Tag Archives: Cool Things

Cool Things: Braid

Posted by natechen on

It’s been a while since I mentioned a video game in this spot. In fact, other than my first Cool Thing, Dungeons of Dredmor, I haven’t mentioned one at all. You can gather a few things from that. For one, I don’t play many video games. That’s mainly because I’m a writer busy with this blog, a job and occasional theatrical appearances. For another, there aren’t many games out there that really strike me as cool. I have standards. After all, I’ve played Contra and Ikaruga. It takes real work to measure up to stuff like that.

But Braid… Braid is special.

Braid is a 2D platformer, a la the original Super Mario Brothers. However, unlike the plumber chronicles, Braid is a puzzle game. The controls are incredibly simple. There’s a button for each of the game’s six primary functions, move left or right, climb up or down, jump and reverse time.

Yeah. Reverse time. I told you this game is special.

Everything about Braid is about manipulating time. The player can’t even really die. If you get injured or fall down a pit the level doesn’t reset, the game just waits for you to press rewind and back up to a point before you messed up. But backing up time is about more than just undoing mistakes. It’s also your primary problem solving tool.

You see, Tim, Braid’s hero, has discovered how  to reverse time and used it to smooth the problems from his life. Unfortunately, Tim now finds that he must wield his new-found powers to rescue a princess and crosses paths with a number of obstacles, monsters and weird time phenomena along the way.

What’s most impressive about Braid is not it’s visuals, which are beautiful 2D sprites, nor is it the game’s catchy soundtrack, which sounds good both backwards and forwards. It’s not even the story, which is both original and moving. No, what’s really impressive is the creativity and originality the game both shows to the player and demands of them.

Over the course of Braid’s six levels players will be confronted with places where time moves forward if they move to the right and backwards if they move to the left. They will find things that won’t be rewound no matter how hard Tim tries. And they will even find places where the actions they’ve taken leave echoes in causality, forcing the player to partner with shadows of himself in order to advance. No other video game in recent past has demanded so much of it’s players in terms of thought, planning and out-of-the-box creativity.

However, for those exact same reasons Braid is not a game for everyone. It’s not action packed, there’s not scoring system (although there is a time trial mode unlocked once you clear the game initially) and there’s no compelling sense of struggle between Tim and his situation. It’s amazing, but at the same time it can’t appeal to everyone.

Still, if you love innovative gameplay, clever mechanics or straight up challenge, Braid is a game worth your time and money.

Cool Things: The Protomen

Posted by natechen on

Time for something a little different! The Protomen are an indie band that produces rock operas (and occasional covers of Queen). Now even if you don’t like opera and Queen isn’t your thing, the Protomen have a lot to offer you.

You see, the primary focus of The Protomen is Mega Man. Yeah, the video game character. Okay, that’s not entirely true. The primary inspiration for The Protomen is Mega Man.

For those not familiar with the general gist of the Mega Man storylines (yes there are more than one) they’re about a plucky blue robot and his epic battles with the mad scientist Dr. Wiley. A number of characters, including Dr. Light, Mega Man’s creator, and Proto Man, an earlier model of Mega Man and the source of the band’s name, are featured.

Most Mega Man stories revolve around Dr. Wiley, a former associate of Dr. Light, building a number of powerful and intelligent robots, providing them with armies of much less intelligent but still dangerous robots, and tasking them with taking over the earth. Mega Man foils these plots by defeating Dr. Wiley’s robot masters and exploiting the similarities in their construction to turn their own weapon systems on their creator.

This kind of stuff is now fairly standard video game fare, but fortunately the Protomen don’t dwell on that part of the Mega Man franchise.

The Protomen are two albums into a three album story cycle. The first album, titled “The Protomen” but perhaps more accurately thought of as Hope Rides Alone, introduces us to a dark, dystopian world ruled by Dr. Wiley and his armies of evil robots. Here, The Protomen introduce us to many of their major themes.

And it’s in their choice of themes that they really set themselves apart. They mull over what heroism really means, to what extent we must take responsibility for the evils we see and act. And it reminds, in Mega Man’s own words, “hope rides alone” and often, doing the right thing means standing alone.

