So you may have noticed that my post today is late. By a lot. There’s a reason for that: we got possession of our new house today. Now personally, I think that’s an okay reason to get a post up late.
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I was up late last night packing up the rental apartment (and not getting anywhere near done). Today we were packing up the rest of our crap, moving crap from one place to another, and waiting for the Internet guy to set everything up.
Because when you move into your new house, the first thing you need to do is set up your Internet. Obviously.
First of all, sorry for being absent as of late. I just didn’t have anything to say and so I didn’t say anything. But I have been busy. Not buying a house like Char or getting good grades like Ann. Mostly I’ve been playing video games and reading comic books and I got a new phone (almost immediately after, my work phone died).
While its always important to plan for the worst the current situation can’t. Come second. Sometimes that means making steak for dinner instead of hardtack. Or just going for a drive because its nice out. However you can keep in the back of your mind all the lessons you’re. Learning while doing these things.
Did you miss out on Free Comic Book Day this past Saturday? If you did, you also missed out on the Buffy/ The Guild preview (?) issue and the Star Wars/Serenity one-shots offered by Dark Horse. That’s sad.
You missed the space pirates, bandits, aliens, and heroes. You missed out on high-flying hijinks, and intergalactic world universe saving awesomeness.
This review covers a series of four books, so I’m not going to write the blurb for each of them. That would just take too long.
Here’s the background: 15 year old Allie Emerson is given a moonstone necklace by her friend and sometime guardian, Kizzy (who is a Romany Gypsy, but everyone calls her a witch). Allie’s mother, Faye, is pretending to have fibromyalgia to get out of working.
So, okay. The moonstone necklace. It’s pretty, it’s a necklace, it has special powers. (I KNOW.)
So it’s no secret that I’m STILL in the middle of a move (omigod this move never ends). Mr. Char and I are in the middle of trying to buy a house, which is a fun process in and of itself (and not stressful AT ALL /sarcasm). Granted, we have the greatest realtor in the history of realtors, and I know this because she puts up with me and my Type A obsessiveness without threatening to a) fire me as a client or b) stab me in the eye with an unsharpened HB pencil. (It’s a well-known fact that I’m a dorky oddball; it’s also a well-known fact that I tend to annoy people without really trying.) (Her name is Crystal, she’s with Remax, and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND her.)
However, the point of this post is not to wax poetic about my realtor, even though she is full of Teh Awesomesauce™. The point is, after looking at over a hundred houses and visiting around thirty, Mr. Char and I obviously know what we want in a house. There are certain things we look for (and our realtor will tell us which houses fit our style before we even go for showings, which is rather nice of her). Some of those things tend to be a good-size kitchen, 3 bedrooms, 2+ bathrooms, attached garage…you know, that sort of thing.
Sadly, none of those things will help me come the apocalypse.
Publisher’s blurb:[1. Review copy provided by Bloomsbury USA]
The revelatory account of the biggest threats we face as a species–and what we can do to save ourselves.
In the history of planet earth, mass species extinctions have occurred five times, about once every 100 million years.
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A “sixth extinction” is known to be underway now, with over 200 species dying off every day. Not only that, but the cause of the sixth extinction is also the source of single biggest threat to human life: our own inventions.
What this bleak future will truly hold, though, is much in dispute. Will our immune systems be attacked by so-called super bugs, always evolving, and now more easily spread than ever? Will the disappearance of so many species cripple the biosphere? Will global warming transform itself into a runaway effect, destroying ecosystems across the planet?
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In this provocative book, Fred Guterl examines each of these scenarios, laying out the existing threats, and proffering the means to avoid them.
This book is more than a tour of an apocalyptic future; it is a political salvo, an antidote to well-intentioned but ultimately ineffectual thinking. Though it’s honorable enough to switch light bulbs and eat home-grown food, the scope of our problems, and the size of our population, is too great. And so, Guterl argues, we find ourselves in a trap: Technology got us into this mess, and it’s also the only thing that can help us survive it. Guterl vividly shows where our future is heading, and ultimately lights the route to safe harbor.
Note: This book is available from Amazon on May 22, 2012.
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So, I was camping in Wales.[1. Details of where we stayed for those who want to follow in our footsteps: We went to The Brecon Beacons, a national park of astounding natural beauty. We stayed in two campsites, both of which I strongly recommend – Priory Mill Farm, just outside the town of Brecon, and Ynysfaen a mile and a half outside of Trecastle] It wasn’t a survivalism retreat and to my mind it was far from roughing it. Experienced survivalists would sneer at it and pampered hotel-dwellers would shudder. But you’d better believe it taught me a few things about my survivability rate post-apocalypse… both good and bad. It also taught me about how unpleasant a panic attack is when you’re having it in a field surrounded by woodland, water and no other people, but that’s an entirely different post for an entirely different blog.
So I’m still in the middle of The Move That Never Ends. (Swear to god, guys, this has been happening since the beginning of March. MARCH. It’s now almost May.) Since my mind is almost completely consumed by the house hunting process and trying to keep my kids from blowing up the corporate apartment The Company rented for us, I have (sadly) not had the chance to give much thought to the apocalypse.
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But I didn’t want to just fall off the face of the planet.
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So I give you… “Fellow Post-apocalyptians,” whereby I write about someone (or some people) who also write about the apocalypse.
Of course, if I do this, you have to promise to come back to ICoS immediately after visiting the other site.
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Understand? If you don’t, I will hunt you down and take out my house hunting frustrations on you. And your computer. Mostly your computer.**
Episode One: A New Day of The Walking Dead[1. A copy of this game was provided for review by Telltale games.] is finally out and it has all kind of expectations to live up to. The comics, the show, and what’s current in action adventure gaming today. Telltale Games set out to please everyone and no one. For the game to be successful it must stand on its own but still make sense within the The Walking Dead universe.
