Tag: 2020s

A Thousand Words: Red Ape Family

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Red Ape Family

NFTs, or “Non-Fungible Tokens”, were one of the most shameless fads of all time. Unlike previous market bubbles like tulip bulbs or Death of Superman comic books, these offered no practical value. In fact, what they even are is hard to explain. The closest normal person equivalent is a receipt.

So normal cryptocurrencies are “fungible” in the sense that as long as they’re in circulation, one dollar bill is functionally the same as another. Non-fungible means distinct, like say, an explicit receipt. Why would you spend a million dollars on a receipt for a transaction of a picture of a badly drawn monkey? The answer is a combination of get-rich suckers and wash trading (despite the name, not directly money laundering).

But I digress. So Red Ape Family, about a family of bored red apes who steal a drive full of the most valuable NFTs and go to Mars, is…. to call it a toy commercial would be an insult to toy commercials. More like a get rich quick infomercial made by someone with no talent whose sense of humor was a single episode of later Family Guy.

The existence of this is more interesting than any of the “gags” itself.

The A Button Challenge

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Mario was originally known as “Jumpman” in the first releases of Donkey Kong. Super Mario Bros. defined the platformer. What I’m trying to say is that Mario jumps. Until now.

For 20+ years, an array of gamers dug deep into the code of Super Mario 64 to see in how few A presses (jumping) they could beat the game. Last year, a successful run with zero presses was finally accomplished.

Numerous stars and even entire levels had to be skipped entirely as they required jumping. The centerpiece that enabled the final “A”-less run to be performed involved playing on Wii Virtual Console and using an emulator/porting glitch that had platforms in the Bowser in the Fire Sea stage moving sloooooowly upwards over time. The game had to be run for three real-time days to let them get into place.

Yet in the greatest human accomplishment since the moon landing, the A Button Challenge was finally completed.

Console Pokemon Returns

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With the release and controversy of Pokemon Legends ZA, it’s time to once again return to the Console Pokemon fantasy that was popped for good in Sword/Shield.

What is “Console Pokemon”? It’s something us 90s/00s kids had in our minds as we moved pocket monsters around our pocket gameboys. Basically, without severe hardware limitations, a Pokemon that would burst out into a paradigm shifting masterpiece.

Was this naive gamer fantasy? Probably. But it was something that had indeed happened with Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time (or GTA III, or Halo, or Final Fantasy VII…) We kept getting hints-a Snap here, a Stadium or Colosseum there. And then the 3DS (probably the first real big “Console Game”) and finally the Switch gave us… unoptimized 3d games with similar mechanics that looked worse than ones twenty years prior.

Of course, now I know that rather than being made by a mega-publisher as its flagship title, it’s actually developed by small Game Freak, whose lack of programming chops was evident in some ways from the get-go. Now I know that the business model is basically that of a yearly sports game, being critic proof in that regard. Now I know that with the franchise so lucrative, the games themselves matter as much as Half Life currently does to Valve.

So yeah, Console Pokemon isn’t coming.

Gaming’s Ford Edsel

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Looking at retrospectives for the infamously legendary recent video game bust Concord , I thought a lot of “wow, this really is the Ford Edsel of video games.” And I mean that specifically.

This video is as good as any for explaining in short terms what Concord was. That said:

  • It wasn’t actually that bad mechanically
    The Edsel was no worse in performance or safety than any other car of its era. Whatever issues it did have could be understood as it being brand new and not ‘broken in’. Likewise, Concord wasn’t a Memetic Bethesda Launch glitchfest with a lot of its immediate issues being… brand new and not ‘broken in’.
  • The timing was terrible
    The Edsel launched in a recession where the cars in its market segment were the hardest hit. Concord launched when hero shooters had gone from “hot” to “disco in 1982.”
  • The visual design was bad
    I don’t think I really have to elaborate here.
  • Expectations were far too high
    Concord was supposed to be a big merchandising and spinoff paradise as well as a tentpole franchise. The Edsel was supposed to be an entire division like Lincoln, the slightly above average in the brand ladder.

    Amazing how history can rhyme.

A Thousand Words: Heading Out

On By coilerxiiIn A Thousand Words, Review1 Comment

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

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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.

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.

A Thousand Words: Lex Imperialis

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The second major DLC for the Rogue Trader RPG, Lex Imperialis brings in the galactic police, the Arbites, as well as pets (ok, “familiars”). The pets are the most fun part of the DLC. But for some reason, I considered this worse than the previous one, Void Shadows. Not unplayable or not worth it, but not as good. Maybe it’s just I wasn’t the fondest of the ingame stuff, but I think the biggest reason is the plot.

