Teton/Yellowstone RV Trip Day 6: Flagg Ranch to Colter Bay

The morning woke us up to rain and fog. It would be silly to take a boat out in this weather, but Old Faithful, Paint Pots, and the Geysers in general are immune to poor weather, so we went with the flow rather than trying to fight mother nature.

We arrived at the Old Faithful Area at 9:30, which meant that the parking lot was mostly empty and we did not experience any traffic jams. Not only could we leisurely lounge around waiting for Old Faithful to erupt, we could also look at the maps to see that Daisy was also due to erupt at a reasonable close time, so we could get 2 geysers for the price of one. I'm glad we made the effort to see Daisy, as compared to Old Faithful it's quite a bit more impressive, with an eruption time that felt significantly longer. Without the huge crowds in place, it was also a much more intimate experience. After that, we took a leisurely walk back via the various pools and geysers, and then visited the paint pots before heading towards Colter Bay.

By then, the skies had cleared some and we stopped by Lewis lake for some pictures. But what really took our breath away as we approached Colter Bay was the open views of the Tetons, now in its full summer glory.

By the time we got to Colter Bay a frenzy had over-taken me, and rather than try to find Kevin and his family to meet up, I went full-on into photo-mode and tried to find a location to shoot the sunset (and the sunrise the next morning). Colter Bay is very close to the beach, and the picnic area is easily the most picturesque in the park:

We had dinner and made plans to see the sunrise the next morning. Since we'd already seen Old Faithful et al, we weren't in a particular hurry to reach our campground the next day, so I proposed that we spend most of the day at Colter Bay rather than trying to reach the Bridge Bay campground the next day.

Teton/Yellowstone RV Trip Day 5: Jenny Lake

We got up early, had a quick breakfast, and walked over to the lodge to pick up the shuttle, which turned out to be a tiny van. I asked the driver if he had issues with having to reject people because the van was so small, and he said that the company sized shuttles to expected demand: so the van was small in the morning but the evening bus would be huge.

I'd originally planned to rent a rowboat or motorboat to fool around on Jenny Lake before hiking over to hidden falls. But it turned out that they wouldn't let a 3 year old onto one of those rented rowboats, so I nixed my original plans and got on the ferry to Hidden Falls trailhead instead, where we hiked up to the falls (which I'd never seen before), which were quite impressive.

From there, we had to decide whether to hike south back to the visitor center, or hike north around the lake, which would be a 5 mile hike. Since we were very early and the shuttle wouldn't show up till late, we decided to hike North to get a much less crowded hike. The side trips (Inspiration Point or Cascade Canyons) were ruled out given the general condition of the rest of my party.

The hike was pretty, and flat most of the way, granting us views of the Tetons, but at the headwaters of the lake, there was a steep uphill which pretty much knocked out most of the party. I also had to carry Bowen, which I didn't mind doing since he'd pretty much hiked the entire Hidden Falls trail, which was a 2 mile round trip, and did quite a bit more.

I looked at a map and realized that the northern end of the lake was very close to the Jenny Lake Lodge, which cut about 2 miles off the hike, so we hiked there and waited at the lodge instead for the shuttle. Since we were way too early for the shuttle that would take us back to Flagg Ranch, we elected to take the shuttle to Colter Bay instead, where I investigated the possibility of a motorboat rental the next morning. It seemed feasible, and we'd be staying at Colter Bay the next day anyway, so that seemed like the thing to do.

Teton/Yellowstone RV Trip Day 4: Fireside Resort to Flagg Ranch Headwaters Campground

The day looked clear, so I ditched all my existing plans and decided to take the family up to Jackson's mountain top ski resort, since the gondola ride would probably result in views. I tried to persuade Kevin to join us, but he had his heart set on going to Yellowstone's Old Faithful. I told him that the attraction was over-rated and that driving from Jackson there would likely result in a traffic jam, but he'd locked on target as they say.

The gondola ride was only 10 minutes long, but the views at the top were pretty good, though marred by a persistent low cloud that usually hid the valley below us from view. Nevertheless, we walked around marveling at the sights. We were prepared for the cold, but not for the wind, which was quite strong.

We descended the Gondola, and were told that our tickets were good for the chair-lifts as well. The chair lifts granted us a slightly lower but no less fun view, and then we had to go. I'd visited the ski resort thinking that I could just drive into the national park and visit Jenny Lake on the way to Flagg Ranch. However, that entry into the park was closed to RVs, and so we had to go all the way back to Jackson and then drive North from there. This delayed us and made a visit to Jenny Lake unfeasible for the day, but I decided to instead visit every sight along that entry.

The entry was filled with all the famous overlooks of the Tetons, from the Snake River overlook to Schumacher Landing Road, as well as the Oxbow bend. We took our time and stopped at every viewpoint to take photos, ending up in Colter Bay just before 4:00pm for the kids ranger program.

From there, we drove up to Flagg Ranch, where the campground office helpfully told me that the park actually had a shuttle service between Flagg Ranch and Jackson, with multiple stops in between at various attractions. Not only was the pick up convenient, but it was also free for campers at Flagg Ranch!

I took a look at the schedule and realized that we could use it to visit Jenny Lake the next morning, at the expense of having to get up pretty early to take advantage of the shuttle. This was not an issue for us, since we were good at getting up early at this point, so we resolved to leave the motorhome parked at Flagg Ranch the next day.

Kevin showed up with his RV, and told me that as predicted, he faced heavy traffic and found Old Faithful over-rated. I told him about the free shuttle service and tried to convince him to stay at Flagg Ranch and join us, but he had his heart set on Colter Bay the next day, and was determined to show up there early to get a first-come-first-serve camping spot.

Review: Foundation's Triumph

Foundation's Triumph is written by David Brin, which was the main reason I picked up the book despite being underwhelmed by Foundation and Chaos.

The book details Hari Seldon's last adventure, where on a whim, he leaves Trantor on a hunt to figure out why the soils of the various planets of the galaxy are clustered the way they are. As a result of this adventure, Seldon discovers the robotic forebears of the human pioneers who settled the galaxy, and sets off a struggle between various factions of robots, representatives of the Chaos world Klinta, and of course, Seldon's own conflicting feelings about his Foundation and Second Foundation.

The net result is a bit of a mash. You do get a nice complex plot with lots of moving parts, but a shortage of new ideas which is what David Brin's famous for. There's a sense that Brin's far too constrained by having to work within Asimov's universe, as well as the issues of writing a prequel: there's too much already known about the future, and not enough freedom to introduce new concepts.

Ultimately, a disappointing read.

Teton/Yellowstone RV Trip: Day 3: Rafting on the Snake River

The rafting trip was broken into 2 parts: the scenic tour in the early morning, where everyone was allowed to go, and the late morning white water trip, where Bowen was excluded and my father elected to stay behind to watch him.

The morning trip was indeed a slow float down the river, where everyone stayed dry. Our river guide, a 27-year old woman from the East Coast, was formerly a pre-med before deciding that it wasn't for her and came to Jackson to lead an outdoor life as well as retrain for education.

We spotted 10 bald eagles, multiple ducks, and Bowen got a chance to row with the guide. I expected a struggle to keep him off the white water trip, but it turned out that an early explanation had stuck, so he agreed to stick around the rafting office and take care of Grandpa.

The white water trip was at most a class 3, since it was summer and the water was low. It was fairly tame by white water standards, but it was a lot more active than the earlier trip, and we got wet quite often.

There was even a section where you could jump off the boat and swim, and the weather being warm enough to do so this time, quite a few folk took the river guide's offer.

After that, we visited the Pearl Street Market to buy lunch, and then were driven back to the Fireside resort. We spent the rest of the evening doing laundry.

Teton/Yellowstone RV Trip Day 2: Bear Lake State Park to Fireside Resort

We got up early the next day to make the remaining drive to Jackson, Wyoming, where I'd pre-booked a site at the Fireside resort for 2 days. I'd gotten to realize early on that a 32' RV was hard to get a space for, and so had booked about the first 9 days of the trip.After that, I figured I'd be competent to fly by the seat of my pants.

