Upgrade Part 1: Camels and Straws.

Silicon doesn’t wear out; microchips were effectively immortal. The Wig took notice of the fact. Like every other child of his age, however, he knew that silicon became obsolete, which was worse than wearing out; this fact was a grim and accepted constant for the Wig, like death or taxes, and in fact he was usually more worried about his gear falling behind the state of the art than he was about death (he was twenty-two) or taxes (he didn’t file, although he paid a Singapore money laundry a yearly percentage that was roughly equivalent to the income tax he would have been required to pay if he’d declared his gross).

William Gibson, Count Zero

As usual, Bill Gibson nailed it.  

Here we all are, living in the future, swimming in a sea of technology that, to quote Daft Punk, gets harder, better, faster, stronger.  But, what it doesn't get is cheaper, which means that most of us are riding along someplace not quite on the top of the breaking wave, living just a bit behind the leading edge - 4G instead of 5G, HD but not 4K, 15 instead of 17 Pro.

For me, that's meant living on borrowed time in terms of computing power, or, more accurately, gaming power.  I'm a long time Apple user, which, like any long term habit, is hard to beat - no 12 Step Program for iMac addicts.  Unfortunately, I also love computer games, and although a few of my favourites such as The Long Dark will run on the MacOS, the great majority of games require Windows.

Fortunately, or perhaps surprisingly, I've been able to get by for quite a while using Apple's Bootcamp software to run Windows from a partition on my 27 inch iMac, in spite of its modest 2 GB AMD Radeon graphics card.*  However, my iMac is ten years old, and although it's had a good run, its shortcomings as a gaming platform have become more and more evident as time goes on: distant images appearing one piece at a time as I approach them, weapons visibly rendering as they're equipped, or just unacceptably slow performance.

The inevitable end of the iMac as a gaming platform came in the form of a Christmas gift.  My wish list this year included gift cards for the Steam gaming platform, and my lovely wife Karli obliged with $50 worth.  One of my long term Steam wish list items has been Starfield from Bethesda, the developers of  Fallout and Skyrim.  Starfield was released in 2023 to surprisingly average reviews, in spite of which it's maintained its original price point of $89.99 CAD.  As such, I've been reluctant to purchase Starfield: if your game isn't doing well, why not bring the price down a bit to attract more users?

However, in this case, the stars aligned, and I discovered that Starfield was on sale for $53 CAD, which seemed a sign from the gaming gods that the time to buy had come.  Fifty dollars worth of gift cards and three dollars worth of Visa later, I was the happy owner of Starfield.

By and large, I don’t check game specs before I buy. I'm very aware that no game is ever going to say “Playable on a ten year old iMac running Bootcamp with a weird nonstandard video card”, so I cross my fingers and hope for the best, a philosophy which has been surprisingly successful. 

That being said, I assumed that there would be some combination of settings that would allow me to play Starfield on my system.  After all, Fallout 4 runs fine on the iMac, why would there not be a similar configuration option from the same developer?  So, I patiently downloaded the 124GB setup package, ran the installer, and launched the game.

Or tried to.  In their infinite wisdom, the good people at Bethesda created a preplay scan for video cards that they thought would be suitable for the game, which, apparently, does not include my card.  As such, the game would not even start without one of those cards, let alone offer me options that would accommodate my idiosyncratic setup. 

This is more than a little irritating.

As far as I know, Steam offers the option returning a purchase within 24 hours, but damn it, that’s not the solution I want.  All other considerations aside, I’m a bit embarrassed by the failure to launch -  having explained to my spouse just how pleased I was to finally be able to play the game and thanking her for making it possible, I'm reluctant to tell her that it's not going to work.  
 
While all of this is taking place, life goes on in the real world. Karli decides to order some stick-on lights to put in her closet and makes a selection on Amazon.  As the owner of our Prime account, I’m in charge of Amazon orders, so she sends me the link and I add the item to my cart.

I sit for a minute in thought before going to checkout, and then do a search on Amazon for Alienware, which I think of as the premier brand for PC gaming computers.  To my mild surprise, there are slightly older reconditioned Aurora R12** systems available for about $1200.***  A prudent check with Steam confirms that the system in question comes with a video card that will run Starfield, and I have about $600 worth of Amazon gift cards stacked up in my account to put toward a purchase.
 
So I buy one. 

The sellers offer a modest $12 Expedited Shipping option through which I can have the box in about three days rather than just over a week, and you know, in for a penny, so I select that.  The order goes through, and now we wait.
 
