Game review: Heat Signature

Heat Signature is, at its core, a stealth game about breaking into spaceships and doing various unpleasant things to the people aboard them. Or it can be an action game about breaking into spaceships and doing unpleasant things to the people aboard them, if you'd rather.

The story in this one is minimal, at best - there's a bit of backstory to the whole thing, and an ultimate conclusion you're working towards, but the two combined make up about 15 minutes. If you read particularly slowly. It's a bit weird to me that I like it anyway, since I typically prefer elaborate stories, but then I can make plenty of amusing stories of my own in describing how I managed to pull off the latest impossible missions.

On that note, the core of the game is the missions you take; these can involve assassinating someone, stealing something, rescuing someone, or capturing someone. You can use whatever combination of guns, teleporters, grenade launchers, hacking devices, or other gadgets you prefer to break through the locked doors in each ship preventing you from getting to your target. Each ship is also guarded by crew with various gadgets of their own, who will be all too happy to shoot you and throw your dying body out the airlock if they see you.

What makes it incredibly fun is the creativity this fosters. With a clever combination of gadgets, it's possible to bust through an entire ship without even being seen - or one could just take a pile of guns and ammo and kill everything on that same ship. Finding clever solutions to some of the more difficult missions is a great way to feel accomplished... although there are also moments when a stupid misclick costs one quite a bit, too. I highly recommend it.

NaNoWriMo update

So the good news is that I've gotten a lot of the preparatory work that I wanted done by now, and I still have two more days in which to do more of it.

The bad news is that none of that prep work has been any of the blog posts that I had intended to write so that I could keep my blog online during November. (In line with every other November tradition, I've apparently decided that now was exactly the right time for me to catch up on old webcomics, old games, and everything else that is going to take up all of my spare free time which I should be using on writing or writing prep.)

I'm still going to try to keep it up, but I'm going to go to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule. The first two will almost certainly be game reviews, and the last will be a novel excerpt. At least that's the plan... we'll see how many of the posts I need for that plan actually get written in the next two days, and how many I'm willing to write during the month.

Book Journal: Ghost Fleet

There's a damn good reason this book has been on basically every flag officer reading list I've seen since it was published. Thinking about the extent to which events might actually turn out this way in a real war - and how to either stop it from doing so or helping it along, depending on which side one represents - is arguably the more important part of many military officers' jobs.

It certainly helps that the book makes a strong effort to track actual trends in technology and politics. There are even footnotes to point out the bits and pieces of tech that are either real or inspired by real things. The book is ultimately near-future science fiction, so there's still some stuff in here that is not real (yet, at least), but there's a lot that is. Its use of military terminology - at least as it applies to my own knowledge - uses almost all of the correct terms but still rings a bit false. Overall, it paints a very convincing picture of what its war might look like.

The characterization is... interesting, I suppose. On one hand, it's nice to have characters with interesting quirks, and to make sure that there's no clear division between good guys and bad guys, both of which the book does. However, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of effort spent on character development; while there are some complicated characters, the book doesn't spend time on how or why they've changed. It's kind of understandable, given the time the book spends on talking about technology instead, but it still seems like a flaw. Given that, I'm not sure how much appeal the book will have to people who are neither in the military nor interested in cutting edge tech. It's a serviceable war story, but those aren't exactly rare.

I certainly enjoyed it a lot, though.

Migration Patterns

The title of this article on the caravan of migrants heading towards the southern border of the US rather neatly sums up one of the things I was thinking about the issue: "This Isn’t the First Migrant Caravan to Approach the U.S. What Happened to the Last One?"

After all, if this caravan really is supposed to be a threat to our sovereignty, or anything similarly hyperbolic, then how did we survive the last one?

