Top 5: Things Lacking in "X-COM: Enemy Unknown"

            I love the video game, "X-COM: Enemy Unknown".  it is a turn based strategy game in which you lead an elite multi-national military strike force against alien invasion.  The game gets pretty hard and pretty much requires you to use the save game function to keep from making criminally stupid mistakes.  I find that alien enemies to be varied, colorful, distinct, and really fun to play against.  For the most part the game is hard to complain about.  Here are some of my complaints that I think they should fix with an expansion pack that I would gladly buy.

            1) Bigger Squads.  When the game starts out the strike team you lead is made up of four people.  As you play your squad members level up becoming ranks of Lieutenant, Major, and ultimately Colonel.  As they level up you unlock squad benefits which you can purchase.  All of these benefits are useful, and them most useful one of all is the ability to expand your strike team to five and then six members.  So the number of squad members caps at 6.  To fight alien invaders.  What?

            I can understand starting small but the cap should be a lot higher.  I know "The Avengers" only had 6 team members during an alien invasion... But they have a HULK.  I have guys in Kevlar with rifles (which I guess is a step up from Black Widow and Hawkeye but that is neither here nor there).  Maybe there are graphics issues and the enemy AI can't figure out how to prioritize targets if there are too many, but I want at least 8 guys, so I can have two of each class (Assault, Heavy, Support, and Sniper).

"Think maybe we should send more than just a half dozen guys."
"Think we should wah-wah-wah, I'm a little bitch.  That is what you sound like, Carl.  A little bitch."
"Fine, whatever.  Not like the world is riding on this."

            2) Class Assignment.  When you manage to kill a few alien monsters your characters advance in rank and gain different specialties.  Snipers get to use sniper rifles, have the best aim, best damage, and can see really far; Support can heal, move really fast, and can use performance enhancing smoke clouds; the Heavy can use a rocket launcher to damage a lot of opponents and terrain at a time, and a heavy gun to better pin down opponents and provide cover fire; and Assault can use the shotgun, shoot after doing a double move, and can generally blow through opponents in close combat.

            Here is the problem: you don't get to choose a units class, they are randomly assigned, and not in regards to the weapons they used (grenades for Heavy), the range at which they attacked (Sniper vs Assault), or whether they provided a bonus to an ally through effective tactics (Support or Heavy).  So you could have a unit kill all of the aliens in an encounter and then get assigned Support... "Thanks for the effective fighting kid, here is a med kit and smoke bombs."  Why not just have the player pick the class and show a chart that compiles how many of each class you already have so you don't end up with nothing but Snipers.

            3) More Locals.  There are several levels that call on your team to extract a VIP, or to stop a bunch of giant cockroaches from turning people into zombies (this game is awesome) but aside from people you have to rescue you do not get to interact with any non-X-COM personnel in the game.  No National Guard, No Cops, No First Responders of any kind.

            I think it would be cool to occasionally have to extract a VIP from an area that is under assault.  You have a ticking clock to work against (a clock that is not literal, but is dynamic) you can show how the alien fire power does overwhelm conventional military that don't have lasers and plasma weaponry at their disposal, and you could even take control of a small group of regular military to compliment your strike team.  They would be shitty and practically dead weight there to draw some alien fire away from your important long term squad units, but they would be there.

THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE SHALL BEGIN WITH GIANT PURPLE BUG MONSTERS!

            4) Bigger Backpacks.  In the game your squad can carry, one suit of armor, one primary weapon (rifle, heavy machine gun, shotgun, or sniper rifle), one side arm (a pistol, though the types get upgraded, and this slot is a rocket launcher if you are a heavy), and one miscellaneous slot.  The miscellaneous slot can store a grenade (1 grenade), a super stun gun (which for some reason does not replace the pistol), a med kit (one time use), or a protective item (like an alien undershirt that gives extra hit points... Why is this alien undershirt not just a blanket upgrade to the armor of all your units, I have no idea).  Support characters get one extra slot.  This is stupid.

            Some of these things are just in the wrong slot, like with the stun gun not being a pistol replacement.  Some of these should be standard equipment for everyone; like the grenade, everyone should have one grenade.  Some should not be items at all, like the alien undershirt, that should just be a generic armor upgrade, increasing everyone's health.  Med kits should just be for Support units and should be multi-use from the start (a special ability for the Support unit later in the game is multiple uses of the med-kit, and it heals more per use).

