Eye candy.

In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.

Warhammer 40K

My spare time for the last month has been almost exclusively dedicated to a large work project with a short deadline.  Happily, I finished writing and laying out the first portion of the project at about ten o'clock last night, which gave me Sunday off to relax.  (Well, I have to do laundry and clean and go to the gym and so on, but after a month of doing nothing but write content on how to take cargo containers off ships, trust me, that's relaxing.*)

As part of my R&R for today, I took some time to get back into a game that I purchased on the Canada Day weekend - Space Marine, a third-person shooter set in the Games Workshop Warhammer 40K universe.

For those of you unfamiliar with Warhammer 40K (ie, everyone but Donovan, and Colin a little bit), it's one of those almost stereotypically über-geek multi-player games that involves a fistful of 20 sided dice, rulers, and painstakingly assembled and painted miniatures. Originally launched in 1987 as a spin-off from Warhammer, a fantasy-based game in the same style, it has in some ways eclipsed its older sibling.

The interesting thing is that unlike most entertainment involving dice, tabletops, and arguments over whose turn it is, games like WH40K have developed a deeply complex and involved back story to support the gaming experience.  Checkers, for example, has no plot.  Chess, which is one of the oldest strategy-oriented games on the planet, doesn't bother to name the pieces.  And, as much as you may enjoy Monopoly, would you really expect to find Amazon.ca selling novels about the brutality and squalor experienced by the race car during its time in Jail?  (Without passing GO or collecting $200.)

WH40K has all of that, and that's much of the reason that Games Workshop dominates the tabletop marketplace.  The universe in the 41st millennium is portrayed as a place of constant conflict, as Space Marines and the Imperial Guard, loyal to the godlike Emperor, struggle against hordes of brutal green-skinned Orks, life-stealing robotic Necrons, the ancient Eldar and their perverse cousins the Dark Eldar, the expansionist alien Tau, and the forces of Chaos, including the Chaos Space Marines, former fellows in the armies of the Imperium who have been changed and distorted by the Warp. Each of these groups is supported by reams and reams of what is technically known as "fluff": documents, maps, descriptions, diagrams, novels, iconography and histories - everything that anyone could possibly want in order to enrich and deepen the gaming experience far beyond the movement of painted plastic on a table.

I've never gotten involved in the tabletop gaming experience (although I had a near miss with Dungeons and Dragons back in the 70s) but the WH40K phenomenon is just one of those known factors in the geek continuum.  I was quite pleased with the PC strategy simulation version of WH40K, ending up with all four of the expansion modules, and as such when Space Marine and all its expansion content went on sale for $14.99, I thought I'd give it a try.

Ironically, compared to games like Fallout 3 or Bioshock, Space Marine does not present a complicated gaming experience.  It's very much a linear dungeon-style game, and to date there's been nothing elaborate in terms of quests, challenges or puzzles - so far it's all pretty much just an excuse to kill orks in a variety of gory and graphic fashions.

However, full credit for the manner in which the feel of the Imperium has been translated to the game environment.  The Space Marines are very close to a monastic order, and their world is presented as a dark, gothic environment full of memento mori and religious symbolism.  Space Marine presents a gloomy, atmospheric environment full of towering bastions, flying buttresses, ornamental skulls and massive reliquaries containing weapons upgrades.  For me, this has more than made up for any shortcomings in terms of intellectual challenges in the levels.

So, back to the game - I've gotten out of the sewer complex beneath the Manufactorum that contains the mammoth War Titan, reunited with my brothers of the Ultramarines, and I am eager to return to the struggle with the Ork invaders.

After all, I fight for the Emperor - and I WILL KNOW NO FEAR!

- Sid

* On the other hand, I'm a bit sceptical about my decision to follow up a month of intensive writing by catching up on blog posts...

 

Spoiler follows! Or maybe not.

I saw The Amazing Spider-Man last night, and I have to say it was a surprisingly bittersweet experience.

You see, I know how Gwen Stacy dies.

