Well, that was one hell of a month

Hello friends and family, anonymous readers and adver-bots.  How are you?  Welcome to August.  

I haven't done much in the video game world lately.  After reading this article, on designing difficult games, I played a few stages of Adventures of Lolo.  I also booted up VVVVVV just for shits and giggles.  That game is still fantastic.   Today a game called Papo y Yo went on super sale, so I'll have to buy it.  And a good friend - who will remain nameless, hint, hint - went and generously bought me a copy of Worms Armageddon, which I have yet to open.  I'll be getting to this stuff soon though, with all the free time I have now that I'm unemployed.

Yes, I lost my job on Thursday.  Don't worry, I wasn't alone.  Maybe 75 other people lost their jobs.  The month of July was spent wondering when this was going to happen, as the month of June was spent watching my workplace crumble while we ran around, working our asses off, but were helpless to do anything to prevent it.  It was not fun by any stretch of the imagination. 

So yeah, no job, which means no money, which means Papo y Yo will be the last game I buy for a while.  But it also means a lot more time, which, as they say is money so-- that's exciting.  I will have more time to play games and more time to write, and I plan on doing both of them, so expect to hear a lot more of me in the weeks to come.

Of course, this will only be for a little while.  I've pledged to give myself at least one week of unemployment ecstasy before I start earnestly looking for a new job.  But I may stretch it for a little longer, depending on how I feel.  I am still in the planning stages.  I hope to do some soul searching in the time between, and I really hope to not be on unemployment when my meager savings runs out.  

I did manage to catch World War Z, and it suuuuuuucked.  It was just terrible.  Pointless.  Bad dialogue, bad action, bad plot.  I really need to read the book now, because, the good news is- it's completely different! I suppose the one decent thing about the movie was that it was kind of fun to watch fast moving zombies pile up on one another.  There was a sort of concept that the zombies were just one big disease, like influenza or HIV something, and it was just these mad gobbling bacteria, moving like a single large creature.  That idea is cool, and if there had been more exposition and less wasting my time I might have enjoyed the movie.  Why are so many movies roller coaster rides now?  I do not recommend.  I do, however, recommend this fun little rewrite of the movie. 

I also saw another movie, a kid's movie from the 80s.  It was called "Cloak and Dagger" - and this one I recommend.  For one thing, there was more exposition in the first fifteen - twenty minutes than the entire World War Z movie.  Another is that Dabney Coleman is in it.  And a third thing is that the little kid actors aren't bad.  Also, it was fun, and interesting.  I really liked this movie, I recommend it.

One last bit:  I just read Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake."  I also recommend this book.  I was hooked within a couple pages.  Without giving too much away, it's a post-apocolyptic novel.  However, it also does the flashback thing.  When the flashbacks started, I was annoyed because I wanted more of the present.  Then I ended up really liking the flashback portions, and then I just wanted to do nothing else, but read this book. I would think about it while I was at work, or riding the train.   I love it when a book or game is so good that I find myself daydreaming about when I get to read it again.  Oryx and Crake - I highly recommend it.  

-D


***next day update:
I watched the movie Prometheus last night.  I'm going to spoil a little bit of it by describing the plot flow.  But that's all I'll spoil.  Anyhow, at the beginning, the movie takes its time, and I really appreciate it.  The scenery is beautiful, and the character introduced is likeable and interesting.  The movie progresses slowly until about halfway through, when the action picks up.  At this point things seem to change so fast, and characters start throwing out conclusions, and performing actions that don't seem to have justifications.  It's very strange that a movie that showed so much patience would ultimately show too little.  Anyhow, I recommend the first 30 minutes or so, but I can't really recommend the rest.