Game Review: To The Moon

So where do i start about To The Moon? Well, i honestly have to say that i wasn't quite sure how good the game was going to be just by looking at the screenshots that were provided to me on the steam page. I wasn't sure if it was going to be a Final Fantasy 2 meets Prince of Persia style game or what because the screen shots given don't really give too much away. And neither will i except for giving you a brief synopsis as well as a description of some of the gameplay bundled in with my overall review.

To The Moon is a classic 2D rpg with forced perspective. ALL of the controls can be summarized in 9 different keys/buttons: The left mouse, the arrow keys and the WASD keys... in that order. The developers, Freebird Games seemed to realize that in order to make a game of this graphical simplicity work really well for them they needed to keep the controls deadly simple. Everything is intuitive to a T which is necessary since this game is so literally story driven.

Story is everything in ths game and i would like to emphasize this point. If you're not one to do a lot of reading in the text box devision or if you're just looking for another game to spend $10 bucks on and troll your way through expecting enjoyment, you should probably stop reading here because no amount of anything i say or do will make this game pleasurable for you. You really need to be willing to sit down, have zero combat and read everything for this game to be a pleasurable experience.

So enough of the fore-warnings. What is this game about? Well, in a way, the title says it all. What way is that? Probably not the one you're thinking of, and it's definitely not the reason you think it is until you're about 2/3rds the way through the game. Basically you play as a pair of employees from a company that specializes in "granting wishes" to people who are a few days from dead via the manipulation of memories. As this not-so-dynamic duo, you receive a new client who's wish is to go to the moon, and the entire game is the story of not only how you achieve that wish for the client, but also about the clients life, and how even the smallest things can leave a huge print on our souls. So large that they can never be erased.

I was seriously sucked into this game. it took me roughly 8 hours to complete which seems like a short time but to sit down and start playing then finish the game without even so much as getting up to move is the test of an amazing game. And even with that short of a play time, i was able to attach myself emotionally to every character in the story, and i experienced genuine emotion for them as they went through their own arcs.

SO, to anyone who is reading this looking for a reason to buy or not buy this game, i'm telling you right now, it's worth the 10 dollars on steam that it's going for right now, it's definitely worth whatever discounted price it's at when you read this. Buy it, play it, cry a little, get pissed off a little, and get some new material that will make you seriously question the print that you have left on the lives of others as well as the prints that people have left on you.

