Category: Review

Review: Starmada

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Starmada 30th Anniversary Edition

I was looking for something to scratch my spaceship wargaming itch. A set of generalist rules that you could apply to basically any setting and have a semi-reasonable approximation of things. Enter Starmada. Now its newest 30th anniversary edition, it lets you build and battle on the tabletop whatever ships you can imagine.

Naturally as a generalist set it lacks specific gimmicks, with anything offensive having to be translated into weapon qualities (ie a big area blast would be “proximity”, and a powerful kinetic cannon shell would be “crushing”) and anything defensive being translated to either “screens” (roll above X or the attack fails) or “shields” (takes a hit before anything else). You get the idea.

It requires some imagination. But if you have imagination and a willingness to abstract, well let me just say that even my initial crude playtesting sessions had me beaming bright. Want to play as a cumbersome pure brute force fleet going against an agile but brittle rapier? This lets you do all that and then some.

Review: The War of Return

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The War of Return

A very timely book, Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz’s The War of Return is a look at the Israel-Palestinian conflict. That the two support a two-state solution and a return of Israel to pre-1967 borders makes it all the more credible. Trying to go and see why the Palestinians have been more intractable than even the other Arab states, they come to a “temporary UN program”.

I knew about the legitimate beefs the Palestinians have with Israel (yes they exist), and how the other Arab nations have used them entirely as political props and tools for decades without wanting to care for them. Yet the key in the lock they’ve explained is the UNRWA, which ended up becoming both a local government (seriously) with an international fig leaf and something that fanned the fires by using the term “refugee” in a way completely different than what everyone else, including the rest of the UN, uses.

(Short oversimplified version: The UNHCR which handles refugees literally everywhere, has a narrow definition and formal apoliticality. Once someone is settled, they aren’t a “refugee” anymore. So WRT Syria, if they’re settled they’re no longer a refugee. Be it in Turkey, Germany, the UAE, Ireland, America, or Bangladesh, that’s that. Also, whether they were pro-or-anti-Assad is irrelevant in that case. In contrast, the UNRWA has effectively made every single Palestinian family into a dynasty of “refugees”.)

It’s hard not to read this book and think that just a bit of negotiation here and a settlement there can still work (or could even before the current war). This makes it a sad but excellent and true story.

A Thousand Words: Jodorowsky’s Dune

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Jodorowsky’s Dune

In the early-mid 1970s, arthouse filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky ended up helming an “adaptation” of Dune. The quotes are deliberate as the movie and its tone would have been Starship Troopers/The Natural levels of intentionally different from the book. In 2013, the story of the most extravagant and absurd movie that never was was finally told in the titular documentary.

This is a great production. Everyone is clearly enjoying themselves as they talk about how the production got more and more crazy. Jodorowsky had his own son play a major role, and of course the son talks about it decades later. The art and effects brought together such figures as Jean “Moebius” Giraud, Dan O’Bannon, and H. R. Giger, the latter two of whom would make a monster movie that was a little successful. Yet the all-star cast was the craziest, featuring Orson Welles (paid in free food) as Baron Harkonnen, Salvador Dali, and Mick Jagger.

What makes the documentary shine is its soundtrack, with Kurt Stenzel’s minimalist electronic score being both a perfect accent and a great piece of music in its own right. (Although I’m biased because I like minimal electronic music, fair warning). The cinematography is also effective.

If I had to have one quibble, it’s that the documentary didn’t have the necessary devil’s advocate/reactor scram button to bring things down to earth. The movie is mentioned as being impossible, but in the sense it was too ambitious for Hollywood. In actuality, it would have been unreleasably bizzare, bound to burn money in its production, and simply strange. (There are scenes in at least some versions of Jodorowsky’s Dune that the documentary doesn’t mention, likely because they’re too weird and/or gross). If it actually got out the door, Jodorowsky’s Dune would probably just have been a bloated mess like Marlon Brando’s The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Still, this is a great documentary about a great story, even if it wouldn’t have been a great movie.

