A Thousand Words: Heading Out

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Heading Out

I saw “road trip” themed games and got Heading Out on a lark. I want to say that it was a worthwhile playthrough simply because of the feelings it generated and how at the very least it was interesting. But to be honest, this is a game where the messaging actually felt insulting to me.

So the gameplay itself is moderate roguelike resource management between driving set-pieces that control like a second-rate arcade racer from the mid 90s. I think it says something about its interest that I turned the difficulty down at the first chance. Beyond that, the best strategy is to frequently cut off road, which doesn’t feel right. Which unfortunately meant I had to experience the plot. Oh boy, the plot.

You’re a faceless figure on a trip of reckless driving in the 1970s USA. Through a series of not-exactly difficult deductions, it’s revealed the player is stuck in a Groundhog Day loop after being tricked into a deal with the devil. Is it real or metaphorical? I know it’s pretentious. As they go west to face the “world’s greatest driver” (an instant obvious hallucination), they develop a reputation as the “Interstate Jackalope” and various people comment on them (and other things) over the radio. This is the worst part of the game. The music itself ranges from serviceable to very good, with a lot of guitars and early 1970s electronics (think electric organs).

The “talk radio” is not. It is what happened if someone took the anti-American axe-grindiness of Grand Theft Auto at its worst but with none of the goofiness, and (even?) worse quality all around. It’s honestly one of the most mean-spirited pieces of fiction I’ve seen. Like the overwhelming theme is of some bitter underemployed elitist screeching at everything and everyone. You have the screaming right-wing host who is designed both to be completely wrong about everything while also being sanded down to the point where he can’t be as vile as a real George Wallace-era figure of that time and place would be. There’s a ripoff of the movie Network desperate host broadcasting and two liberal women who are supposed to be better than Mr. Right Wrong but who you’re also supposed to sneer at (see what I meant?), and the literal (drug?) devil who’s providing social commentary that is still supposed to be profound but ends up being the ramblings of someone who just read A Peoples History of the United States while listening to turn of the millennium whine-rock.

Also the story scenes/adventure book style choices you encounter are variations of: “I don’t really care because this is all a time loop/crazy drug-induced hallucination anyway” – “the same bitter nihilistic things you had to listen to now you have to read and watch” and, in my least favorite scene, treating immigrants who are sincerely in awe of America’s wealth with barely concealed subtext of them being naive fools and not, you know, people who actually have firsthand knowledge of what real poverty and oppression is like.

Anyway, I spited the game by ramming into as many things on the road as I could while giving my character the least sympathetic backstory in the choices allowed. (He was an adulterer who was driven to despair and rampages out of boredom).

…Whoa, never thought the plot of a rougelike would invoke this much reaction in me.

The Italian Lesson

On By coilerxiiIn Essay2 Comments

What has been said, and said accurately is that drones and tactics surrounding them are advancing and moving extra-fast in Ukraine. Yet counter-intuitively, this is a case for not rushing forward with swarms. Note: It is still important, and rapidly getting C-UAS, especially hard-kill weapons and proper training, is high priority.

Because this isn’t the first time this happened. And the (often unfairly) scorned Italian military of World War II is a stark example why.

So in the 1930s, automotive and aircraft technology was indeed roaring forward at a “Moores Law For Tanks and Propeller Planes” rate. Now I’m oversimplifying, but here’s what happened: Italy didn’t have the economy or resources for multiple huge waves, so they “modernized” too early , and were left with tons of biplanes and tiny tankettes .

I remember seeing a lecture on US interwar armor where even though he didn’t mention Italy or anything similar, he did use that as a reasonable answer for why America was slow in the same period. Now I mentioned the defensive priority being higher. Anti-tank guns and AA guns even if underpowered are still going to be useful in ways strictly worse tanks are not.

A Thousand Words: Gone Home

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Gone Home

A 2013 game about a young woman exploring her now-deserted family home, Gone Home has been pretty controversial back in the day, being one of the first video games classified as the dreaded “Walking Simulators.” Now that I’ve played it, it’s weirdly better in terms of actual gameplay but worse in terms of central plot than I’d expected it to be.

