After years of being a passive recipient of GOG.com's weekly newsletter (GOG stands for Good Old Games), I finally succumbed to one newsletter offer that I couldn't for the life of me resist -- I purchased Zeus+Poseidon on a special price of $3.99!
Readers of this ole blog of mine know that Zeus: Master of Olympus, that 2D-terrained city-building game from defunct Impression Games, is my favorite video-game of all time and when I saw the offer from GOG.com, it got me salivating. It was the one game that finally got me whipping out my plastic and excitedly keying in the needed numbers and codes. With permission from my wife, of course.
Being bundled with the Poseidon expansion was a real, sweet bonus. Imagine, for merely something like Php 164 pesos, I bought a game that has been on my search-list for eons. What's better is that it's DRM free meaning I could install it in different machines (right now I got it installed in my parents' rig (which is with me because I had to troubleshoot its boot-up) and when installed, it only takes up 700+MB. How's that for a space-saving game?
I haven't had time yet to play the game but I've tested it out already and it opens up just fine. Hopefully, I won't be encountering any problems later on when I play it in earnest.
After that first purchase, I may just end up buying other good old games. I've seen many of the Dungeons & Dragons games in the list (Baldur's Gate I and II and their respective expansions), as well as other games from prominent game publishers. Let's see.
* * * *
Speaking of city-building games, I'm actually playing one right now, on my wife's tablet -- Townsmen. If I'm not mistaken, this game was ported from the PC platform and then offered for free-play on the Google Play store. The whole freakin' game is free!
While the game was addictive at first, once I got the hang of things, it sort of became redundant with the goals becoming a never-ending multiplication of the amount of money you make and the number of items you need to fabricate (tools, bread, clothes, jewelry, etc.). I've only played two scenarios so far and I'm hoping the two other scenarios available will be more challenging.
But what's good about this game is that unlike other social games, you don't actually have to spend real money for in-game stuff. The only time you need to spend real money is if you want to take out the ever-present banner ad on top and the every now and then intrusion of an advertisement during the game (the game though is considerate enough to warn you with "Advertisement in 0:10 seconds"). For me however, the ads are no longer intrusions. I've learned how to ignore the omnipresent banner ad that it just becomes one with the background and for the pesky take-over ad? I turn off the wi-fi of the tablet and what happens now is when the ad countdown arrives, the games becomes black for a few micro-seconds and then promptly returns on-screen basically there's no ad to "call" when there's no internet connection.
But like I said, the game has become repetitive that my interest in it has waned a bit. I'll still play it now and then but hopefully makers of the game can add more spice into it one of these days. That'll be an update worth waiting for.
* * * *
Since my trusty Nokia 6680 has died on me (tried to revive it a couple of months back to replace the SE T303), I went on a hunt and ended up buying a Nokia X1-01. Yes, it's back to basics with the X1-01 mostly because I've realized that having one touch-phone was enough. Fat fingers and the need to text while on the go meant finding a second phone that had the keypad available (with that raised thingy bit on the number "5" key) and that wasn't QWERTY. One year with my ZTE Blade (which I reviewed here) has allowed this realization.
So, a couple of months back, I shopped for a phone and ended up with the X1-01 which is actually a music phone. No cam, no wi-fi. But this grippy phone handles music files well and even without attaching it to a speaker, you could just turn up the volume to full and rock out. It reads only files in MP3 format so I had to rip some of my CDs into MP3 format to be able to play them. With an 8GB micro-SD card, that means hours upon hours of music. Heck, I could start my day at the Desk with the first music album on the X1 and by the time I log-out, I would still have about 4 hours worth of music left to play.
Of course, the X1 does its primary job well -- I can text even without looking which was a skill many of us developed early on during the days of 5510s and 3210s circa 1998 to the early 2000's. My only gripe is that it limits you when saving your Contacts' names because it only allows for several characters of space. That means a lot of creativity when saving your friends' and acquaintances numbers especially when several people you know share the same first name (on my contact list, the most common name is Mike).
What's on my X1-01's playlist? Mostly OPM rockers -- Sandwich, Eraserheads, Cambio, The Dawn, Bridge, Dong Abay, etc. with a smattering of choice rock song favorites from the 90s to the mid-2000s. Sorry, no emo.
* * * *
Around the same time I bought the X1-01, the apartment along Fortuna Street in Olympia, Makati also became a wi-fi zone. This was also a few weeks after my wife's tablet (and supposedly second phone) was bought. What was the essence of a wi-fi tablet if our internet connection was wired, right?
So, a trip to ElectroWorld - Waltermart-Makati (where I also bought the X1-01) found me buying an Asus wi-fi router. After a quick read of the instructions (yes, I still do that), in a matter of minutes the apartment was converted to a wi-fi zone. And as explained to me by the store clerk, the router I bought was a more powerful one as it allowed wi-fi access even from the second floor and through several walls. I installed the router in our bedroom on the second floor and heck, I can even access it while in the toilet in the ground floor. To test the router's strength, I took my Netphone out to the garage and walked some 50 meters from our apartment unit before the wi-fi signal got cut (the router was on the second floor like I said, through walls and a floor which added some 10 meters to the entire distance).
So now there's no need to wait for someone else to finish using the internet connection. At any given time, three to six devices are sharing the connection and no one's complaining.
* * * *
Reading a book by a new author is always quite the chore. That's because you have to first rid yourself of the previous author's writing style and technique and then immerse yourself in the new author's style and technique.
That's why for me, a new book by a new author always takes longer to finish and this is exactly what's happening right now with Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon, the book I'm tackling after Kevin J. Anderson's The Key to Creation and Brandon Sanderson's The Hero of Ages.
The voice is always different, the writing technique is definitely a departure from the previous book. Whereas KJA was fast-paced and Sanderson was action-oriented, Erikson is a bit slowed-down and the action played down a bit. But that's not to say the book isn't good. I just need to adjust and get the hang of it, so to speak. Right now, I'm ploughing through the book and about to reach mid-way.
This was the same predicament I was on when I took on Brent Weeks after gorging on several of George R.R. Martin's books from the A Song of Ice and Fire series. It was the same predicament when I tackled James Owen after Weeks.
As I get attuned to Erikson's style, I'm sure my reading will pick up. The book's interesting and I'm already on the lookout for the next book in the series. And one person I'm sure is waiting for my reco. Right, Gen?
