Summary of activities – February-April 2018
I have to admit that I neglected a little blog. I started again wasting time for fun and enjoyable things but not so valuable. I took as always holidays to watch snooker world championships. The tournament was magnificent, a lot of great games:
- Ding Junhui won with Anthony McGill. Start was fabulous, he beat 8 frames in a row – whole first session. On the end he had standing ovation,
- John Higgins demolished Jack Lisowski to one (sic! 13-1) and after that he packed up Judd Trump (13-12),
- Ali Carter first time won with Ronnie O’Sullivan,
- two great semifinals Kyren Wilson vs John Higgins and Barry Hawkins against Mark Williams,
- and final, tremendous: two of the oldest top snooker players, 34 frames, pace less than 16 minutes per one. Great comeback to the game of John Higgins in the last session, tension to the last frame, but he didn’t stop Mark Williams. During interview Mark almost cried, the last title he won 15 years ago. And how he had promised he went on the press interview naked.
Moreover I wasted time, not as always, on games. I still have a fun with new machine. I was in a mood, or I should write I’m still in a mood, to check top rated games released in last years. For this reason other things become neglected, even books. If you are interested here you can find my small summary of reading and playing games.
Battle Royale – Koushun Takami (ISBN 4-87233-452-3)
I decided to read this book when I found out that the idea of the new game mode – battle royal – comes from it. Plot is simple: school bus was hijacked and all students land on an island. Other things you can guess, quote: Let me explain the situation. The reason why you’re all here today … is to kill each other. … Each one of you will take one of these bags prior to departure. Each pack contains food, water, and a weapon. … I’ll be referring to … zones that will be forbidden …if you are in a forbidden zone you must clear out … because of the collars around your necks. I have to admit that it’s not great literature, but I had a fun during reading it. Small sample of weapons from bags: set of darts, dagger, sharp sickle, telescoping spring baton, poison. If you are interested much valuable book about we all start and one survive please consider The long walk by Stephan King (ISBN 83-7255-457-9).
Modern Vim – Drew Neil (ISBN 978-1-68050-262-6)
Quite new book about a possible successor of Vim – Neovim. It’s mostly focused on scripts and plugins. From my point of view I didn’t learn a lot new interesting things. The most readable part was about new terminal mode. If you love Vim you have to read bible about this editor, written by the same author: Practical Vim, second edition (ISBN 978-1-68050-127-8).
Beksińcy. Portret powdójny – Magdalena Grzebałkowska (ISBN 978-83-240-2874-0)
Sorry for the title in Polish, but as I know this book was only released in my country. Biography of Beksiński’s family, mostly focused on Zbigniew Beksiński – polish painter and his son Tomasz. Zbigniew was a strange person. As a painter he didn’t like take orders from customers (art dealer), he draw mostly his own ideas. According to the book he didn’t like people, meet them, talk, etc. He was strongly focused on his work, family, money and music which he was listening during painting. Tomasz was, hmm … a jerk. He thought that he’s the smartest, he abused his mother (and father too). Tomasz was a funny guy too, small example: he made obituary notice about his death and put it up in his town. Sad history about messed up people.
Final cut – Veit Etzold (ISBN 978-83-7758-682-2)
I have to admit to something. When I commute to work by train from time to time I glance on title of a book read by other passenger. In this way I discovered Millennium but also Fifty Shades of Grey. After that accident I started making better research before reading. Final cut is one of this book which I have seen in train. From my point of view it contains too much borrowings from The Silence of the Lambs (BTW. terrific novel and movie too). Non-complex and stereotypical characters and average plot. But this book has something what entranced me. Dirty world of entertainment, disgusting show which might become a true in the future. Moreover, book shows consequences of careless usage of social media. Ordinary thriller.
BioShock Infinite (release date 2013)
Great game, definitely one of the best which I played this year. Beautiful history about Elizabeth and flying city Columbia
with astonishing ending. During the game you gathering random information
about world and characters. Some of them on beginning seems to make no sense, like flip a coin, but on the end the pieces of the puzzle
fit together. It’s a FPS, but the strongest advantage of BioShock Infinite is absolutely Elizabeth. On the beginning she enjoys everything
like a child. A few hours later Elizabeth asks hard questions and banters with Booker (main character). I love when she change attitude
after an argue and starts using “mister”. Until I play BioShock I used to think that Alyx from Half-life is the best FPS women supporting character,
but Elizabeth beat her without no doubt. Did I mention that even 5 years after release game looks beautiful? And music … It was the first time when I’ve
heard Will the Circle Be Unbroken in a game. I played on hard level and it came out not so hard. Only, from time to time, I had annoying floods of enemies.
I spent 26 hours with BioShock Infinite and I don’t regret any of them.
Tomb Raider (release date 2013)
I have a lot of good memories about the first Tomb Raider from 1996. In that days game was tremendous: beautiful 3D world, complex locations and of course first interesting woman character. I remember fight against T-Rex, plenty of interesting puzzles to resolve. Dozens hours of running, swimming and jumping around. Almost twenty years later I played the game with the same title. First obvious observation, they are different – I didn’t expect a remastered version. It’s a modern game, big open world, cut scenes and some secondary tasks to resolve. Plot is average, Lara and other ship staff become castaways on an island. They have to find out why place tries to kill them and resolve mystery about ancient cult. To be honest, I had a small problem here with Lara. On the begging of the game she kills animal and cry over it. A few minutes later she kills man without any scruples. Not many hours later she uses weapons of mass destruction to kill dozens of enemies and she wishes death them. Furthermore, the ship staff take advantage of Lara. They send her on dead to resolve their problems. Moreover, puzzles are not complicated. All needed things to resolve any are always present in one location. Regardless all that things, which I wrote about the game, I spent a good time with it. Not more that 20 hours according to the Steam on normal mode to get out the island.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (release date 2016)
According to the Steam I spent 70 hours with this game. It sounds scary, because I didn’t even realized that. The game touch one of the current world’s problem – terrorism. The shortest plot without spoilers looks like this: you become Adam Jenson to find out who is responsible for last attack on underground in Praha and prevent new one. You work with secret services and cooperate with hacker’s team to collect information. First, I played on hard level and for a long time I tried to not hurt anyone. I suppose that was the reason of final long gameplay. I had a lot of fun with gathering data about people and organisations. You hack laptops and read emails, some of them are important some of them are spam. Of course yours organisation gives you jobs to do like visit murder scene and find some evidence. Praha and other places are quite small but locations are full of details. You can resolve problem on many different ways what makes gameplay attractive. Disadvantages: I don’t see difference between weapons. I used only a few of them and each worked in the same way. Moreover, when you point the head the is no difference at all – one shot one kill. Very annoying is moving around the city by underground. Each time you see the same cut scene when Adam enters into a train, the same people are around him and it takes 1 minute. But the worst is the end, when Adam saved the world. It’s hard to say about it without spoiler, but I felt nothing when I saw the final movie. It was no tension, nothing. Sad.
It’s worth mentioning that port on Linux of Tomb Raider and Deus ex was made by the same company Feral interactive. They made a great job – I didn’t have any problem with games on Debian. I checked on their page that they made port of Hitman too. I’ve seen a few reviews of this game and it seems to be interesting.