The reason for staying here two nights was because I'd signed us up for a rafting trip the next day. We'd arrived early enough to be able to take the bus into town and walk around, so we did so. We then had an early night so we could wake up in time for the pickup from the rafting company the next day.

Tetons/Yellowstone RV Trip Day 1: Salt Lake City to Bear Lake State Park

In early April, we thought it might be a good idea to take the family to the Tetons and Yellowstone for some RV camping. Because of the number of people involved, I thought that an RV might be practical. I've never tried it before, but given my experience with relatively large sailing catamarans, I didn't think that maneuvering an RV would be especially difficult.

Because of the number of people involved, I was forced to reserve a fairly large motorhome. I ended up picking a class B Sunseeker 3170 from Utah RV Rentals.

Because of a few last minute change of plans (driven entirely by external circumstances beyond our control), neither Boen nor Xiaoqin could come, so my parents were recruited to come along instead.

On August 3rd, we flew a 6:15am direct flight from San Jose to Salt Lake City, where upon landing the representatives from Utah RV Rentals met us, tossed everything into an open-top pick up truck, squeezed all 6 of us into the cab, and drove us to pick up the RV. You might think me insane for deliberately picking an absurdly early hour, but my reason for doing so came from my experience with sailboat charters: I expected the check-out to take 2 hours, and then wanted another couple of hours for provisioning, and then to gingerly make my way to Bear Lake State Park, where I had a fully hooked up connection.

The check-out doesn't take nearly as long for an RV: you're presumed to know how to drive a car. The systems aren't nearly as complicated, and RV rental companies seem to be really casual about teaching you how to operate systems. For instance, on a sailboat, the propane is usually cut off whenever you're sailing, but on an RV it's apparently OK to turn on the propane while driving!

We left the RV rental place around 11:00, made our way to a Costco, and then proceeded to eat lunch before buying about 10 days worth of consumables. The RV handled pretty nicely, much closer to a boat than a car, but much less bulky and more maneuverable than any sailboat I've had to drive. What caused us to drive slowly, however, was an unusual storm, which made visibility poor and traffic on I-15 slow an uncharacteristically slow 45mph. We did leave before rush hour traffic, so we were able to get onto the smaller roads past Ogden fairly early.

If you use Google Maps to visit Bear Lake State Park, it'll take you to the wrong one. What you want is the Rendezvous Beach campground. We got there at around 5:00pm, proceeded to set up camp and dinner, when Kevin arrived. The kids got to play, and we got to walk around in the park, which wasn't particularly pretty, but it was only a temporary stop.

As expected, Bowen loved RV camping, and after playing was happy to sleep in the same space as me above the cab of the RV. He kicked around all night, however.

Review: Isaac Newton

I have fond memories of James Gleick's excellent biography of Richard Feynman, so I checked out Isaac Newton from the library hoping for similar excellence. To my surprise, it wasn't nearly as good, though upon reflection, I shouldn't have been so surprised.

With Richard Feynman, many of his colleagues were still alive when Gleick wrote his book, and so we were able to get personal, up close stories about Feynman. Feynman also left behind tons of media from books to lectures to actual videos (such as from his famous exposition about the O-ring problem in the Challenger disaster).

By contrast, Newton was secretive, frequently writing his notes in cryptography, and separated from the modern age by 300 years: enough time for even his undeciphered writing to be cryptic and full of spelling that seems ancient by the standards of modern English. He never married and had no children, and so left behind few who could explain his personal mannerisms in an informal setting or know what he was really like.

Given these limitations then, Gleick does a reasonable job for the layman, explaining certain myths (such as the Newtonian conception of gravity) but at the same time not really providing sufficient context for important inventions such as Calculus and differential equations. The overall picture that emerges is complex, and Gleick does a good job of explaining to the reader that as the bridge between pre-modern pre-scientific Europe, Newton wasn't just the first scientist and mathematician, but also the last alchemist who also poisoned himself in the quest to turn lead into gold.

My criticism of the book is that Gleick doesn't really provide sufficient context for Newton's contemporaries. We get some tantalizing glimpses of Charles Boyle, and of course there's Leibniz, but none other than Leibniz are given serious treatment, so we don't really see the context in which Newton worked.

I recommend this book despite the faults, because of the limitations Gleick had to work with. Newton was (and arguably still is) an incredibly important figure in modern scientific enterprise, and it's a worthwhile read to see the origins of insights that came from the great man, as well as getting a (admittedly very limited) glimpse of the context in which he worked.

Review: Foundation and Chaos

Foundation and Chaos is the second book in the post-Asimov Foundation trilogy. I missed it when it came out in 1998, and decided to skip the first novel because it was generally panned by reviewers.

The novel is interesting making references to Asimov's universe that I've long since forgotten, but also drawing the importance of robots, for instance, in the evolution of human kind to the logical conclusion. It's fun and a little bit creaky, but still entertaining.

The protagonist of the trilogy is clearly Hari Seldon, who of course is the prophet/leader depicted in the original Foundation trilogy. As a prequel, the novel grants us relatively little insight into what psycho-history is, what the parameters are, and of course, depends too much on the rise of psycho-history as the brilliant work of one man, while we know that most scientific work usually depends on not just theoreticians and mathematicians, but also experimentalists. Yet the rise of psycho-history (as depicted in these novels) appears to depend entirely upon mathematics without any empirical evidence, which seems really far-fetched, to say the least. I raise this as a criticism because the authors of this second trilogy are all writers with real scientific credentials, as Asimov was.

In any case, the plot revolves around the rise of telepaths (called mentallics in the novel) who can influence other people or even groups of humans. Readers of the original series would know that this plays a critical part in the second foundation. It's an interesting romp, but ultimately fails to compare to the scope and grandeur of the originals.

Nevertheless, it made me want to go back and read the original series again, which can't be a bad thing.

Review: Armada

Armada is Ernest Cline's love letter to the 1980s media, including video games and movies.His first novel, Ready Player One was also from the same mold, so if you read that novel and wished for more, well, here it is.

Treading the same waters is a dangerous game, but Cline pulls it off. The plot is a remix of The Last Starfighter, where video games are used as a testing ground to train and recruit fighter pilots (and mech warriors) for a secretly planned war against an alien invasion. Except this is updated to modern times, where it's a MMO shared world shooter.

The twist that Cline adds is that all the obvious plot-holes of The Last Starfighter are covered. Cline covers all these issues in a fun and straightforward way, with the protagonist constantly questioning the underlying premise he's presented with. The net result is that you never feel like you're being taken for a fool, while Cline still gets to throw in all the fun and important action hijinks that's a crowd-pleaser.

Nevertheless, the entire novel still feels like a re-tread. If Ready Player One satisfied your 80s nostalgia, there's no need to read this book. It's fun, but it does feel a bit too obviously an attempt to repeat the prior success without adding a whole lot.

Review: Fables #22 - Farewell

"This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper." T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" is as good a description as any of the last Fables graphic novel, titled "Farewell."

In many ways, Fables was a victim of its own success: with a video game, several spin-off comic book titles, and a run spanning well over a decade, there came a point where the story wore out its welcome.

In recent issues, Willingham managed to kill Bigby Wolf, one of the fan favorites. Of course, death in the world of the fables isn't necessarily permanent, and he comes back, albeit in changed form. I don't know when Willingham decided to end the series, but in many ways the ending feels rushed: not only does Wolf's resolution feels rushed and hurried without any real explanation (or at least, an explanation that can carry weight in the milieu of the Fables), the final epic battle is also averted with far too much common sense, but without a sense of a dramatic reveal that characterized the best of the series.

It's interesting to see Willingham even acknowledge (through one of the characters) that in many ways, Fables should have ended with issue #100, with the defeat of the adversary. In many ways, the 50 or so issues after that climatic event felt like treading water. Though there are a few gems, (Fables #18: Cubs in Toyland in particular evoked such strong memories of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman that I checked the credits page to make sure it wasn't a Gaiman story) the worst of the series felt like the author was drunk on success and too rich to care any more.