As tempting as it is to just let that rhetorical question stand on its own, it's probably best if we look at the details a bit more closely. What happened to previous caravans suggests that only a fraction of this one will actually end up at the US border (although a fraction of a caravan this size will still be somewhere around two thousand people). Most of those people will request asylum, and a majority of the people that start that process will get past the first step. At that point, most of them will end up living and working in the US while they wait for their cases to work their way through immigration courts. Most of those asylum seekers will eventually be denied; I don't have particularly good data about how many of those will try to stay in the US anyway, but even if all of them did, it wouldn't increase the number of illegal immigrants entering in a given year by very much.

It's possible that this iteration will be slightly different - maybe the larger size of this group just means there are more people that won't qualify for asylum, so there'll be a smaller percentage that gets past that first step, for one example - but I doubt it'll be significantly different.

I can see how someone looking at that chain of events might be a little bit annoyed, given that it clearly offers chances for people to stay here longer than our laws permit, but I also don't think the opposition I've seen to the caravan has really thought through what our options are to stop that from happening. For better or for worse, our law does have provisions for people to request asylum, and most of the people in previous examples have followed those provisions. Finding technicalities and excuses to deny them entry, or forcing them to go through additional hardships while they're in the US, or any other method that preserves that option to request assistance on paper while removing that option in practice, just makes us look like we're not willing to keep our promises. Or makes us look like we're not brave enough to admit that we actually want less immigration, period.

Of course, we could just change the law so that people like this can't request asylum, or make the standards for granting asylum stricter (as Attorney General Sessions did). It's not quite that simple, though... that does basically say that we want to allow fewer immigrants (legal or not) and provide aid to fewer people. There are plenty of people in the US who don't want that to be the message we send to the rest of the world, and who are quite willing to both advocate for and vote based on that opinion.

Gender Identity Posts

I'm actually not going to bother writing much of a post today. Instead, here are some quotes from some good articles about one particular controversy that came up a few days ago.

New York Times - Trump Cannot Define Away My Existence

"Redefining us won’t make us go away. It won’t restore your world to its precious, boring binary — which, I hate to tell you, never existed in the first place.
All it will do is make people suffer."

New York Times - Intersex, and Erased Again

"I’ve experienced firsthand the consequences of the gender binary in what’s often a non-binary world. It isn’t good for anyone. Certainly not trans people, but also not for a population that’s larger than many think — and that has spent years trying to convince people that our bodies are good enough as they are."

Scientific American - Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum

"Biological sex, on the other hand, appears to leave less room for debate. You either have two X chromosomes or an X and a Y; ovaries or testes; a vagina or a penis. Regardless of how an individual ends up identifying, they are assigned to one sex or the other at birth based on these binary sets of characteristics. But of course, sex is not that simple either."

Shared Values and Goals

By now, I'm sure everyone has seen some variation of the debate about whether or not it's possible to be friends with someone you disagree with politically. Usually, I see the right wing downplaying some of the statements and positions from their side as not worth ending friendships over while the left wing points out that they have no intention of being friends with people that don't care about their basic human rights. (There is a version where the right wing types refuse to be friends with anti-American traitors or something like that, but it's less common.)

Inasmuch as I think either side is always right, I tend to side with the idea that people can and will break friendships over politics... but that's largely because I think that people can and will break friendships for almost any reason whether it's good or bad. "I don't want to" is a perfectly valid reason not to be friends with someone, frankly. 

That said, I also don't think people are under any obligation to break friendships because of politics. I think there will often be situations in which maintaining the friendship is extremely difficult (and possibly not worth the trouble), but there will also be situations in which it's possible. There does have to be some level of mutual respect, and ideally some sort of shared values, though.

Let's use healthcare as an example. Depending on how we define the terms, what the two parties want is quite different: one wants the government as far away as possible from the funding for and operations of our healthcare system, the other thinks the government could do a much better job than what we've currently got. From a different perspective, though, what both parties want is the same: a well-funded healthcare system that improves life expectancy and general welfare for the population.

It may or may not always be easy to focus on the similarities, admittedly. There are often going to be disputes about whether one side or the other is being honest with themselves and the other side about the likelihood of their policies actually reaching the stated goals, to provide one example. But if the decision is made to try and maintain the friendship, those similarities can provide a bond to focus on, even if both parties have to avoid talking about their disagreements.