Laptops vs Tablets

Today i wanted to touch on one of the subjects that has been near and dear to my heart for the last month or so, and that is the discussion of whether laptops or tablets are a more fiscally sound purchase option. And to be honest, the short answer to that question is very much like my answer to whether i prefer Windows or Mac: it depends on the application that you plan to use it for. Now i just want to preface this with a little tip of the hat to the fact that i am aware there are laptop/tablet hybrids that are starting to surface on the market (Microsoft Surface 2, i'm looking at you) but the real question is whether those thrive well at all when being used for either application when compared to a dedicated unit from either side. I think it would be safe to say that the surface 2 performs much better as a tablet compared to other tablets of the same caliber than it does as a laptop compared to other netbooks and ultrabooks of the same caliber. So what exactly are the applications that make these two platforms thrive? lets start with Tablets. Tablets thrive on being hand-portable. Given the average size is only marginally bigger than phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note series most of these items will fit comfortably into the pocket of a good pair of cargo pants/shorts and with the utilization of Solid state memory they work well with being portable as there's no spinning parts to accidentally scratch the shit out of when you accidentally drop it while reading your free copy of Aesop's Fables from Amazon Kindle going down the stairs. Which leads me to the next thing they're really good at: Reading. For those of us who can accept digital books with open arms and recognize within ourselves a viable use for digital books, these items are fantastic. Pretty much any tablet out there can be readily converted into an e-reader with software such as Amazon's Kindle reader, Barne's and Noble's Nook reader and Adobe reader for PDF files. Tablets also succeed well with modern casual games since the smart phone industry has made it their sole duty to monopolize on that market as much as possible. With casual games spanning every conceivable genre there is they've all been pretty much ported to the Android and Iphone systems which makes them readily available on 90% of tablets seeing as There are more makes and models of Android tablets out there than any other platform to date. Apple is the most readily accepted and Windows is quickly creeping up to Android in the tablet market. Where do Laptop's Stand? they also excel in the realm of portability and that world is quickly becoming more readily accessible. It is no longer the case where Apple produces the one and only solid-body aluminum chasis laptop on the market anymore. Almost every primary laptop manufacturer in existence has now jumped on the band wagon and made a solid metal-body chasis of some form or another. These laptops come in all shapes and sizes, the most lightweight of them all being the Samsung Series 9 ultrabooks which come in at an astounding .4 inches in thickness or something crazy thin like that and go as large and traditional as some of the new HP's which come in at the HP standard 1.5 inches or thereabouts. So what do these excel in besides being much more durable than they ever were a year ago? well, they perform better than tablets at most gaming applications because they don't run off of what is called the ARM architecture for their CPU's(Central Processing Units) or GPU's(Graphics Processing Units). ARM Architecture is the same type of processing power that has been built into every smart phone you have ever known, it is a miniaturized processor that emits minimal heat under light to medium load and processes things at almost the same speeds as regular processors but do to their size restrictions generally yield less effective throughputs. Laptops from netbooks all the way up to premium gaming laptops all utilize real processors with regular outputs which allow them to work on difficult information much more readily. Primarily though, these guys are word processing and internet browsing first and gaming second. Unless you buy extra peripherals like a game pad or a mouse to go with it you'd be hard pressed to play Call of Duty on a track pad. So where does this put us in the grand scheme of things? Well tablets have a lower price point than anything laptop that runs on windows and has a screen larger than 10.1 inches, which is a big selling point, and if you're just going to be using it for possible some very brief note taking and reading of textbooks for example. or possibly as a device to store all of your recipes so you have something to look at while you're cooking in the kitchen, the lower price point is going to make this the system for you. If you want high end gaming on your tablet you're going to end up spending a bit more on your tablet than you'd probably care to do so and at that point it might be worth it just to look into a low end gaming laptop as companies like Dell offer a laptop with one of the higher-end GeForce 700 series graphics cards (the really nice ones) for $650 before shipping and handling. That will come with a 14 inch screen and a decent resolution for your enjoyment. But if you're not planning on using this in the kitchen, if you work in a business environment and travel a lot, or go to school and need something that you can take notes on quickly and naturally, chances are an ultrabook or a regular old laptop would probably be the choice for you, and you can decide on the degree of sturdyness you need for that system depending on the average level of abuse you see it going through. Anywhere from 100% plastic shell (for those who use their laptop as a stationary computer for around the house and don't move it around much or if at all). all the way up to solid metal body ones that are coming out which will probably withstand some of the harsher rigors of being moved around a lot cross country, or to and from school. So, once again, i would like to reiterate, whether you should buy a tablet or a laptop is purely dependent on what you expect the system to do or how durable you want the system to be. Right now is a better time than there ever was before to buy into the computer market, because there are more options than ever before, and with all of these options, you can really purchase the system that is not only right for you, but is also inside your budget range.

The Not So Educated Education System

So since last tuesday and the time i wrote a blog before that i've had the great fortune to start working at the school as the resident Tech Specialist. I pretty much just fix computers for 8 hours a day or when there are no computers to fix i just sit at my desk and wait (or occupy myself with other means). But i recently was invited to the 2014-2015 techcnology planning committee for all of my school district where we sat down in groups of 5 and attempted to point out the issues that we saw with the 2010-2013 technology plan. We did make a lot of suggestions for the new plan that is getting a preliminary draft as we speak, but i noticed something huge: Public schools are grossly under funded. As a Tech. Spec. i am paid about 33% of the national average wage for other people in my position. Granted i'm at the bottom of the ladder but even my entrance wage was just a blip on the map compared to what most IT guys make walking in. That and i generally am required to work harder than most iT Guys. Let me explain: the proper tech spec. to tech items ratio is at the max 1:400 but is usually appropriate at ~1:300. This will ensure that the tech spec has enough time in his day to get to every problem with no hiccups at all. The average ratio at my school district (something like 22 different schools each with their own tech spec) is around 1:850. On top of that, our technology is grossly out dated. it wasn't until October of last year that we finally shipped off the very last batch of computers that were purchased in 1999 and ran windows 98 natively. XP barely. The upgrade frequency for us is supposed to be every 4 years but we're sitting at roughly 15 or 16 years per upgrade. Why do you ask is this a big deal? The state i live in, Arizona, had passed a bill in 2013 that said they were going to increase the state-wide sales tax by 1% for 3 years and dedicate all of that money to education to improve wages and technology. What actually happened? They increase the state-wide sales tax by the 1% and then pushed all that money in to the state coffers from where it will never see the light of day. In Arizona, Education i almost at the very bottom of the list when it comes down to funding, and when they write bills, they use it as a point of guilt to get people to approve said bills. I'm sure it's not just the state of Arizona, but it's disappointing when Schools fall so far behind on technology when technology is exactly where the future is headed. Technology now has a set of fundamental skills, that may not have been considered fundamental 14 years ago, that should all be taught starting at a very early age to encourage a successful future. These are things like how to understand a computer desktop, typing skills, presentation software, word processing software spreadsheet software, anti-viruses, public speaking with the use of modern technology, basic computer skills and dare i say just a smattering of programming. Not a whole lot but if you can teach a kid just enough in program to get them interested in it or evoke some thought in their minds then chances are it could very well improve problem solving and logical thinking skills. But do we mandate that first graders should learn how to type appropriately? do we mandate that fourth grades learn how to use powerpoint in a professional manner and speak effectively and confidently in front of their peers? not in the slightest. So what gives? I know that there are some of you that highly doubt that K-5th graders have the level of thought required to program but you and i both know that's a load of bullshit. At that age they're in the formative years where their brains are the most malleable and the most susceptible to impressions. If there's any age they can be imprinted with the logical reasoning of programming it would be at that age. Would it be every kids cup of tea? absolutely not, but it's definitely worth a try. I'm really not sure how other states education funding measures up to Arizona, i imagine it could be worse, about the same or better because there really are not other generalized answers to that question, but i honestly think that education needs to become of larger importance to this country. We want our kids to be prepared for the future and to be better than their fathers when they grow up, but where they're most malleable? we refuse to supply them with all the tools they need to grow into something better than we were.