Review: Eastern Front 1945

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Eastern Front 1945

An Osprey book on the air war in WWII’s final year, Eastern Front 1945 is about the often-overlooked in the west clash in the eastern skies. It basically does every Osprey book thing right. While it’s not the most detailed, it provides an excellent overview of the somewhat different air war (ie, where the P-39 shined even as it flopped in other theaters).

One thing I particularly liked was how the book accurately showed the air campaign’s influence on postwar Soviet/Russian doctrine. Instead of a “big blue blanket” smothering every enemy in its tracks, it was focused on targeted air superiority and supporting maneuver formations. Which led to February 1945 when the Luftwaffe actually regained air superiority for a time. ( In short, they pulled more or less every propeller fighter away from the fruitless bomber interceptions and were were able to operate from intact developed airbases while the Soviets were worn and had their field strips wrecked by bad weather)

It’s a good look at both Soviet air doctrine being successful and at the eastern air war.

Review: Stuck On The Drawing Board

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Stuck On The Drawing Board: Unbuilt British Commercial Aircraft Since 1945

Passenger planes made in Britain followed an almost exactly stereotypical British pattern: At first bold and trend-setting, then fell behind due to both luck and skill, finally becoming just an international cog. The could have beens and never weres of this are shown in Richard Payne’s Stuck on the Drawing Board.

This is a fun, if niche, book for aviation enthusiasts. The big problem from the nature of the planes it describes. For passenger planes that are all essentially just tubes with different capacities, VTOLs and odd shapes are the absolute most different you’re going to get.

But this isn’t the book’s fault, and you’re left with a fun look at what could have happened before the 707 and its successors crushed any hope of a full-scale British aviation industry.

Review: Raven

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Raven

William Kinsolving’s 1983 novel Raven is an aviation pop epic about one Buck Faulkner and his family. Faulkner starts his aviation company in the 1930s, which starts with a 21 seat airliner and moves up. Like many other traditional pop epics of the time, we get a mixture of semi-spicy personal drama and big picture discussion about airline orders.

This is no technothriller and Kinsolving is clearly just modeling the planes on famous existing ones. However, (and this sounds like faint praise), he at least knows the basics. This is no Ian Slater. Some of the names may be a little goofy, but that’s it.

As for the novel itself, it’s a good 51% book. It’s not the absolute greatest, but as a brief time passer, it works. Plus it manages to avoid at least some of the pitfalls of authors writing about technology, so it has that in its favor.

Review: Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation

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Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation

Every so often I get a textbook that is not really the best to conventionally review at all, much less amongst cheap thrillers. Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation is one of those books. I feel a little guilty reviewing it because the target audience is scientists and the like who know the math, physics, and engineering subject matter a loooooooooooooooooooooot more than an armchair enthusiast like myself. So yeah, a lot of this goes over my head. And that’s fine.

If the “Type 1 Academese” was understandable and inevitable, the “Type 2” is a legit point of criticism. Despite the fact that anyone who’s read a single piece on the modern history of South Africa would instantly grasp why the post-apartheid government gave up the nuclear weapons, the book explains this in a long and pretentious way. Where I think this is more than a stylistic issue is how it wouldn’t be easy to get its points across to a non-scientist, whereas other similarly dense works on the same topic are still more understandable.

Review: Bloodlines (Warhammer Crime)

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Bloodlines (Warhammer Crime)

I love Warhammer 40k and have some connection to mysteries, so getting Chris Wraight’s Warhammer Crime novel Bloodlines was obvious. Then I started reading it and felt disappointed. Now as a mystery novel, it’s 51% all right. If this was a contemporary or original sci-fi mystery, I wouldn’t think much more of it.

The problem is that it doesn’t take advantage of its setting. Now I’m not expecting or demanding an Ultramarine and an Ork on every corner, but this just never felt like a Warhammer 40k novel. It felt like a basic post-Blade Runner dark sci-fi city mystery only with more skulls and 40k terminology. Which didn’t make the book bad but did feel it wasted its potential.

