Beer Tasting - Sam Adams: IPA Hopology

Sam Adams is an odd brewing company to me.  They are quite large, almost too large to really be considered a "craft" brewery.  However, they have craft-level quality and put out a lot of small batch labels, experimenting with a variety of styles and flavors - things a small craft brewery would do.  So it's almost the best of both worlds, when you really think about it.

Anyway, recently I got a case of their IPA Hopology, a limited-release variety pack which features six different beer styles, with an IPA twist.  It's a unique collection, and I didn't hesitate to snap it up.

You can read more about their limited releases here.

I'm not going to go in-depth with each of the beers (no tasting notes, I generally don't bother with them anyway), but I'll do a quick run-down, along with my impressions and likes/dislikes.

The Beers
Here are the six beers in the collection:

• Whitewater - Wheat Ale IPA, 5.8% ABV, 61 IBU
• Latitude 48 - IPA, 6% ABV, 60 IBU
• Grumpy Monk - Belgian IPA, 6.5% ABV, 55 IBU
• Tasman Red - Red IPA, 7% ABV, 60 IBU
• Dark Depths - Baltic Porter IPA, 7.6% ABV, 60 IBU
• Third Voyage - Double IPA, 8% ABV, 85 IBU

My favorite of the bunch was the Grumpy Monk, which should be no surprise, given how much I like Belgian Style Ale.  It's a great beer, rooted in that Belgian Style, but with the bitterness of an IPA.  The bitterness is just the right amount - not strong enough to overpower the core flavors, not weak enough to turn this into a watered-down, inferior version of a Belgian Style Ale.

My next favorite was the Dark Depths.  Much like the Grumpy Monk, it was a good mix of porter and IPA, both smooth and bitter.  It seems odd that a dark, rich beer that you assume would be a stout or porter would be bitter like an IPA.  It's similar to the confusion we all got when drinking Crystal Pepsi for the first time (or maybe I'm the only one who remembers that).  It looks like one thing, but tastes like another.

Moving on, in the middle of the pack we have their more traditional IPA styles, the Latitude 48 and Third Voyage.  Both were very good, well above average but not great.  I preferred the Third Voyage over the 48, probably because I like strong IPAs.  I'd drink them again, but probably wouldn't go out of my way to seek them out.

The Whitewater was okay... my wife liked this one more than I, but she's a big fan of Wheat Ales.  This one is a white ale, technically, with flavors of apricot and "spices" (usually things like coriander and citrus peel).  I do like some wheat ales (Boulevard Wheat is by far my favorite), but this one didn't do it for me, even with the bitterness of an IPA.

And once again, I'm not surprised that I disliked the Tasman Red the least.  If you've been reading my tasting blogs, you'll know that I don't particularly like red or brown ales.  I find them too thin and the nuttiness sometimes turns me off.  I still taste them, though, in a quest for that diamond in the rough, for that one red/brown ale that I will like.  This one, a Red IPA, was simply not good to me.  My wife liked it, though, so I let her drink the rest of them.

The Verdict
This is a solid variety pack overall.  I got it at Costco, though you should also be able to find it at larger beer/wine retailers.  The Costco price was $25, which is a great price (anything roughly at $1 or less per bottle is great to me), but I'm sure it's a bit more at normal retailers, seeing as a 12-pack of this can run up to $20.

Either way, if you like IPAs and mixed beer styles, definitely check it out.  You're bound to like at least half of the pack.  The others you can pawn off on your spouse.

The Hope of Memory [Update 12] Of Estimates and Editing

A quick update my trilogy, The Hope of Memory.

A week ago I finally finished typing up the first draft of the second volume in the trilogy, Wilders, and I discovered that my word count estimate was way off.  I had estimated the length at around 189K words, but in actuality it was about 148K... so I over-estimated by some 22%.  Yikes!

In the future I'll need to adjust my estimates by perhaps 15-20%.  I was worried about going over 180K, and had deliberately shortened some sections in the second half of the book because of that... but it seems there was no need to, and now I have the leeway to expand it slightly.  There are a few things I do need to add - I have a full page of notes regarding edits - so I'll do that once The Distant is complete.