            Maybe they could just give me more stuff.  Like mines, you set a mine and when an alien goes by it the thing goes off; Cameras that players can put down remotely and see through to cover their back; Thermal Imager allowing a character to see through walls; jet packs or grappling hooks (though those are types of armor later in the game, which I kind of get, I just like the idea that a character wears armor, and wears a jetpack, not just that they are wearing jetpack-armor).  There are things that can be done is all I'm getting at.

Don't even really know why I am complaining.  I never really used these things, they seem monumentally stupid in concept you are the single most visible target on the battlefield and have ZERO COVER.

            5) Branching Skill Trees.  Currently when a unit gains a rank they can chose one of two abilities (some levels only have one ability to chose... so you don't really chose it, you are given it).  These abilities are often of dubious use, but many are awesome.  I like the Holo-Targeting of the Heavy, he uses his machine gun to paint a target with holographic markers making it an easier target for everyone else.

            Why can't I just get multiple ranks of Holo-Targeting?  Why can't I have my heavy just not use his rocket launcher and instead is just the best guy to pin down enemies with a machine gun, and draw giant "THIS IS THE GUY TO SHOOT" signs over his opponents' heads?  If each class had a skill tree, that is to say each decision I made in regards to their abilities unlocked more advanced skills and shut out others, then two squad members of the same class could end up playing very differently from one another.  This is probably hard to balance, and it is probably very hard to imagine.  even with just 4 classes and 7 levels with two choices a level... that would be 512 different abilities to think up.  As is there are probably 60 and that is a lot.

This is a skill list for a very advanced and well armed sniper.  It is attached to a very well written full review of the game.

            And that is the bulk of my complaints, I have other nit-picky stuff that isn't with the game play, so much as it is with the bugs of the game.  Graphics, the ability for aliens to see through things and fire at things they shouldn't be able to, or how clunky moving from floor to floor is because the game freaks out about the concept of height.  Maybe this stuff will happen in the inevitable sequel, but I have no idea.  Still, you should play this game, it is totally worth purchasing.

THE COMMUNITY BAR BQ

            Social interaction might be the most forced thing I go through each day.  I don't particularly like "people" in the broadest of strokes, much like the quote from K in Men in Black, "A person is smart.  People are dumb panicky dangerous animals..."  And I really believe that to be the case, so it should come as no surprise I go out of my way to be an entertaining, informative, uplifting, and otherwise pleasant force in social situations.

            It is exhausting.

            And it is from this on-the-outside-looking-in mentality that I approach the social event that is: THE COMMUNITY BAR BQ.  When I was in under-gradute at FGCU I lived in on campus student housing all 4 years, I applied to be an RA for years two and three.  The first time because I wanted to get free rent and pay for doing something I would have done anyway, sit on my ass in the dorms all the time.  The second time because I thought I could get out of my shell, I furthered my goal by going to every stupid housing get together I could and making my name known to the Housing staffers.  I never got to be an RA and by my senior year I had decided to stop giving half a shit.  What I did pick up on was the pattern of lazy event planning which was this: Food and Mingle.

            Since frozen hamburger patties are cheap, and an all but unused grill is standard issue next to all college housing pool areas, so the go to is of course, THE COMMUNITY BAR BQ.  And while the food is terrible, and the guests are all college students with nothing better to do the experience is rarely anything other than miserable, how do I remember this so clearly?  Cause I just went to one today.

            I have aged emotionally and physically since I last went to one of these contrived events, but for whatever reason they remain incredibly awkward and not fun.  For god sake it is still chilly outside, so there isn't even the off chance that women in bikinis will show up to be ogled and made uncomfortable by me.  Though I guess there is the trade off that none of the six-pack-abs brigade will be around to make me lament my poor dieting decisions so I guess that is a wash.

            The only thing these events really bring to mind are those Kim Jong Un photo-ops.  Where everyone there is just incredibly uncomfortable, I guess there is no compulsory service at THE COMMUNITY BAR BQ, but at the same time... Nobody has to be there, so those who show up are all the more awkward because they all know that none of them have anything better to do.  It is kind of pathetic.  And yes, I am pathetic for having gone just to bite into a burn burger on a stale bun (I threw 80% of it in the garbage, as it was garbage).  Maybe I needed a refresher in how none of this stuff is worth my fantastically inexpensive time.