Review: High Disaster

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The Penetrator 22: High Disaster

The name High Disaster is fitting for the 22nd (!) Penetrator novel. By now co-author Chet Cunningham had clearly gotten sick of the series. That was the first problem, though someone as prolific as him could have just powered through a contract potboiler. The second and worse problem is that the ‘kill the mobster’ plot had played out and the ‘kill the terrorist’ plot had not yet become big.

So most men’s adventure novels in that period simply ended, with the oil crises not exactly helping things either. Yet the Penetrator kept going like a large caliber tank shell penetrating through a BMD-1. You ended up with things like High Disaster, where the threat/villain is (without spoiling anything) not exactly overwhelming, and the big gimmick is…. wildfires. In the American West. Which is kind of like rain and floods in Southeast Asia.

To appreciate the highs of a genre, you need to see the lows. And that is the only reason I’d recommend this book.

A Thousand Words: Hitman Absolution

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Hitman Absolution

The Hitman series of stealth video games involves super-clone assassin Agent 47 hitting various men (and women). The games are centered around disguises. 47 can be a master of disguise despite being a bald near-albino with a barcode tattoo on his head who’s tall enough to be a viable basketball player. It’s just video game logic. Anyway, Hitman Absolution is regarded as one of the worst in the series, albeit in a way that spawned the absolute best let’s play series I’ve ever watched:

There’s far more focus on story in this game, which would be interesting if it was good, but it isn’t. So let me explain just one series of events:

  • 47 goes to “South Dakota” (the Danish IO Interactive devs do not know what South Dakota is and have apparently mistaken it with Texas). He’s there to pursue a genetically modified girl/hitwoman-to-be who’s been kidnapped.
  • 47 on the streets of the South Dakota town kills several anachronistic greasers who are the friends of the man who kidnapped her. The connection is incredibly tenuous.
  • 47 counter-kidnaps the kidnapper and kills him.
  • 47 goes through an amazingly precarious entrance in an Uncharted/Splinter Cell hybrid that’s nothing like previous Hitman games. He goes this way to get to a supervillain lair.
  • 47 kills three mad scientists in the supervillain lair, only one of which has the most tangential connection to the kidnapped girl.
  • 47 leaves the lair and kills the giant hulking man who doubles as a luchador MMA fighter. While up to the player, he potentially disguises as the man’s opponent, beats him in a semi-fair cage fight to death, and then like every true master of disguise, takes off his mask in front of a large crowd.
  • 47 stays at a hotel and fights off a group of hitwomen dressed as latex fetish nuns.
  • Finally, in an actually sensible plot plan, 47 finds the girl is in the hands of the sheriff and goes to the courthouse/prison/whatever to find her. In this part of the mission you can disguise yourself as a judge and beat people with a gavel.
  • This cannot last for master assassin 47 is (out of player control) surprised and captured by a creepy ineffectual sheriff. Instead of killing them the antagonists leave him tied to a chair like every good supervillain.
  • 47 then escapes (SPOILER ALERT) and battles/sneaks through a wave of stormtroopers sent by the assassin agency. He pursues the sheriff, who has been wounded by said stormtroopers, to a church and finishes him off.
  • Finally 47 leaves “South Dakota” for the final showdown. And thus ends the arc. Somewhere Jon Land is going “uh, I think that’s too absurd”.

All this is punctuated by some of the worst cinematography ever, long after most games had figured out the basics. This gets to the point where one of the lets players reasonably called a cutscene in it the worst ever. What makes this strange is that publisher Square Enix basically invented the use of cinema in games. Or at least perfected it.

As for the actual game, it is a strange combination of cargo culted stealth movement through levels, occasional platforming, and a simplified, often made too easy version of the Hitman formula. It’s not unplayable or broken, but if you want Hitman, either the earlier Blood Money or the later remakes are vastly superior.