However, there may be circumstances where no shared goals can be found. Most of the examples I can readily think of involve religious values, because I think those change the way we define a good result in ways that may be hard for the other side to understand or agree with, but I'm sure there are other examples. Even then maintaining a friendship isn't impossible, but I'd expect it would be extraordinarily difficult in that case.

Video Evidence

Today's article from the New York Times isn't the first time someone has brought up digital manipulation of videos and the very realistic fake videos that can be created, but that doesn't make it any less worrying.

That said, I'm actually not as worried as one might expect about the prospect of larger numbers of more convincing fake videos. It will require people to be more cautious, basically, because even the most well-made fake videos still have to explain where the video was made and why it was made. These are details that can be checked and used to determine whether a video is real or not, regardless of how real it looks. And frankly, even if we know the person actually was at an interview at the right place and time, asking them what they actually intended to say and which remarks they're willing to stand behind is certainly a thing we can do.

I certainly don't hold out much hope that people will actually do that sort of additional checking, given that we can't even seem to get a handle on existing sources of fake news. However, I don't think fake videos of this type will add that much more damage over what we've already got.

The concern about it being easier for anybody to disavow things they've actually been recorded saying is actually more of a concern for me. There aren't a whole lot of good ways to prove that a recording that's been made actually is real in the face of the subject claiming it isn't. Basically, the only option we'd have is the same as the above - ask them what they're willing to stand behind, and if that answer keeps changing, then that's the best we're going to get as far as figuring out how honest they are.

Online Reliability

Here's yet another article about new and interesting ways to try and stop the spread of fake information online!

... Okay, that might come off as a bit unnecessarily sarcastic. I actually sort of like the points this article makes about how our reputations are supposed to act as a check on the bad information we spread, and how social media and its different norms about reputation and endorsements have made that check less useful. Attempting to correct that by thinking of new ways to force people to put their own reputations on the line and consider what we know about others' reputations is a worthwhile goal, and there certainly are systems that can help us do that if we're willing to use them.

However, this article doesn't really acknowledge the declining trust people have in sources of information outside their own circles. That's the other reason - arguably the bigger reason - why accusations of fake news have become so common, and trying to spread more fact checking isn't going to help with that part unless the organizations controlling it are trusted by both sides. There aren't any organizations I can think of that would fit the bill, unfortunately.

In the end, such a system would almost certainly end up either being exploited by whichever faction made up the majority of its users, chasing acceptability at the expense of ignoring partisan falsehoods, or trying to be honest and complete and becoming hated by one side or the other for rightfully denouncing their lies. I certainly think we should try to have such things - eventually I think we'll figure out how to make one that actually can earn everyone's trust - but it's not going to be quick or easy. 

The Costs of Climate Change

It hardly surprises me that there are a lot of people, in the wake of the IPCC's most recent report on climate change, who are looking for any reason they can find to downplay the information and recommendations. The Wall Street Journal, for example, had an editorial on that topic; I would summarize their position as "we can't do enough to fix the problem, so why should we waste time and money trying?"

There's a quote that I like as far as a response to that goes. I can't claim credit for it myself, and it certainly wasn't originally intended as a contribution to the climate change debate (it's originally from a web comic), but it still fits this situation extremely well:

"Then get started now. 'There is too much to do' is a terrible excuse for doing nothing."

To be entirely fair, there are parts of the WSJ's editorial which lean more towards the idea that the limited effect we can have on climate change isn't worth the large amounts of money we'd need to spend on the effort. Given that, it argues, we should just focus on increasing our economic and technological strength to put ourselves in a better position to deal with the problem once it actually is at a point where we have no choice.

