..works best on small screens!
Brad | 86 Posts
Shades of Game is a collection of thoughts, essays, podcasts and posts about games, fiction, media, and culture.
gamerdad
Pink Books Go Wild
gamerdad Don’t ask me why I never bought this book when I saw it on the discount rack at Chapters, but I didn’t and so ultimately (after it stuck in my craw for long enough) I bought the audiobook version and have been diving into the strange parallel reality of this little science fiction meets dramatic character story.

I honestly don’t have a great sense of where this story is going yet. While it is technically a science fiction novel, the sci fi aspect is light in favour of the deep dive character drama that tells the story of this odd fellow named Belt who is either deeply troubled by mental illness or has some unique talent that is unappreciated enough by the world that he comes across so. The construct of the world is that there are these little fuzzy hamster-like robots that are as ubiquitous as an iPhone might be in our world, and people carry them around and perform all manner or complex ritual that is alike a metaphor for social media and technology addiction.

I will read on and try to decipher the puzzle, though, before I proclaim to understand more.
gamerdad
Another Five Books?
gamerdad I finished book five about a week ago and I’m already onto another read, but I figured I should at least give Bob and his clones a proper send off.

These are decent books and I do like them, but I will say that book five was a bit more scattered than the previous four. There was a solid plot, yeah, and the story progressed in a long arc sort of way, but the whole thing seemed a bit more like there were a half dozen short stories shuffled together like a deck of cards into a single novel-sized package. The series had already been about a guy who (spoiler alert) digitally clones himself and propagates across the galaxy, so there are increasingly more stories to tell as the bob-iverse expands and branches and subdivides infinitely onwards.

So I guess if the author really is aiming for a teen book series as he claims in his blog, he’d better figure out how to focus the story—at least in my opinion.
gamerdad
Nineteen Ninety Three
gamerdad It kinda strikes me that at some point someone was bound to get a little tired of the graphics are king style of game design and look back fondly on those days of simple blocky games with an easy-to-understand premise. Like SimCity. Remember SimCity? The classic SimCity? Remember? The one where you just built the three zones and connected roads together and made a giant zen-state city that had a few simple metrics to follow.

I mean, oh sure, SimCity got big and then Cities Skylines took over and now with the second edition getting mixed reviews all over the place the PS5 version is seemingly delayed indefinitely or something. AWOL at best, I guess. What do I know? But whatever, those games got immensely complex and crazy and you were juggling so many things it just seemed like work. Like, if they could just put in a little slider-knob at the start that says something like “make it play like in 1993” and I’d actually use that on occasion. Those old versions were simple and fun, and I do like the complexity, but sometimes I like the simple stuff too.

Little Cities seems like someone got my vibe check and was like, yeah, let’s make the old SimCity but—since someone already made it—let’s build it in VR so that we have a gimmick to sell it under and—yeah. Old school SimCity. I’ll be back.
gamerdad
Wormholes and AI
gamerdad The fifth book in the Bobiverse series showed up in my audiobook library the other day and I quickly moved it to the top of my reading/listening queue.

I’m still not sure if this series counts as humour science fiction or speculative fan service, but i’ve enjoyed every title in it, whatever it is. In only a couple chapters into book 5 tho, so more thoughts on the book and the whole series as I keep reading. Um, listening.
gamerdad
Atomic Age Speed
gamerdad I’ve continued to dive into this Australian campaign for another couple hour-long play sessions and have come to the ultimate conclusion that as much as I like this game I’m probably playing it far less strategically than the designers intended.

It’s not that I’m not strategic, but I’ve come to notice that my play style is way more casual than details-oriented. The game famously floods you with dozens of narrative threads all meant as tweaks and dials and knobs and gears to micromanage the course of a civilization thru history. That’s the appeal. That’s the game. And I’m sitting here thinking about how difficult it is to keep all those metaphorical plates spinning as I play. I’m clicking from turn to turn and building all the little pieces to grow my team wondering how some people keep track of it all. But I started to then think about how much I tend to rush it all. Click. Next. Click click. Next.

Then the obvious dawned on me: there’s no rush. I could spend hours on each turn if I wanted. I could read every option. Look at all the data before each play, each spend, each build. I could, but I usually don’t. I just click, click and click some more. Strategy never happens at pace, it is methodical and slow, and I just play “wrong” when I play casually.

I mean, I’m not sure if that changes anything at all whatsoever, but it’s interesting to notice and think about.
gamerdad
Waltzing With Matilda
gamerdad No thanks to Youtube I found myself watching the latest in depth video about the next version of Civilization, the seventh instalment due early next year in February. Of course, my next best option to playing a game that won’t come out for six months is to dig back into some #ps5 Civilization 6.

Anyway. The last few times I’ve played I’ve been mucking around with the custom game settings. Call me a casual gamer, but sometimes I just like to play in a more creative way, so toning down the difficulty and the aggression of the ai is about the only way to turn this into a builder type game versus the all out campaign of military and religious warfare. Sometimes I just like to build big cities and explore, y’know?

