Updates.

And now, a few updates for recent postings:

"It's Alive!"

 

In an impressive long-distance maintenance accomplishment, NASA has managed to remotely rewrite Voyager 1's code and return it to near-normal functionality.  Which is all very well and good, but damn it, NASA, we had a movie plot riding on this!

"All Roads Lead to Amber."

And so, The Adventure of the Walotsky Portfolio comes to an end with the delivery of the Ron Walotsky Amber series cover portfolio that I had purchased on eBay.  The portfolio package itself was a bit the worse for wear, but the contents were in reasonably good shape, and I've added a favourite to the decor in our second bedroom.  I'm pleased with my purchase, but I'd still like to get a full set of the prints - perhaps the Walotsky Adventure will have a sequel...

"Unite the League."

I also received the Alex Ross Justice League poster that I unexpectedly won with a low bid on the Heritage Auctions web site.  It's an impressive piece of work, but the sad truth is that, at 24 x 65 inches, it would probably cost me four or five times the purchase price to have the damn thing framed - and I'm certainly not going to use thumbtacks.

"Nice fourth-wall break back there!"

I'd like to thank all the people involved in the decision to feature the remains of Toronto's CN Tower in the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer - there's a certain logic to that, given that both the characters are Canadian.  And, as I've commented before, it's hard to find a really good post-apocalyptic Canadian image.  (But not impossible.)

 

"It's Alive (2)."

Having just added a new purchase to my Electronic Arts launcher, I was surprised to note that Battlefield 2142 was available as a download option - an unexpected option given that the game servers have been deactivated since July of 2014.

A little digging around on the interwebs took me to a link on a modder site, which offered a patch and application combo that would bypass the BF 2042 server access requirement.  I'm always cautious about this sort of thing, but since I rarely use my Windows configuration* for anything except gaming, I decided that I would take a chance on the download.

I cautiously followed the instructions for the mod, and to my extreme happiness (and mild surprise) it worked seamlessly, and I was able to log in and access single player mode with no problems at all. Not only that, but the mod download included a wide selection of single-player versus bot maps that were not part of the original game download, including a fun multiple walker versus walker level.  

No offense, EA, but why would you still have a game available for download that can't be played without hacking it through a third party?  Would it not make more sense to mod the game yourselves?

- Sid

* I run Windows 10 using the MacOS Bootcamp software pretty much solely for gaming access, but in quiet moments I visit the Dell Alienware gaming system page and dream of what might be. 

Cheap Thrills: Titanfall 2

Baby, I don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight
(I love cheap thrills).

Sia, Cheap Thrills

I do my PC gaming on a 27 inch iMac running Windows 10 via the Apple Bootcamp software - I have complete Windows functionality, it boots directly into Windows rather than running in a window in the Mac OS, but it's an older computer that relies on a ten-year-old AMD Radeon R9 M290 video card that wasn't that powerful in the first place.  

That being said, it's actually kept up well with my simple gaming interests, and I spend a certain amount of time wistfully browsing Dell's Alienware™ gaming hardware page and dreaming of what could be with the latest version of Battlefield 2042 running at full resolution.

Fortunately, thanks to the generosity of the gaming companies like Steam and Epic, there's an ongoing opportunity to get games that are reduced in price, or in some cases even free - cheap thrills, if you will.  Epic is the strongest supporter of this, with a rotating pair of free downloads every week.

The games tend to be a few years old, but they're certainly not scrubs. My free Epic acquisitions to date include Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Guardians of the Galaxy, the entire remastered Bioshock series, Star Wars Squadrons, and a handful of less well known games. It's an admirable treatment of older games with excellent playability that have been eclipsed by more advanced programs or sequels, and they fit nicely into the capabilities of my gaming setup, such as it is.

My latest Cheap Thrills acquisition is Titanfall 2, originally released by game developers Respawn Entertainment in 2016.  Steam had the game on sale for a staggeringly affordable $3.99 CAD, which seemed like a manageable expense. 

