antimony

And here we have it; the last few games of the Comp.

( Sigmund's Quest )
( Krypteia )
( Jesse Stavro's Doorway )
( Paradox Corps )
( Begscape, also contains more thoughts on With Those We Love Alive )
( Origins )

And now to score stuff; I am one of those folks who curves scores; I always give 10s to my favorite game(s) even if I don't think they're perfect, and I generally use the whole range; I will be giving a 1 this year. Basically I put them in order from Best to Worst and then start assigning numbers. The number of really small games in the Comp is throwing me a bit; how do I rate a very good, completely bug/issue free, very short game compared to a mostly very-good long game with one or two issues? Not sure, but I have a tentative list.

I think these reviews may be coming off crankier than I am; I'm a software quality engineer and thus my reaction to "here, try this" is to list flaws. It's what I do. That said, this was not my favorite batch of games, so this batch is pretty harsh.

( One Night Stand )
( The Black Lily )
( Following Me, also has spoilers for The Urge )
( Hill 160 )
( Tower )
( Inward Narrow Crooked Lanes )

Next up: Creatures Such as We, Hunger Daemon, Enigma, HHH.exe, The Entropy Cage, Ugly Oafs, Laterna Magica.

I feel like perhaps I should say more on how I rate games; I've scored a bunch of these competitions before, but the last time was in 2000 or so. And I haven't played much IF from the years in between; I've missed many chapters in innovation, both technological and artistic, and so I don't always know where a competition game is doing something new and where it's doing something that was done better in 2008 but I haven't seen before. I am not worrying about that, and am scoring on whether I liked it.

Also, I have two platforms to play on: an aged Mac laptop running OS X 10.5.8 and the corresponding version of Safari, and a version 1 iPad, also running its corresponding Safari. Both can be bogged down by very basic websites, and both are a little flaky. I've been playing most of the web games on the iPad while commuting on the T, and the interpreter games at home after I write down notes on the web games. (I have, at the point, played almost all the web games, but actually editing my notes hasn't caught up.) (And the numbering sequence of these reviews reflects the original shuffle list I had; if I was at home I played the next interpreter game on it, but I was playing web games as I felt like it.)

( The Contortionist )
( Fifteen Minutes )
( The Urge )
At this point I got tired of doing the cutesy summaries, plus the next group included some games that felt like the author's first IF, and being snarky about the shortcomings of a first game isn't something I want to do, because all of them had something good about them and I'd like to see their authors keep writing.

Though the next game wasn't one of them; in fact, it wasn't the first game from this author in this competition.

( Zest )
( Unform )
( Raik )
( Missive )
( And yet it moves )

Next up: The Secret Vaults of Kas the Betrayer, Tea Ceremony, Transparent, AlethiCorp, Arqon, Icepunk, Excelsior.

( spoilery Captain America: The Winter Soldier question behind the cut )

Icon in honor of how Cleveland is blatantly every city ever in the MCU, and it cracks me up.

So the last time I posted, I mentioned getting a new bike; it arrived about a month ago, and I finally had a chance to get it out for a long, fast ride yesterday. Whee! I missed riding like this. Yes, I used to do it on my Nishiki (1984 Nishiki Bel-Air mountain bike), complete with fairly knobby tires, but it's really nice to do it on a bike designed for speed. And yes, some may remember that I had another road bike, a Bianchi Brava, but it never fit right, and I gave up on it a few years ago.

(In other news, I am still not fast enough for group rides, sigh. There is a dearth of rides that a) actually, honestly, state their speeds and b) go 13-15 mph on flat ground. I like riding with people, and being the slowest person in a group sucks. Even if the leader clearly didn't mind hanging back, some of the other folks clearly did.)

High points of the ride: I can climb the hills on Trapelo Road while tired without a granny gear, which means I'm not completely out of shape. Also that not having a granny gear on the new bike was not a horrible mistake. :D I've been riding a lot more lately, though I am still out of shape compared to when I was riding 10-20 miles a day. I need to commute more (though not on the new bike). Even if it's getting dark out there.

Low points: a squirrel fell out of a tree and hit me. Seriously. Something dark and heavy came flying down, too fast to swerve or do anything but hold my line, and bounced off my left wrist. The guy behind me said "that was a squirrel". WTF, squirrel. It was probably a low point in the squirrel's day, too.

And, since there were very few reviews of this bike out there when I went looking, I'll post mine (warning: super-long):

( click for pictures and not-so-mini-review )