Oh, and for the next book, Rom Tar, I think I'll type up the text as I go, perhaps after each notepad.  It's tiring typing the entire thing up at once.

One More Time

Speaking of The Distant, I'm now working on the 4th draft edit in earnest.  Now that Wilders is complete, I feel more confident doing a true edit.  This will be my last line edit... and there are a few parts that I'm going to cut, as they are simply no necessary now.  I'll be able to get this done fairly quick; at 2 chapters a day I'll be finished in no time (currently there are 37 chapters).

Anyway, once I'm finished with that, I'll take a break from it for a few weeks, revise my outline for the final book, Rom Tar, then come back and read it one more time before finalizing for release.  Which will be nice, considering that I started the first draft of this book way back in 2003.  Yes, it's been kicking around that long.

I could keep going over it and revising here and there ad infinitum, but there are many different ways you can say the same thing, and in the end you just have to pick one and go with it.  As long as it tells the story the way I want it told, I'll be happy with it.

Aww... the PS3 is All Grown Up!

or, Life of PS3
or, Sigh, Yet Another Nostalgic Editorial
or, I'm Cool Because I Bought a PS3 Soon After Launch

It's hard to believe that the PS3 has been out for almost 7 years.  Maybe I'm getting older or am just busier these days, but this console generation seemed to go by so much faster than previous ones.  As I think about the imminent PS4, I started thinking about how the PS3 has changed since its launch.  Unlike previous generations, the PS3 you have now is markedly different than the PS3 you bought upon release in late 2006 (or in my case, early 2007, not long after I got my first large flat-screen TV).  It's like a completely different console.  At least to me.

Imagine a PS3 without PS+, without trophies, without controller rumble, without Home, without an in-game XMB...  (Actually, scratch Home since no one uses it.)  Imagine a PS3 that costs $600, with 4 USB ports, multiple memory card slots, PS2 hardware, Linux installation...  Imagine, and take a trip back to 2007...

PlayStation 3 Splash Screen
Remember how it used to display the "PlayStation 3" logo and chime before a game started?  I actually still miss this.  It's just something I had come to expect from PlayStation over the years and sometimes it still feels awkward when playing a game.  It's good software design to have some kind of transition when moving from a menu to an application.  Apple forces you to provide a transition screen upon loading for all iOS apps, even if it's blank.  When you start Excel or Outlook on Windows there's a splash telling you it's loading.  On the PS3, though... now there's this long pause filled with a sometimes flickering blank screen.  Just doesn't feel right anymore.  Even now, some 5 years later.

Bringing this back was even posted on the PS Share Blog as a future idea... of course, we all know how seriously Sony takes any of the major ideas there.  Most of those implemented are minor things or releases of suggested HD collections, things they were going to do anyway and but now pretend that they were all due to our suggestions.

Animated XMB Icons
Maybe it was just me or the specific games I played, but virtually every game I had in the early days of PS3 seemed to have animated game icons on the XMB.  You know, when you select the game to play it.  It's a useless feature, of course, but I've always liked it.

Nowadays, almost all of them are static and boring.  It's like they decided it was a waste of time to provide a short, animated clip for the XMB icon.  That, or I'm just not playing the right games today vs. 6 years ago.  It might be just me on this one, but I've included it anyway.

A Cleaner XMB
Remember when there wasn't a PS Store link in every XMB category?  I do.  But with an update in 2009, they added duplicate links for the Store under Games and Video, as well as the What's New? section that no one looks at.

While it's not that big of a deal, and it's almost silly to complain about, the update has always bothered me because it went against the whole design principle of the XMB.  It was designed to make it easy to access anything with minimal steps, without the need for redundant links (Sony even won an award for the XMB design back in 2006).  It was already fast to get to the single Store icon on Network, simply by jumping menus, i.e. scrolling left/right to the Network section.  Throw in the fact that Network only has a few options to begin with - not a lot of steps needed to find the Store once you get there.  The update simply did not make sense in the context of the XMB.