Okay, it isn't this awkward, but it is certainly on the same sliding scale of  "socially uncomfortable situations".

Poem, "In Fear of Defeat"

Would I like to have gone through my life without having known failure?  That whatever I did I did effortlessly well?

No.

That is a path to banality.  A world that glitters but is not really won, just given freely.

But what of failure and defeat?

It seems that they become the motivating factor, rather than the success.

Some-when in the past we stopped wanting success, and started to expect it.  Failure was not a possible outcome, but that thing that happened to lesser people.

If you did not win, you shouldn't have played to begin with.

So people stopped playing, and people stopped trying.

Because the only way to lose, is to play.

The only way to fail, is to try.

Hope was a path to disappointment.

And life was not a series of adventures, but instead a task of prolonging itself.

You avoid confrontation.

You don't think.

But you worry.

You fear.

You hide.

And everything slows down.

Turns gray.

And those who do not fear defeat go to war.

Sadly, those without fear, are stupid.

Intro to Comics: Legion (upgrade)

(This blog appeared on my Facebook nearly 3 years ago, I am transferring some of them over).

            Welcome to the dark side of comics (and not Darkseid god of tyranny and domination, he is awesome) I mean the Dark Age of Comics in which everything became more extreme.  In the late 80's and on through the 90's comics became very much about three things, huge misshapen musculature, weapons of such alien configuration and abnormal size as to baffle all who looked upon them, and the X-Men.  The number 1 all time selling comic is an issue of X-Men from the 90's, which people speculate sold in the realm of 10,000,000 copies to people hoping to eventually cash in on it as a collectors item with the investment genius of a 12 year old who doesn't know what scarcity means.

Also, POUCHES, would be another good word to help describe 90's art.

            The character I wish to point out as a symptom of the impending fever that was the Dark Age is Legion, an invention of Chris Claremont the same year I was born and Doctor Brown discovered time travel, 1985.  Legion actually sounds like a complex little character on paper with some cool ideas inelegantly worked into his design.

            Legion is psychic, having a few different forms of (blank)-kinesis, and mind reading.  He also can mimic mutant powers.  Thing is, his mind reading ability causes him to copy the persona of those he is around, these personalities become whole in his mind and have caused him a bad case of multiple personality disorder, what is worse is that each persona can use his mimic abilities to use their own original super powers in Legion's body.  This means that he can do anything if the right mind is in control of his body.  Time travel, lighting people on fire with his mind, anything.

This is a more modern take on Legion.  It seems to be doing a lot better job with him.  It does still have terrible hair though, and that will forever mark him as part of the 90's.  (Then again, if Prof X, the bald was my father I would grow my hair out while I still had it to grow.)

            What makes him a symptom of the darker edgier age of comics is not only is he crazy powerful, and crazy, but he is also the horrible kept secret of Prof X.  Legion is Charles Xavier's bastard son who had been raised in an institution because of his mental defects.  That is right, the Martin Luther King jr. knock-off of the Marvel universe has a baby mama, and an f'd up crazy baby.  Because illegitimate parenthood, that is something for superheroes to be associated with (keep in mind both Batman and Wolverine have illegitimate children in the comics, and Superman had one in his latest movie, so somewhere out there someone thinks that this is a real common human flaw for popular and competent characters to have).

            Legion needless to say becomes a villain, and using his time travel power attempts to make it so Magneto never becomes the leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants.  Legion fails, and instead ends up killing his dad, causing an unstable time loop resulting in the super villain Apocalypse ruling the world (much like the Darkseid mentioned above, Apocalypse is awesome).  Needless to say the time loop untangled itself and the universe got better... By having Legion never be born to begin with.

            Didn't stop a writer who hadn't done his research from bringing him back for no reason at all, and doing nothing with him, and allowing him to fade into comic book obscurity again.  But yeah who cares.

