Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 13

A look back at 2018…

This probably should have gone up on January 1st, but Dark Souls III isn’t gonna play itself. (I’m actually playing several games all at once and hope to have something ready for review soonish. I’m also close to finishing a book for review, and I can say that review will be mostly positive.) Truth be told, I’m hard pressed to think of what to say about 2018. It’s wasn’t a bad year compared to some in recent memory, but it wasn’t stellar, either. It’s the homely year, the kind of year that attractive years take along on pub crawls to make themselves look more alluring. It didn’t overstay its welcome or shit the rug on its way out, so…I don’t know, I guess I’ll mostly be remembering this one somewhat fondly.

It was a year I released a book, albeit it almost two years late. (Sorry about that. I blame my self-esteem as much as my health for that one.) But I used to be able to release four and five books a year, and so one book is…well, it’s less than I’d hoped for. By the same token, I’ve been less able to post reviews for books and games. I can’t afford more than a handful of games per year thanks to my less than stellar sales record (again, my fault; I need to do better at promotions) and I’ve had difficulty reading for most of this year. (Or more precisely with reading and retaining what I’ve just read.) So on the surface, I know it’s seemed like I haven’t got much done.

BUT—and, like my expanding rear it’s a big but—that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working. I’ve been serving part-time as an editor of an international glass print magazine and web-site, and this year, I also began writing articles for them. The pay is pretty good, but we’ve still had money troubles due to the move from Milan to Pavia. I’m glad we made the move despite the financial strain. I have an office of my own, and with our new kitchen, I’ve become more enthusiastic about cooking again, something that’s pleased our neighbors and my husband to no end. I do miss Milan, but Pavia is full of its own charms, and I’ve enjoyed hunting them down one day-trip at a time. The hubbers is also closer to his mom, and that’s having a positive effect on his mood. So all around, I’d call the move a win-win even if it is keeping our bank account strained for the time being.

I’ve done more to exercise, though winter has halted my progress there for now. For some folks, MS kicks in worse in summer, but for me, it’s always the winter that wrecks me and leads to relapses. This winter is no exception despite being incredibly mild. I sleep a lot longer, and I suffer a lot of pain for even minimal physical activity. But when I can, I still try to get in a stationary bike ride because it does help me to feel better. It hasn’t done much to reduce my butt size, but some of that can be chalked up to my increased cooking. (The traditional southern diet is a tad carb and calorie heavy, after all.)

Looking ahead to 2019, I’ve got plans to find other avenues to write in, stuff of the paying kind that I’m looking forward to talking about once more details are finalized. For now, I’m just getting together my CV and work samples as well as a few references before I get around to selling myself to the (hopefully) new bosses.

I also have plans to release a book, possibly two. It’s my hope that once I have funds coming in from paid work, I can invest a bit more in marketing services from someone who can take the strain off of me. When the last book came out, I made about 3 weeks of full-time promotion efforts, and it wiped me out. I know I need to get someone else to pick up the slack, and I’m not one of those folks who expect work to be done for free. I may call my fans my minions, but I still respect them too much to say something like, “Y’all could be doing more word of mouth advertising for me.” I know some already are, and what they do is more than enough. So what I need is someone I pay to pick up my slack, and if they slack off, I can fire them…from a cannon. Kidding! *Hides cannon*

I also have some hazy goals around reviving my YouTube channel, though I’m not yet sure of what it’s going to be. Part of me thinks it would be better to create another new channel. So the old one would just be video game stuff, and the other would be more…vloggy? Like, it might be a stream of thought vlog one day, or the next I might cook something and share my recipe. Another day, I might take a day-trip to show off some location in Italy or elsewhere in Europe. All of this depends a lot on getting that second paid job, obviously, but I feel confident that I can, given that I went from just a few weeks of editing work with my current company to be asked to write articles for the print magazine this year based solely off of the first article I turned in over the summer. Once I have that second venue locked in, yeah, I think I’ll have the money to make a vlog and the gaming channel more reliable.

So, that’s about it, I guess. Before closing this out, I should remind y’all that the old Twitter account went poof on January 1st, and if you want to keep up with me, you should go to https://twitter.com/Zoe_Whitten and follow me there. I assure you, it’s not all ads all the time like some Twitter writers, and in general, I’ll only bug y’all for a bit when I have a new book out. Despite the nasty rep it’s gained over the last few years, Twitter is still my favorite place to socialize, so if you tweet at me, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll tweet back. (Especially now, when the follower count on the new account is back down to the kind of numbers I had in my first year online. That may sound dire, but it’s been nice, seeing more real tweets instead of bot-streamed ads all the time.)

I wish all of y’all a belated happy new year, and I hope to give you more of what you come here for in 2019. Thanks as always for reading my stuff, and I hope the new year sees you earning some success of your own.

Netflix Nosedive: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Hi! As you may know if you’ve been with me for a while now, I’ve been working on trying to bring new reviews to you, with…less than frequent results. (But there will be new game reviews in the future. I got games over the holidays, and I need time to play them and get a better idea of how I feel about them.) Well now I have something all new to bring you, the fine, kind, and very intelligent reader who has most graciously seen fit to keep reading my stuff.

Are you ready? It’s NETFLIX NOSEDIVE!

I admit, I’ve never actually used Netflix, though with every ad for a Netflix Original show or film, I’ve said, “Huh, I should look into that.” But there are games to play, books to read, things to write (or edit), and I never got around to it. Then just a few days ago, the TV antenna decided it didn’t want to work. We had nothing, and even trying to scan for channels wouldn’t fix it. So, I’m at the store to buy stuff for Christmas dinner, and I saw a prepaid Netflix card and thought, “I’ve just earned a check for editing and writing. Why not get that card as a Christmas present for myself and my hubby?”