Next time, Sony, leave the design the way it was intended.  There was nothing wrong with a single Store link.  If people want to buy digital content, they'll buy it.  Oh, and I still go to Network to get to the Store.  Because it's faster.

Crappy Avatar Selection
For a long time there was only around 220 avatars to choose from.  That might seem like plenty - and it would be, if over half of them hadn't been crappy.  Like this one:

Really?  That totally expresses my individuality, Sony.  There are many other strange or silly avatars that were originally provided, and you can still use them today.  Very few were deemed cool enough to be used by me, though.  I used the one below for a very long time, because it was the only thing that looked mean and cool to me (plus I like cats):

People kept screaming for new avatars and Sony finally provided them a few years after launch... for a price.  I have purchased a couple, though I still think they should be free, given the minimal effort it takes to create most avatars.  Mostly I just download any free ones from PS+.  And while people still think the selection sucks, at least we are no longer in the Dark Ages of Avatars.

Digital Downloads
This is commonplace now, and tons of games are available digitally, but when PS3 came out, it was the greatest thing ever to me.  They weren't the first ones to do this, of course, but it was my first experience with such things.  Short, downloadable titles that cost a fraction of a disc title and are still fun to play?  Demos for disc titles?  I downloaded a ton of demos back in the day - in part to check out different PS3 gameplay, in part because the game selection in the first year or so was horrible and I was willing to try anything to feel like I got my money's worth with the console.

I don't download many demos anymore... too many games to actually play in my queue now.

However, being curious, I checked my historical download list on SEN (easier to sort it there).  Here are the first demos and games that I downloaded, back in early 2007:

Demos
1. MotorStorm
2. Genji: Days of the Blade
3. Armored Core 4
4. Blast Factor
5. Def Jam: Icon

Blast Factor is the only game I actually ended up playing for real later on.

Games
1. Gauntlet II
2. MediEvil
3. Super Rub a Dub
4. flOw
5. Nucleus

Qore
I bought a subscription to this when it first came out because there was no other good enough content to spend my money on (there were no games, remember).  It wasn't too bad at first, and the price was slightly justified by the fact that on occasion you would get a free game, theme or avatar.  The stories and videos in it were good, and I liked the host, Veronica Belmont.  I still follow some of her stuff online now, she hosts a few cool shows (Sword & Laser is a good one).

My enjoyment, though, was always hindered by the huge download size.  At that time, downloading 1 GB or more seemed like a chore and I never felt it was worth all that wait.  Needless to say, I did not renew after my initial subscription was up.  They did another version later on called Pulse, on PSP, but I never bothered to check that one.  But Qore was a staple of the early days for me.

Non-Trophy Games
Remember these?  I still have many of those early games in my collection.  Lair, Conan, Assassin's Creed, Folklore, Heavenly Sword, Resistance: Fall of Man, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction...  There's a complete list of them here.

In the beginning, I just wanted to find some good games worth playing.  I remember standing in front of the very small PS3 section in Best Buy, thumbing through the perhaps 30 titles available, debating over which game was worth buying.  For a while I didn't buy anything, because they took forever to come out with some good games back then and the ones they did release were never in stock when I went to the store.  Compared to the larger Xbox 360 section, it was sad.

Makes me think of the Blu-ray vs HD DVD sections as well.  Blu-ray was not as popular and had a pitiful section in the store.  I honestly thought HD DVD was going to win that battle, given Sony's track record on proprietary formats in the past (Betamax, Mini-disc).  Thankfully it didn't.  I like Blu-ray.

Also makes me think of stores in general.  I don't think I've been to a Best Buy in over a year.  I buy virtually everything online now, compared to the early years of PS3.  Better prices and Free 2-Day Shipping from Amazon Prime FTW.

Folding@home
Since there weren't a lot of games to play back then, I explored other features of the PS3 because it was that cool.  One early feature was Folding@home, a distributed computing project that allowed you to volunteer your PS3's processing power to help Stanford University with research, specifically in regards to protein folding.