Finally Graduating

It's been a long and arduous road for me to go from graduating high school to graduating college but as of this semester i'm finally going to be able to do just that. Not only will i be able to graduate with my Associates of Applied Science majoring in Computer Programming/ Systems Analysis, but i also found out at the start of this semester that i was exactly 1 class away from graduating with an Associates of General Studies majoring in General Studies. It just so happened to be the worlds most basic computer class as well, CIS-100, Intro to Computers. So i figured what the hell. Put in an extra $213 for the class and finished it within 5 hours. It has taken me almost exactly 4 years to get my first Associates degree and if it wasn't for my discovering how dangerously close i was to my AGS, i'd only be walking away from 4 years of school work for a 2 year degree which seems rather un-fulfilling. And i think here-in lies the major problem with higher education. In higher education establishments they always advertise to you the wonderful dream of "oh finish your Associates in 2 years, bachelors in 4, masters in 6 or Doctorate in 8!" but it's never that easy. For all the new students walking into college for their first semester next semester (Fall of 2014) i want you to understand something. Those numbers when referring to the years it will take you to get your degree are after you've completed all of the pre-requisite general education credits. Depending on where you land in your placement tests, if your school even has placement tests to void your some of your core classes, your general education credits could take anywhere from a year to three years to complete just by themselves. And if you're not going full time (for my college that was 12 credits or more a semester for most others it's 15 or bust) then it will take you even longer. Then, once all that is said and done, you finally get to move along to what are called your degree classes, These are the classes that are always listed as the only classes needed for the degree on any college or university website. This list will take you x years depending on the type of degree so long as you fill a couple of requirements: 1) you take a minimum of 15 credit hours every semester or at least average it out to 15 a semester until you graduate. 2) you can manage to navigate which semesters the classes are offered and create a master key of sorts determining which semester exactly you're going to take what. In order to do this you need to consider things such as semesters offered, number of credit hours the class is, the actual time scheduling of the class so you have no overlap, where is it offered, and what pre-requisites you are required to have taken in order to even have access to the classes. 3) you also need to manage to keep a flexible schedule because the parameters you need to factor for in number 2 can and (chances are) probably will change from semester to semester. 4) you always acknowledge that the advisory team in your college/university are a bunch of turkeys in a thunderstorm. if you leave them alone for too long they'll drown themselves from stupidity. So always have a game plan going in, And be sure to only ask them yes or no answers. They're going to dodge the answer with a bunch of mouse clicking, tabbing through screens, printing papers and saying very sophisticated jargon. but generally if you press hard enough they'll either say something along the lines to "yes, it seems like you know what you're doing" or "No, this is how it really works *insert a bunch of convoluted bullshit here*". at which point it doesn't matter if your question has been answered you've reached the end of your conversation tree. it's time to move along to the next checkpoint. Seems easy enough right? well i promise you there will be at least one required class, gen ed or degree that you will unexpectedly fail. At this point you have one of three options: 1) tack that class onto the end of your degree plan, which will add another semester to your plan 2) Try to find a low credit hour semester that you can cram it into, and then desperately try to cope with the now heavier workload when that semester comes around. 3) take it over summer if it's even offered over summer. none of those options are that glamorous but unfortunately it's what you have to do to graduate. There is a a silver lining to all of this. Every stormy cloud and all that bullshit. That siler lining is that if you do decide to go with an associates first like i did, then you have the unique opportunity of getting all of those general education credits done before you step into your bachelors program. This saves a colossal amount of money and once you do get into a real college you can avoid all of the gen ed classes at the uni which is where professors go to die. and you can just focus on degree courses which is where professors go out of passion. Granted, you'll still just be a number and most of what you do still won't matter but at least you'll matter a little more walking through the door. To those who have not experienced College yet, i hope this helps you on your journey. To those who have gone already and have survived, i hope this has provided you a laugh or at the very least a subtle head nod in acknowledgement that you experienced some of the same problems i did.

