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Oct 29

What’s New: October 2015 Gaming News And Busy Life Stuff

Like many of you, my schedule keeps me busy doing things other than playing games. Or even writing about them. The single biggest hit on my gaming time is work. On the positive side, I do get some quieter times when I can think about games and get ideas to write about. The negative, of course, is that I frequently have little or no time to actual play games, at least on work days. And with a six day work week, well, I just don’t get as much play time as I’d like. Plus there ARE things other than games to do in life.

I do get some good vacation time, and like to take advantage of that to enjoy our summer. It also gives me more time to play, so a lot of my most intense game experiences happen during vacation. One of those is:

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Evading And Fighting Dinosaurs: ARK: Survival Evolved. This is a potentially extremely addicting survival game where you are on an island, with nothing but your bare hands, and prehistoric hungry creatures all around you. Don’t expect to survive long at first, but it has all the wonders and challenges of a Jurassic world. It can draw you in, tempting you to live almost 24/7 in this terrifying world — that is, if you want to actually survive and advance, since your character merely goes to sleep when you log out. Tribal friends are very much recommended.

The biggest game news this year is Star Wars Battlefront. At least, for science fiction action fans, just as the new movie will be. The Beta finished with record numbers of players, and the game definitely looks good. It has the potential to be even better, so here’s hoping that EA and DICE can deliver on the promise of the most awesome Star Wars battle game ever.

Battlefield has its own news as well. Both Battlefield 4 and Hardline have new, free game material — new maps and weapons. Not a new paid-for DLC, but actually free for all players. Battlefield 4 development continues, which is pretty impressive for a two year old game. This is very encouraging for all DICE fans, because Hardline and Battlefront share the same engine, as will other games, and Battlefield players are very demanding.

Star Wars Battlefront will have four DLC packages and a season pass, very much like Hardline and its Premium package. Battlefield 3 and 4 had FIVE DLC packages, so this is a definite reduction in expansion material for about the same price. Free DLC content could add to the value of the base game, and the Premium/Pass includes some extra content and features which are not available to other players. But is the extra material the equivalent in value to another DLC package? Or has EA essentially shot itself in the foot, figuratively, by not making the advantage of springing for the Premium Deluxe upgrade worth enough to make most players get it in order to have the real deal. Hardline on PC is suffering from a lack of players, and the new DLC maps, which are quite nice, will only have players if enough people get it. Paying for DLC individually is losing proposition for getting multiplayer gamers together in the same game.

GTA Online has frequent additions, new content for both the online game and the GTA V single player. They could charge for these installments, but they don’t. GTA Online is more like an MMORPG than a session-based FPS, so this isn’t that unusual. But it is still very nice. The recent Lowrider add on offers a lot of new content, and gives PC and next gen console players a very nice boost with a fourth property (garage) to store the new, fancy cars inside.

Guild Wars 2 is just coming out with its first paid-for expansion, making it a very high value for the play time offered to date — loads of new content and activities, as well as a huge world to explore and enjoy.

Civilization: Beyond Earth has its first expansion as well. Expansions to existing games do a wonderful job of keeping players interested in the games. The best games — and these ones definitely rank up there — are fun to play even with the original content (albeit with patches and fixes to improve earlier problems.

In short, I have loads of great games to play. But not enough time to play them.

I do luckily have time to do some other things which I enjoy in places and times where I can’t play my games. I’ve been able to have time to read. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, but other things too. I like a lot of stuff, but here are a few I spent time on this summer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is famous for his Discworld series, a funny, often satirical take on fantasy worlds. I took the time to reread that series again, because sadly, this summer the very last Pratchett book ever came out (The Shepherd’s Crown). He passed away this year, after writing dozens of books over a very long career. His family has promised not to authorize anyone to “continue” his stories. This is a good and refreshing thing, because it is hard to imagine anyone able to match Pratchett’s writing style, and it would be a terrible shame to have others tarnish his work by trying and failing to make a sequel. Fortunately, there are a lot of books out there to read, and many chances for new authors to be inspired to create fun, fantastic worlds and characters of their very own.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Weber

I love David Weber’s work, in all genres. He writes both fantasy and science fiction, but is especially good at military science fiction — stories about soldiers and wars in the future. He is best known for the Honor Harrington series, an epic adventure following the careers of the crew and officers of starships and their star kingdom in the distant future, and I’ll address that one in a moment. But he has also done a few standalone stories, and I spent time recently reading them.

