I’ve been a man possessed. The object of my obsession: Euro Truck Simulator 2. Coupled with this new Logitech G27 wheel and paddle set I’ve just been too lazy to unclamp the peripherals from my desktop to do anything kinda sorta productive on it. But you have to admire the adaptability and flexibility of the PC. In minutes I can pull the wheel/paddle set and hook up my Saitek X52 Flight Control system and suddenly I’ve left the cabin of a huge cab-over Volvo semi and plopped myself into the confining cockpit of a Sopwith Pup in World War I. “Next gen” consoles, chew on that.
1.
Rise of Flight on PC
Speaking of that aforementioned Sopwith Pup, I’ve been
flying the not so friendly skies over Flanders Field. My new Sopwith Pup exudes
all of the quirky charm of its namesake.
It turns on a dime, and has the ability to almost land on a tennis court. I’ve
recently started a career and I’ve already shot down two crafty Germans. Rise of Flight truly is the end all/be all
WWI flight simulator. I’m not crazy about their price scheme, the core game is free
to play, but you have to buy individual planes, and they’re not cheap. They
range from $6.00 to $12.00, but with that said, each plane flies so differently
each purchase is like buying a stand alone flight simulator. And there is nothing quite like being 4,000 feet up seeing wispy clouds you can almost reach out and touch, and then looking down to see the amber fields and black rivers looking like a fantasy chessboard out of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and hearing the oh so warm rumble of your plane's engine. It's certainly nothing like the real thing, but it sure can give you an appreciation why these ancient flyboys loved what they did. Be forewarned, however. This is no arcade game. Finishing out a career and bagging five kills to become
an ace is far easier said than done.
2. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Plagiarizing from my own review of this book on www.shelfari.com, Regarded as a highly revered work of modern literature, I liken it more to a great men's adventure novel set during the Spanish Civil War. Nothing epic here, just the subtle niceties of Hemingway's concise and tight writing. This, an excerpt from the book concerning the main character's sighting of a squirrel. Each and every word is the stroke of a brush on a palette, and the period at the end of the paragraph the realization that you are looking at a beautiful word painting: "He saw the squirrel's eyes, small and bright and watched his tail jerk in excitement. Then the squirrel crossed to another tree, moving on the ground in long, small-pawed, tail exaggerated bounds." Nothing profound here, just a word painting excerpt of Hemingway's great writing style. He’s by no means my favorite writer, but an important 20th century writer, and well worth reading.
3. Combat Mission on PC
Ah, I don’t know why this turned out to be a
month of warfare and violence for me, but carrying on with it, I finally gave
up on Knights of the Old Republic on my laptop. I realized I was just not going
to finish it. So, I replaced it with Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord. With its
sparse graphical engine it makes an ideal game to stick onto a laptop.
Eschewing typical hex based war game mechanics, this game has you placing and
commanding your units, and upon completion, the AI does the same, and then you
hit the GO! button and everything plays out in real time. It turns into a sixty
second long heart racing, temple sweating, ordeal that rivals anything
seen in a war movie. I never realized a
minute in time could be so intense, nor last so long. The icing on the cake:
Every little thing is taken into accountability, the morale of the lowliest
infantryman, and how many grenades he’s carrying, to the armor thickness on a King Tiger Tank, and whether or not the armor is thickest on the front of the tank or the sides. Of course, all of this is taken care of so elegantly behind
the scenes.
4. The Godfather Trilogy on DVD
I had never seen The Godfather, despite its claim to fame as
a recipient of the 1972 Best Picture Academy Award. A buddy of mine at work overheard me tell
somebody this, and he rectified the situation by lending me his Godfather
trilogy. At its core, The Godfather is ostensibly a tale of bad men betraying
each other and killing each other off.
It makes you wonder if the Italian machismo and good looks are worth
having to watch your back every time you leave your house. This series is truly
Francis Ford Coppola’s best work, and what makes it superb is that Mario Puzzo
(the author of the famed novel) penned the screenplay. He did likewise for The
Godfather II as well, and not surprisingly, The Godfather II got an Academy
Award for its brilliant screenplay. (The Godfather and The
Godfather II became the first series movies in the history of cinema to both
pick up Academy Awards for Best Screenplays.)
5. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Picked this up for free on my Kindle a long while back, and just began reading it while waiting in dentist’s office, car shops, check out lines, etc. And it’s become a subtle addiction. I never realized the conspiracies this book delineates, and at first I thought much of it was the “faction” (fiction + fact) stuff that Michael Crichton writes, but then when I read about the mystery of the Mona Lisa and how the name Mona Lisa is an anagram for the Egyptian god of fertility Amon and the Egyptian goddess of fertility, Isis, (formerly called Lis) I just got more fascinated by this book. I remember when this novel became an overnight sensation in the late nineties when it debuted, and I’m not sure it’s captivating me on that level, but it’s a great read nonetheless.
6. I Still Dream About You by Fannie Flagg
Fannie Flagg has always been my gal. Ever since I sat in a
break room at Abbott Laboratories years ago reading Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop
Café and having a coworker ask me if I was okay. I was silently holding my
stomach, tears rolling down my cheeks, laughing so hard I couldn’t even
breathe, let alone speak. Flagg’s books
have always had this ribald humor coupled with a subtle sadness that has the
power to play your emotions up and down like a Wham-O! Yo-Yo. I’ve just started
this novel, but it concerns an aging real estate agent, a former Miss Alabama
who’s heading into old age and realizing despite her perfect veneer and her
contributions to the community she’s one of the saddest people inwardly she’s
ever known. And she’s about to do something about it, something drastic. She’s
written what looks like a suicide note, but not sure if she’s going to dispatch
herself or simply pull up stakes and fill her gas tank up and just drive. I’ll
keep you posted.
7. Euro Truck Simulator 2 on PC
This culprit of a game, actually a simulator, is my biggest time robber as of late. I had purchased
this on a Steam Sale many months ago, but didn’t want to install it until I had
my wheel and paddle set. Boy, was it worth the wait! The whole simulation takes
place in Europe. You start out with a single truck and choose the jobs you
want, hop into a rig supplied by an employer. You get to drive a
variety of trucks and haul a variety of loads. Easy Peasy. All the while you make big money
that enables you to finally buy your own rig. You make bigger money, but
now you are financially responsible for fuel and repairs. And all the while you
have to stop and rest or risk being cited or worse getting involved in
accidents from lack of sleep. Ultimately, you make enough to buy a garage and
outfit it with multiple semis, and then you hire additional drivers to keep
them going. It’s a fascinating simulation that brings back my own memories of
when I used to drive trucks. Driving through Holland at midnight in the rain,
and looking out of the side window during a lightning flash and seeing a field
full of the old Dutch windmills spinning in the high winds, I couldn’t help but
smile. Or seeing bib overall clad men work in hayfields alongside Allis-Chalmers
tractors and hearing the whistle of my turbo diesel as I mashed the
accelerator, such good stuff. I put over 50 hours on this sim in 4 days. And
now I want to move to Germany.