So the game is not just “hold forward to win while listening to some pretentious narration” like too many of its successors were. It’s really atmospheric, you have to do some exploring even if it ultimately boils down to “go everywhere and interact with everything”, and it’s no worse in terms of kinetic gameplay or lack thereof than say, the classic PC adventure Myst. That’s the good part. It’s still just a short fun experience but there’s substance to it.

The not so good part is that the “secret” hidden is a melodramatic teen drama where I saw every twist and development coming despite not really knowing the game before I played it. The first world problems of upper-middle class America here just aren’t that intriguing.

That said, I have to give this a positive overall score. It is better than the firebreathers have made it out to be.

Review: Skygods

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Skygods: The Fall of Pan Am

Written by aviator and former Pan Am captain Robert Gandt, Skygods is the most fun I’ve had reading a history book in quite some time. First, I want to get the small negatives out of the way: This is very much a David Halberstam style ‘History as Narrative’ book, so I’d recommend taking specific claims with even more grains of salt. That said, everything important I did find corroborating evidence for.

The good part of this “history as narrative” is well, it feels great to read, flowing smoothly and going into the minds of people in a way that Gandt can clearly write from personal experience. And what he says about Pan Am is both interesting and dismal.

Pan Am’s decline, arguably inevitably terminal, started long before Lockerbie. It started long before deregulation. The impression I got from Skygods was that Pan Am was basically to airlines what Harley Davidson is to motorcycles: A wheezing lummox with poor fundamentals whose longevity was/is due to mystique over any practical advantage. There’s also the “British Industrialization” problem Pan Am had where being the first to do big international routes meant they were stuck with the most baggage.

So this is a great book I highly recommend for anyone, not just aviation/history enthusiasts.

The UAV Illusion

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So RUSI fellow Justin Bronk has given focus to what I’ve kind of grasped but struggled to articulate myself: Small UAVs are not a panacea.

A smaller piece by the same author.

The short version is:

  • The weirdest analogy I have but one I believe is comparing FPV/etc… drones to B-17s and the like. There’s been a giant debate about the effectiveness of WW2 strategic bombing. The Western Allies had less a choice in it than one might think. Until 1944 it was the only direct offensive ability they had, and being shielded by water made it viable. Similarly, Ukraine’s use of drones, as Bronk explains, is a necessary one, just like that a result of desperate circumstance. But it’s not the circumstance and abilities that others, just like how no one had the WAllies circumstances there, will have.
  • Practical effects, which very few people are mentioning- namely, relying on drones against a force that’s spent three years optimizing against them is like relying on deep pass plays against the Lawrence Taylor Giants (ask yourself how the Joe Gibbs teams behaved offensively most of the time).
  • Finally and most crucially, Bronk brings up it’s the Walter Payton in Super Bowl XX / SA-2 not scoring that many direct kills in Vietnam problem. Which is that what’s causing drones to be effective is massive amounts of traditional weapons: Normal artillery, mines, missiles, and backed by UAVs in the traditional spotter role.

A very good splash of cold water. This isn’t to say these aren’t dangerous and won’t get better, but it helps to have perspective beyond highlight reels. Speaking of which, here’s a veteran talking about the side you didn’t see.

Review: Hard Landing

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Hard Landing

Thomas Petzinger’s Hard Landing is a 1995 book about the corporate wars in the airline industry. It’s naturally dated, but that’s not something it can help. I view it as a very good book that could have been great. Why?

On the plus side, there’s lots of things even I didn’t know. Everything from FDR’s attempt to renationalize the air transport industry that served as a rare early bungle to how the Gulf War was truly what finished off Pan Am is there. This is a very detailed history.

On the minus side, it misses the forest for the trees too often. We get long, long descriptions of meetings and takeovers mixed with the occasional vignettes that aren’t really relevant. Yet it’s not good at articulating the basic problem with airlines, similar to sports betting of all things: It’s hard to truly differentiate the product, and costly sales wars are one of the few weapons marketers have.