In Fury Born, the expanded version of Path Of The Fury, covers the career, and in its second half, the mission of revenge and justice, of an elite of the elite Drop Commando, a warrior of the Terran Empire. It gives a great view of the life, attitude, and tactics used by ground troops in the future, which reflects very much how combat plays out in real life today.  Both also have heroes who are enhanced humans of the future.

Apocalypse Troll and Out Of The Dark are two stories about a near future (or alternate past, given how the future becomes the present so quickly) invasion of Earth by aliens. They represent some of Weber’s earlier stories, and both show a dedication to detail about real world military weapons, equipment, and personnel, common to a lot of military fiction, but called “gun porn” at times by those not as much in love with the tools of violence.

In the first, an alien enemy from the far future, losing their war with Earth, dare an almost suicidal trip to the past, pursued by a human space force determined to stop them, or die trying. If the aliens succeed in their bid to conquer or destroy the Earth in the past, they could undo their defeat in the future. The Troll of the title is a cyborg with fearsome combat technology, who far outmatches the best military forces of 21s century earth. The humans are almost clueless in how to fight them, without the aid of a little help from a survivor from the future.

Out Of The Dark is an even grimmer tale of how outmatched 21st century Earth would be against an invasion from another star system. With generally superior technology, including the ability to deliver kinetic strikes (the equivalent of nukes) from space with nothing to counter them, humanity has no hope to defeat the invaders. The invaders are hampered by their lack of preparation: they expected natives with bows and spears, not assault rifles and tanks. But whatever their weakness in direct combat, nothing can stand up to hammers striking from space. This story describes in loving detail the advantages humans have built into their weapons, and we get a very good scene showing just what the Barrett XM500 is good for (taking out a transport vehicle by killing both its driver and its radio, so the survivors can’t call for help). We also get a very nice bit where a group of survivalists actually get to use their preparations — good against zombies AND aliens, you bet! Could the humans possibly fight long enough to persuade the aliens to negotiate, rather than being forced to surrender to slavery? The aliens motives are roughly that of the Conquistadors of Spain — to gain new lands and new followers (slaves), who will be taught civilized ways. This story has a really big twist. If you are going to read it, I recommend avoiding any hints about the twist so you can feel it for yourself. It is foreshadowed, subtly, but it pretty much comes right from Out Of The Dark.

David Weber’s Safehold series moves the combat back into the age of sail and muskets, more or less. We get some very detailed coverage of both the techniques and weapons of the era of wooden ships and iron men, along with a condensed history of the development of military and industrial technology. Starting in On Armageddon Reef, the story deals with a kingdom’s fight against a world of enemies, primarily the Church which has become hopelessly corrupt and will not tolerate any nation which resists its demands. The concept of a true world war fought with 18th century technology is interesting, but there is a twist. Don’t worry, it is given away at the start, and in the book covers. This world isn’t actually a world of low technology. It is, instead, the last surviving colony of the future Terran Empire. A genocidal alien species exterminated all others, including Earth, so a secret colony was established which would avoid the use of advanced technology, and thus the attention of the aliens. The long term goal was to let the population grow and time pass, and then stealthily redevelop their original technology and build a force able to defeat those aliens. But the colony leadership was afraid that the plan would fail, and instead attempted to lock humanity into an idyllic technological stasis, with as much comfort as they could arrange, but an absolute prohibition on the development of advanced technology. Not all the colony leaders agreed, and that led to a brief but violent war, which pretty much wiped out all of the leaders. Since the majority of the colonists, in order live happy lives, had their memories modified to forget their past, the story that they had been placed by God on this world was entirely believable. But not everyone forgot, and nearly 900 years later, one last warrior of the Terran Empire awakes to continue the mission, and bring humanity back to the age of reason and technology.

