This one is a big one. Of course, having a week and a half off of work in winter leaves time to indulge in a generous heaping of fun stuff like books, movies, and games. I took advantage. I knocked out my GoodReads reading goal by over two books. Yay! My goal had been 20 books this year and I closed out the month at 22 books. Covid-19 is still amongst us, but now the plot thickens. A new strain is appearing in the States, a strain that is even more contagious. I think this virus forced a paradigm shift on all of us. The social butterfly me has become a casualty due to this plague. I’m perfectly content staying inside and not going anywhere and I think, unfortunately, I shall remain that way when all of this is behind us.
1. Railway Empire on PC: Kalypso Media is a big entertainment software company headquartered in Germany (but with satellite companies in the USA and the UK.) They released the ever-popular Tropico series and now a railroad game entitled Railway Empire. You’ve seen me say it here before. If Sid Meier’s Railroads! and Railroad Tycoon 3 had a lovechild this game would be it. It takes the cartoony zaniness of Railroads! and couples it with the seriousness of Railroad Tycoon 3. I think the game is slightly more difficult, well, wrong word . . . more, shall we say “less intuitive” than the ease of the Firaxis games. I had to watch YouTube videos and read guides just to get the track layout and the signaling down, and I still struggle in some layouts in the scenarios. But I’m having fun with it, despite I’ve spent a dozen hours on the last scenario in the American campaign and I can’t beat it. I try to do what these guys do on YouTube and I STILL can’t beat the scenario!
2. Far Cry 4 on PC: Far Cry 3 will go down as one of the most memorable games I’ve ever played on PC. I played it back in 2014 when I had a lot of strange things going on, and I remember playing the OST CD in my car. I still play that soundtrack and it will forever invoke odd memories of that year and the game itself. This year I decided to go ahead with the next game in the series (when you see this writing years from now, for some context let me just say they are now showing trailers for Far Cry 6, so yeah, I’m a little behind, but then I always am when it comes to PC games. This one is a bit repetitive. But one noticeable difference standing out like a carpenter’s thumb is Jason Brody, the main character in Far Cry 3 underwent a sea change of differences, transporting from a spoiled rich kid to a survivalist, a grown man doing what he had to do to prevent falling victim to an island of crazed pirates. Far Cry 4 sees me as an American youth traveling to the far reaches of Asia rising to a cause for an oppressed people and slowly rising in reputation and glory with each act I do against the country’s dictator. It’s oddly cool to watch the NPCs go from braindead pixelated characters to stopping what they are doing and greeting my character on a first name basis and then to start about my hi-jinks and my fame right there to my face. It’s unfolding like a great movie. I’ve still got a long way to go; I’m about halfway through the game, but I’m really glad I’m playing it.
3. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie: You always hear how the Grimm fairy tales were horrid, not horridly written mind you, but just awful in their darkness, the death of girlhood in Cinderella, warnings to children that the woods were a dangerous place in Hansel & Gretel, and Little Red Riding Hood. I had no idea that James Barrie's quite famous Peter Pan was such a sinister book! The Neverland was not just an idyllic haven for little boys who didn't want to grow up. It was an island in which fierce pirates led by Captain Hook fought the "redskins" to the death. And woe be to any little boy on the island who started to grow up. Peter Pan didn't carry a dagger for nothing. I was really surprised at how "adult" this book was. I'd only tackled it because I'd never read it as a child. My initial exposure was the classic Walt Disney animated version. The original story presented in this book was a wake up. (Disclaimer: stolen from my own review on GoodReads.com)
4. Nemo’s War Board Game: Board games, for me will always be associated with a “game night” group of friends who get together one evening during a droll work week for a little fellowship and healthy competition (or cooperation.) I started lurking around on Boardgamegeek.com and discovered there’s a popularity of solo board games. Solo board games! Who would have thought? And me, being the avid Jules Verne (and especially Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) fan. I took a chance on this game since it was a solo game and had good scores. My first game lasted over four hours, and though I had to consult the rule book a few times, it was not a complex game. Honestly, the four hours felt like an hour. I didn’t win. Now that I’ve played four more games, and still haven’t won any of them I can say with confidence, this is some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a board game, shoot, ANY game experience. You play as the titular Captain Nemo in one of a manner of aims: explorer, scientist, warmonger, etc. You are on a quest to find treasure, sink warships, free oppressed peoples being exploited by captors profiteering from building products of war, or simply explore the ocean depths. The game uses card draws and dice rolls to dictate movements and events in the game. The board, counters and pieces look like elegant art from the Victorian Age.
5. Pegasus
Bridge by Stephen E. Ambrose: I play a well known gateway board game called Memoir '44.
Players use cards, dice and tiny plastic soldiers on a fold out map board to
mimic famous WWII battles, using strategies and a bit of luck to outpace the
real life officers and men who fought and died in these places. The first
scenario reenacts the famous "Pegasus Bridge" incident in which
British special forces (before special forces was a thing) to take control of
two bridges leading up to the coast of Normandy, thereby preventing the Germans
from being able to supply mobile reinforcements to the defenders of the coast
during the famous invasion.
As I find Stephen E. Ambrose's writing transports me to
the mud, blood, snow, anguish, and weariness of war like no other writer does.