In any case, this final volume is a celebration, with lots of little stories celebrating some of the characters in the series. It's unfortunate, however, that in many cases, the characters were not fleshed out enough for me to care (or in some cases remember) about them. Nevertheless, Willingham's to be commended for not pulling a Robert Jordon and dying before finishing his epic, a rare trait in these days of multi-volume epics that are abusive of readers (graphic and prose) otherwise.

Review: Call of Duty - Advanced Warfare (PS4)

In my many years away from computer games, I'd somehow missed the rise of the Call of Duty series. A victim of Amazon's "Prime Day", I dutifully bought a copy of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare when it appeared to be really cheap. The series has a reputation for having short single-player campaigns, but at half-price, I figured I could resell the disk if I didn't enjoy the multiplayer. (I expect not to play the multi-player game as I'd probably get slaughtered, and as someone who frequently gets interrupted in the middle of a game, I'd probably annoy all the other players by having to bail in the middle of a session)

I will say that I'm impressed. Much like Killzone 3, it's a surprisingly fun and linear first person shooter. But the difficulty setting (especially at "easy") is such that even I could play it through. What's particularly fun is that much as you could imagine it would be, you don't have to kill every enemy while progressing through a level to proceed. The game will proceed anyway if you simply charge forward. In the case of several of the set pieces, the game runs as though it were a Disneyland ride, rolling along at a breakneck pace while you do your best to nail as many enemies as possible, dodge obstacles, or simply keep up.

And just as with the Uncharted series or Killzone, you're never alone: you always have an NPC to guide you. This serves two purposes: in many cases, the NPC's there to tell you where you go. Secondly, the NPC serves as a marker, following you in case of assault, and even occasionally giving you a chance to assist. Unlike certain other games, the NPCs never nag at you, and only occasionally give you orders.

The story is thin, an excuseveneer to have fun. But boy, not having played one of these before, they're incredibly fun. Each segment of the single player campaign is unique, with set pieces that are never repeated in others. Whether it's night vision goggles, mute charges, or some new high tech warfare gadget, you're never given a chance to get sick and tired of the "oh wow" high tech special effects. The price of this of course, is player agency: you get one chance to drive the giant robot, one chance to drive a tank, one chance to drive the hoverbike, but you will never find one to hop on and use where the game designers have not placed it front and center (and an unavoidable part of the story). Nevertheless, when you do get the chance, you'll get a grin on your face and enjoy the heck out of it, because the entire set-piece is designed around the capabilities of your new toy. If this is part of the formula of the Call of Duty series, I can see why people line up for a chance to throw $60 every year to take part in the franchise: it's a heck of a lot more fun than most movies.

Technically, the game's a masterpiece as well. There's slight stuttering in scenes where you're in close quarters with your comrades, but never in combat. Once you're in combat, the game runs (on my PS4 at least) at a full 60fps, and looks gorgeous. The cut-scenes look like they're from a high-budget Hollywood action movie, and the in-game graphics aren't a lot worse. The set pieces have a few annoying QTEs, but no worse than any of the Uncharted games.

I will admit that I bought Wolfenstein: The New Order at half the price I paid for this, but even on the easiest difficulty level I'd get stuck. By contrast, Call of Duty was compellingly playable, had a much lighter story, and I never cared that I didn't find a single piece of Intel that was supposedly scattered throughout the levels of the single-player game: I got too engrossed and caught up in the situation presented, and never gave a thought to rooting around for hidden rewards when I could be off in another fire-fight with my squad-mates.

That speaks volumes as to how playable and how much fun the latest Call of Duty installment is. Wolfenstein, by the way, got much better reviews (and is a dedicated single player game to boot), but I suspect you'd have to be much more jaded (and competent) a FPS player than I am to pass up Call of Duty over the Wolfenstein series.

Recommended.

Review: Tippi - My Book of Africa

I bought Tippi: My Book of Africa for the photos. Tippi's parents, both photographers who worked in Africa for a period, took the opportunity to shoot photographs of her playing in the wilderness, with animals, and with natives.

Fast forward a couple of years, and Bowen's suddenly decided that he was interested in Africa. While the BBC series (impressively shot and presented) was fun for him, the Tippi's book was much more fascinating for him: for one thing, it was written by a 10 year old, and the photographs (many of which were staged or set in reserves with tame animals) more intimate. So I've been asked to read the book over and over again for him.

The book's voice seems very authentic. Life, philosophy, racism, and fear are all talked about from a ten year old's point of view and consciousness. There would be wild sweeping pronouncements followed by "I don't know." It's very rambling, and frequently repetitive. But Bowen can't get enough of it and so I'm forced to read it over and over again.

Because of the photographs, it's not an ideal bed-time read. You really should have good lighting to see the photos properly. On the other hand, as an authentic voice and as exposure to your child as an example of, "Yes, you can write a book too." It's pretty ideal.

Recommended.

Review: The Fox Effect

By now, it's not a controversy that viewing Fox news will actually have a detrimental effect on your knowledge. But there was a time when this wasn't common knowledge, and people had to take Fox News seriously instead of being the propaganda machine that they are.

The Fox Effect is an effective documentary book about that period of time. It covers the founding of Fox News, its rise in its media, and its strategy towards coverage:

1. One or more Fox hosts will launch a series of lies.
2. Fox will provide wall-to-wall repeated coverage, with the Fox hosts repeating each other.
3. Fox will then attack other media outlets for not covering "the controversy".
4. This would lead to political ramifications, either from people being fired by administrations afraid of controversy, or someone losing an election.

The book is very effective, though very painful for me to read. The series of lies propagated by Fox and the blatant leverage of their platform as a campaign platform for the GOP was of course played out in 2010, almost killing the Affordable Care Act, and not relenting on it.

Furthermore, it's clear that the authors of the book bent over backwards to try be as sympathetic to Rupert Murdoch as possible, often repeating his statements about how regretful he was about the damage Fox has done, while at the same time noting that Murdoch not only endorsed Fox strategy in many cases, but also gave money to the causes it actively campaigned for on its behest.

The book ends on a hopeful note that today's media now recognizes Fox's M.O., and that Fox's attempt to go after the authors' organization did not bear fruit because Media Matters itself saw it coming and managed to stop the process before it got to step 4.

In any case, a worthwhile, if depressing read. Recommended.

Review: NXR-RH3001 Professional 30" Under Cabinet Range Hood

After our recent remodeling I now have a deathly fear of home improvement projects. Unfortunately, our microwave range hood's microwave function went dead recently, and our remodeling also left us with some ridiculously sensitive smoke detectors, so I went crazy and bought the most powerful range hood Costco has: the $500 800 cfm "Professional" model.

Being tired of remodeling, we paid someone to do the install. He had to make a couple of trips to Home Depot since the hood didn't come with all the parts, but we kept going instead of returning it because he said he had experience with the unit and thought it was an excellent choice.

The hood extends down quite a bit more than the microwave did, but that's not a bad thing: it just means that the hood is closer to the cooking pots and what not. The lights also work better since they're closer to the stove.

At full 800CFM, the thing isn't excessively loud, and was indeed the same noise level or less than the microwave hood it replaced. What's most important, however, is now when I get out the blow-torch to sear steaks, the house's smoke detectors don't go off, and you can visibly see the hood sucking up all the smoke and grease.

At lower levels (the hood has 4 different motor speeds), you can barely hear the device.

Recommended. Should have done the upgrade ages ago.

Review: Never Alone (PS4)

Never Alone is a puzzle-platformer whose primary purpose is to provide cultural understanding of the Inupiat Alaskan natives. The game tells a story (in the Inupiat language with subtitles provided) about a girl who sets out to free her village from an eternal blizzard. The story is well told and full of atmosphere, with cut-scenes provided through faux-historic pictograms. It's pretty, and part of the reason I kept playing even though I don't usually enjoy platformers.