In “Act Two: The Father of Death”, The Protomen take us back in time to meet the young Drs. Light and Wiley, and introduce themes like discerning use of technology and the value of work in a mechanized society. They also give one the feeling that one of the two doctors at the center of their story isn’t entirely sane. Here’s a hint: It’s not Wiley.

It’s true that on occasion The Protomen can border on the melodramatic. But that’s not often, and hey, it’s opera, right? They’re entitled to be a little melodramatic.

If you want to hear what they sound like, here’s a link to their preview track from The Father of Death.

Cool Things: Easie Damasco

Posted by natechen on

David Tallerman has a degree in English Literature, specializing in Tales of Witchcraft. He currently works as an IT Contractor. Naturally, he writes stories that involve neither.

Easie Damasco is a thief – hardly unique to the fantasy genre. He lacks significant skill in battle, deception and even in thievery. In fact, when we first meet him he’s so poor he’s resorted to stealing food from the camp of an invading warlord.

When he gets caught he’s offered a simple choice: be treated as a common criminal or join up and help the invaders by riding herd on one of their giants. However, as soon as no one’s paying attention he wheels his giant away from the battle, raids the camp and hightails it in the opposite direction.

What ensues is less of a caper than it is a chase story. Easie has somehow turned himself into the equivalent of Harrison Ford’s Fugitive, albeit with a twelve foot tall giant in tow. He spends a great deal of his time ducking away from pursuit and trying to figure out why he’s being chased in the first place.

It also brings him face to face with the central conflict of the series. While Easie is a thief, and a fairly well known one, he’s not rich or well established. Like many people do when deciding on their careers, he seems to have thought that he was starting out on a path to easy money and early retirement, however all he’s gotten himself is more and more trouble. Getting chased by a whole army is certainly an extreme manifestation of that, but it’s hardly the first.

Over the first two books of the series he spends a lot of time thinking about thievery and whether he even wants to keep it up. Given how stubbornly many fantasy characters hew to their profession, that’s unusual in and of itself. On the other hand, everyone knows that all crooks are just looking for a big job that will let them get out of the game. Whether Easie will ever actually try to get out is another matter.

Two things that set Easie apart from other fantasy characters are his friendship with the giant Saltlick, which evolves in a believable fashion and is by no means smooth and one dimensional, and his total lack of magical talent. Far too many fantasy stories rely on magic as an easy out of tough situations, but Easie has no easy button to get him out of a jam. In fact, while incredible creatures like giants do exist in his world, it seems that magic does not. Or if it does, it’s so rare it hasn’t made an appearance yet.

Tallerman hasn’t delved deeply into the history of his world yet, nor do we know much about it outside of the small area that marks the bounds of Easie’s admittedly provincial life, but so far it seems to have a promising start. If you like fantasy without a lot of magical nonsense cluttering it up, or you just like a slightly more realistic look at what a life of crime might really be like in a world with all the technological advancements of the Middle Ages at its disposal, the Tales of Easie Damasco might be for you.

Books in the Easie Damasco series include:

Giant Thief

Crown Thief

Cool Things: Rivers of London

Posted by natechen on

Ben Aaronovitch is a man who can spin a tale. He has written TV scripts and audio dramas and includes both episodes and novelizations of the famous Dr. Who franchise among his many credits. And I’m sure all of those things are very interesting. But they’re not what I want to talk to you about this week.

No, today we’re gonna talk about the Rivers of London series. Police Constable Peter Grant is our plucky protagonist, an up and coming beat cop who has little to look forward to in his career beyond a life behind a desk, making very important contributions in the field of clerical work. That is, until he is placed on guard at a homicide scene and winds up interviewing one of the most important witnesses in the case.

It just so happens that that witness is a ghost.

This makes PC Grant’s life exponentially more difficult. Particularly when the information he gets from the ghost is verified by other developments in the case. Naturally, Grant goes out in attempt to ask the ghost some more questions. What he finds instead is Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale. Rather than signing up Grant for a long stay in a padded room, DCI Nightingale offers Grant a job – as an apprentice to the last officially sanctioned wizard in England.