This is a much more defensible point, but in the end I think even it falls short, because it relies too much on the idea that the necessary changes we'll need to make to adjust for climate change will be simpler and easier at some point. I don't think that's a reasonable belief. Some of the research and development might be a bit easier, but rebuilding our entire power and transportation infrastructure is going to be expensive no matter when we choose to do it. And either way, it's going to take time; putting it off for too long seems like a bad idea for exactly the same reason that waiting until one is already at war to build up their military is a bad idea. Even if the changes we need are more expensive than the damage from doing nothing, I think getting ahead of the problem is probably worth that price.

Novel Writing Prep

National Novel Writing Month is coming up yet again!

I am going to try and keep the blog going, even during NaNoWriMo. (Also, as tempting as it might be to count all the words I write in a day towards my count, even if they're on my blog and not my novel, that would definitely be cheating.) I probably will try and post short sections from the novel I'm writing on the blog every week, but we'll see how well I can actually pick out interesting sections to excerpt. I'm also probably going to try and write some game and anime reviews for stuff I've already played or watched now so that I can just use that backlog rather than having to write new stuff during the month, which means there's going to be a lot more of that and a lot less political commentary during November.

The novel I'm writing this year is going to be a fantasy adventure type of story focusing on a group of investigators trying to survive a trap-filled ancient temple. I have a very good idea of the traps and monsters in the temple, but a bit less detail about the actual protagonists, so I've still got a bit of prep work to do before November.

Book Journal: The Honorverse

The only bad thing about a new Honorverse book is that now I have to read some of the previous entries and remind myself what's been going on... actually never mind, that's a good part.

The Honorverse is a science fiction series written by David Weber - it follows the adventures of Captain (at least at first) Honor Harrington of the Royal Manticoran Navy - which is probably best thought of as the British Navy from the age of sail, except in space. Over the course of 19 books (as of the latest release) and three wars spanning 20 years in the setting, she goes from being the captain of a single ship to being one of the most influential admirals in the entire galaxy.

Weber's skill at world building is on full display here; the companion book describing the creation and organization of the Royal Manticoran Navy draws heavily on the wide variety of real world skills that his friends, advisers, and fans of the series possess. Including stuff from the Naval War College's curriculum about the theory behind how navies and fleets are organized (or so it claims). Some people probably don't like the fact that most of his books only ever get to one or maybe two major battles, since they spend so much time on the political maneuvering and background details leading up to those battles, but I like the detailed breakdown of all the events surrounding each battle, myself. There certainly are some unrealistic parts; there isn't any actual science that I'm aware of behind their hyperdrives or a lot of their gravity manipulation, but that's not a problem for me.

One of the other nice details is that there are fairly clear bits and pieces that are inspired by politics and governments in the real world, but it's still rather difficult to pick out anyone who is all good or all bad. There are some science fiction authors I can think of who quite clearly like one side or the other; all their heroes and villains are clearly on the side they like or dislike. A lot of them still write good books, but it's kind of jarring and irritating to read depictions of politicians or activists who are clearly based on the misinterpretations of their opponents. These books generally manage to avoid that fate, as far as I'm concerned.

Which brings me to the reason why this is one of my favorite series of all time, and why I think it's going to remain so for a long time: It's had a significant impact on a lot of things in my real life. Between the degree to which its world building is based on some real political and economic theories, and the extent to which it avoids reducing either side to a complete parody, it certainly feels a lot safer to draw lessons out of this stuff compared to any number of other books. And the depictions of various military leaders are frankly inspiring - and detailed enough in their priorities, outlook, and demeanor to be worth emulating.

Given that, it should come as little surprise that I literally never fail to mention this series if anyone ever asks me for book recommendations.

Game Review: Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet

Yeah, I'm still playing around in Sword Art Online's universe. It's not going to end anytime soon either, since even after stuff like this there's a new season of the anime that just started airing. (Incidentally, having read the light novels, I'm quite certain the new season will be awesome.)