The game is clearly written to be played with two players at once: if you're a solo player, you'll have to flip between the two characters (the girl and her arctic fox) in order to get through some of the puzzles. Because certain puzzles have a time limit (especially near the end of the game), this could lead you to repeat sections over and over until you get it right, which can be frustrating. Fortunately, the game's checkpointing system is fairly well thought out, and you usually will not repeat any puzzle which you can do once.

The closest comparison game I'd compare this to is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Both use a puzzle platformer to tell a story, and because the game has a goal other than to provide extended play time or to challenge the players, the puzzles are straightforward.

As a single player, however, the approach of Brothers is the considerably better one, with the controls for Never Alone never really feeling comfortable, and frequently awkward. However, what the game excels at (and this is an excellent reason to play and experience the game) is mapping the platforming adventure to the environment of the harsh arctic circle. Frequently, the most dangerous part of the game is the environment, not the polar bears or the enemies, real or mythical. Furthermore, the game ends just about when it starts to wear out its welcome (3 hours 10 minutes is the average), a rare demonstration of restraint amongst video games.

I got this as part of the Playstation Plus subscription. I can't imagine paying the full $14.99 price for this game, but considering the other PS+ games that never get played more than a couple of times, I'd say that this game is considerably more respectful of my time than other games, is beautifully rendered, and therefore worthy of your consideration if it were to be suitable discounted (it was recently on sale on steam for $6.99, and on PSN for $6.00). Considering that it includes 24 videos that essentially form an hour long documentary about the Inupiat Eskimos, that would be a very attractive price if you have an interest in the topic.

The game is available on XBox One, PS4, PC, and Macintosh.

Recommended.

Review: Joss Whedon: The Biography

I generally enjoy Joss Whedon's work. I hesitate to call myself a fan, since I don't like all of his work. For instance, I enjoyed Buffy, but I found Dollhouse too silly. I disliked the fakeness of using Mandarin in Firefly, but I enjoyed the series anyway. But I was curious enough to check out a copy of the Joss Whedon biography from the library, despite it being a major pain in the neck to read, because my library provided the ebook on hoopla, a library ebook provider that cannot seem to get session management right.

The book covers Whedon's early life right until Agents of Shield (which I still haven't gotten around to watching). The early part of the book's very well done, with interesting exposition, and a largely unvarnished picture of a bright and talented, yet unmotivated student muddling through school until he found what he loved. Then a great teacher he respects turns him around, and he embarks on the typical career path of the late 80s: moving back with his parents.

Since he's a 3rd generation TV writer, he did get a leg up on everyone else, but he also got screwed, just like many other talented folks. The story of how he rewrote almost every line on Speed but then was dropped from the credits page is poignant and reflective of how the rules can screw you if you don't know them. The detailed story behind his work on the first Toy Story movie was also fascinating, and I enjoyed the account from both sides (with Whedon the script-writer envious of the animators, while the animators were in turn in awe of his ability to tighten up dialog).

From then on, the book, however, stops being interesting, mostly because almost everything is fairly well known (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Dollhouse, Serenity, The Avengers aren't exactly stories you would have missed unless you were living under a rock somewhere). The opportunities for Pascale to shed light on the issues Whedon might have had with Gellar are completely dropped, for instance. (It's quite clear that Gellar isn't in Whedon's inner circle, which considering how often he enjoys using the same staff in different productions means there's something there that's not reported)

The tone of the book also shifts clearly into fan-mode at this point. I fully expected there to be a chapter on how Whedon walks on water in the later portions of the book.

Whedon's in his 50s now, and I'm wondering if it's still too early to pass judgement on his work. In any case, however, this book is not the source to go to for that. It's clearly written too much from a fan's point of view, and has too many holes in it. In any case, Whedon's clearly successful, and well worth following in the future.

Review: The Last of Us - Left Behind DLC (PS4)

I normally don't buy DLC content. Invariably they're either set too difficult (typically only hard-core fans buy DLC, and they want a challenge), or don't add much to the story or single player experience. But my recent play-through of Max Payne 3 made me long for more Naughty Dog content, and that in combination with a recent sale that allowed you to buy Left Behind as a standalone game on the PS4 game at $5 allowed me the indulgence of the DLC.

My previous year's review of The Last of Us was ambivalent at best. But some of the most scintillating moments of the game was when I was playing as Ellie, the character Joel was tasked with protecting. (At the end of The Last of Us, we finally realize that rather than Joel saving Ellie, the game was about Ellie saving Joel) In the entirety of Left Behind, you get to play as Ellie. The story composed of two separate sections, each alternating with the other. In the opening sequence, you open with Ellie desperately trying to find supplies while Joel is incapacitated (this isn't much of a spoiler). In the flashback, you play Ellie before she meets Joel about the events that lead up to her ultimate need to be transported.

The two stories intertwine and alternate, and reinforce each other. More than anything else, what Left Behind oozes is self-confidence. What other game would provide a good half hour of "game play" where you're two kids fooling around in a deserted post-apocalyptic mall where there's no way to fail, but isn't a tutorial? This is video-game storytelling at its finest, with you building and discerning the relationship between characters directly through interaction. The game isn't heavy-handed, and the lack of consequence of failure actually frees the player to enjoy the contrast with the main storyline's seriousness.

The serious game play is well done, and arguably much better than in the main version of The Last of Us. Ellie gets to play the zombies and clickers against the party that's hunting for her, and intelligent play can be used to great effect. I still died a couple of times, but unlike in the original game, I never felt it was unfair or I was misled. The amount of stuff I could scavenge still felt parsimonious (despite playing the game set on easy), and I still felt like I was being forced to atone for being a rat-bastard DM, but twice I managed to get the Zombies to prey on the Bad Guys was far more satisfying than the grinding I had to do in the original game.

The other interesting to note is that I played the original game on the PS3, but Left Behind on the PS4. (There's no save game state that carries over between the two, so it's OK to play that way) The PS4 version of the game is significantly faster to load and start, and also has better models, but not so much so that I'd forgo the game on the PS3. In fact, I'd say that by far the most important feature of the game is instant resume, which I love given that I often get interrupted and have to turn off the PS4 to do something else before coming back a day or so later. (I also have the PS4 hooked up to a 5.1 surround sound system rather than merely stereo, and that also makes it impressive, but the PS3 would also happily hook up to a 5.1 surround system as well)

It's unfortunate that the full emotional impact of the DLC can really be felt after you've played The Last of Us (though I'd say that the promotional material overstates the spoilers in Left Behind: you can safely play it the minute you get Ellie as a playable character in The Last of Us, and in fact, it's probably best played that way), but if you've already played The Last of Us, Left Behind will leave you feeling even more impressed than at the end of the original game. Highly recommended.

NOTE: if you have a PS4 and haven't played The Last of Us, Amazon sells it in digital release for $14.45. The full game includes this DLC, which is a bargain if you have never played it before.

Review: Mindhunter

I have finally succumbed to the failure of the avid book reader's memory. When I saw that the kindle edition of Mindhunter was at $1.99, I tried the sample and read it, and enjoyed it and bought it. Two chapters later, I realized I'd read it before: somewhere in 1993, before I had a blog (well before blogs existed), which is why a search for my own review of Mindhunter never surfaced it.

Nevertheless, I didn't mind too much, as the book was a great read and I ploughed on through the book reading each chapter breathlessly.

Ultimately, this is a non-fiction account of a detective's cool magical trick: that of being able to profile the criminal through thorough examination of a crime scene. When you read newspaper reports about how the police have determined that the killer was a "white male, age 30-35, drives a volkswagen, has a high school education, and probably smokes and drinks and has a beard", and then wonder "how the heck did they do that?", this is the book for you.

John Douglas was one of the pioneers in the FBI Investigative Support Unit, and did the early research and studies on what makes serial killers tick. As a result, we get first hand accounts of how he profiled and helped to capture (and in some cases failed to capture) the serial killers that he was brought in to investigate.

