What was I talking about?

Oh, right, since I don’t have any games to talk about, a friend suggested I talk about our trip. This is the trip we’re taking, and I can say this: if we die there, it better not be in a car wreck!

The first couple of days we’ll be on an atoll in the middle of a marine preserve. I’ve never been snorkeling, and I have a fear of being eaten by giant animals with huge teeth, but I’m going to go gamely into water in which things with dead eyes can swim up from underneath me and oh god maybe I’ll just stay on the beach and drink mai tais.

Assuming we survive that, then it’s on to Pook’s Hill Lodge and ziplining and cave tubing. Did I mention I am also acrophobic? (You’re going to sense a pattern to my phobias and this vacation). Seriously, I once couldn’t step off a ladder onto the roof of my house; I was too paralyzed to will my limbs to move. And yet, I’m going to strap myself to a harness attached to a cable in a third-world country and go hurtling through the oh god maybe I’ll just stay at the lodge and drink mai tais.

Cave tubing will be fun, though.

Next up is what I consider the apex of the trip: the Black Hole Drop. Just thinking about this can give me an adrenaline rush. What is it? It’s a 300-foot rappel into a sinkhole in the middle of the jungle. Yeah, I’m that insane acrophobic who can’t step off a ladder, and I’m going to strap myself in a harness and step off the side of a 300-foot oh god I’m definitely staying at the lodge drinking mai tais.

The last adventure is a hike into Actun Tunichil Muknal, a cave that once served as a Mayan sacrificial chamber. I have absolutely no claustrophobia, however, so that’s good.

I have a new waterproof digital camera, so I should have a billion pictures when we return. If we return.

First, everyone go congratulate my friend Morgan Dempsey on being made Assistant Editor of Scape.

—

I haven’t played many different games lately. Mostly just Minecraft and SWTOR. My SWTOR subscription is up soon, and I won’t be renewing. Not a bad game, but like I’ve mentioned before, theme park games can only hold my interest in small doses. I tried a French MMO in open beta called Wakfu. It’s an intriguing title, far more complicated than the cutesy graphics would indicate. It’s going live in a few weeks, and they’re planning a server wipe, so I haven’t wanted to get too involved in it. Still, I’ll probably check it out again when it’s ready.

—

We’re going on vacation in Belize in a few weeks, so we’ve been upping our workout routine. I’ve added swimming to my weekly schedule, and I’m starting to get my endurance up. I’m up to a half mile, and now I’m working on needing fewer stops between laps. Our Belize vacation includes snorkeling, sea kayaking, caving, ziplines, rappelling, and hiking, so it should be a blast. Yeah, can you tell I’m not really a big fan of the whole “lounging on the beach with a book and a margarita” type of vacation?

—

I finished another round of revisions on my last book and started the first draft of another. Not willing to really say what it’s about yet, because I usually don’t know what it’s about until it’s done. But it’s coming along very well. Almost 20,000 words and I haven’t yet hit a drag point. I will eventually, of course, but I’m enjoying the ride as long as I can.

Let’s get those out of the way first. The big one is the UI. The only part of it you can move is the chat box. You can’t resize it; you can’t put your minimap where you want, or your companion bar elsewhere, or anything else. This is very annoying. The UI takes up way too much of my screen. I would shrink my icon buttons if I could, move my minimap to my preferred location (top right) and my chat box to the bottom left. This is the default setup of theme park UIs for the last ten years, but I guess Bioware thought switching all that up for no good reason was a great idea. They were wrong. I’m starting to think UI developers need to have the Sword of Damocles over their cubicles to get them to straighten up and fly right.

Another annoyance is that combat feels a wee bit sluggish. I wish instant attacks would reset just a little faster. I’m wielding a double-bladed lightsaber. I want to look badass with it, not like I’m still in training.

My overall experience with the game is good, though. The fully-voiced quests are fantastically done and add a very strong element of immersion. I thought it would be a gimmick, that I would want to hurry through them to get to the meat of the quest, but I enjoy them. I haven’t heard any weak voice acting yet. The interactivity and strong story-telling elements do a great job of disguising the standard nature of the quests. (It’s hard for MMOs to get away from kill/collect/deliver quests). Still, I’ve had very few quests that required me to kill [x] creatures. Most of those are bonus objectives. Extra XPs, sometimes extra rewards, but not required to finish the quest line. The class storylines are great, too. I’d like to see more games focus on personal stories.

My highest level character is 12, so I haven’t seen much of the game. I don’t expect to play this one more than a month or two, which is fine by me. Like I’ve mentioned before, it’s rare for me to stick with a theme park game for long. But I can easily see myself coming back to it every few months as new content is added, or when I’d like to try out another class.

