneaky number two or something,” I said. I smiled and walked out, wiping my feet as I went.
Joe, out.
Dr Horrible…
It’s all over now, but as the trailer below proves, it was good while it lasted. In fact, I suggest you buy the DVD as soon as it’s available. Do so blindly and solely on my recommendation, and with plenty of spurious, commas and awful (nay, horrible), punctuation!
Teaser from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.
Joe, Out.