Tonight I was randomly assigned to be the great ancient civilization of Australia, which disappointingly had nothing to do with the mighty aboriginal cultures but instead just the regular modern crocodile dundee aussies. I may need to find the mute button to keep up this save file tho—there’s only so many times I can listen to Waltzing Matilda playing in the background, ugh.
gamerdad
Commuter Audio
gamerdad Back when I was working full time I powered thru so many audiobooks that it word make your head spin. It probably accounts for why my library is in the 500s and’s I’ll never write or post about even a solid fraction of them. Since I’ve been downtown again a few days this week I’ve been back into the audiobooks again and that means I’ve picked back up on this Lord of the Rings history once more. With only a couple hours left I may even finish it off soon, though it seems appropriate with orchestra starting up again shortly that I rejoined my listen right about where they are talking about the music score from the film—a definite masterpiece to compare to, and be a huge part of, the film itself.
gamerdad
Coin of the Realm
gamerdad Along with some user manuals (which are still weeks away from release as I write this) I’ve been inventorying my supplies for a basic D&D campaign. Dice. Map tools. A big kitchen table to play at. And apparently, tho maybe I’m jumping the gun here, coins are useful. And sure, I could be boring and just but a set, but I do have a #3Dprinter just sitting there in my basement calling out for reason and purpose. I downloaded a set of community-designed coins as a start and I figure I’ll just start printing and creating a collection of some kind. I don’t have any silver or grey filament tho, so I’ll see how they look in a couple hours and maybe lean into some painting to lock in the final look.
gamerdad
Last Season Unnecessary
I started back at the beginning this week. We binge watched season four over three short days (there were only six episodes in this last round) and in a bout of “we should have rewatched season three to re-catch-up confusion, I got to thinking that I really didn’t understand it and it might be that I need to revisit the whole series again, in order, to get a better sense of the whole.

That said, I did pull out the graphic novels and flip through them too in an attempt to see if there were any hints, but it turns out that season four was seemingly invented whole cloth for the Netflix show and not adapted from the page like the first three seasons, so the slight change in vibe and tone I was sensing might not have been completely off.

The Kid had already dug into the reviews before we capped off the series (even though she did politely wait for me to watch the actual show) and the reviews of season four were right in line with what we sensed: a bit of meh, a bit of wtf, a bit of oh. The show was always weird, but sometimes nostalgia kicks in and the magic we glommed onto during those magical first episodes doesn’t float fully across the entire series even if the quality and story parallels. We can inflate stuff in our brains and make it out to be better than it was. But benefit of the doubt, I’m re-watching the whole damn thing now.
gamerdad
Chapter Two
gamerdad It would seem that I made it thru the first chapter, and not without some considerable effort. I did some more reading and my impressions and impressiveness with the climbing mechanics were on track as this game seems to be 98%all about that exact thing. But as a puzzle game those climbing challenges are getting increasingly more complex as I progress—obviously, huh? Where Of left off last time turned out to be right at the start of one of those impressively challenging climbing puzzles so a couple days after playing the tutorial I had to give my memory a plunge into the depths of medium term storage to recall all the tricky bits and beat the stage. Somehow I managed, but not without some tired fingers from manipulating the climb controls. I can only imagine how tired the little dude clinging to the wall must feel—and if he could talk, how frustrated with my skills.
gamerdad
Climbing Sim Up
gamerdad I haven’t been buying many games but in celebration of some anticipated new income in the coming weeks I spent my first hour’s pay on a title that had been tucked away on my wishlist for a while. I don’t remember where I heard about this, maybe from a podcast? but it looked intriguing enough as a chill out zen game to have on the #steamdeck for bursts of quiet time play.

I didn’t quite make it through the opening act, but I think I’ve got the vibe. It’s like 95% exploration and climbing so far, and before you think it’s just pressing the arrows and moving around on a wall, think again. It’s strategic, and you need to be increasingly more thoughtful about placing ropes and leaping and resting and then of course the multi-button climbing controls where each hand is controlled by a different button. It’s deliciously complex. I think I like it.
gamerdad
Decked Out
gamerdad An odd chain of events led me to playing #flightsimulator on my #steamdeck this morning. Ultimately it kinda started with a power failure that borked an update on the deck and forced me after about four hours of effort to bite the bullet and reimage my device. It was one of those sacrifices that led me to have basically a fresh install and lots of room to install games—particularly when I’d been struggling with the motivation for a digital purge. When I first got the deck, FS2020 wouldn’t even install on it, only stream, and the lag was unbearable. But for some reason it gave me the option and since I had the room I, again, bit the bullet and endured a three hour 129GB download over wifi to get the game on there. Of course I had to crank down all the graphics settings to “medium” at best, and in many cases just off (I mean, you can’t tell on a small screen anyways) and I actually got some respectable performance out of the thing, even flying over a small city like my hometown. Now I just need to tweak the control scheme and maybe I can actually play on this thing, huh?
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