Books

Since getting my iPad, I’ve read more books than I usually do in any given year, and I’m happy about that. These were all digital purchases.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them.

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Non-gamers might not find this one as interesting, but I absolutely loved every minute of it. I like the fact that the author knows games, and it’s obvious he holds a deep fondness for them. His OASIS is the perfect computer system, and anyone who loves MMOs will understand the appeal.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

In America’s Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota–and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it’s worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life.…

In this powerful novel, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.

I almost didn’t read this, because I tend to have a dislike for long paragraphs unbroken by dialog, and that makes up the first couple of pages. But the story significantly picks up the pace, and I could barely put it down once I got into it. I’ve read a lot of YA dystopian fiction this year, and this is my favorite by far.

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard

A charmingly gothic, fiendishly funny Faustian tale about a brilliant scientist who makes a deal with the Devil, twice.

Johannes Cabal sold his soul years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. Now he wants it back. Amused and slightly bored, Satan proposes a little wager: Johannes has to persuade one hundred people to sign over their souls or he will be damned forever. This time for real. Accepting the bargain, Jonathan is given one calendar year and a traveling carnival to complete his task. With little time to waste, Johannes raises a motley crew from the dead and enlists his brother, Horst, a charismatic vampire to help him run his nefarious road show, resulting in mayhem at every turn.

It’s hard to say how much I love this character. He’s completely amoral, highly sarcastic, and easily annoyed. Think Gregory House, if he could raise the dead and had fewer ethical qualms. I would gladly read any story he was in, and I hope the author is able to write many more Johannes Cabal books.

Runners Up: Divergent by Veronica Roth and Johannes Cabal the Detective by Jonathan L. Howard

Games

Minecraft

I avoided this game for a long time, even knowing millions loved it and friends raved about it. The graphics were a real turnoff to me. But a friend convinced me to try it, knowing my love of sandbox games, so I took the plunge. I came up for air the first night six hours later, bleary-eyed but eager to play more. I convinced Joe to play it, and now two months later, we’re still playing almost every night. We have a server with a handful of friends playing, have added some of the biggest and best multiplayer mods, and I’ve probably put more hours into our world than I have every game combined in the last six months. Oh, and I found a gorgeous texture pack to apply to the graphics.

Skyrim

If you know games at all you know this one. It’s the fifth installment of the Elder Scrolls series. It’s an open-ended roleplaying game set in a fantasy world of elves and dragons and magic. It’s easily one of the best-looking games out, but more importantly, it’s an exciting, sandbox world where you get to decide what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. I’ve only put in about three dozen hours (for the reason, see entry above), and I’ve only just touched the main quest line. Some days I just get in and read a few of the in-game books. Other times, I go out until I stumble upon a cave or dungeon or house and just see what’s inside. I put literally hundreds of hours into the previous Elder Scrolls game, and I expect to do the same with Skyrim.

Everquest 2

I’ve mentioned before that Everquest 2 is the best theme park MMO out, and I stand by that. Their latest expansion, Age of Discovery, is filled with content, including a new dungeon creator that allows players to make dungeons for others to complete. And the items for those dungeons are found from drops, giving you even more reason to go out questing. I’ll go back to this game in the future.

Runner Up: Fallen Earth

Movies/TV

I watch so little TV and movies that I’m lumping these together.

The Wire, Season 5

Finally finished the show up. This is quality TV the likes of which you rarely see on screen. It’s not always easy to watch. Characters you like often do terrible things. The good guys aren’t always easy to identify. But even when the focus is on the politicians, the show still holds your interest. It feels real in a way no show has ever felt before. Oh, and it’s surprisingly funny. Laugh-out-loud funny.

Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil

I heard about this one mentioned by Candace Havens on Twitter, so when we were looking for a movie to rent one night, we decided to give it a try. Watch the trailer and see for yourself. I’m always worried with comedies that all the funny parts are in the trailer, so I was pleasantly surprised to find this wasn’t the case with this movie. It was genuinely funny, and the two heroes are dumb but sweet.

Psych

I won’t pretend this is the greatest show in the world, but I enjoy watching James Roday and Dulé Hill as the heroes of this comedy detective series. The two work well together and have great comedic timing. I’ve been watching some episodes of The West Wing, and it’s funny to see how different Charlie Young is from Gus. I think Dulé Hill is an underrated actor, and I hope he keeps working for a long time.