A lot of the profiling comes from an understanding of the background of the killer: the kind of person who could commit most of these crimes is pretty dysfunctional, and hence can only fit into certain backgrounds. There's also some interesting statistical analysis, for instance, killings rarely cross racial boundaries. Furthermore, what's interesting is how the killer often tries to inject himself into the police investigation, leading to some proactive methods by which he can be caught. And of course, it's almost always a male serial killer. Though there are a couple of chilling examples of women killers in the book, they almost always target their immediate family rather than strangers. (There's one example in the book of a woman hiring a hit-man to take out her FBI agent husband to get the insurance money)

The book does have a hidden agenda: Douglas is very much pro-death penalty, and after reading the book, you can see why. There's no way you could handle the thousands of horrifying cases he has without coming to the conclusion that certain criminal types just cannot be turned around: by the time the killer has committed multiple murders, there's nothing that can be salvaged from his psyche. Furthermore, because such personalities are very focused on returning to prior behavior, they're capable of fooling psychologists, social workers, and others into thinking that they've been rehabilitated. When such people are let out on parole, they inevitably kill again. Reading this book makes you think that maybe the Batman comic books aren't so silly after all, where the super-criminals inevitably get let out of prison to repeat their crimes.

Douglas is also unsympathetic to the insanity plea. He notes that none of the "criminally insane" ever feel so compelled to act that they commit their crimes in front of a uniformed police officer. In several cases, he notes that the serial killers would visit a location with the intent of committing their crime, discover that conditions weren't favorable, and back out. This meant that when they committed their crime, they were in full control of whether or not to go through with it, and that they knew that it was wrong, but committed the act anyway.

In any case, the book is compelling reading, and well worth the time and $1.99. Pick it up!

Review: Max Payne 3 (PC)

I will admit that I'm one of those people who always power down his desktop whenever he's not using it. The reason is that my desktop is power hungry (idles around 150W). But with Google Photos recently providing unlimited storage, I decided to just keep the desktop on and upload all 66,000 photos (including many in RAW format) into the cloud. Since the PC was already on all the time (the process is taking weeks!), this reduced the mental barrier against playing games on the PC, and hence I ended up playing PC games that I never got around to doing so. This is an entirely irrational decision, because the difference between running the 7870 GPU idle and loaded is more than the cost of powering up and running the PS4 (which has essentially the same GPU!).

I'd picked up the Max Payne 3 and GTA IV package for $3 a year or so back. GTA IV was completely unplayable, especially after the delectable Sleeping Dogs: the characters were detestable, the controls were sloppy, and the driving unbearable. Max Payne 3, however, is essentially a cover shooter (or at least, on Easy you can play it like a cover shooter), which is one of my favorite genres, so I played it through to see what the incredibly high reviews were about.

The game is long, but a lot of it is because of incredibly long cut scenes. From reading the forums online, apparently these cut scenes were a result of the previous generation consoles taking so long to load assets from disk that they had to put in movies so you weren't staring at a loading screen for a long time.

The shooting part of the game is just fine. Apparently though I was playing it wrong: you're supposed to treat it like a running shooter rather than a cover shooter, but whatever. The flaws in the game, however, turn it into a frequently frustrating experience. Unlike Uncharted 2, the game wrests control from the player all the time, leaving one with a feeling of a complete lack of agency. This is compounded by the game's collectible system: frequently, what you're supposed to do after a fight is to run around the room picking up ammo and collectibles. But if you were to stumble into an exit zone (which aren't clearly marked), then suddenly the game takes over and you're driven into a cut scene where you're not allowed to retreat and explore. This is annoying as heck if you ran down your ammo shooting the previous room and then are moving into the next room with a huge disadvantage. Even worse, it means you're pretty much guaranteed to miss clues that advance the story.

Fortunately, on easy mode, if you die enough times, the game gives you more and more health packs and ammo until you can finish the scene.

The story has excellent production values, with excellent voice acting, but the plot is ridiculously predictable. You could tell who the bad guy is within the first hour, and everything else is just an excuse to gun down lots of other people. There are no puzzles, and the pacing is extremely uneven, with some shooting scenes ending and transitioning almost immediately into another shooting scene, while you sometimes go through long cut scenes only to endure a pointless wandering around before stumbling onto another fire fight.

The game's technical implementation is nice: you can play either with a controller or with keyboard and mouse, with the mouse giving you far more control and faster action at the expense of it being in a pain to enter bullet time. But you don't have to choose your control scheme: you can switch between one or the other at will, and the game picks it up and moves pretty nicely despite all that. I ran Max Payne 3 at my monitor's native resolution of 2560x1440, and the GPU wasn't maxed out the entire time, though (as expected from an extra 200W of power draw) the room did get warm.

What's interesting is how little the CPU of my 6 year old Core i7 920 was taxed: despite the uploading to Google Photos in the background, I never noticed any jitter and slow down due to the number of background processes running (including the web-browser). In daily use, I notice the web browser slowing down as I can frequently out-type the blogger text-edit field! Clearly the web-browser guys can learn a lot from the video game guys about interactive application performance and latency.

Of course, for $3, I got my money's worth, but I can see now why the Uncharted series is so revered: even Rockstar games with (essentially) an unlimited budget cannot hold a candle to what Naughty Dog did on a relatively tiny budget. Though I guess if you're a PC-exclusive gamer without access to a PS3 or PS4, this is as good as it gets.

Review: The Annihliation Score

The Annihliation Score is Charlie Stross' latest laundry novel. I gave up on the Laundry series after The Apocalypse Codex, but the kindle sample for this latest installment was intriguing, and filled with enough changes that I bought it and read it.

The first change is that Bob Howard is no longer the protagonist/narrator. Instead, we get his wife, who's a much different character. The opening is entertaining, but unfortunately after a while Mo whines just a bit too much for me to enjoy the narrative. She's self-centered, unappreciative of her husband, and obviously headed towards a nervous breakdown as she becomes increasingly neurotic.

The series pivots towards superheroes as the latest manifestation of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, the rise of the old ones. A series of super-crimes results in the authorization of a government-mandated super hero team to fight crime. This could be fun and funny, but instead Stross chooses to emphasize the bureaucracy and cross-functional coordination mess (with Mo as the director) rather than the fun. And then he ends the novel with a reveal that actually undermines the entire premise, tying it off back to the laundry.

I bought the book hoping that it'd be a good change from the series so far, but it seemed to be a sideways shift, rather than a quantum leap in quality or even a major change in setting. As an airplane novel it's serviceable and probably much better than the usual dreck. Compared to the early laundry novels, it's disappointing.

Review: Exploring Calvin & Hobbes, An Exhibition Catalog

I'll admit that I'm a sucker for deals, so despite having had lousy success with comics in the past on the Kindle store, I picked up Exploring Calvin & Hobbes for $1.99 when it went on sale. So this is as much a review of the Kindle Cloud reader as it is the book.

As a book, this is decent stuff for $1.99. You get a long interview with Bill Watterson (which is unusual, since he doesn't usually do interviews). There's a lot of good stuff in there, especially his indictment of modern childhood:

Really, I suppose the biggest gift my parents gave me was a lot of time. There was never a sense that I should be doing something else. If I was up in my room drawing, nobody bothered me. That kind of time is just indispensable. It's not a luxury, it's an absolute requirement. You've got to mess around---it's the only way to figure stuff out. (Kindle Loc 15)

I drew a couple of strips where Calvin and Hobbes are sitting alone in the car while Calvin's mom or dad shops. My parents did that all the time when we were kids, but if you did it now, someone would call the police. I imagine today's readers wonder what's wrong with me that I'd draw something like that. (Kindle Loc 36)

 The book's marketing literature talks about how there are various notes on the panels, but disappointingly, those are the curator's notes, not Watterson's. By far the most frustrating thing about the Kindle Cloud reader is that it doesn't let me highlight text, or even copy/paste quotations (i retyped all the above quotations!). Needless to say, the search functionality is also missing, as is bookmarking. This makes me glad I didn't pay full price for this (or any other comic), as obviously my basic Kindle is useless for reading comics. What's annoying is that the full blown Windows client doesn't work on comics either!

If I was running Windows 8, I suppose I could attempt using the Kindle App, but as it is, I'm forced to browse back and forth to extract the quotes I reproduced above, which was quite frustrating.