Life as an apprentice wizard is more than just study and practice for Grant, however. In addition to his exhaustive study of Latin, the language Isaac Newton codified magic into, Grant has to log several hours of practice each day (but not too much, else he cause a fatal brain aneurysm), help Nightingale keep the Queen’s Peace among the many supernatural denizens of London and figure out exactly what magic is and where it comes from.

And that’s in addition to trying to figure out what happened to the murdered man and the helpful ghost he saw. Oh, and the job comes with supernatural politics, too. In particular, one of the local rivers incarnate wants to take a hand in regulating and enforcing the Queen’s Peace among the paranormal folks of London. Juggling his obligations to the Crown while navigating the tricky byways of the Thames River tributaries is a running theme of Grant’s life, hence the name of the series.

Peter is a believable character living in a lovingly detailed rendition of modern London, and his stories are told with wit and charm, along with a healthy dose of heart that makes them both engaging and enjoyable. As a note, part of what makes Peter believable is that he behaves and talks like a cop, including coarse language. If that bothers you, the Rivers of London might not be for you.

If that sounds intriguing, Rivers of London (or Midnight Riot if you live in the States) is the first book in the series, and is well worth your time to check it out.

Cool Things: An O. Henry Christmas

Posted by natechen on

Here’s a limited time, limited availability cool thing. On November 2-4 and 9-11 the all for One theater group will be presenting a Christmas play entitled An O. Henry Christmas. It’s located at the Main branch of the Allen County Public Library, 900 Library Plaza, Fort Wayne, IN. Doors open at 7:30 PM on Fridays and Saturdays, 2:00 PM on Sundays.

Why is this cool? Well, in no small part because I am in it! Hooray!

So if you live somewhere near Fort Wayne, drop by and check us out. You can call ahead and order tickets by calling (260) 622-4620. Ordering ahead even saves you a few bucks!

Oh, you want to know what they play is about?

Well, the play is set on Christmas Eve, 1893 and is based (in the loosest possible sense of the word) on the life and works of the author O. Henry. The best way to think of the script might be to consider it what Christmas Eve, 1893 would have been like if O. Henry had written it.

In the play, O. Henry finds himself on the run from the police after escaping from jail and winds up at an abandoned railroad spur in New York. There he finds a collection of homeless bums (including yours truly) who he helps to pass the cold and lonely night by telling them stories that embody the spirit of Christmas.

If that doesn’t get you excited, you can also come and laugh at me acting like a drunk. Your call.

Cool Things: The Hat

Posted by natechen on

In the modern day and age there is very little respect for the hat. I’m not really sure why that is. If you think about it, the hat opens up another 4 – 8% of the body to customized accessorizing. In oldentimes (pretty much any time up until the 1940s) the hat was almost a mandatory accessory for people of both genders. However at some point, the hat has lost favor. I’m not really qualified to comment on whether this is a good or bad thing so far as it concerns women’s hats, as I’ve never worn one*, but I really feel like men have lost access to a valid method of varying themselves from the general populace.

So let’s take a look at some modern hats, shall we?

This is a stocking cap. It’s a very common piece of headgear in the modern day and age, at least during the winter. It makes a very aggressive fashion statement, namely, “My head is round.”

While modern fashion favors tight fitting clothing that emphasizes the line of the body, I’m not really sure that hats are a great venue for this. Usually the only adornment seen on these hats is some sort of commercialized logo. Fun, cheap advertising is a kind of a fashion statement- “I pay money to advertise!”- but if that’s really the message you want you might do better with something like this:

The “ball” cap is traditionally a way of showing who and what you are affiliated with, and is generally light enough to be worn in any weather! This hat, as you can see, clearly identifies the wearer as an employee of the Hereti Corporation, or perhaps their subsidiary, the House of Cheese! Wearing this particular hat around mini-lop rabbits is not advised.

This is a fedora. Unlike the last two hats, the fedora does not hug the head as tightly as possible, but instead is styled in such a way as to make you look as much like Humphrey Bogart as possible. It will undoubtedly add an air of sophistication, elegance and style to your life and relationships. You may or may not find yourself seeing in black and white as well.