New Laptop

Well, it finally happened. It seems to happen to me a lot unfortunately but my old laptop finally fell to the point where i got tired of using it. My old laptop which had seen me through the last two years of my schooling died, and that is a concerning number for someone like me because the average laptop life-span should be right around the ballpark of twice that. Way back in 2010, i graduated High School, was preparing to go to college and i felt the need for a laptop so that i could take all my notes and do all my homework on that instead of wasting paper and wasting time with my incredibly slow and sloppy hand writing. As a solution, i had purchased a netbook when they were brand new on the line. my whole thought was that maybe the compactness of a 10.1" screen coupled with the extraordinarily low price point of 250-350 for the laptop would make it a worth word processor that is easy to transport back and forth to and from school to keep all my notes on. Well that netbook didn't last very long as one especially crappy night i had set it on the roof of my car and forgot it there until i made a u-turn and threw it off the car, onto the street where it exploded. I had a friend of mine retrieve all of the information they could from the reasonably destroyed hard drive, to which i put on my new netbook that i had retrieved that night and started over again. That netbook lasted much longer as i was able to hold onto it for roughly a year and a half before it was stolen from my bedroom during a vacation trip with the family to Big Bear, California. That theft was exceptionally agitating for me because i was actually planning on bringing my laptop with me on the trip to do some writing when my mother and step-father insisted i leave it at home, only for us to get video footage the day before we were supposed to go home of my step-father's ex-wife breaking into our house and stealing it out of my room. So from the insurance claims on that one i decided that perhaps it's time to go a little bit bigger. We went to best buy and there just so happened to be a brand new ASUS laptop which had a 13" screen and one of the first or second generation i3's in it. It was originally marked at roughly 1000 dollars but since it was a display model that was no longer on display, i got it for the smashing deal of about 600 dollars after tax. that laptop has been the one that i have done all of my blogging on up until now. Living in Arizona, we tend to get very hot summers. We're talking 104 in the shade. and with me being a college student and also running around frequently to do computer service work, my laptop never really left my car very much. Well it can get up to 300 degrees inside the cars in Arizona in the heat of summer. So problems started to arise with the laptop. The LCD screen started to warp, the hinges started to break, the seams of the laptop split causing the second issue to get worse, touch pad got less and less responsive. But i kept it repaired with healthy supplements of super glue and willpower. Finally, the other day the seam of the body split up by one of the hinges, and the screen started flickering in and out so it was time to get a new laptop. I decided that i didn't really care too much about the price tag so long as it filled a couple requirements: 1) The laptop needed to have a solid aluminum body, like the MacBooks 2) It needed to run Windows natively for school because i don't have time to try and make a macbook dual-boot. I managed to find my laptop. It's from a company i wouldn't normally purchase, but the price is so competative for a solid aluminum bodied ultrabook that i really just could not pass it up. So far i'm loving it. The whole thing is built really sturdy without being incredibly bulky or pricey and the performance off the specs are surprising for what i need it to do. All in all i have to say i'm rather pleased with the machine and am praying to god that this is the last machine i need to purchase for a very long time. We're talking 8 years minimum.