Nevertheless, the long interview was worth the $1.99, and the extra cartoons and notes are just icing on the cake. Recommended for Watterson fans, though I suppose you could just check it out from the library for free.

Regardless: don't pay for Kindle comics. They're just not worth it. Sad to say, pirated comics probably deliver a much better user experience.

Review: Entwined (PS Vita)

Entwined is a Playstation exclusive art game. I imagine whoever picks the games to fund must have a fun job: it's a lot like being a VC in that you're largely picking teams on their potential, but the stakes are a lot lower, and the results are more about fun and diversity than purely about making money.

Not to say that the money isn't good. For instance, when Sony picked flow, Flower, and Journey to fund for the PS3, they ended up backing a game studio that's generated an experience that's unique among games, and that success was so profitable that Sony went on to port the game to all their other platforms.

I'm sure the same kind of thinking went into funding Entwined.  By essentially hiring fresh graduates from CMU, and pairing them with some veterans, they hoped that lightning would strike twice. Entwined uses a unique mechanic: essentially, you use the twin joysticks on the controller to control two different characters. Your characters then need to capture balls by running into them, and stay in certain zones that represent some form of tunnel. If you miss those zones, you lose energy (as displayed by a bar in your HUD). When you max out both characters' energies, they merge and you're rewarded by a free flight where you capture more colored balls with no chance of losing energy, and then it's onto the next level (there are 9 levels in all).

The game's hypnotic in a sense, as you gain tunnel vision while playing through a level. The music's beautifully written and complements the patterns. It's a very simple game, yet it commands your entire attention as the patterns you have to fly the characters in can vary, sometimes by moving in the same direction, but also sometimes flying in opposite directions or in complementary patterns. You can't ever die or lose completely, but as the levels get harder it's harder to sustain maximum energy, and so the game can get frustrating.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't quite work. There are two major flaws: first, the controls are very finicky, requiring you to hold tension in the joysticks for the entirety of a level. Since I first started playing this on the Vita, I thought it was because the Vita's joysticks were so small that I hurt my thumb. But when I switched to the Playstation TV's Dualshock 4, I suffered from the same issues. Playing more than one level at a time on this game is just asking for trouble.

The other part is the lack of story: both Flower and Journey had excellent stories with which to motivate the player through the experience. The visuals were beautiful, as was the music, but neither games suffered from the same frustrating control problems that Entwined did.

I didn't consider Entwined a waste of time, but I also picked it up as part of a Playstation Plus subscription. I can't find myself recommending this game to anyone who'd have to pay full price ($15). And even at a discount, you're better off playing Flower or Journey instead. Nevertheless, it's a good change of pace from the usually shooty-shooty bang bang games.

Review: Deadlight (PC)

The funny thing about PC gaming is that it's filled with deals, humble bundles, and what not. Because of those deals, I sometimes end up with games in my Steam library that I have no memory of how or why I bought them. Most of them turn out to be pretty crappy, while an occasional few turn out to be gems. Deadlight is one of the latter.

Deadlight has two things going against it: first, it's a puzzle platformer, and I usually dislike platformers. Secondly, it's got zombies. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty much done with zombies, and that's by itself a turn-off nowadays.

Against that, it has several things going for it. First of all, the art is gorgeous. This has to be one of the prettiest platformers I've seen. Most indie platformers for whatever reason take pains to look like retro-games from the 8-bit era, but I didn't pay for a high end video card to stare at pixelated garbage. The music is also well-executed. Far more importantly, however, is that the game's puzzles are logical. There were very few places where I couldn't think through a puzzle and figure out what I'm supposed to do. (Only 2 locations required me to youtube it, and after the reveals I did a face-palm every time) Because of this logical nature, I found myself drawn into the game, playing on and on for just one more level until I got to the end!

The story's fun, and even justifies some of the extreme platforming. Some of the reviews on Amazon complain about the latency of the controls, and indeed there are several sections where being off by a few milliseconds would force you to restart, and you'd just have to play over and over again in order to get through it. That's not so fun. But if even I can do it, it shouldn't impose a challenge for most players. It could also be that if you have a less than capable PC, the latency could be so bad that the game's unplayable. (I played with an XBox 360 wired controller: it's entirely possible that the game is worthless with keyboard and mouse, since it was originally designed for the XBox 360)

All in all, a worthy experience. There's no need to pay $15 for it though. Just get it as a humble bundle or steam sale, and don't pay more than about $5 for it. Recommended.

Review: The Order 1886 (PS4)

After the 25 hour epic Sleeping Dogs, I was in no mood for anything long. Fortunately, Amazon had a sale on The Order: 1886 for $19.95, so I placed an order. The Order 1886 has been severely criticized as having relatively little game play (i.e., a short game), while being heavily theatrical. I've learned that jaded game journalists who've played a ton of FPS twitch shooters tend to be very critical of games like this, but Among Thieves for instance was one of my favorite games on the PS3, so I tend to discount their criticisms, and just wait for a sale.

The Order: 1886 is a gorgeously rendered game.So much so that I actually bothered to learn to use the PS4's screen capture capability so I could upload a scene that looks like a gorgeous HDR photo:

The lighting, detail, and shadows are all perfectly rendered in jaw-dropping, stunning detail. The artists, voice actors, and musicians are all to be congratulated for the prettiest game I've seen on any platform yet. In many ways, the game evokes Myst, with vista after vista filling your eyes as you wander through the world it renders. You can hear your PS4's fans spinning away as the machine works away at giving you this output.

The game's background mythology is interesting: The Order, the Knights of the Round Table descended from the days of King Arthur himself, is charged with defending the empire from half-breeds (lycanthropes, vampires, and the like). The knights themselves are long-lived due to the powers of the grail, and are armed to the teeth by the likes of Nikola Tesla. You play Galahad, who investigates a mystery only to uncover corruption within The Order itself.

It's a nice setting, but I'm afraid the story doesn't do much justice to it: Galahad himself is unbelievable in how (I don't understand why writer after writer uses this stupid trope! On The Steel Breeze suffers from the same problem) he holds everything close to his chest, without even trusting his closest friends. As a result, when the betrayal comes, there's no one left to defend him. This makes no sense, and also telegraphs the plot from miles away, since the bad guys are so obviously protecting secrets.

The game play is very much like that of Uncharted (3rd person cover-shooting), but too filled with QTEs. Worse, the game commits the crime of taking control away from the player frequently at critical junctures, robbing him of both sense of control and sense of triumph.

Net net: unfortunately, the best thing about this game is that it's short, so it's not a waste of time. If you treat the shooting as the price you pay for being able to walk through the visuals, the game's pretty acceptable. It's definitely competent, and doesn't have the insane difficulty spikes that spoiled Drake's Deception for me.

In any case, I'd say that it's worth waiting for the price to drop to $10 or $5 before picking it up, though if you're looking for something to tide you over until Uncharted 4 comes out, $15 wouldn't be unreasonable.

Mildly recommended, mostly because it's so pretty.

6 Months Followup: PS4

I've now had the PS4 for 6 months, and it seems like a decent time to follow up. At that time, I said that it was a terrible time to buy a PS4, since the game didn't have decent media features, and there weren't a ton of must-have games out yet. The PS3 was a better deal at the time.

At this time, I will revise my opinion, and recommend the PS4 over the PS3 now. What changed? Sony added the following features to the PS4:

• Game suspend and resume. This is huge! I didn't realize how big a feature it was until it launched, and now I couldn't live without it. For one thing, it makes long games no longer a chore: even if the game doesn't provide a decent save feature (or good enough save points), you can always suspend the game, use "Rest Mode" on the PS4, and then resume uninterrupted the next time you boot up. Because the PS4 (especially with my Hybrid SSD upgrade) boots so much faster than a PC, it's become my favorite gaming box. Yes, the PC can hibernate (potentially), but I have yet to be able to do so consistently. Rest Mode does consume more power than a full power-off, but it's still cheap compared to my PC, which can't consistently hibernate without randomly turning on and draining power like crazy.
• The PS4 now supports DLNA and full on MP3/MP4/MKV/AVI support. This is very much welcome and now brings the PS4 up to par with the PS3. By the way, what this means now is that if you have a remote play capable device (including several Xperia phones, tablets, and the Vita), you now have access to your entire media library while traveling anywhere you have an internet connection. No monthly fees like Plex.