I've never really cared that much about the various Sword Art Online games, admittedly (Fatal Bullet is not the first one they've created). A lot of single player games that attempt to mimic massively multiplayer games end up with a lot of useless "chat" or "friend list" features that serve no actual purpose, and force the player to deal with threats balanced for a 4 person party... with one actual person and three AI characters that range from stupid to horribly stupid. It would be more understandable if there actually was an option to play with friends, but there usually isn't anything like that.

Which does actually bring me to my first complaint, since Fatal Bullet has indeed lived down to my expectations in that regard. I would love to experiment with different builds more, and try to work with new people and come up with interesting party setups, but it mostly just feels kind of pointless when the only customization the rest of my party can manage is me selecting from a predefined list. The only good thing that can be said for this part is that I knew what I was getting myself into from the beginning, so it softened the blow a bit.

Luckily, it does turn out that there's a really good character customization system built into the game. It's not just a matter of setting height, weight, eye color, or even the more precise options for just about every physical trait imaginable - there's also a system for modifying (okay, mostly just recoloring, but still) a lot of the gear items as well. My character could look quite different from someone else's even if we had the exact same items equipped; that's always a nice option to have.

As for the gameplay itself... It's at least okay. A lot of the reviews I read compared it to Phantasy Star Online 2 (mostly in the context of "you should probably play this instead", to be fair) and I have to say the comparison is quite apt both in good and bad respects. On the negative side, there's a lot of time spent farming and grinding to find the exact gear you actually want to use, and the story doesn't feel especially elaborate or compelling (yet, at least). But, wandering through the wilderness shooting everything that moves does manage to be fun most of the time, and there's enough interest in exploring the various areas and finding secrets to keep me from dropping it. Also this game actually lets the player jump across gaps, unlike PSO.

In the end, I think I have to agree with the reviews that say it's probably not worth it unless one is either an SAO fan, or the game is on sale - ideally both. Anyone that liked PSO or PSO2 should like this as well, but the SAO brand probably doesn't add enough to make it worth playing this instead of those games.

Community Solutions

There was a very nice op-ed in the NYT today about community organizations working together to solve various problems in their communities. It hits a lot of points that I see a lot when we're looking at successful interventions: careful analysis of data and results, focusing on specific goals and methods designed to reach them, and accepting incremental gains and imperfect solutions rather than trying to focus on the one perfect solution that will fix everything if we can actually get it to work.

Which raises an interesting question: Why aren't more people doing this?

Part of the problem is simple awareness. People can't try to use solutions they're not aware of - which is why seeing this sort of article is always a rather nice thing. Some of it is uncertainty. Trying an unfamiliar solution is always a risk, since it's sometimes difficult to to know whether or not it will work better than what one is already doing.

One of the bigger problems, though, is resources. Most places don't have the money to throw at every possible solution in the hopes that one of them will work. Some of them don't have the money they need to address basic services; paying even more than that to help fix the problems that causes is not likely to happen anytime soon. Most liberals, of course, look at that problem and ask why we're not having the government fund programs like this - but, of course, there's a bit of an ongoing debate about whether the government should take things like this on.

Believe it or not, I think the concerns about spending government money on this are partially valid. Part of the reason programs like this work are because they are community driven programs; it's entirely reasonable to worry that a program run by the federal government would not be able to connect with the necessary people in the community. And there's a legitimate desire to make sure the government is spending its money on useful things that makes turning the government into a funding source with almost no control (or oversight) a problematic idea.

In the end, though, I think those problems can be overcome. It would take leadership and an electorate that was willing to trust each other and their government a bit more to even build a system where we could pay for these things without demanding too much control, certainly. But I think that's a more likely possibility than assuming that private charities and donors will step up to cover the cost of these things on a wider scale than we're currently doing.

Apocalyptic Language

One of the common complaints about political discourse is that everything is too extreme, too hostile, and so on. It really isn't surprising that it's quite a bit harder to compromise when both sides regard the other as an existential threat.