I thought, "This is cool, l'll help out!"  I started using it and sometimes left the PS3 on overnight so it would have plenty of time to process.  With the way the console would heat up, though, I soon stopped, not wanting to risk the dreaded YLOD I was hearing about (I eventually did get one on my original 40GB Phat model - twice).  I was more concerned about the lifespan of my gaming console than helping higher education with research.  Does that mean I'm a bad person?

Netflix on Disc
When the PS3 first came out, there were no apps as we know them today.  The iPhone hadn't even been released yet and App Stores didn't exist.  Later in the PS3 lifecycle we finally got our own versions of popular apps, like YouTube, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video, etc... but one of the first third-party ones that I used was Netflix - and you needed a disc.

If you had an account, you told them and they sent you a Blu-ray disc with the application, rather than having a download on the PS Store.  Why they did this, I don't know.  Anyway, this was essentially my first experience with streaming movies online.  It seems my digital cherry for a few things have been popped by the PS3.

I still have the disc, by the way.  I don't know why I kept it, it's nothing more than a drink coaster now.

Credit ryanspoon.com

Sixaxis Controller
Sixaxis was a touted feature that many early PS3 game developers actually used.  Some used it well, some did not, but most did in the first year or so.  After that, though, like the animated XMB icons, there must have been an unspoken agreement between them to simply stop using it.  It's still there - but I can't remember the last game I played where you actually need to use it as part of the normal gameplay.  I thought it was pretty cool at first.  But like most motion controller schemes, it died out after a brief flare of life.

Along with that was the lack of rumble on the controller.  I can't remember Sony's excuse for not including this.  Something about rumble not playing well with the Sixaxis accelerometer?  Either way, that was something I really hated.  Rumble feedback had been an important part of the gaming experience  since the first Playstation.  Now you're going to remove it?  Thankfully they figured it out and released the DualShock 3 a year later... for a price, of course.  How convenient for Sony.

The Phatty
I wish they still made the PS3 like the early models.  Though it was a beast and prone to overheating, it looked cool and had all those ports, PS2 hardware, etc etc... more hardware features than most people needed.  I understand why they dropped much of the extras on future models - to cut manufacturing costs, primarily - so I don't hate them for giving up on it, but I wish they still had one high-end model like this now.

The PS2 emulation was something that I did use regularly when I first got the PS3, because I had some PS2 games I still needed to play.  After a year or so, though, I never used it.  I rarely used all 4 USB ports, yet there are times now when I wish I had more than two.  Of course today you can get an accessory with more ports if you really want more, but that's not the point.

I saved my old phatty from YLOD twice - once via third-party repair, once via blow dryer - and finally gave it up for dead last year, selling it for something like $40 to an electronics repair shop.  The upgraded 250GB HDD I had put in it I repurposed for my home computer.  So at least I still have something to remember it by.

No Trophy Sites
I was never involved in an online gaming community until trophies came around and I found ps3trophies.org.  I used sites like IGN or Gamefaqs here and there for their walkthroughs and to browse forums for help, but never to actually contribute or interact with people.  I don't believe I even had any PSN friends for the first year I had the console.

So until trophies, it was business as usual for me, I merely used the internet when I needed help.  It never occurred to me that I would get even more into gaming than I already was.  I was vaguely aware of the XBox 360 achievements, purely in the sense that I knew that they existed, but that was it.  It wasn't until my first trophy popped on Linger in Shadows that I understood what they were all about.

And so the trophy-less PS3 experience came to an end, as did my lack of involvement in the gaming community.

Writing about this made me think of that first trophycard site, ps3trophycard.com, run by MMOS.  Anyone else remember the search for a new card site when it went down?

We're Expecting!
Now, the PS4 is around the corner.  It will be interesting to look back on it in 7-8 years, or perhaps in 10-11 years when the console support dies, and see how much it will have changed.  Because it will change, much like the PS3 did.

I see all the features it's going to have at launch and I wonder, what else could they possibly add to it?  When PS3 launched, no doubt most of us thought it had just about everything we could possibly need at the time (Party Chat aside).  It would have been hard then to anticipate all the changes the console went through, especially when things like the tablets and smartphones we know of now didn't exist.

I'm not going to bother to speculate.  You'll just have to wait 7 years for the sequel editorial.