Visit any video game web-site and there'll be a bunch of people complaining that the PS4 has no games. The reality, however, is that there are plenty of games out now for the current generation platform, and the PS4 is arguably the best experience for those not willing to sink at least a thousand dollars into a desktop PC. And even that desktop PC, if it has to drive a high resolution monitor, might still not offer a nicer looking visual than a PS4 connected up to the TV. (The reason is that you tend to sit much closer to the PC than to the TV, and optimal viewing distance calculators will tell you why you need higher resolution whenever you sit closer)

There are folks who'd claim that you can build a gaming PC for about the same price as a PS4 (about $400). But every build I've seen neglects to include a Blu Ray player, for instance. We use the blu ray player quite a bit, so I'd say that the PS4 is still great value for money. And of course, you'd have to add another $50 for a Steam controller if you want the couch experience.

On top of that, as console programmers start to use the 8GB of DDR5 available on the PS4, I think we'll start to see low end video cards start to suffer from lack of VRAM. I think those who were disappointed by the relatively low-end specs of the PS4 are underestimating the bandwidth requirements that will be an issue in future games.

Add in remote play (coming to the PC in the fall in the form of SteamLink), a great controller, and the fact that you can current play Arkham Knight on the PS4 with a great experience but can't yet on the PC, and I think that Sony has made a compelling story for the PS4.

Review: Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition (PS4)

Sleeping Dogs is an open world game set in contemporary Hong Kong. The core game play is a Batman-style brawling mechanic with a side-dish of over-the-shoulder 3rd person based shooting. This is a striking combination of two of my favorite mechanics, and the game was on sale (both on Steam/$7 and on PS4/$15).

I bought this game after reading great reviews, and sat down to play it. And play it, and play it. The game's core mechanic as I mentioned before, was great, but what dropped my jaw is the story. If you're an Asian American male, by this point you're used to mainstream media constantly making Asian males (even protagonists played by Jet Li, for instance) effectively de-sexed characters:

Gene Cajayon, the Filipino American director of the 2001 film "The Debut," the first Fil-Am movie to be released nationwide in the United States, talks about the revised ending for the action movie "Romeo Must Die," a retelling of "Romeo and Juliet" where the R&B star Aaliyah plays Juliet to the Chinese actor Jet Li's Romeo. The original ending had Aaliyah kissing Li, a scenario that didn't test well with an "urban audience." So the studio changed it. The new ending had Aaliyah giving Li a tight hug. Says Cajayon, "Mainstream America, for the most part, gets uncomfortable with seeing an Asian man portrayed in a sexual light."

Well, the writers over at United Front Studios never got the memo. Wei Shen, the protagonist of Sleeping Dogs is virile, manly, and mould-breakingly gets laid with every date (NOTE: Like every video game out there aimed at a mainstream audience, there are no explicit sex scenes, but the dialogue heavily implies what's going on). No wonder the Publisher Square-Enix declared the game a financial failure despite it's amazing critical reviews. Shen is a Chinese American cop from San Francisco on loan to the Hong Kong police department because of his childhood connection with certain Triad members. As he infiltrates the gang and organization, he becomes torn between his personal loyalties to his childhood friends, his duty to the police organization, and his rising position as a "red pole" in the triad. This is a fairly familiar story to anyone who's watched any number of Hong Kong movies, but it's very well executed. In particular, Wei Shen is true to Chandler's statement: "the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world." The ending is satisfying, even if some aspects of it are predictable, and everything feels true to character. When Wei Shen goes to sleep, he wakes up with memories of recent events haunting him. You cannot help but empathize with what he's going through in order to do this job.

The game is very authentic. For instance, the opening of the game starts in Cantonese. And this isn't lousy Firefly-style acting, but the real deal. The accent is authentic, and by the end of the game you would have learned several choice Cantonese curses if you've been paying attention. Most of the storyline is in English, however, though certain characters who could never speak English would only speak in Cantonese while Wei Shen continues to reply in English (subtitles are provided for the non-Cantonese speakers, of course), which is completely acceptable.  Much of the English is also mixed in with Cantonese by the NPCs in authentic fashion. This is good stuff, and I did not expect it at all. Even the food you can get in the game (Pork Buns, Xiao Long Bao, etc) is authentic. And yes, every time you see Chinese characters in this game, they're correct!

The other parts of the game involving driving, car chases, gunshots and the stuff of epic movie-making, Hong Kong style. There are also side-missions where you do policeman-type duties (hostage crisis, car chases, and drug-busting, as well as serial killer investigations, etc) I didn't care too much about racing, so I didn't volunteer for too many races, but the ones I did were fun and more importantly to me, not set so hard that I got too frustrated. Even the collectible portion of the game isn't too frustrating, with the mini-map unlocking fairly early as a reward for going on dates with various women. As you unlock various martial arts moves and driving and shooting improvements, Wei Shen becomes more and more of a bad-ass. He can jump from a car to another to hijack another car. He can parkour with the best of them. At the highest level of martial arts, he starts making Wing Chun moves like Ip Man, one of my favorite modern martial arts movies. (There's even a costume to go with that!) Did I already mention, and he's good with the ladies? Oh, and he also has to do Karaoke a few times. One of the times he has to do it badly deliberately, and the animation is hilarious.

Speaking of combat: the game really comes into its own in the hand-to-hand martial arts combat. It's very reminiscent of the Jackie Chan movies where you can grab a person and use the environment to attack him. It beats the pants of all the other Batman-like games, including Shadows of Mordor. The opening foot chase sequence is also a lot of fun, and it's a pity that foot chases through a busy urban environment aren't used to as much effect in other games.

The game does have a few weaknesses. The early missions are exceedingly hard if you didn't run around and avail yourself of at least a couple of health upgrades, and drink/eat health and damage potions. This goes away fairly rapidly, but do spend some time looking for and upgrading your health and damage before going on any of the early missions. One of the DLC missions, Wheels of Fury, has a mission that stutters at sub-optimal frame rates, causing me to have to replay it a few times (it unlocks a car that even my wife said was a cool-looking car). The women Shen dates are all effectively one night stands,with no character development. In fact, one of the side mission has Shen stalking one of the women to see her cheating on him (she does, but yes, it's still a creepy thing to do and out of character for Shen) without there having any indication that there was a deeper relationship going on. Finally, the climax boss fight nerfs your hard-earned Dim Mak martial arts skill, which I thought was cheesy.

But these are nits. When I sat down to write the review of this game, I thought I'd write something like: "If you've ever complained about the portrayal of Asian men in media, put your money where your mouth is and buy this game." But now that I've thought it over, I realized that the statement would have been a disservice to this game. This is a superlative experience, well designed and executed in almost every way, and easily the best game I've played so far this year. That it's a few years old and hence relatively cheap makes it an amazing value. That it breaks every male Asian stereotype and makes mainstream America uncomfortable is simply icing on the cake. It deserves more success than it has had, and I have no compunctions about tagging it with my highest recommendations.

This one is worth every minute of its 25 hour+ play time (not including extended DLC content that comes as part of the definitive edition), and every penny of its full retail price ($18 on Amazon without any discounts). Buy it, and you'll play the heck out of it.

The definitive edition comes with 2 DLCs that are separated from the main game: Nightmare in North Point, and Year of the Snake. Both DLCs got lackluster reviews, but mostly for being short (90 minutes each). This is no big deal since you're getting it all packaged with the game anyway! Both DLC are somewhat interesting, though it's interesting that since I played them both after the main game they had a milder impact, since I didn't expect to be able to use any of the perks earned in the DLC in the main storyline! In any case, the lack of the RPG aspects in the DLC (you no longer earn any points towards powering up Wei Shen) means you're less likely to do side quests, but on the other hand, the game's core game play is still fun that the game hardly needs to bribe you into picking up the controller and playing the heck out of it. I wouldn't buy the DLC if I had to pay full price, however, so only pick it up if you're picking up the definitive edition for the PC or PS4.