We’re introduced to The Walking Dead universe in Episode One: A New Day at the kickoff of the zombie apocalypse rather than weeks in as we are at the start of the TV series.
Immediately, we’re introduced to our main character, Lee Everett[2. A black man in the back of a police cruiser. Le Sigh.] and we get to decide what kind of person he’s going to be based on how he completes conversations–or doesn’t. Not saying anything is an option, it’s also the default when you time out.
See, in the story summary video below there are choices being made that bring to along to those places and those conversations–those outbursts aren’t standard. Lee rarely says anything without your consent.
The game definitely has places to be and paths to take you there but to say it’s on rails would be doing it a huge disservice. Maybe a choose your own action adventure on rails would be most accurate as it is most accurately not of any specific genre.
However, to get a bit more specific, Episode One: A New Day offers some first level game things that should be noted.
The gameplay mechanics of Episode One: A New Day:
As is to be expected from a choose your own action adventure on rails, the game quickly introduces the method for choosing. The method is pushing the button that corresponds with your choice.
If you have the hints on, you might be notified after making a choice that you’re now seen as a nice guy, or an asshole, or a sketchball. It depends on what you decide to say.
Conversation choices need to be made quickly (sort of) or you’ll be stuck with the default or your choice will be “silence.” Saying nothing can sometimes say a lot about you.
Action choices, while they need to be made quickly can also be left to inaction like saving This Guy, That Guy, or neither. Though often in action choices you must choose.
Objects also must be found to complete a number or scenarios… So maybe this is a choose your own action adventure puzzler on rails. Anyway, a small number or items are kept in your inventory to be used either on people or thing to either solve them or win them over.
The story of Episode One: A New Day:[3. Of course, I get a little butthurt about the black man being carted off to jail for murder as an introduction, though it’s heavily tempered by my happiness that a mainstream game is actually staring a person of color as a regular person rather than a shaman or witch doctor or gang member or rapper.]
I was immediately engaged in the story presented in Episode One. The officer in the car is transporting Lee to jail but doesn’t believe he’s truly guilty. Out the window you–you’re allowed to look around as much as a real neck would allow– might see shambling people, and car accidents.
Eventually, you hit a person (zombie) and it knocks the police car into a ditch. Sorting yourself out at the bottom of this ditch is where you sort out how to control the character, interact with your environment, kill stuff and really do all the basic tutorial stuff. Lee comes to grips with the fact that something terrible happened and people are all fucked up.
Making your way through a neighborhood, Lee finds a house and is charged with making a friend or three to eventually get himself out of the suburbs.
Lee’s murdering past comes up often as a kind of haunting character motivation piece. Thankfully there aren’t any flashbacks.
Overall Episode One: A New Day:
1. The art style is great. It’s not intended to be Mass Effect-real or straight up cartooney. There’s a great mix of comic art and animated effects. To me, it felt new and worked well with the game.
2. Nobody is perfect. I hated something about every character, which to me is good because it means they’re not trying to make super familiar likable characters. Everyone, felt really regular and realistic. I think they did a better job of humanizing characters than the TV show did[4. Sorry, can’t help but compare.]
3. Maybe because I’m a nerd and I love graphs and stats, but I was geeked to see the comparison at the end of the level about who made the same choices you did. Were you among the majority? Did other people stay silent when they could have spoke up?
It’s a great feature that ads a bit of perspective and community to an otherwise solitary experience.
4. It’s not as heavy as the chow or the comics. People die and impactful decisions need to be made but they don’t unsettle me. I feel like playing through some of the decisions in the show and the comics would have been really difficult.
5. There can be a lot of hurry up and wait. It’s urgent to get to X or to do Y but you can spend eight years searching a room for the A or you have to talk to every singly person before you can progress. I don’t care about some people and their motives
6. In order button mashing is how you fight. So, a zombie attacks and the screen flashes “x” and you tap it and then it flashes “b” and you tap that and you can win, lose or not die but not really win. Personally, I like being in full control of a hit stuff button.
I’m having fun playing and so excited to find out what happens next in Episode Two.
[Rating:4.5]
Remember, the full five episode season of The Walking Dead for PC and Mac is available for purchase via the Telltale Games Store (http://www.telltalegames.com/store/) and other digital distribution outlets as a season pass for $24.99. Once launched on Xbox 360, each episode will cost just 400 MS Points, and on PlayStation 3, each episode will cost just $4.99, or $19.99 as a season pass.
Ohmigawd, Ohmigawd, Ohmigawd! I’ll try to breath, but, it’s finally happening. No, not the apocalypse. The Walking Dead video game. They said it would but after waiting so long (at least it felt like so long) I thought, maybe it was just an idea that wouldn’t really come to full fruition.
Then, one day, I saw the AMC choose your own adventure motion comic game thing, Dead Reckoning, and thought that was the game. I mean, it was awesome but not what I expected from Telltale Games. They make games not promotional content. (By the way, check out the AMC promotional games for The Walking Dead, they’re generally awesome.)
Finally, today, I got the press release along with the video for the “Choice Matters” trailer:
Tellale explains the details in today’s press release:
Telltale Games and Robert Kirkman, the Eisner Award-winning creator and writer of The Walking Deadfor Skybound Entertainment and Image Comics, announced today that the first episode of the game series based on the critically acclaimed comic book series, The Walking Dead, is now available for download. Players can purchase the PC and Mac versions from the Telltale Games Online Store, as well as Steam and other digital distribution services. The first episode is also available for download now on PlayStation®Network for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and will be available Friday, April 27th on Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft.
Every system (except the Zelda/Mario/Exercise console)!