Maybe there is no console and the PS4 is simply a controller... hmm...

The Malloreon [4] Sorceress of Darshiva

This is Part 9 of my retrospective for The Belgariad and The Malloreon. Please see this blog post for an overview of the retrospective. Warning: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES, AS IN BOTH THE BELGARIAD AND THE MALLOREON.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

The best way to approach these blogs is via your own re-read. If you have not read the entire series yet and plan on doing so, you may want to wait on reading this.

Book 4: Sorceress of Darshiva (1989)
I was in new territory when I first read this book, because I had to wait for it. It had only been released in hardbook once I finished the previous entry, Demon Lord of Karanda, and as an 8th grader with a paltry allowance, I could not afford it.  So I had to wait for the paperback, which didn't come out until November 1990.

The agony!  This was my first experience with having to wait for the next entry in an ongoing series.  Looking back, it wasn't all that bad since I only had to wait a couple of years for these last two books.  That's nothing compared to the 20 years I experienced as an early The Wheel of Time reader.  But of course you can read all about that in those blogs.

Anyway, all starts to become clear as our party now continues their trek, this time through the Melcene Empire.  This is my favorite entry in The Malloreon, with the last book, The Seeress of Kell, coming in a close second.

What Everyone Else is Doing
We open this book with a chapter that doesn't focus on Garion and our heroes, but rather all the people that they left behind in the West.  It's kind of a dull opening, nothing more than a series of cameos to sate those readers who might miss those characters.  There was one in the previous book, I believe.  Later on, there's another, and I honestly want to skip over them half the time, because Garion's quest is much more interesting.

However, it is somewhat necessary, as it explains how Barak and the other warriors we had to leave behind meet up with our heroes near the end of the final book.  Which is rather amusing... we know they won't be able to catch up to Garion, because the prophecy won't let them.  So it's fun to see misfortune befall them (mainly because they can be pretty stupid at times, i.e. Lelldorin and Mandorallen).

The Cover
What else can I say about these covers that I haven't already said before?  Same style as usual, nothing too exciting.

This time we have Zandramas, Garion and Poledra in her wolf form.  They are at a farm, and this is during the attack of Zandramas on them in the night (she first attacked in her dragon form).  The background, of course, shows the Melcene Empire, which is featured in this volume.

Garion seems a bit short in this picture, if you ask me... Zandramas just towers over him.  But it's good that Zandramas is on the cover.  You can't title the book after a character and not put them on the cover!  Oh wait... they did that for King of the Murgos.  And they do it for the next book, The Seeress of Kell... so never mind, I guess they can.

The Complete Zandramas
As I mentioned in my post for Demon Lord of Karanda, each book in this series progressively reveals an aspect of our antagonist, Zandramas.  Here we finally learn her background - where she came from, how she became the Child of Dark, etc - conveniently told to us by a Melcene bureaucrat Garion and Co. find in an abandoned village in Peldane.

French cover... not sure why Zandramas
is pictured in the snow, but she looks cool.

After Torak was killed, the Dark Prophecy fled into a new Child of Dark: Zandramas.  She was consumed by it and fled into the forest for years.  Eventually she returns to begin preaching that a new god of Angarak is coming.  Of course Urvon, the last living disciple of Torak, didn't like this.  So they've been at each others' throats ever since - and it's all coming to a head in this book as their armies converge in Darshiva.

Of course, when they hear that Zandramas intends to be the bride of the new god, should the Dark win... Ce'Nedra's more upset with the fact that Zandramas would be her daughter-in-law more than anything else.  Women!

Silk's Empire
This book also gives us more insight into Silk and Yarblek's vast merchant empire that they started building after The Belgariad.  Throughout this series we have been learning of their exploits, and they have offices everywhere it seems.  Here they put it to good use in Melcene when tracking Zandramas and the Sardion.

I always felt this was another sign of the world changing and finally moving on from the repetition and stagnation of the dual prophecies.  Before The Belgariad, Silk and Yarblek would have never been able to do something like this, not with Torak still alive, the Grolim Church strong and the enmity between Alorn and Angarak.  But much like the fall of any type of oppressive society, with the death of Torak trade opens up and the West infiltrates the East, so Silk's successes are not exactly surprising.