            Truth is, Legion could have worked as a sort of Borg collective for mutant powers and memories, he could have even worked out as Prof X's greatest failure, but he didn't.  His stories were a cluster of continuity hiccups and bad plotting.  Want to know how I know the character could have worked?  Because a few years ago Marvel started the "Ultimate" line of comics, retelling classic superhero stories with modern sensibilities and art, in it the character of Legion is mixed with a better character called Proteus.   Rather than absorb minds Proteus hops from body to body burning them out to full his reality warping powers, ultimately falling into a trap, being bound inside the mind of a psychic long enough for Colossus (who is awesome) to crush his ass with a car.  All while Prof X debates the ethics of killing Proteus, who is his own son, but also a terrible danger to the world, as he kills hundreds of people just to rub in X's face how Xavier is responsible for having never used his powers to fix Proteus.  That is crazy evil.  Hurray for Colossus saying "sometimes somebody has to die" and having the balls to follow through with it, though this Colossus is a former hitman for the Russian Mob so take from that what you will.

            So overall Legion is a bad character, and one of many that populated the Dark Age of comics.  Poorly conceived, poorly plotted, poorly reused.

Ultimate Proteus, in one of the worst stills I have ever seen for a character.

Hole in a Field, Epilogue

A little while ago I wrote a short story for the L. Ron Hubbard "Writers of the Future Contest".  I did not win, and I know why, my story is really more horror than Science Fiction or Fantasy.  But I decided that I will post each chapter here on my blog.  There are 37 very short chapters (and now this short Epilogue), for a total of a little over 16,000 words, about a fifth of a modern novel.  Here is the first chapter.

Epilogue

            Explanations are always messy, and they always lead to new questions.

            "Max," said the man in the suit, in his typical reassuring tones.  "I am sorry about Wilton, Claire, Allison, and Todd.  Before we continue I would like to tell you that no one thinks you did anything wrong, and from what you told us you reacted as anyone in your position might."

            "What happened?" asked Maxwell.  "I mean, I have an idea, but why did it happen that way?"

            "The house you found in the hole," said the man in the suit.  "We have an idea.  It seems the house fell into a sinkhole sometime in the past, we found the bodies of a middle aged couple crushed under the house.  The body you found in the upstairs bedroom was presumably the couple's child.  She was buried alive in the house, as it started to partially collapse on itself from the weight of the earth, she focused on her toys, and hoped for rescue."

            "Rescue never came," said Maxwell.

            "No," said the man in the suit.  "It never did and we have a likely hypothesis as to why.  Regardless, the girl held out as long as she could in the dark.  Eventually she gave into despair hanging herself with a jump rope."

            "God," said Maxwell.

            "There was a dead flashlight and some paper next to her," continued the man in the suit.  "She wrote something with a marker, we were able to enhance the faded writing."

            "What did it say," asked Maxwell.

            "She wrote, 'I waited so long, but the laughter in the dark is just too much'," the man in the suit said it with a sort of reassuring tone, more wistful and sad then the subject matter would suggest.  "She was alive for a while, she was strong, she was a fighter."

            Maxwell just put his head in his hands.

            "Max," said the man in the suit.  "We--"

            "How do you lose a house?" interrupted Maxwell.

            "I'm sorry?"

            "How do you lose a house?  Why was she not rescued?  How did you lose where we were?"

            "As I was about to say," said the man in the suit.  "We found something under the ruin of the house.  There was a... pillar made of polished black rock, it has script written on it that we have not identified."

            "What?"

            "Any psychic that goes near the thing feels like they are going to puke and die," said the man in the suit.  "It has been there a while, and we think it was the source of the 'laughter in the dark' the girl mentioned, it messes with cell phones, GPS, makes people hallucinate, we shipped it to a radiological institute to put in a shielded box till we figure out what to do with it."

            "So people noticed the house was gone," said Maxwell.  "But this thing scrambled their brains?"

            "That house became a dream to the people who knew of it."

            "Then why weren't people just falling into that hole year after year?" asked Maxwell.  "Why only now?"

            "A section of the ground near it gave way," said the man in the suit.  "Its weird signal spread out, it used the young ladies memories and perceptions as a basis to lure people into the trap.  Her little models of a small town and a carnival with little figurines of clowns everywhere.  It played with your minds."

            "You talk like it is alive," said Maxwell.

            "We aren't sure if alive is the right word," said the man in the suit.  "But we think it might be some kind of device, a computer maybe."

            "So it just kicked on?"

            "No," said the man in the suit.  "And that has us worried.  We think it was turned on.  We think something might be coming."

            "What?" asked Maxwell.  "What is coming?"

            "Something bad for all of us."

To Be Continued.