The jockey’s cap is favored by horse racers everywhere, or just people who want something to keep the sun out of their eyes without a logo being affixed to their forehead like some sort of modern day variant on cattle branding. Wearing one is a sure way to mark yourself as a man of refined tastes, or possibly just find people who are looking for a cabbie.

So in the future, keep your eyes out for headgear and ask yourself, “What does this say? I it something I would wear in public? Or should I just take a picture of it and send it to Nate?”

I’ll look forward to hearing from you.

 

*Nor am I, in fact, a woman.

Cool Things: The Quadrail Series

Posted by natechen on

Timothy Zahn’s Quadrail novels, also known as the Frank Compton adventures, showcases one of sci-fi’s best thinkers in his best work to date.

Many science fiction authors, including the great Isaac Asimov, wrote their stories as mysteries. The mystery is a classic genre in literature, appealing to our desire to know. It also allows the sci-fi author a unique vehicle to explain their world to the reader, as detectives often ask questions about how and why things happen, even when they already know to a certain extent, just to ensure they have the facts straight (or to catch someone in a lie.) And the working out of a puzzle, be it a crime or just a strange set of circumstances, gives a story an immediate sense of purpose and conflict.

Zahn is a master of the sci-fi mystery, and even his Conqueror’s trilogy, ostensibly about an interstellar war, has a number of mysterious circumstances at its heart. The Quadrail series takes this to the next level, presenting you with Frank Compton as a protagonist and the Quadrail itself, along with the aliens who run the Quadrail, known as Spiders, as some of the first mysteries you’ll have to figure out.

Let’s be honest, having a whole train system in space as the primary means of interstellar travel is a little mysterious. In fact, it might be the most difficult hurdle for most sci-fi fans to get past (but it’s worth it, there is a very solid reason for the Quadrail, trust me.) The quirky, almost B-movie feel of the Quadrail is part of the charm, and if you can’t get past that there’s certainly no way you’ll get used to the talking chipmunks with guns*.

In the Quadrail’s galaxy, humanity is surrounded by eleven other civilizations that have been riding the Quadrail longer than they have. Aliens with unusual and distinctive social structures are a trademark of Zahn’s fiction and he really goes over the top with the races on the Quadrail.

Being a fairly experienced traveler who is familiar with the basics of interstellar politics, and more importantly, out of a job, Frank is recruited by the Spiders to deal with a problem they anticipate occurring in the next few months involving one of the oldest and most powerful interstellar civilizations on the rails. If that wasn’t enough, Frank quickly finds no one is really telling him all he needs to know- not that he’s being entirely honest himself.

Frank’s attempts to get a handle on the Spiders and their problems, not to mention the parter they saddle him with and the enemies he makes on the way, fill a total of five books of suspense, clever reasoning and wry irony. A fan of suspense, espionage or science fiction will enjoy the Quadrail series, a fan of all three should definitely check them out.

 

*Chip ‘n Dale’s Rescue Rangers all grown up.

Cool Things: Soon I Will Be Invincible

Posted by natechen on

Austin Grossman’s novel Soon I Will Be Invincible is an adventure novel of a different stripe. Once upon a time, comic books were considered a very lowbrow form of entertainment. Thin plots were often called “comic book plots” by literary, theater and movie critics.

However, comic books have tried their hardest to grow out of their stigma. To some extent, they have succeeded. Grossman’s book is one example of that success. The plot revolves around supervillain Dr. Impossible and the superheroes who try to catch and imprison him in the absence of his archrival, CoreFire.

Grossman takes great pains to sketch his characters are real, believable people rather than the cardboard cutouts that are so often associate with comic books, fairly or unfairly. The result is a superhero story with a great deal of believable characters, if not a whole lot of believable wardrobe. Not that that’s a pet peeve of mine or anything.*

Invincible focuses on two characters, Dr. Impossible, the “villain” and the “hero” Fatale, a part of the superhero alliance dedicated to brining the good doctor down. Both characters are more a ball of psychoses than functional humans but, as Grossman points out, the events that bring them their abilities almost demand that.