The original Titanfall, released in 2014, was a dedicated multiplayer game without a single-player option, although it did have an offline tutorial level that let players learn the game controls before being exposed to online competition. I was aware of the original's release, and watched a trailer video or two, but by and large I'm only really interested in single-player gaming*- preferably first-person. As a result, it never made my play list, in spite of my ongoing interest in operating giant robots.

The sequel attempts to be the best of both worlds, adding a single player option as an alternative to multiplayer encounters. Titanfall 2 features a narrative campaign in which you play as Jack Cooper, a rifleman in the Frontier Militia. Your ambition is to pilot a Titan, a seven meter tall warbot with an AI personality interface - Titans can be equipped with a wide range of add-on weaponry and defenses, and have the ability to operate autonomously as well as under the guidance of their pilot. 

When Captain Tai Lastimosa falls in combat, you find yourself in the pilot's seat of his Vanguard-class Titan, BT7274 - aka BT - and part of the struggle to defend the Frontier from the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation  The IMC abandoned the original settlers of the Frontier in the early days of the colonies, but now they've decided to regain control by force. 

A pre-game training sandbox called the Gauntlet allows players to hone their skills before they start the game, which relies heavily on being able to jump, double jump and run along walls to complete challenges.  The system also uses this information to choose an appropriate difficulty setting for the game, although it only took me two tries to upgrade from Easy to Normal.  

Playing the game, I realize that I've been spoiled by the expansive nature of open-world games such as the Fallout franchise and The Outer Worlds, rather than the more linear goal-oriented parameters that Titanfall 2 relies on - it's very much what I think of as a level-based dungeon game. Some of the levels, such as the manufacturing plant, are quite large and complex, but ultimately, there's one entrance, and one exit.  

Combat with the IMC forces offers the player a standard selection of hand weapons - light machine guns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, and so on - and a similar range of loadouts and options for Titan to Titan battles. If I have one complaint about the game, I'd like to have seen more time spent in piloting my Titan in order to lock in weapon skills and defensive options.

The wallrunner/double jump challenges give the game a bit of a platformer feel at times, but they're well integrated into the flow of the game, and the developers have helpfully included a holographic guide that demonstrates the path that players need to take to reach their goal. Even with that guide, I struggled a bit with the exact angle of attack to maximize my runs, but after a few fatal falls I seemed to have it locked in.  

Which is good, as it turned out, because wall running is definitely a crucial part of moving forward with the game. This can cause its own problems - as an example, it took me more than a few tries to work out the exact jump kit/wall run timing for the trio of generators in the Beacon level, to the point where I had almost given up on the game.

I did eventually hit the right combination of running, jumping, and double jumping, after which I was relieved to see that the game did a save before subjecting me to any more barriers.  

The addition of time travel capabilities adds some clever puzzles to the game. Your character obtains a time controller that lets them hop from the present to the past and back again as necessary - it's a clever idea that requires the player to jump back to a functional research facility in order to access undamaged passages and bridges, and to jump back to the present to avoid security forces.  At one point, it's necessary to coordinate time travel jumps to be able to travel along support walls that don't exist in the present, requiring a carefully timed series of literal leaps of faith.

Bottom line?  It's an enjoyable challenging game. It's nicely locked into my difficulty zone so that it's demanding but not impossible (although I was starting to wonder during the Beacon level), the environments are well mapped out, detailed and visually interesting, it uses a standard interface pattern for all of the basic functions, making for a more manageable learning curve, and the various Titan weapon and defense choices provide an interesting strategic challenge in terms of selecting appropriate options for each opponent.  As above, my primary interest is first person shooters, but the various platform/runner challenges are cleverly constructed and unexpectedly interesting.

Online estimates have the run time for the narrative storyline to be about six hours, which works out to sixty-six and a half cents an hour based on the price I paid - I didn't time my play, but it still sounds like a good return on investment to me. 

- Sid

* I've had some minor experience with online arena gaming, but it doesn't really speak to me - I'm much happier banging away at computer opponents without having to deal with judgemental critiques of my skill level.  As an example, I very much enjoyed the original Battlefield 2142, now sadly defunct, but I was completely unprepared for the chaos of competing with dedicated human competitors online when I attempted the co-op PVP mode.

