Search This Blog

Monday, October 8, 2012

A New Hope

I'm not a writer. Well maybe literally, but I don't get paid for it, and I'm not good at it. It's been nearly two years since I've typed up anything that wasn't either a stunningly boring scientific report or an astoundingly boring accounting report, but I'm going to give it another try. And basically no one reads this anyway, so instead of something exciting or witty, what follows are some of the mundane things that have been taking up my time recently.

Following the announcement of the Steam Big Picture Mode beta and the weeks of  discussions on the Giant Bombcast I finally decided to hook my computer up to my TV. It's a pretty sweet idea if you like crossing the Venn Diagrams of video games and sitting on couches. You probably also like Venn Diagrams. The catch is that my computer is up a ladder in a loft and my TV is literally in the middle of the main room with no walls nearby. In the end all it took was this, these, and two of these. But now we can all FINALLY play FTL without hunching over a sweaty keyboard. Royal We. And yes we have sweaty keyboards.

FTL: Faster Than Light though. Hooooey that's a tall drink of water. They're calling it a "Roguelike", which is to say it's like the old game Rogue, which is to say it's hard as balls, among other Rouge-y things I guess. I've never played a Roguelike before but I have pretended my way through minimalist designs, and this lets me do that in spades. Every play through leads off to a crazy new adventure and every one is totally unique. People will tell you that sometimes the failures are the best parts. That every crazy death makes for a new great story. They're lying of course. Winning is obviously the best part, but it's impossible. I have a spreadsheet that proves it.

Speaking of spreadsheets it's back to work tomorrow and that will be it. At least until Pokemon gets here. Gasp!