While Soon I Will Be Invincible makes great strides towards believable characters it does suffer some from its close attention to comic book tropes. For one thing, high magic, high technology and even stranger powers all exist together with little attempt at a rational for their existence or function. For the most part that’s forgivable, because all fantasy and sci-fi rationalizations eventually boil down to just so stories. As Ben Aaronovitch puts it, “pixie dust, or quantum entanglement, which is the same thing except with quantum in it.”

Perhaps a bigger difficulty is the constant intrusion of back story into the book. Modern comic books are frequently based on characters that have been around for four or five decades, if not more, with immense backstories that readers are often expected to be fairly familiar with. Grossman tries to duplicate that feel by building a great deal of backstory into even minor characters, unfortunately sometimes it makes the plot drag a bit.  Since the long life span of modern comic book characters is now one of the biggest barriers to entry into the medium, I’m not really sure why it would be something one would want to duplicate.

On the whole, though, Soon I Will Be Invincible does a great job of combining the fun of comic books with the realistic characters of hardcover fiction. Further, it has served for a sort of template for some of my own writing. And that makes it this weeks cool thing.

 

*Edna Mode fans unite!

Cool Things: Chilling Stones

Posted by natechen on

Okay, this one doesn’t take up nearly as much head space as the last few weeks. Chilling rocks are pieces of carved stone, usually soapstone. They function in a fairly simple fashion. You put them in your freezer, then you put them in your drink. Your drink stays cold, but doesn’t taste nasty due to melting ice!

They average between ten and twenty dollars and can be found fairly easily from a variety of online retailers. Most of ’em look something like this:

So what’s so great about these babies?

The possibilities, my friend, the possibilities. Dropping ice down someone’s shirt used to be a simple, juvenile prank that left water all over the place and was a pain to clean up. Now you can just slip one of these babies down the shirt and once the show’s over pop it back in the freezer! No fuss, no mess, quality entertainment!

If that’s not sophisticated enough for you, you can take the whole mess and sit them in someone’s shoe for ten minutes or so, just before you leave the house. Dump ’em out just before you leave then enjoy a new variation on the classic hot-foot prank! Just be sure to wash those boys off before you put them back in the freezer. No telling where those shoes have been.

Most people know better than to go licking a flag pole in the middle of winter, but they’ll never see one of these rocks coming the first time around. Plus, there’s no standing around for fifteen minutes while someone heats up water to melt them off, just wait a few minutes and it should fall off on its own. Previous comments about washing the rocks applies to this stunt as well.

Of course, you can always use them for scotch “on the rocks” as well. But really, the strange appeal of chill rocks comes from their incredible versatility. Put your mind to it and I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with plenty of creative uses for your little portable chunks of winter.

Cool Things: The Destroyermen

Posted by natechen on

Taylor Anderson‘s Destroyermen series is based on an interesting premise. In a freak accident during the Battle of the Java Sea at the opening of World War II a pair of US destroyers, built at the end of the first World War, flee Japanese forces and sail straight through a rip between worlds. They arrive in an Earth with talking cats and a late Renaissance level of technology. They go from obsolescence to cutting edge.

On the bright side, there are talking Velociraptors on top of the talking cats. And the raptors want to eat everyone. Okay, maybe that’s not a bright side. But at least it helps everyone get friendly fast enough.

Mayhem quickly ensues, providing plenty of humorous cross cultural moments, fast paced action sequences and thoughtful considerations of how the world might be different if one thing changed.

To be fair to both reader and author, Anderson is not a trained writer and, at times, it shows. He can be a little wordy and sometimes gets distracted from his plot while reveling in the details of developing technology or firearms use.

But for the most part the Destroyermen series delivers exactly what you would expect from a series with its premise – good action, fun characters and a healthy does of humor.

That’s not to say that the series has no depth. Quite the contrary. It has a very impressive amount of it. In particular the character of Chief Gunners Mate Dennis Silva is well explored and carefully developed. The world also shows a great deal of thought and consideration.

On top of that, if you’re one of those that likes a good long read, the series is already on its seventh book, and looks to have at least one or two more in it. Anderson shows a lot of talent in juggling an ever growing cast and giving everyone enough screen time.

If you enjoy light, fast paced and action packed reading, the Destroyermen series is well worth your checking out.