"Major Tom to Ground Control..."

Do you think that the success of Barbie ($1.446B USD to date) is helping Tom Hanks get any traction with the Major Matt Mason movie?

- Sid

You know, the other kind of gaming bugs.

If I have one complaint about the otherwise stellar Fallout series, it's the lack of monsters. I've spent a lot of time in the Wasteland, and it's a LOT more dangerous than it's portrayed in the show.   We only see two monsters - one yao guai mutant bear, and one gulper, and gulpers aren't even from the original game, they're from the Far Habor expansion pack 

Seriously, where are the Deathclaws, the most iconic danger of the Wasteland?  Or the mirelurks? Why didn't we see a single radscorpion?  Bloatflies, bloodbugs, stingwings - even a mutated mole rat or two would have provided some welcome representation from the regular cast of hazards.  

Season Two will apparently take us to the Mojave Desert, and damn it, I'd like to see some fire ants.  But, I'm willing to be reasonable, they can just leave the cazadors out of the show, or else Lucy and the Ghoul going to need some serious plot armor to survive more than an episode or two.

- Sid

"I don't want to set the world on fire..."

According to the Steam™ game management system, I've spent 1,405.4* hours in the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout 4, not to mention extensive untracked time in Fallout 4, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas before switching to Steam™**.  (Sadly, my Fallout 76 online experience has not led me to a return visit.)  

As such, it's safe to say that I'm more than a little familiar with the alternative future of the franchise, which fully prepared me to bring a critical eye to the new Fallout series which made its streaming debut on Amazon Prime Video this week.  To my intense relief, the adaptation is excellent, using all the building blocks from the source material to combine drama, humour, action and violence into a clever, gripping storyline.

For readers unfamiliar with Fallout, it takes place in an alternative version of the United States which diverged from our timeline somewhere in the 1950s. Atomic energy has become a commonplace power source, to the point that even cars are powered by small atomic reactor units.

In 2066, China invades Alaska in order to seize its oil reserves, and eventually the conflict escalates into a merciless exchange of thermonuclear weaponry that destroys the world in 2077, leaving behind a legacy of death, chaos, and conflict. The series is set in 2296, just over 200 years after the disaster.

The opening scene in the first episode is a disturbingly realistic introduction to the end of the world, as mushroom cloud after mushroom cloud rise over the future Los Angeles, after which we are taken to the post-war paradise of Vault 33, one of the underground Vaults created by the Vault-Tec Company to preserve a chosen few survivors whose descendants will eventually emerge to rebuild civilization.  

The writers have chosen to focus on characters from three areas of the Fallout world: Ella Purnell plays Lucy Maclean, who has left her secure home in Vault 33 in search of her kidnapped father; veteran character actor Walton Goggins is the Ghoul, a victim of severe radiation poisoning which has left him a damaged and distorted parody of humanity but granted him near-immortality; and Aaron Moten takes the part of Maximus, an aspirant in the Brotherhood of Steel, a paramilitary organization dedicated to restoring civilization by any means necessary.

As in the game, Fallout uses the naive character of Lucy the Vault Dweller, and her quest for her missing father, to introduce us to the post-war Wasteland and its various perils, monsters, inhabitants and communities. The show does a superb job of evoking the look and feel of the game, and is loaded with background Easter egg references: Vault Boy bobbleheads, laser rifles, two-headed mutated Brahmin cattle, raiders, cannibals, and feral ghouls - not to mention the beloved Dogmeat the dog, a stalwart companion for any quest. 

As with the games, the series has stories within stories, plots within plots, and mysteries within mysteries.  The quest-driven nature of the computer versions translates well to the narrative format, combining a larger overall storyline with smaller sidebar interludes.  The episodes alternate between the post-war plot and a pre-war storyline about Vault-Tec, in which Goggins portrays Hollywood cowboy Cooper Howard before his transformation into a mutated monster.

The writers make full use of the same oddball humour that characterizes the game dialogue - and the same level of violence, perhaps more than expected by some viewers. To be fair, the source material is a first-person shooter computer game, but even so, it's a bit more graphic than the standard television fare in terms of gore.