The Linux Discussion: What happens to Windows

Recently i've been experiencing some customer woes of using a windows machine. I have to admit i'm growing really tired of the Windows Platform, i've been growing tired of it since windows 7 and the new Windows 8.1 really isn't helping much at all. But why am i do i have so many problems with the Windows Platform? It's their ruin everything and make people believe that what they currently have isn't good enough anymore mentality. I understand that for a company to survive it needs to sell product, don't get me wrong and i'm not slighting them for doing that, But the recent release schedule for Microsoft products is getting dangerously close to the release schedules for NFL games for most consoles. In the year 2012 it was buy NFL 2012!! now with enhanced graphics and all new players! In 2013 it was Buy NFL 2013!! Now with even enhanced-er graphics and all new players! Now you can play the water boy! and for 2014 they've got enhanced-er-er graphics and the ability to launder your uniforms or something like that. Why do people continue to buy the newest NFL Game every single year? the strategies and maneuvers in football have hardly changed since the 80's or 90's. the only thing really that's been updated are the people on the team and the uniforms. It's the same Thing with Microsoft and Windows lately. Microsoft hit a boom with Windows 98, rode that wave until they skid to a halt on the beach and then swam back out with XP and rode that wave even further (Seeing as XP isn't going to be officially de-comissioned until April 15th, 2014 which will mark the end of it's 13-year run on the market. most of that being the number one operating system even over some other Windows Platforms like the horrific mistake we call Vista). But Right around the time that XP popularity was beginning to wane Bill Gates stepped down as CEO and went into early retirement which is where Steve Ballmer stepped in and became the new CEO. And now it's all about re-releasing the same crap with a couple new features every year. The last brand new operating system to have come out of Microsoft was Vista. No really, look it up, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 are essentially to Vista what Puma, Jaguar and Panther were to OS X. Just the next three updates. the x.1, x.2, x.3 of Windows Vista. Yet what does Microsoft do? Well, much like the NFL Industry, they charge full price for the product again, and they remove all of the old stock off the shelves. Why? Because they don't want you to use the old stuff. In their mind they're completely done with that already. They want you to use the new and improved stuff so that your computers are walking billboards of product placement. So to curb this problem i've switched to linux which has raised an interesting question in my head. Because the very popular and very free operating system Ubuntu, has a graphical user interface (GUI) that could be the spiritual sister to Windows 8 if Linux liked to rip people off. Whats the only problem with Linux that i can find to date? well... software's a little bit harder to install and there's no native game support which is a massive killer for the operating system. Mainstream game companies need to make the switch over to Linux, which companies like Valve are doing (with their introduction of the Steam box which runs a completely open source completely free version of linux designed by Valve for their machines and their DDP). Once more companies follow in the footsteps that Valve are placing there for everyone to see then linux should gain traction and then Microsoft will be a thing of the past. It will just be another company like Apple: Foo-foo labels and overpriced shit. By the way? if you're not agreeing with me, i might have some bad news for you: If Valve's SteamBox hits it off well then it may come to reality. Granted Microsoft support will always be a thing with them, but if a massive player base makes a paradigm shift over to a linux based DDP console? I promise you, you'll see companies flocking to linux like flies to shit.

Movie Review: Ender's Game (2013)

I know i'm a little late to the band wagon, but i feel i really needed to get on here and post something new and this movie sticks vividly in my mind since my last post about it last may. The movie has come and gone, it is now available on all the mediums we've come to know and love/hate depending on how comfortable you are with the internet (if you know what i mean). The first thing i've got to reiterate from my last post is the fact that i am in the process of reading the Ender's Saga in chronological order according to the canon. now keep in mind that there is a lot of time travel involved in this series which shows itself in the form of light speed ships ( going off Einstein's theory that the closer to the speed of light you get the slower time goes) so it's a little hard for me to really sink my teeth into the chronological later books a little since it jumps around a bit. None the less, the 2013 movie adaptation of the most popular "middle-of-the-canon" book and also the first one in the saga to ever be published (and even that started out as a short story in a magazine before it became a book) was without a doubt one of the best movie adaptations of a book i have ever seen. Please understand me, did they mutilate the book beyond recognition? yes. Did the brutally dismantle the original literature for the movies so that i would be extraordinarily difficult to make any of the other books aside from the original three(Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide)? Absolutely. But did they convey the messages they needed to convey in the time they had? Most definitely. Ender's Game is a movie adaptation of a book where you walk in knowing it's not going to be the same as the books because the trailers show that and once you start watching you really just can't will yourself to care. The characters are all there, they all do their inevitable job, they show the critical points in the plot, and at the climax you'll cry like the little bitch that you refuse to acknowledge that you are because even with all the extra information cut out and even with a lot of the build-up that leads to some of the key points missing, they still manage to give you that emotional connection to Ender and his merry men and you still feel just as betrayed as him when you know what happens. All in all, i would highly recommend Ender's Game for those who have and have not read the book, it's a fantastic movie that's full of fun, action and emotion. Really good job converting this iconic text to film.