Hole in a Field, Chap 37

A little while ago I wrote a short story for the L. Ron Hubbard "Writers of the Future Contest".  I did not win, and I know why, my story is really more horror than Science Fiction or Fantasy.  But I decided that I will post each chapter here on my blog.  There are 37 very short chapters, for a total of 15,000 words, about a fifth of a modern novel.  Here is the start.

(This is the last chapter.  If you want an epilogue explaining everything, please comment on here and tell me so.)

Chapter 37:

Maxwell was standing alone in the attic of an abandoned house.  The whole place was dark but for a glow out of the window. There, three cords hung from a hole in a cavern ceiling and down into the darkness of the cavern floor.  As he peered around the room tiny metal figures made themselves clear to him, miniatures of clowns and Ferris Wheels, of a little town… and more clowns.  The room had a bed, fallen in on itself from decades of being in the moist underground, and lying across it was a skeleton, juicy and covered in clothing with a long faded clown motif. Wrapped around the skeleton’s neck was a cord or rope.

Maxwell left the room untouched and wandered down through the house that seemed to fill this hole for the most part.  It was dark and smelled of earth but it was a house, and not some twisted little dimension filled with stairs and undead clowns. It was a place, and Maxwell wanted to leave.  He wandered a stairwell and saw more bodies, mummified with age, in different clothes and with different looks, all ancient and moist from the underground. Maxwell’s reaction was blankly distracted.  He felt something on the edge of his mind, a dizziness, or sickness, like he was sleepy or the world was pressing down on him. He felt like he was breathing through a sheet, stifling and uncomfortable.

Maxwell reached the front door and lying rigid on the threshold was Clair, cold and dead.  A few feet away Wilton’s body was splayed out.  Just outside the circle of light were the bodies of Todd and Allison.  Maxwell climbed out of the hole and into the field where he found the cars they had all rented, alongside another car, which Maxwell saw belonged to the guy he had only been introduced to as Ernie (minus the knife in the eye). All were sitting outside around the hole and the nearest road was on the horizon.

Maxwell popped open his rental car and dug his phone out from inside the central console, dialing out.  “Hat Rack, this is Maxwell," he said.  "Hey Jenna, yeah, I know.  Listen, something weird is happening. I need help.”  He then let the phone drop to his side and looked out at the field a Merry-Go-Round turning slowly. He blinked and focused his eyes, and it was gone.  He pressed the phone to his ear. “Be quick.” 

Hole in a Field, Chap 36

A little while ago I wrote a short story for the L. Ron Hubbard "Writers of the Future Contest".  I did not win, and I know why, my story is really more horror than Science Fiction or Fantasy.  But I decided that I will post each chapter here on my blog.  There are 37 very short chapters, for a total of 15,000 words, about a fifth of a modern novel.  Here is the start.

Chapter 36:

“Max,” a voice moved through the darkness from behind Maxwell and caused him to form rigidly in his position, looking down on the scene of clowns piling over his comrade. The voice was familiar.

“Clair,” Maxwell responded.  He turned and was greeted by his friend, her visage twisted, pale and distended, a funhouse mirror of his coworker.  “You've looked better.”

“Careful Max,” Wilton’s twisted form crept up out of the shadows. His back was hunched and bent at numerous points and angles, his legs seemingly having far too many joints. His face was crushed on one side but still smiling.  “I don’t think you should be kidding my girl so playfully, it is unprofessional to draw attention to how good she looks.”

Maxwell cringed at the sight of them and realized how useless the weight of his gun felt, how cornered he was between his two friends and the unbreakable window. With a ghost by his side and the madness all around, the world was as crooked as the house he stood in.  “Wil, Clair, I want to ask you: do you know how I can get back to the normal world?”

“Why would you want to go back?”  Clair asked back.

“I suppose you don’t get why seeing the world crooked like this is better,” Wilton chimed in. “Everyone smiles, everything shines. It is all as it should be.  Honestly insane.  Rather than secretly, like the rest of the world is.”

“But do you know?” asked Maxwell.

“Max, baby, you’re already there,” said Clair.

“Just try and see it our way.”  At that phrase the world changed briefly for Maxwell. It was darker, less animate, and just for a moment he saw something different.

“See things your way?”  Maxwell squinted and focused his eyes again, and again the world got darker.  He heard Allison say something but it was a whisper. He heard the clowns of his friends say something, but it was distorted.

Crooked House straightened all out… things got a lot easier to see.