Based on the final episode, Season Two will take its cast of characters to New Vegas, a logical step from the Los Angeles setting of the first season which will allow the writers to integrate material from Fallout: New Vegas, which is generally considered to be the best of the Fallout game franchise. 

And, finally, the season ends on an appropriate note with Walton Goggins uttering the franchise's iconic motto: 

"War.  War never changes."

Let's hope that's true, at least in terms of future episodes.

- Sid 

* To give some perspective to this, if playing Fallout 4 was my job and I worked seven hour days (with an hour for lunch), five days a week, I've spent about seven months living in the Wasteland.

** I actually started all three back in the days of installing from physical media.  (Oh, sorry - for the younger readers in the audience, games used to be sold on discs - originally floppies, later CDs, finally DVDs - all of which involved switching out disc after disc as prompted by the installer, and then requiring that the first disk to be in a drive for the game to run.)

Little Conversations: Tainted Love.

These little conversations
Well for me they'll never do
Now what am I supposed to do with
Broken sentences of you?

Concrete Blonde, Little Conversations 

Retrograde childhood trauma is the WORST.

- Sid

Space Crawler II: "UNLIMITED POWER!"

Home at last after our fun five-day Victoria vacation - we've apologized to the cat for being away, he's reluctantly accepted our apology, we've unpacked, made dinner, done some laundry - time to get serious with the Major Matt Mason Space Crawler that I stumbled across at Cherry Bomb Toys.

The rotating leg/wheel mechanism may not be unique, but it should be - as it turns out, Mattel filed a patent for the whole thing in 1970 under US Patent #3529479A.  (Funny that I've never found any reference to this elsewhere.) To be fair, the patent also defines the complicated gearing mechanism that makes the whole thing work, and refers to "wheel substitutes" rather than attempting to define that part of the toy.

The battery contacts are a bit corroded, which, sadly, is the most common cause of death for toys that have been stored with the batteries in place. Over time the cells eventually self-deplete, after which pressure from gas buildup splits the casing and the subsequent leakage destroys the working parts.

However, early days - the upper and lower contacts aren't particularly clean, but it appears to be primarily just surface buildup, let's hope for the best.

The next day, I pick up a set of D batteries* on the way home, and after dinner return to the fight.  I gently open the power compartment (pro tip: always be careful when dealing with any 58 year old toy that uses compressed plastic for hinges) and, after taking a moment to decipher the insertion directions, pop in the batteries.  

The mechanical power switch is the simplest thing in the world, just a plastic plate that rotates in and out of the gap between the battery and the contact.  I close the compartment, move the switch - and nothing. I test the drive/winch control just in case, still nothing.  I'm a bit disappointed, but again, early days.

A search through my toolbox produces a torn sheet of emery paper, and I use a piece of it to carefully scrape away at the upper battery contacts until I see bare metal instead of corrosion. The lower contacts are less accessible, so I decide to do a work-in-progress test before building some kind of tool to get at them.  

Batteries in again, and I move the switch - success!  The motor grinds into action - "grinds" being the appropriate term, it's a bit loud - and the paired legs begin to rotate.  I test the winch control, and it works like a charm, both forward and backward. 

However, when I carefully place the crawler on the floor, only one wheel - leg? - rotates, the other one does nothing.  There's a plastic friction mechanism that acts as a sort of primitive differential release, so that if either wheel is blocked or jammed, the motor can continue to operate.  The mechanism for the right wheel is too loose to engage, and as such there isn't enough friction for the drive unit to move it. 

I test it with some tape, and once the right wheel is secured to the friction tab, both wheels rotate to drive the crawler noisily across the hardwood floor - to Jaq the Cat's initial dismay but eventual indifference.

I'm a bit foolishly pleased by the whole thing - it just adds to the serendipitous nature of this purchase that the crawler actually still works after so many years. It's a bit jerky, but you know, as the saying goes, it's not that the bear dances well, it's that it dances at all. 

- Sid 

* Yes, surprise, D batteries - am I alone in thinking that everything is AA these days?