To Silk, however, it's all a game.  He's on his way to literally becoming the richest man in the world, but actually having the money doesn't seem to mean that much to him.  Just the fact that he bests all his opponents.  Money is simply the way they keep score.  Men!

Melcena
So our party finally leaves the Seven Kingdoms of Karanda, heading for the Melcene Empire.  The island of Melcena reminds me of Tolnedra, only better.  Tolnedra prides itself on their educational system and modernization, yet they won't acknowledge the existence of sorcery.  The University of Melcene here is a greater center of learning than that found in Tolnedra, plus they accept sorcery and magic.  It's essentially the greatest center of learning in Eddings's world.

Here our heroes follow the trail of the Sardion and Zandramas (they lead to the same place), and it's here that they learn much of the history of the Sardion from the clubfoot Senji, who is really an untrained sorcerer that's lived for a few thousand years himself.  The couple of chapters where Belgarath, Beldin and Garion visit Senji are probably my favorite of the entire saga.  There's a lot of history and discovery, and some memorable dialogue as well.

The Sardion resided at the University for thousands of years, but eventually it was stolen... and since it left, so must we.  At this point Belgarath learns that they must go to Kell to discover the location of the Place That is No More.  So off we go!

Peldane
Simply another region of Melcene that our party must cross, there's not really much to say about Peldane.  It's torn by war and we slowly make our way across it, hot on Zandramas's trail; they've pulled within a day or so now.  No special history, no unique people - pretty much the same as anywhere in Melcene.  A stark contrast to the variety of cultures found from region to region in The Belgariad.

A few important things do happen here.  One is that they learn Zandramas's backstory from a Grolim they capture and drug.  The other is another encounter with Zandramas in her dragon form, along with another appearance of Poledra, both on a farm that reminds our main characters of Faldor's Farm, way back in the very first book, Pawn of Prophecy (from the cover).  Poledra still has more to do; we'll be seeing more in the next volume.

Darshiva
This is the home of everyone's favorite Child of Dark, Zandramas.  Our party is cutting across these regions because they are heading for Kell... but now they're in danger of being sandwiched between two armies: those of Zandramas and Urvon, fighting for dominion of the Angarak Church (which is ultimately pointless, considering where the story is headed).  Zakath's army is converging along the River Magan as well... so you can guess what will happen...

...Zakath rejoins our party.  Zakath's army captures them when they try to cross the Magan to get into Darshiva.  Cyradis, the Seeress of Kell, orders Zakath to join them or risk dying within the year.  Zakath has a secret crush on Cyradis, so it doesn't take much convincing to get him to go in the end.  We also get new party members in the form of a she-wolf and her cub... the identities of which are revealed in the next book, and which will complete our party just in time for the Meeting.

And finally, Durnik completes a very important task at the book's climax.

A New Disciple
Durnik not only is meant to be a sorcerer, but a new disciple of Aldur, perhaps to replace Zedar the Apostate.  He earns his amulet by defeating the Demon Lord Nahaz at the end of the book, banishing him and Urvon to Hell with a giant hammer, weighted by the power of Aldur.  It's a touching scene since we all know that Aldur has not chosen another disciple in a long, long time.  Beldin and Belgarath finally get a new brother.

Of course, the first time I read it I still expected Durnik to be renamed to Beldurnik, but it doesn't happen.  Which is good... it just doesn't seem right.  Plus, being a Sendarian (one of the peoples who don't have a patron god), he's never been very pious beyond respecting all seven Gods for major holidays like Erastide.  So it seems weird... but it makes more sense after the next book.

Durnik fighting Nahaz on the Turkish cover

Of Sorcerers and Amulets
As part of his induction into disciplehood, Durnik receives an amulet with an engraving of a hammer, to go along with those of the other sorcerers (Belgarath = Wolf, Polgara = Owl, etc).  And keeping with the theme of repetition from The Belgariad, this is essentially another one, when you really think about it.