The problem is that both sides, even as they're wishing for civility and compromise, seem to have no problem with being uncivil if they're sufficiently provoked. Frankly, hard as it may seem to believe, that's probably even a good thing; asking people not to react strongly regardless of the provocation is neither fair nor helpful. And probably not possible either.

However, if we're deciding that some degree of incivility is acceptable, we do have to come up with some kind of standard for when it's justified, and we have to apply that standard fairly to both sides. A significant part of the current problem is that both sides might as well be determining whether any particular expression is justified or not based on who's engaging in it - everything their side does is acceptable, and everything the other side does is not. Even when someone agrees that their side has done something wrong, the unacceptable things they can find from their own side (assuming they're even looking for them) are the exceptions and the extremists that nobody listens to, whereas the unacceptable things they find from the other side (which they are generally looking for quite closely) are evidence that the other side really is just that vile.

That tribalism both gives people an endless stream of reasons to keep turning the intensity up (since their opponents are constantly being unjustifiably uncivil) and convinces them not to back down themselves (since anything that might be called uncivil on their side is justifiable). Trying to call other people out for not having good standards quickly becomes problematic, since it's basically inevitable that the target of such criticism will seize on any ways in which their attacker has been uncivil and use them in turn to argue that their attacker isn't helping either. Those debates are rarely helpful; it's not easy to analyze every decision and debate point that's being made to determine who's less justified.

In the end, the only solution I see is for everyone to be very careful about their own critical thinking skills, even if that is a bit of an unsatisfying answer given how easy that is to say and how hard it is to do. There are times when apocalyptic language is called for, but we should all be very careful about when and why we do that.

Detecting Lies

One of the points that's come up in the debate about whether Judge Kavanaugh should be confirmed or not is the question of how well we can or can't tell whether he or Dr. Ford are lying based on their temperaments.

The short answer is no, we can't. Picking apart verifiable facts is an excellent way to catch liars at it; looking for tells in their behavior largely isn't. This article lays out several reasons for that, ranging from the fact that what people look for is quite subjective to the fact that we don't have any good way to check whether our past judgments have been accurate or not. Even those people whose jobs rely on detecting lies aren't always good at being able to tell who's lying without being able to check other facts.

That conclusion goes against what most people believe about lying and spotting liars, at least as far as I know. If nothing else, a lot of the stories we tell ourselves are filled with the wise investigators and clever gamblers who can see right through their fellow people. Even if I'd be willing to agree that some of those people might exist, most of us aren't like that, and I suspect people who are that perceptive are rarer than we'd all prefer.

The conclusion does not, however, go against my personal experience - because I've been caught out by a liar or two in my life, and reflecting on those moments definitely does make me think about how difficult it was to spot them at it. It was incredibly tricky to figure out even after I had reasons to be suspicious and was watching the people in question as carefully as I knew how. And in the end, it still wasn't any kind of insight into what they looked or acted like when they were lying that got them caught - it was the facts about what they were doing versus what they were saying that got me to realize I was still being lied to. So I have no problem agreeing with the various studies that suggest catching liars on temperament alone is an extremely hard thing to do.

Game review: Arcade Spirits (Part 1)

So this time I'm actually reviewing a game that's not out for the general public yet. This is possible because I supported the game's creator on Patreon, so I got access to the closed beta test. Yes, this probably means I'm a bit predisposed to like the game, if for no other reason than that I'd hate for something I supported that way to turn out bad.

That's also why this is marked as part 1. I haven't played through the full game yet, and couldn't even if I had devoted more time to trying out the beta given that the full game doesn't exist yet. So there will be another review of this game at some point in the future once I've had the chance to actually play the full version.

Everything I've seen so far is positive, though. Arcade Spirits is a visual novel, set in a fictional alternate reality in which the video game crash in the 80's never happened, which means that gaming and arcades are much more of a mainstream pursuit than they are in the world we actually live in. It's partly romantic comedy and partly a rather serious drama about chasing one's dreams. It also features an alignment system of sorts (which players of some RPG computer games may recognize) - your choices give you points towards a variety of character traits, as well as relationship points with the other characters, and as the story proceeds, that starts to have an impact on how everyone reacts to the main character.