Runner up: In Plain Sight

I have a suggestion for all the search engines and DNS providers: hold a week of protest in which you remove every site for every company and organization that supports SOPA. Remove them from search engines. Cut off their DNS. In other words, show them exactly how it would feel to be banned from the Internet.

Several years ago, we visited the Great Sand Dunes National Park and climbed the dunes. In many parks, you’re expected (and sometimes required) to stay on designated trails, both for your safety and to protect the park’s resources. The Dunes aren’t like that. You’re free to go anywhere, take any route. It was exhilarating.

Do we take this really high dune now, since our ultimate goal is the highest dune in the park, or take that downward path, knowing it only means more ascending later? Do we travel along the top of this dune to that spot further from our goal and then ascend, or take this shorter path that requires more climbing? Sometimes we picked wrong (like in that picture, where we were sure it was a gentle rise when we headed for it. The sand really plays havoc with your depth perception).

Just as I love forging my own path in real life, I love doing it in games. Minecraft hands you the tools to do whatever you want and then steps back and says, “Go for it.”

For some of you, this is old news. Minecraft has been in beta for ages. People have been talking about how incredible the game is for months and months. Four million copies sold. Yadda yadda. But I couldn’t get past the dated graphics. I don’t require top notch graphics. I appreciate them, but I’ll gladly play games that are graphically unappealing if the gameplay is awesome. But I thought Minecraft’s graphics were beyond my threshold.

But the idea of the game was interesting. Then I saw a PC Gamer article on the Top 25 Minecraft Mods. My interest was piqued once more, but I had enough games to play. I had active MMO subscriptions. Skyrim’s release was just around the corner. I asked, begged, pleaded with Dempsey to talk me out of buying the game. She, being the black-hearted woman she is, did exactly the opposite. She even took to Twitter and rallied the troops. No fewer than six people told me I was insane for not playing Minecraft.

So I took the plunge.

I finally shut the game down six hours later that first night. About thirty minutes in, I told my husband, “I…I think I understand what all the fuss is about.” The next day I kept talking about it. He’d been as opposed to it as me, but he watched some videos. He, too, decided to try it out.

We probably played about 20 hours that weekend alone. I found the photo realism texture pack, which vastly improved on the graphics.

We got other people in it. Everyone seems to be thoroughly enjoying it. It dominates our game time. We’ve found an abandoned mine shaft deep in a cavern, a fortress in the Nether world, several small dungeons full of mobs and treasure chests. We’ve built castles and towers, and a skyway, and even a three-way-switching minecart rail beneath the earth.

I’ve started modding my single player game. Mods add so much more to the game. I want to mod the server, but with the imminent release of the final build this Friday, all the mod-makers are holding off on updating.

This is a game of extraordinary possibilities, a true sandbox. Not many games give you a dungeon to explore, and then let you take out not only the treasure, but the support beams, the walls, and then lets you carve your own path back to the surface (literally).

The release of the video trailer marks the launch of a unique Facebook campaign for APB Reloaded.  [a]list games and GamersFirst have partnered with Fanrank, the Facebook app designed to track and reward influential fans, to invite new players and encourage existing ones to spread the word about the game.  The campaign begins by awarding in-game prizes for those who share the live action trailer and get their friends to join in the Free2Play fun in APB Reloaded.  Later stages will introduce bigger prizes, new trailers, and ultimately a player museum of in-game and user generated content.

For the APB Reloaded Fanrank campaign, please visit: http://tinyurl.com/7rcuhr8.

She’s so sweet and loving. When she was young, she was awake and active more than any other cat I’d ever seen. Her favorite toy was the string from a pair of sweatpants. She carried it with her everywhere. She would drag it into one room, play with it, then carry it somewhere else to play with. I found it in a different place all the time.

She isn’t the smartest cat in the world. In fact, I think she might be one of the dumbest. When she climbs on the kitchen counters, virtually the only place in the house she isn’t allowed, she meows loudly, letting us know very clearly what she’s doing. She used to do somersaults and try to look cute when she did something wrong, in the hopes the cute would make us forget what she did. Sometimes it worked.

She’s perfectly content sitting in our laps, or sleeping under the blankets in bed, curled between my arm and side. She loves having her belly rubbed. When we put a pet door in the door to the attached garage for the litter box, she discovered heaven in the form of an un-air conditioned garage during a Texas summer.

She’s almost 15, and she’s been with us for 13 years. She’s in a lot of pain, having a lot of problems, and it’s only going to get worse. We don’t like seeing her suffer. Tomorrow morning we take her to the vet. She won’t be coming back.

I wish it could have lasted longer, but I’m glad I got to know her.