In that series, Garion becomes Belgarion and gets an amulet of his own, which features... um, so until I was writing this I didn't even know what was on his amulet.  If you remember, Garion received his between Pawn of Prophecy and Queen of Sorcery, right at the beginning of our saga.  He starts Queen of Sorcery with it, and just mentions that he doesn't like wearing it, and he takes it off a few times when he shouldn't have.  But never do we learn what is on it.

I did some searching online and in the books and confirmed that what's on it is never revealed. It's simply described as "curiously carved" with a "strange design."  It's not important in the grand scheme of things, but I wonder why Eddings never revealed what the design was, when the designs of others' were clear.  Maybe he just forgot.  We'll never know.

Speaking of sorcerers... are you wondering what happened to Beltira and Belkira, the twin disciples from The Belgariad who finish each other's sentences?  So am I.  They never appear in this series.  Eddings ignores them entirely.  I wonder what was on their amulets... or Beldin's, for that matter.  A falcon, perhaps?

Consistent Cultures
At this point, after travelling through Ancient Mallorea, Karanda and Melcene, you may have noticed that the cultures here on the Mallorean continent are actually somewhat consistent and actually make sense with each other (*gasp*) compared to the hodge-podge of anachronistic cultures found on the unnamed western continent of The Belgariad, and which I mentioned way back in my post for Queen of Sorcery.

Eddings obviously created the Mallorean continent's history separately at a much later date than The Belgariad.  This should be clear given how much of that continent is godless and doesn't fit into the theology that dominates the story at the beginning.  Well... I'm not sure about Mallorea, but apparently everything was done deliberately.  Not too long ago, on an old FAQ, I found this quote from Eddings, featured in Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series, Volume 35 (essentially a reference book with biographical info on authors of the day):

"My current excursion into fantasy has given me an opportunity to test my technical theories [of writing]. I made a world that never was, with an unlikely theology splattered against an improbable geology. My magic is at best a kind of pragmatic cop-out. Many of my explanations of how magic is supposed to work are absurdities - but my characters all accept these explanations as if there was no possibility of quibbling about them, and if the characters believe, then the readers seem also to believe."

Of course his magic system has always been weak, but it has never bothered me, since it worked in the confines of the world, and as he mentions, the characters believe in it.  And if you remember, I also went into great length about distances and the size of the world itself, in my post for King of the Murgos.  They make no sense, and coupled with his comment on theology and geology, you can see why: he didn't intend for it to make sense, if his quote is to be believed.  He simply incorporated whatever he wanted to in the series to "test" his "technical theories" - whatever that means.

If an author today came up with a world like this, it would be widely panned as unrealistic, considering how much more plausible and believable fantasy worlds are now.  Does that lessen Eddings's work?  Not to me... I still find it enjoyable, and it's important because it was the standard of popular fantasy at the time.  To understand where fantasy is heading, it's important to know where it's been.


Next:

The Malloreon
Book 5 - The Seeress of Kell

Previous:

The Malloreon
Book 3 - Demon Lord of Karanda
Book 2 - King of the Murgos
Book 1 - Guardians of the West

The Belgariad
Book 5 - Enchanter's End Game
Book 4 - Castle of Wizardry
Book 3 - Magician's Gambit
Book 2 - Queen of Sorcery
Book 1 - Pawn of Prophecy

All maps by Shelly Shapiro

Carcassonne 2013-04-13

My wife and I regularly play a board game called Carcassonne.  If you haven't heard of it, lots of information here and here.  We have all of the expansion packs that are available in the US, but we don't use them all every time we play, otherwise the game would take close to 3 hours.  So most times we simply use the core game with a couple of expansions and mix it up so the rules and strategy differ each time.

I thought it might be fun to post our final layouts (before final scoring) each time we play, because they are radically different and that's what makes the game unique.  Last night we played with the following expansions:

The River

The Count of Carcassonne

Inns & Cathedrals

Bridges, Castles & Bazaars

Final layout:

Yellow wins by 44 points.  The final point count is irrelevant, because many times when scored features are shared (like the farms using the Count of Carcassonne), they essentially cancel out, so we don't see the point in scoring them.  The margin is what's important.

