Ready Player One

I finished Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, handed it to lovely wife and then watched her devour it over a couple days. Yeah, it's that good. It is indeed the book I've enjoyed reading the most so far this year. It concerns itself with a treasure hunt. World has gone to pot, everybody spends their time in OASIS - think WoW mixed with Facebook and a couple other things. Guy that created it kicks the bucket and leaves behind an easter egg somewhere in the virtual world. You need three keys to find the egg. Commence searching. Oh and the guy that hid it? Totally loved the 80s. So the search becomes a road trip through everything 80s nostalgia. So good. Now, if you didn't live through the 80s and more to the point aren't a geek to some extent, you will probably only like this book. He does a fine job of explaining most of the references (leaving a couple for the reader to suss out) so you're never completely lost, but if you fit those criteria you are in for a real treat.

Redbox now carries videogames. So as I was curious about Demon's Souls back when it came out and the spiritual (heh) successor Dark Souls is now out, I thought I'd give it a go. $2 is certainly a better try it out price than $60. It's an interesting game. They're both known for their difficulty - you can expect to die a lot. No really, a lot. No, more than that. Keep going. A little more, there you go, that's about right. You choose a fantasy based character type, start the game off dead and then proceed to become more dead. Except for those times when you manage to come back to life. But you'll die again, don't worry. Enemies are tricky and out to kill you. They succeed. So, why do people play this? It's an interesting question. I think some of it stems from the absolute rush you get when you manage to make it past them. Every so often you will find camp fires, they serve as checkpoints of a sort. If you rest at them, you regain your health and refill your flask that lets you heal while out and about, but it also resets all the enemies you killed. So it becomes a kind of tug of war - do you press on, knowing you might die, but hoping to get just that little bit further, or do you heal up, knowing you've got to fight your way through?

Honestly the most intriguing thing about the game is listening to people talk about it. For example, I was stuck in the middle of Undeadburg trying to fight my way to the next camp fire. I'd managed to learn how to make it to a tower. Climbed said tower, got super lucky when the guardian must have fallen off or something - I sure didn't kill him, and then was confronted by a dragon guarding a bridge with a stair case going down about halfway across the bridge. I was certainly in no shape to fight the beast. I got barbecued a bunch of times trying to make it to that stupid stair case. Not to mention the numerous times I still died just getting to the dragon. Curse those guys and their spears! But I'd done it. Made it to the stair case. Started poking around a bit and there it was. A camp fire. But wait, it looked sort of familiar. That's right, it was the same camp fire I'd been starting at, I'd just kicked a ladder down to it so I could access the bridge under the dragon. I'd gone in a huge circle. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or punch a hole through the tv. I seriously thought about returning that disc to the redbox snapped in half. But those moments when it goes right... I might have to pick it up when it gets cheap. For those times I feel like wondering why I ever play games.

Little and littlest sis are in town along with the rest of the crew. We sort of attempted the corn maze the other night. Between the rain making the ground a little too spongy and a late start causing it to be too dark to really see, we made it about halfway through before deciding bed time was the better part of valor and re traced our steps. The pig races were as enjoyable as always. G managed to win himself a pig nose thanks to Faith Squeal I think it was. We will get together some tomorrow and possibly again over the weekend for lovely wife's birthday shenanigans.

We've also been making our way through that first season of Supernatural. It really was pretty great. I liked it back when they focused on the monster a week formula. We shall see if it continues.

Fall arrives in force

It's been a pretty rainy couple of days, finally driving the temperatures down where they belong. If you were unsure where Fall was, you don't have to wonder any more. There are even rumors of snow. Winter is coming indeed.

Caught the remakes of Nightmare on Elm Street  and Friday the 13th. We'd seen the latter before. I'd actually forgotten how gruesome it is. I wonder if they're going to bother continuing it or not. As for the former, it was fine. Lovely wife didn't care for the new Freddy's voice, but after the initial shock I adjusted to it. I like Jackie Earle Haley and thought he did well. The story was a touch darker than the original, but mostly because they insisted on spelling a few things out. Freddy's ultimate plan for Nancy was certainly creepy.

I am this close to finishing Ready Player One. It is awesome. Probably the book I've enjoyed reading most all year. And that might well be including Wise Man's Fear. Admittedly part of it is due to the fact that the book is pretty much tailor made for me. Ok, a lot of it is. But it's still great. In honor of awesome 80s nostalgia, I present to you Zork. We called it a text adventure. You wacky kids today refer to it as interactive fiction. Either way, still awesome. And frustrating. Beware the grue.

Psst. There's free Portal 2 dlc available. More co-op levels and challenge mode for both single player and co-op. Oh and the entire soundtrack is available here.

I remember thinking when Steve Jobs left Apple that it would be interesting to see how they would fare without him. I thought he'd still be around for a few months. I was shocked yesterday to learn he had passed away. He will be missed.

Are you ready

I could follow that up with "For Freddy?" but we'll get there.

September is rapidly drawing to a close. Letter 'r' gets to test out the waters of that last year in the 30s for a couple months before I take the plunge. I suspect it feels remarkably similar to things now.

Lovely wife and I watched Hanna last night. That was one intense little movie. I actually didn't know too much about it going in and I think that really made a difference in my enjoyment level. I knew she was raised as an assassin and that the Chemical Brothers did the soundtrack. Honestly part of the reason I watched it was to hear the soundtrack as there were people claiming it was as good or better than the Daft Punk Tron Legacy soundtrack. I'm not sure where I weigh in on that one. I did like it. I think Daft Punk gets the nod though. It would be interesting to hear the Hanna soundtrack divorced from the film. I think it might be odd... Anyway, if you haven't seen it, it's worth checking out.

If you have any love for the 80s, you need to read Ready Player One. I'm about halfway through it and loving it. It's awesome. Radical even. (Totally) It'll appeal a touch more to those with 80s geek cred, but I think anybody who lived through the 80s will find something to latch on to.

So, October approaches. I have several horror movies waiting for me on the hold shelf downstairs. At the moment I'm going with a remake theme. Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Let Me In all fall into that category. (The editions I snagged) I also have Monster Camp which is about LARPing and supposed to be good. We shall see. Will probably watch The Grudge when little sis is around. Still plan on Constantine and I may just snag the Paranormal Activity movies again. I've heard good things about the third one. Yay October.

McK and I managed a quick trial run of Elder Sign. It looks to be pretty good. Will go into more detail once I get a couple more games under my belt. I still need to mock up some bleach designs for t shirts. I want to make a couple horror themed shirts and maybe some game related ones as well.

So Amazon has announced their new tablet, the Kindle Fire. I am somewhat intrigued. I think I'm a little too tied to iTunes to really enjoy something that isn't an iPad but at $200 it might be worth looking into once I hear more about it. Especially as the Library is now loaning Kindle books. Speaking of, I played around with that and read Found the third Magic Thief book. It was good. I really enjoy that series. It also marks the first book I've actually been able to complete on a Kindle. I still don't find the reading experience that enjoyable on those things, but I see where they could be useful for traveling and so on. I will admit the whole checking a book out from the Library on the Kindle is pretty darn cool. I'm curious to see what happens once the checkout period is reached.