I’m fully aware of the irony of spending $600 (or $1200, depending on how you look at it) to play a game that I wouldn’t buy until it was on sale for $53, but but it's really more of a camel's back situation, and this was the proverbial straw. As it is, I don't regret my decision, and I'm looking forward to trying out some game purchases that I've been reluctant to install in case of similar performance problems.  

Bootcamp iMac, thank you for your service. 

- Sid

* The joke is that I upgraded to a new Mac Mini when I retired, leaving my iMac to run solely as my primary Windows platform - which it ran faster than the MacOS. Draw what conclusions you will.

** The R12 had an oddly brief lifespan.  It was originally released in March of 2021, but was almost immediately replaced by the R13, apparently due to changes in US energy efficiency regulations.  

*** To provide some perspective, a current entry level Alienware gaming system new from Dell would start at about $2500 CAD.

Ex Tenebris Ad Astra.

The Long Dark is one of my favourite gaming experiences, and I'm eager to see how Blackfrost, the followup to the original, will build on the strong foundation that it has built.  But, in a way, I'm also  disappointed by the decision by the game's indie developer Hinterland to do a sequel.  

I realize the attraction of telling more stories in a world you've already created, lord knows I've seen enough sequels, series and spin-offs that were created for that very reason, but in this case I was hoping that Hinterland might decide to do something that was a complete departure from their previous work.

I've always been impressed by the combination of thoughtful creativity and hard work that went into The Long Dark - the attention to detail, the quality of the artwork, the fantastic range of lighting conditions, the incredibly accurate sound effects, the constantly evolving and changing weather, the geographic complexity of the various maps, all the bits and pieces that make it such a playable experience. 

I'd love to see the same people apply the same approach to developing something completely different, like an asteroid belt exploration game for example, something that would take advantage of their experience with survival programming but expanding into a whole new area - resource mining, cargo shuttles, trading posts, space stations, claim jumpers, iceteroids, meteor storms, alien artifacts, the whole catalogue of possibility for what life - and possibly death - in the Belt would be like. Let's face it, there must be some people at the studio who would enjoy a change from animating trees, ptarmigan and blizzards at this point.

What do you say, Hinterland - maybe it's time to shoot for the stars?

- Sid

P.S. In the incredibly unlikely event that Raphael van Lierop, the founder and CEO of Hinterland, should happen to read this and thinks that an asteroid belt game is a good idea, please get in touch, I would LOVE to talk about it.  I work just around the corner past Gastown, we could do lunch.  

On the other hand, maybe it's too much like No Man's Sky.*

* Which may just be the survival version of The Outer Worlds, which is perhaps the poor man's Starfield, which could be considered to be Fallout in space. It's such a slippery slope.

Blackfrost.

Hinterland, the Vancouver-based indie game developers behind the survival masterpiece The Long Dark, recently announced their next game: Blackfrost, a sequel to the original game which takes place a year after the original geomagnetic event that crippled electrical devices and brought a threatening new aurora to the skies.

 

The sequel is set in the northern industrial town of Harmont, and will offer a new set of survival challenges and opportunities.  There are some fascinating hints as to what might take place in the game -  life in an urban environment, the prospect of being able to ride a horse, and most of all the possibility of a functioning nuclear reactor.  The Contamination Zone map in the original Long Dark introduced a variety of dangers related to industrial waste, I can only imagine what a radioactive power source might bring to the table.  There are also some more practical upgrades, such as the scoped rifle in one of the sample screens - that would certainly provide some much needed distance in dealing with predators. (There are also some images featuring a hockey stick, which isn't something that was on my wish list but which will certainly blend in well with the general Canadian feel of the environment.)

The concept artwork and trailer animation show an obvious connection to the look and feel of the original game, but it also shows how much the creative team has learned over the last ten years as they've fine-tuned the game and added onto the gaming experience. 

Although I'm not sure whether it would be a part of survival versus narrative gameplay, the new game will add NPCs to the mix, which, if added to the Survival mode, would certainly give more depth to the story.  There will also be a new co-op feature, an option that would enormously enhance the gaming experience: imagine having allies when being attacked by a pack of timberwolves!  (Hopefully there won't be a PvP option, that would somehow seem to be inappropriate for the survival environment.)  On the other hand, they could add the option of playing as an escaped prisoner from Blackrock Prison - which could well be a feature, it sounds as if there will also be enhanced options in terms of customizing your survival character in terms of skills and traits.

Blackfrost is scheduled to be available in Early Access mode sometime in 2026.  As with the development process for The Long Dark, Hinterland will be involving its gaming community as early as possible - I've already added the Early Access version to my wish list on Steam.

And now we wait.  2026 feels like a long way away, but fortunately, anyone who plays The Long Dark understands patience.

- Sid

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.

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.)