Void Shadows centered around a horrific cosmic nightmare (genestealers). This centers around…. tax evasion. Everything involves an investigation for unpaid or stolen Imperial Tithes. I don’t mind lower-stakes stories, but this is just too mundane. It’s almost Postal 2-esque.

That said, many set pieces are good and the music is probably the best I’ve heard in the game.

Diving Into A True Disaster

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So the NTSB has conducted its hearings and giant document release on the tragic DC collision in January. You can take a gander at the primary sources here, there’s a lot of them (yep, NTSB is very, very thorough). Because I developed an interest in studying systemic breakdown of air disasters some time before the collision, I’ve been following it (knowing them actually makes me more comfortable flying because of all the massive safety efforts.) Being I can read these things better than a lot of people, I’m going to give my takes. Warning: These are from an amateur non-aviator and I’ve been mostly looking at the helicopter ones.

Who Was At Fault?

Immediately, the helicopter for not seeing the incoming plane. The controller for letting a crew with literal tunnel vision try to see and steer itself instead of just having it stop (I call it, trying to save the helicopter from itself). That said, it’s not helpful to say someone immediately should have zigged instead of zagged. Or to try to exactly apportion blame since it doesn’t work out like that.

Because the overloaded DCA airspace was such a nightmare that something like this-I’m honestly surprised it didn’t happen sooner. The close calls were huge and massive. Like, yeah. Totally massive.

I’ll admit from pretty early on I was reminded of Charkhi Dadri, a somewhat similar but far worse disaster in 1996 with a 747 and Il-76 that remains as of this post the worst midair collision ever. Same overloaded capitol airspace with a bizarre civil/military boundary and the use of small vertical separation that was bound to fail miserably. There the immediate “fault” was entirely on the Il-76 for slipping a thousand feet while the controller gave perfect direction and the 747 stayed where it was supposed to, but that was not nearly as important as the systemic issues.

Was This a DEIsaster?

Short answer is no. Longer answer is that yes, Lobach was indeed not the greatest pilot and was wobbly and insufficient on the disaster flight (which should have been called off and failed) but did not fit the “stupid DEI bimbo” caricature many on the internet claimed. (Not that it’s really relevant but a massive interview with her boyfriend seemed to debunk the claim she was a lesbian). (The PAT unit from the readings actually had a much higher than normal amount of women in it from one of the documents).

What she was was a commissioned pilot with a fairly small and highly uneven amount of flight hours, and that her issues were not uncommon among junior commissioned crews, crews who probably should not be allowed into the most dangerous airspace ever. (Training flights in that area for all but specialized careful missions like route knowledge for a true emergency should not have been happening).

In any event the male instructor made the most crucial catastrophic decisions.

So, What Was the Swiss Cheese Failure

(Try my best to summarize, which I’m not the best at): DC had been incredibly overcrowded with both helicopter and commercial traffic for political reasons. Little-used runway 33 was seeing more use, including on the fatal collision. The helicopter crew was granted permission to see and avoid, a foolhardy one given the night vision goggles and light pollution. They looked at an airplane operating on the main runway and assumed that was the “traffic in sight”. It wasn’t.

To me I think the most revealing thing was how -sincerely – overconfident the army was. Everyone from safety officers (who treated birds as the most dangerous collision threat) to the accident crews themselves were disturbingly blase about working around commercial traffic. In later informal podcasts/interviews, veteran pilots who in some cases flew the exact route seemed honestly surprised at how bad it was from the aircraft’s end. They did not come across as making excuses.

Lessons

I’ll say I don’t know what the changes besides the obvious ones could or even should be. DCA is very dangerous by nature (as demonstrated before when, despite the fundamental differences, many similar things from a less-than-ideal aircrew to dubious controller decisions contributed to an earlier famous disaster), and important people should probably bite the bullet and drive to Dulles.

Review: The Last Republic

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The Last Republic

The alternate history of the beginnings of a war between a US and an independent, Iran-allied Utah/Deseret, The Last Republic is one of those books that is only distinguishable by its premise. It would be a medium-grade techno-thriller if it involved real places. Granted, given the comparative scarcity of technothrillers today, that would be praiseworthy (mildly), but it doesn’t, of course.

The bizarre alternate history, which is very much a soft AH (Iraq with a surviving Saddam is similar to real life Saudi Arabia in terms of relationship with the US, both sides use historical F-16s, etc…), is what makes this stand out. Still, I just don’t think the author took advantage of it as much as he could. Could that have made it worse? Quite possibly. But would it have made the book much more interesting? Quite possibly as well. As it stands, it’s a 51% book with weird sauce.