The biggest single point in this game's favor, of course, is Stefan Gagne's writing. He's responsible for writing a lot of the game's story, and I've liked everything he's written ever since I first read one of his stories. The worlds he's built are interesting and amusing by turns, and the characters he puts in them have very realistic strengths and weaknesses - he always avoids giving his characters the idiot ball for no reason, but also doesn't have any boring invincible heroes that I can remember offhand. And the dialogue choices are written in such a way that you can tell what type of person you're going to be, but it's not obvious to the point of parody. That's a common flaw with alignment systems like this game's, but this one avoids it to at least some extent.

One of the other interesting details, though, is the character customization options and how they affect the romantic options. Or rather - how they don't. I haven't actually reached any of those story lines yet, but from what I understand the player is free to romance whoever they like, regardless of what gender they picked for their character. That's not common, and it's kind of refreshing to see it treated as utterly normal and unremarkable.

As for the rest of it, I guess we'll see. Everything I've seen makes me think I'll like this one, though, and I strongly recommend at least giving the demo a look.

Game Review: Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

One of the problems with this review is that I'd like to open with a concise summary, and phrasing it in a way that doesn't leave an overly negative impression is going to be difficult. Shantae and the Pirate's Curse was fun to play, and I think it was worth what I paid for it, but it did benefit a bit from some low expectations on my part.

The game's main character (Shantae, of course) is a dancer (okay) who is also a half-genie (?) whose primary weapon is whipping enemies with her hair (!?)... and that's not even in the top five most ridiculous things this game comes up with. There are a lot of comedies that would lose me very quickly by being this ridiculously stupid, but this game managed to consistently land on the right side of the line between hilariously stupid and just being stupid. Probably by virtue of sheer audacity; it's pretty much impossible to expect anything serious out of this one. 

As a platforming game, it's acceptable. Certainly it's not much of a challenge given that I've been playing games like Celeste recently, but it had enough tricky boss fights and platforming to keep me from getting too bored and managed to avoid being difficult for the wrong reasons (e.g. control issues). The exploration aspects probably would have been a bit more interesting if I hadn't already known where everything was (my introduction to the series was watching other people play it), but there's not much I can do about that at this point, nor is it an actual problem with the game.

In the end, as I mentioned at the beginning - I enjoyed the time I spent playing, and I think I got my money's worth. But there's also nothing here that makes this game exceptional, at least as far as I'm concerned. If you're looking for a quick, not too challenging, and amusingly stupid 2D platformer, it'll do. But if you're looking for something more engaging, this game probably isn't what you're looking for.

League of Legends Worlds 2018

The League of Legends World Championships start today! And unlike some other things that are called the world championships (I'm looking at you, World Series) this is actually a worldwide affair, with teams coming from 14 different regions, some of which represent multiple nations.

My decision about which team to back is pretty strongly based on country loyalty. Which basically means I want the US and Japanese teams to do well and don't want the Chinese and Russian teams to succeed. Then again, it also has something to do with cheering for the underdogs and not wanting some of the people who have always been on top to keep winning - which is why I'd prefer if Korea didn't do great despite generally liking them.

... Of course, I'm not likely to get much of what I want. Japan is doing better than average at an international tournament if they actually manage to win a game, and that's not likely to change this year. The US teams typically just barely fail to accomplish anything useful - which means Cloud 9's victory in the very first game played at Worlds is likely just getting all their fans worked up before we ultimately choke. And the Koreans have never done poorly, ever; only the Chinese teams have managed to take any tournaments off of them and that only recently. I suppose at least the Russians are probably going to lose, so at least I get a little of what I want.

Unfortunately I also don't get to watch in person, since tickets for these events sold out in minutes. I suppose I can hope to find someone selling their tickets (likely at a significant mark-up) but I might have to just watch from home.