I'm not special in that regard, a lot of people know.  Gwen Stacy died in 1973, although, in the fashion so common among comic book characters, death has not been a barrier to subsequent appearances in Peter Parker's life.  Regardless, that moment 39 years past when Peter cradled his dead girlfriend in his arms is considered to be a critical event in the history of comics, the end of the Silver Age and the beginning of a changed world not only for supporting characters, but for the heroes as well.

The question is, what do the producers of the Spider-Man reboot have in mind for Gwen?  Unlike any of the other comic movie franchises, The Amazing Spider-Man doesn't feature the hero's nemesis, deciding instead to go with another villain from Spider-Man's catalogue of foes.  The Lizard certainly occupies a strong position in Spider-Man's mythology, but I have to say that I don't consider him to be a first-line villain.

But I can guess at the strategy behind the decision to start the show with Curtis Connor's cold-blooded alter ego.  By connecting Connor's experiments with Oscorp and Norman Osborn, they're setting up the elements for Osborn's appearance behind the mask of the Green Goblin in a future movie.  I'm impressed that they'd gamble on the success of the reboot by refusing to lead with trump, so to speak, and I think it augurs well for the next film.  (Or pair of films, trilogies seem to be the standard for super-hero movies.)

Similarly, I can see why they went with Gwen Stacy for Peter's love interest.  Gwen was Peter's first love, and it was widely believed that Marvel was working their way up to marriage for the happy couple, at least until the events of Issue #121.  As such, she's a better canon choice than Mary Jane Watson for Spider-Man's return - in fact, in the comic version it was shared mourning over Gwen's death that began the process of Peter and Mary Jane becoming a couple.

But does that mean that Gwen Stacy is marked for death?  They've made some minor alterations in Peter's backstory for the reboot, but the major events in his life remain the same.  On the other hand, they've already made a substantial change in the Gwen and Peter continuity by having Peter tell her about his dual lifestyle - in the comic, she died without ever knowing Spider-Man's true identity.  On that basis, I'll be paying a lot more attention to subsequent movies in the series to find out whether or not Ms. Stacy's relationship with her friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man has started her down a path with only one destination.

- Sid

Asimov to Zelazny?

It's funny that I don't talk more about books here considering how much reading I do.  Not a day goes by when I don't read a e-book or a paperback or a hardcover, and my daily round trip commute gives me at least an hour of reading, regardless of what else is on my schedule.  My brother John once asked me if I read while eating - I laughed and replied, "John, I read while I'm brushing my teeth."

However, I'm not buying as many books as I used to.  Part of the problem is the fact that I'm out of shelf space again - it's not just a case of buying another shelf, I need to reconfigure my apartment in order to find room for that new shelf.

I'm also torn between on-line shopping and the more limited opportunities of retail outlets.  The down side of physical book shopping is that, quite frankly, I no longer remember each and every book that I own. This has not been helped by the e-book phenomenon, which has resulted in confusion between books I own on paper, downloaded, or which I may have borrowed from someone to read and never owned myself.  As a result, I sometimes find myself purchasing books that I already own, which is counterproductive. Online shopping allows me to check possible purchases against existing stock, so to speak.

Unfortunately, I seem to experience some sort of basic disconnect in the online browsing experience. Something in the manner that Amazon in particular has set up its system completely disagrees with the way in which my mind processes information - or at least the way that it browses for books.

All other issues aside, unless I'm missing something incredibly basic on their website, they won't let me look at their inventory in alphabetical order!  I realize that alphabetical order is an obsolete holdover from the pre-digital age, but you know, Amazon, I think you'll find that a lot of people still sort their books by author's name.  In fact, you still do it in your stores.  Would it really be that hard to add a "Sort by author" to the options?

Oh, and if anyone's curious, I'll be happy to do a posting on how to brush your teeth while holding a book and turning the pages with the other hand - but trust me, don't try it while you're shaving, there are some things you really do need to watch in the mirror.

- Sid