Yellow won mostly because they had two farms.  Green only got share one via the Count.

No, I'm not going to reveal who was Yellow and who Green.  :)

I'll work on better picture quality in the future.  It's hard to get a good picture because the pieces easily glare in light.

Game of the Month [Mar 2013] WipEout 2048

WipEout 2048

[PS Vita]

I finally got a PS Vita a month or so ago, and got to work playing a bunch of games on it.  Since I'm a PlayStation Plus member, I've been "purchasing" the free Vita games there in prep of my Vita purchase - that way I'd have plenty of stuff to play when I finally got the handheld.  The handheld is awesome, and so far the best game I've played on it is WipEout 2048 - which was one of the free games PS+ offered a while back.

The Wipeout Series

I'm not a huge fan of racing games.  I don't even consider myself all that good at them.  I play them here and there, but the only one that has consumed me and that I actually like is the Wipeout series, which is futuristic racing with combat.  Wipeout first began on the original PlayStation in 1995, but I never picked it up until WipEout HD on the PS3, which is a great game.  I got the Fury add-on for that, and checked out WipEout Pure on the PSP soon after.  Played through them all, loved them.

I got many of the trophies for HD, but was never good enough to get the really hard ones like "Zone Zeus" or "Beat Zico."  Those were far beyond my gaming abilities and it took me a little while to accept it.  The ships move too fast and I simply can't process that speed, react fast enough to it or do the very subtle movements needed for victory.  I guess I'm getting old and my brain is slowing down.  Yet I still enjoyed the game.

So grabbing WipEout 2048 for the Vita was a no-brainer for me.  I knew I'd like it, and it also came with the added bonus of the entire HD and Fury campaigns, re-imagined for Vita, if you had already bought them for the PS3.  Love the cross-platform content you get with some games between PS3/Vita.

Familiar Ground
I've spent a lot of time with this game already.  It's a great handheld game since most races are short - you can easily save and quit, very few events run longer than 5 minutes or so.  It has a lot of the same modes as previous Wipeout games, so it felt like coming back to an old friend.  The only barrier is learning the new tracks.  But if you intend to complete the single player campaign, you'll quickly become an expert on them.

The game looks great on the Vita.

But it wasn't just the 2048 campaign.  The HD and Fury campaigns beckoned as well, and I'm still working through them.  But since I completed those on PS3, I've been cruising through them on Vita.  It's a great bonus and kudos to Sony and Studio Liverpool (the developer) for including it.

There's also a complete Multiplayer campaign that I haven't even touched yet... so I know I'll be spending a lot more time with this game.

On a Handheld
There's only one real negative about this game... and that's the fact that it's on a handheld.

Since the Vita is missing L2/R2 trigger buttons (which you can gradually depress on the DualShock 3 controllers), there is a subtle bit of control that you lose.  This is particularly evident on Zone events, where light touches on the airbrakes (L2/R2 on PS3) was key to surviving the insane speeds of Zones 40+.  Without that precision on the Vita, I've struggled with some of the Zone events.

Also, your hands will get cramped after playing for a long time, due to the controls you use for racing and having to hold down some buttons for a long period of time.  You can change control schemes, but it's hard on a Vita to accelerate and fire/absorb at the same time, since they are handled by face buttons (triangle, circle, X, square).  You don't want to take your thumb off the accelerator to fire on a competitor in a race, because every second counts.  As such, I usually place the ball of my thumb on X, and use the tip to fire/absorb as needed.  It works, but it's not a comfortable position to use for very long.

The Future of WipEout
Sadly, Studio Liverpool was closed down late last year.  They were even working on a new Wipeout title for PS4, already 12-18 months into development.  That's a huge disappointment for me... the Wipeout games are fantastic.  If Sony is upset by low sales of WipEout 2048, they really have to look at the low sales of Vita instead.  The game itself is great.

I can only hope that Sony will do something about the PS4 Wipeout that was left incomplete.  After seeing what they did with 2048 on the Vita, I can only imagine how awesome a PS4 version would be.