Review: Superman - The High Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero

I will confess that I've always been much more of a Batman fan than I have been a Superman fan. Most of the reason is that from a literary point of view, there's nothing that Superman can't do, and the power-creep that's happened over the years means that I can't ever read a Superman story without feeling like he's not even threatened. And cynical me, I never believed that he would stay dead during the "Death of Superman" sequence.

Larry Tye's Superman is not so much a Superman story, however, but a story of the people involved in the media empire behind the work. It's a much more interesting story than most Superman stories. For instance, I knew that Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel were Jewish, but I didn't know any of the background behind Mort Weisinger and Julian Schwartz, who edited and published most of the Superman stories I remember reading as I grew up.

Furthermore, I never actually understood the stories behind the legal battles between Shuster and Siegel and DC Comics. Tye laid it all out, and I'm afraid nobody really comes out of it smelling good, but the facts are all there. I also never watched any of the early Superman cartoons, TV series, or even some of the later ones (such as Lois and Clark).

In recent years, Superman's movies and reboots have been unsatisfying to me, so I haven't paid any attention to them. This book won't change my mind, but it does explain to me why America has consistently found Superman to be an important part of its zeitgeist.

Recommended.

Review: Playstation TV

I wasn't going to buy a Playstation TV, but a recent deal at $40 made me try it. The PS TV is basically a Playstation Vita with no touch screens or cameras but a HDMI output port. The missing touch screens essentially mean that the PS TV is incompatible with many Vita games, including many that make full use of the PS TV's features. The use of a PS3 or PS4 dual shock controller , however, means that you can use the PS4 remote play feature without using the awkward touch-screen substitutes that the PS Vita requirement, so that's a worthy trade-off. The HDMI output also means that you can use a large monitor or TV as a display, which is very nice.

Note that by comparison, the Steam Link, which enables similar remote play functionality for a gaming PC, is about $50. By contrast, the Steam Link doesn't come with a controller (and neither does the PC), which means you pretty much need the $50 controller. If you have a PS4, of course, you already have a controller.

In practice, set up is tricky. It turns out that by default, if you enable "direct link", the remote play tries to use a WiFi access point that's generated by the PS4 to directly connect with the PS4. This works if you set up the PS TV close enough to the PS4 that the connectivity is strong. However, if you setup the PS TV just at the edge of the PS4's wifi range, the connectivity sucks and your latency, display quality, etc just goes to hell.

The corrective action needed is to disable direct access, but you can only do that from the PS4 via the configuration screen for remote play. It's a bit counter-intuitive, and Sony should have enabled that kind of control from the PS TV. Once that's been resolved, you can either use your general Wifi network, or directly plug into the ethernet port for real remote play.

Remote play is fairly acceptable. There's significant input lag, which isn't really visible for most slow games (such as any strategy games, etc), but is significant in Sleeping Dogs during driving sequences, for instance. Strangely enough, in that game, the shooting and martial arts sequences don't seem to suffer from the lag whatsoever!

One interesting thing about plugging in the PS TV to a computer monitor is that the HDMI output is also intended to carry sound. However, you can get around that by using a bluetooth headset, which works very well.

When playing local games (e.g. Sonic Transformed), nearly all the input lag goes away. However, the lower resolution of the source material is also immediately apparent on a 1080p display. It's a trade-off in either case.

All in all, the PS TV is a good way to access your PS4 remotely. At full price, it's not a good deal, but at a discount ($40 or less), I think it's a useful accessory to a PS4 in a household with more than one TV, or where the PS4's main display might be used for other purposes on a semi-frequent basis. The local play feature is icing on the cake, but beware that not all Vita games (including many that I consider are best examples of what the Vita is capable of) are compatible with it!

Recommended.

Review: Velocity 2X (PS Vita, PS4)

I picked up Velocity 2X as part of the Playstation Plus free games package, and was surprised by how much I played it, and hence feel confident enough to write a review for it, despite it now looking rather unlikely that I will finish the game.

Velocity 2X is an unlikely combination of 2 genres: the space-based vertical-scrolling shooter, and the side-scrolling platformer. The two of them work together in interesting ways. For instance, you might start one puzzle in space ship mode, only to have to dock and go into side-scrolling mode in order to complete the puzzle.

The game does a fairly good job of bringing you up to speed with the controls: first, you start with basic shooting and teleporting, and then puzzles(gates), bombs, and then bookmarks are introduced. The bookmarks enable the developer to construct complex levels where you'll have to backtrack in order to achieve higher scores and explore the entire level. The side-scrolling mode has its own puzzles, as well as tools, so you get introduced to them as well.

The game's well done, in that the difficulty level isn't set high, and it only gets hard if you want to say, pick up every crystal, or finish the level in the fastest possible time in order to achieve a gold medal or what-not. I'm largely immune to this types of in-game lures, but if you're not, then you're probably going to replay levels over and over again in order to hit those achievements.

Where the game falls down, however, is that it level-locks later levels to a total achievement score! That effectively forces you to go and replay levels until you get enough points to let you keep going in the game. If this was a mobile game, I'd expect there to be a micro-transaction engine reminding you over and over again that you can buy your way past those artificial barriers. Unfortunately, this is a full-priced game with a retail price (on amazon for $19.99) for the PC version. (I'm sure you can find it for $5 on a steam sale) That makes me scratch my head. Why would you punish your purchasers by locking out content in order to grind the same levels over and over again if you've already got their money?!!! Clearly the game designers think that the only people who might buy such a game are those who have an infinite amount of time to replay content they've already played once.

Because of this stupid decision, I can't recommend the game at full price. If you can get it for under $5 on a steam sale it's worth a shot if you think you'll like the combination of elements, but otherwise, it's a take-it-or-leave it game. That's a pity, because without the cap, I'd probably play the game to completion. As it is, I'm stuck in one of the later levels with no desire to replay all the previous levels.

Review: On the Steel Breeze

On the Steel Breeze is Alastair Reynolds' follow-up to Blue Remembered Earth. I call it a follow-up rather than a sequel, because it doesn't depend very much on reading Blue Remembered Earth, and Blue Remembered Earth's characters (with one exception) do not play much of a part in this novel.

I'm of two minds about this novel. First of all, the point-of-view character, Chiku Akinya, is a thoroughly unlikeable person. She's secretive, makes poor decisions, and trusts, no one, not even her family. She's faced with a dilemma, with knowledge that the generation ship she's on is headed to a destination already occupied by a human-created AI with no intention of letting humans settle in. Furthermore, prior automated machines and sensors sent there in advance to prepare the planet for settlement has been lying to humanity for ages. Rather than trust humanity to do something useful with that knowledge, she keeps it to herself and does her best to let no one else know about it, even though if at any point she had died, humanity would have been screwed. It's clear that Reynolds doesn't know how to build plausible characters, and this main character basically reflects the worst of science fiction's traits: the inability to fit decent characters into a plot-driven narrative.

On the other hand, the world building is great. Reynolds does a good job exploring how you could build a caravan of colony ships, complete with ecosystems and planned hibernation setups. The world of Crucible and its solar system is interesting as well, as is the state of the civilized space in the Sol system.

Unfortunately, there are plot-points one after another in the novel that just destroy the believability of the novel. For instance, we are led to believe that humanity would build a caravan of colony ships with deliberately under-supplied engines, trusting that new technologies would be invented during transit that would enable the ships to brake and orbit the target system. That sounds insane to anyone, and is unbelievable.

The net net is that On the Steel Breeze is a much poorer novel than Blue Remembered Earth, and even worse, it doesn't supply a payoff to the major mysteries introduced in the setup, expecting you to read the sequel with the novel ending on a cliff-hanger.

It pains me to say this since I'm a huge Reynolds fan: but stay away from this book at all costs unless the sequel has come out and you're prepared to spend the time reading both books at once. Not recommended.