I was anxious to delve into this book with a bit of foreknowledge gleaned from
my experiences with my board game. Ambrose did such a remarkable job of giving
traits, personalities and backstories to these men. Ambrose tells both sides of
the story in an almost real time recount that it reads like a movie being played
out. One gets the feeling there weren't really any good guys or bad guys. The
Brits were all volunteers and with the exception of a few zealous Nazis, the
Germans were there under duress, many of them conscripted from other nation's
armies the Germans had conquered.
The biggest surprise of all is how after the war many of
these British and German men who had faced each other and shot at each other
became lifelong friends in the years that followed, some of them looking at
each other and joking about what terrible shots they were. The next time I play
this scenario in Memoir '44 it will be with more seriousness, and I'll
see it much more than a collection of tiny plastic soldiers.
(Disclaimer: “borrowed” from my own GoodReads review.)
6. The Little Friend by Donna Tarrt: Years ago, my cousin Janet gifted me a paperback book entitled The Secret History a debut novel written by a then unknown author named Donna Tarrt. Once bitten, I couldn’t put the book down, and I remember thinking it was one of the best books I’d ever read. Ten years later, Tarrt dropped The Little Friend on us. You know me, always late to the party. I’m reading this now, and if not for the religious fervor sanctity manner I treat books I’d be marking passages up like crazy in this book. My youngest daughter is a fan, who long ago told me about the book. I’ve called her up just to read passages to her so we could laugh out loud. The way Donna Tarrt “sees” things, it’s incredible. Robin (my daughter) told me this book is going to spoil me for other authors. She may be onto something. I now rank Donna Tarrt right up there with Pat Conroy and Michael Chabon. I’m only on page 100 (out of almost 600) and I don’t want the book to end.
7. Carly Simon “No Secrets” on CD: I’d had this on my wishlist on HD Tracks for a while now. And then one day I was perusing the loudness wars site I go to that analyzes each CD out there and discovered the CD version of this album had more of a dynamic range than the HD files on HD Tracks (for less than half the price!) So, I went with this CD version. The sound is so full and bright. This CD may have been remastered from the original, but there was no crushing or “re-engineering” done on it. If only all CDs could sound this way. This was Carly Simon in her heyday, some fans say her best album ever. Coming out in 1972, it definitely has that popular folksy vibe that was ever present back then, Neil Young, James Taylor, etc. I’ve never heard “You’re So Vain” sound so crisp and clear before.
8. Metallica: Nothing Else Matters – The Graphic Novel by Jim McCarthy/Brian Williamson: This was a lovely little gift from my daughter. The latest graphic novel I had read was The Watchmen which I remember being good, but rather long winded. This graphic novel was short and to the point. The illustrator did a wonderful job bringing Lars, Cliff, James, Kirk, Jason and Robert to life in his black and white ink. I learned numerous things in this book. James Hetfield really had a bad childhood, losing his mother to cancer when he was 13, he says, simply because his family participated in a religious belief that God would heal his mother, there wasn’t a need for doctors or hospitals. I never was on board for the way the band treated Jason Newstead. They had a cruel (but playful) way of always “initiating” him into the band. And because he wanted to do some things outside of the band, it caused a heated exchange between he and Hetfield which led to Newstead’s departure from the band. I always thought Lars Ulrich was the bad guy in the whole Napster fiasco, suing people who used Napster. It wasn’t the case at all. Metallica sued Napster, not its users.
9. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on DVD: Inspired by the aforementioned board game, I watched this great movie. I hadn’t seen it since its double disc Collectors Edition in 2003. It does a decently faithful adaptation from Verne’s novel. There are some rather “Disney-esque” liberties taken, of course, but this is tied with another movie with being my favorite movie of all time. The real star of the film is the Nautilus, itself. If you go to Disneyland in California and go into the famous Haunted Mansion ride, you’ll get the honor of seeing the organ Captain Nemo played. It’s in the grand ballroom in which the ghosts are waltzing near the ceiling. I always thought they could have searched the world over and not found a better actor to portray Nemo than James Mason. He WAS Captain Nemo. Supposedly there is now a Blu-Ray version of this movie out, but it’s lacking the generous amount of extras in the DVD Collectors Edition.
10. Horrified Board Game: Since I’m on this solo game player kick, I picked up another game entitled Horrified. In the game you protect a village (looking very much like a back lot series of sets from old horror films) against all of the classic Universal monsters from the old movies (Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolfman, The Invisible Man and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.) Me and my oldest daughter played a few games and fell in love with it. It has one of the easiest rule books I’ve encountered in any game. The components of the game could have used one more notch in the quality department. The cards aren’t heavy stock (I sleeved them immediately) but man, that art style! It’s a cooperative game like Pandemic. It moves quick and easily in a frantic attempt to do a series of tasks to dispatch each monster (depending upon how many you decide to take on in a single game.) All the while you are protecting the towns’ villagers, who after escorting them to safety you are awarded a perk card that gives you advantages against the monsters. I was lucky to pick this up at a local Walmart store. This is a good thing, because this is a great gateway game to the world outside of casual games (e.g. Life, Monopoly, Sorry.) If you get a chance to get it, you’ll enjoy it. You can thank me later.