But there’s a lot more good than bad here. It just hit a triple instead of an inside the park home run.

The First (and best?) Rock Opera

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The first rock opera can be considered the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed. It tells the story of one day from morning to night. (It happens to also be an excellent album in its own right). Most people know this as where Nights in White Satin came from, but every track is great. My favorite is “Evening”, both “Tuesday Afternoon” and “Evening Time To Get Away”.

No track is wasted on pointless “story”, which is something that afflicts the otherwise excellent Tommy and The Wall. My favorite story concept album at any rate.

A Thousand Words: Knuckle Bash

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Knuckle Bash

One of the weirdest Final Fight descendants, Knuckle Bash is a very strange game. Yes I know I repeated myself. But it is. That it was made by the same people who made Zero “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” Wing explains some of it, including the plot which involves pro wrestlers fighting a group called the “Bulls” (well, Michael Jordan was at the height of his power when the game came out…)

The game is janky and poorly translated (to put it mildly) but the best/worst part is the enemies. For instance, the first stage is outside a hotel. The enemies there include hotel doormen. Then a later level as sunglasses wearing tourists alongside the typical thugs.

This isn’t good by any means, but it is memorable. And that’s more than can be said for a lot of video games.

Tanks of the Soviet-Romanian War

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Main Battle Tanks of All Union’s Soviet-Romanian War, starting with the victors.

Sovereign Union

  • T-94. The star of the tank scenes in All Union, the T-94 was inspired most heavily by the Object 640/Black Eagle prototype with its advanced gas turbine, low turret and crew position, and much more. It also has a heavy remote turret with an aircraft-adapted 23mm autocannon (for improved anti-soft target AND hitting things not worth a main gun shell). This was an actual proposal. Most advanced Sovereign Union tank of the war, used only in some mobile corps.
  • T-84. The T-84 was chosen as the “low” tank in the high-low mix (ie T-64/80 and T-72 in real life). The real reason was as a bribe to the Ukrainian SSR where a potential situation was defused by All-Union President Yatchenko. Ukrainian firms would get preferential choices in procurement while Crimea was handed back over. T-84s were used in mobile corps and some high-category legacy divisions and had the most advanced suites of the “125mm classics.”
  • 125mm Classics: IE the T-64, T-72, and T-80, in various states of upgrade. Even the mobile corps had many of these. The 7th Mobile Corps famously had only T-64s and BMP-2s. Not much else to say except that T-64s were disproportionately used because so many units were drawn from the Ukrainian SSR where they were historically based.
  • T-62/55s: These classics were minimum viable tanks that did minimum viable tank things, seeing service in low-category legacy divisions.

Bulgaria

  • T-72. The most advanced Bulgarian tank, which showed their limitations compared to the Sovereign Union.
  • T-62. Bulgaria was the only NSWP country to use the T-62, and they saw extensive use (and losses). Likewise with the T-55, the most common Bulgarian tank.
  • T-34. The absolute contrast between the electronically linked supertanks and Bulgaria fielding hundreds of T-34/85s in its crazed mobilization was one of the big ironies of the war.
  • LPT-100. A fictional tank based on a real proposal, this like several other semi-improvised vehicles could be built in Bulgaria, so it was used by the Bulgarians. Others included APCs on bus chassis and uparmored jeeps from local factories.

The Atomic Bombs Are Not Controversial

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Every August 6 this comes around, and I have to give my take. No, the atomic bombs were not controversial and were entirely justified. Totally justified. When Japan was already being starved and firebombed, when the bloodbath of Okinawa was fresh in sight, to not use the superweapons would be wrong even by 2020s standards, much less 1940s ones.

Were they horrific? Definitely. Were they a magic win button that guaranteed a peaceful surrender in place of an invasion that could have killed a million Americans and ten-twenty times as many Japanese? Not by themselves. Could you have wished the war would have ended without them? Of course.

But there was no way they were not being used, and they very well could have prevented something worse. Much worse.