That got kind of long, didn’t it? The stories themselves do that too. Weber puts a lot of detail into the stories, including loads of details about sail and ship handling. There is one long sequence in a book which details the efforts of a single galleon to survive a storm at sea. While the characters on the ship ARE important for the plot, most people aren’t familiar enough with sailing ships to really understand everything that goes on. In other long sequences, often there will be a cutaway to another location telling the action elsewhere in the world at the same time. Remember that bit about not really being a low tech world? The hero — and later others — has access to high tech stealth reconnaissance, including remote (drone) platforms and satellites, as well as (obviously) radio communications. None of which can do anything to aid a sailing ship caught in a storm. Nor can they simply start producing more advanced ships (and weapons) right off. It takes time to develop the production capacity, and just as important for the core mission, the attitude and mentality of creative innovation which drives human technology. Still, the advantage of advanced intelligence technology (including weather prediction) makes a huge difference in the way wars are fought, even if the actual battles are based on the weapons and tactics of history.

Honor Harrington is a space naval officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy. Humanity has been expanding through the stars for centuries, and has established human populations and hundreds of worlds. Space travel was, for a very long time, too slow to make colonization anything but a one way trip, so most of the new worlds formed new nations. Improvements in hyperdrive allowed for faster travel, but it can still take weeks or months to reach a destination. Many worlds have joined into local trading alliances and even nations, but many are purely independent, especially on the frontier — like Manticore. Their nearest big neighbor is the People’s Republic Of Haven, which evolved from an idealistic democracy into a socialist welfare state controlled by an effective aristocracy. In order to shore up their failing economy, they have been conquering neighboring worlds, and Manticore is on their list. It is their toughest, richest target so far, and it is not unaware of the threat. The main line of the story deals with Honor’s career in dealing with this threat, both before and after the war starts. It is roughly inspired by wars in Europe in the 18th century, especially England (Manticore) and France (Haven), but it isn’t a recast telling of history. The mainline story deals with the rise of Honor from commander of a small starship to admiral of the fleet, and the decisive battle which could end the war. This is over a series of 10 books, with some short stories.

Weber’s original plan to break the series there, then do a time skip for a next generation and the next war, got derailed by new developments. His writing collaborator, Eric Flint, came up with the characters, story, and a plan to jump start the next war 20 years or so early. As a result, though, instead of one novel telling each new volume in the story, we get three. Yes, three. We still have the Honor Harrington series proper, which gives us the big picture, from the view of the fleet commanders and heads of state. At the same time, we the story of the next generation, the Shadow series starting with The Shadow Of Saganami. This covers a new group of graduates of the Saganami Island Space Academy, and the developments on a new frontier for the Empire Of Manticore. They face a conspiratorial menace, a force operating in the shadows to defeat the attempt to expand the Empire. The other side is Flint’s big contribution, the Torch series, which covers the efforts of a group of spooks (spys, intelligence agents) and their allies to fight against slavery (which despite being long outlawed is still practiced), which leads them right up against the same shadowy force from the other side of the series.

You need to read all three story lines in order to get the full picture of everything going on. In some ways, it is like having a whole trilogy for each new novel episode in the series. They run parallel to each other, and we do end up with some almost redundant scenes where we see other characters deal with the exact same situation — and sometimes, the same situation from the direct point of view of each side. This has led to the problem of having too much going on to make it easy to keep track of every detail, and some things seem rushed as a result. The delay on the next episode is likely related to this, an attempt to actually work out all three new entries as one cohesive whole before publishing, rather than producing them one after another. The cliffhanger element of the last set is a case in point. In one, we see a fleet ordered into a dangerous attack. In another, we see an agent, seeking aid for a desperate situation — on the very world targeted by that fleet. In the last, we see a message from that fleet — but not the battle nor the full outcome. And now, we must wait, and wait, until the next set of books come out. We will actually need all three in order to see the results for all the major characters,

I’ve hit on the complications of trying to read and follow a series which depicts interstellar politics and war on a fairly grand scale, but it is the characters and situations which really make the series work. The heroes and their enemies are interesting characters, and even most of the villainous enemies have their own solid justifications for their actions (even though we as readers are encouraged to think they are wrong).

I could write a lot more about books I read, but this should be enough for now. My original intent was to concentrate on gaming articles, but my limited gaming time has made that harder than I’d like.

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