Now I know, some of you probably already know this, but Netflix is amazing, like even better than Kindle. I can be watching a show on my PC on the PS4, pause, go to the bathroom, and keep watching the same show from the very second I paused on any other device. This means I can binge watch anything Netflix has on their service, anytime and anywhere. It’s like living in the future!

But, I’m not so good at binging. I want to, yes, but there’s like 10,000 things I want to watch, and I can only make it through so many episodes of any one thing before I want to see something else. Hence, what I do isn’t binging, and it’s not Netflix and chill. It’s more like a nosedive. (Which is also a clever name for reviews of these programs, in my opinion.)

This is the first of my reviews, and some in the future will be for movies, but the longer ones will be for series. The first of these will be Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. The hubby and I watched the two seasons of this lovely gem over the course of five days, and we both were amazed by how fantastic it was. I myself remember the name because I read a few of the books when I was a teenager. But if I’m being honest, that stretch of time is now slightly hazy in my memory with respect to books I’ve read, so while I recall some of the characters, the actual plots are lost to the blur of brain fog.

That’s probably for the best because I could go into this series knowing who Dirk, Todd, and all the other characters are, but not recall any of the details of these cases they’re working on. It’s watching a mystery show and not knowing who done it, and loving every second of the trip.

The show opens with Todd Brotzman (Elijah Woods), a nobody hounded by his drugged out landlord, heading to his dead end job as a bellhop on what may be the worst day of his life…SO FAR. Because from this point forward, Todd life is destined to get much, MUCH worse, thanks in large part to the entry of a private detective into his life, the eponymous Dirk Gently. (Samuel Barnett)

Dirk comes off as a raving lunatic, while Todd seems like a grounded everyman suddenly thrust into a story he cannot possibly understand. It’s only later that the truth begins to come through. Dirk is…possibly still a raving lunatic, but Todd isn’t everything that he seems. Rather than detract from my like of him, the revealing of his rough edges only adds to my enjoyment of his complexity. He’s not a good guy, you see, he’s just a guy who’s been caught up in event so far out of his comfort zone that there’s no way he can rationally cope with it. And yet, he does begin to come to terms with everything.

All this is before you take into account the case Dirk is working on, which involves time travel, a cult of body swapping hippies, a kidnapped girls, and a kitten with a weaponized soul. Just another day at the office for Dirk, but for everyone involved, this is a one-way ticket to Cuckooland.

Then there’s Bart Curlish (Fiona Dourif), a holistic assassin who thinks she’s been set up by the universe to kill Dirk, along with a whole lot of other people. She’s easily twice as crazy as Dirk, kidnapping an assistant of her own and dragging Ken (Mpho Koaho) along to witness her killing spree.

There’s so many other amazing characters and performances that I’d love to list without risking spoilers, including a quartet of mathematically challenged psychic vampires calling themselves the Rowdy 3, a bodyguard desperate to save her ward and make up for all her perceived failures in life, a former rock star turned into a mutinous rebel and…and so much more. Every episode brings in someone else I love whether they’re good, evil or some hazy shade of grey somewhere in the middle.

The first season concludes with the case being somewhat solved, but with a cliffhanger conclusion resulting in Dirk being captured and with most everyone else on the run, hiding out from the government agents who are trying to contain the supernatural and use it to their advantage because of course they would.

This leads to season two, where Todd travels to a small town trying desperately to locate Dirk. Dirk is still imprisoned by an inept government agent until the arrival of another holistic entity who tasks him to “find the boy” before setting him loose and back to Todd. This second season is even better than the first, involving pocket dimensions and sorcery while also expanding on everything that made the first season so great. Todd’s sister Amanda (Hannah Marks) becomes a “chosen one,” Dirk struggles with what it means to be the universe’s tool, Todd learns to embrace the chaos surrounding each case, and Bart chills out and comes to terms with her own place in the nature of things.

I’d love to explain more about each season, but that would be spoiling it, and if you haven’t seen the series yet, I want you to be as surprised and delighted as I was by every episode. There’s really nothing I could find to complain about. The acting is fantastic, the special effects are amazing, and the music is pitch perfect from one scene to the next. Seeing these two seasons now makes me want to buy the books and go through the whole series again.

Sadly, it seems the show was cancelled, though fans are trying to make petitions to get a third season funded. I hope their efforts succeed because I would love to see what else can be done with this cast. The end of the second season just begs for another case to bring everyone together, but it also ties up enough loose ends that I could be happy if it just ended where it did. Plus, like I said, if I really want more of Dirk and Todd, there’s always the books.

There’s also always the chance that if more people watch the show and Netflix sees it’s spiking in popularity, maybe they might change stance and green light another season. So, get out there, dive into this show, and if you like it, give it a thumbs up on Netflix’s rating system. Who knows, maybe if enough of us dig Dirk, he might just go on a new case. The universe could certainly be a better place if that happened.

I give Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency 5 stars and my highest recommendation. If you have a Netflix account, you need to see this. If you don’t have an account, consider going in for the free trial just to see this. It’s well worth your time.

This is not a review for Wizard of Legend (on PC)

I’d like to apologize for my absence, but this time it’s not my fault. I’ve been sick, and am in fact still ill. All my plans and workouts fell flat as soon as the weather turned truly cold, and I had to drop a paying editing job in the middle of a week because I had an MS-related relapse. Right as I was recovering from that junk, I got a good old-fashioned cold, the kind that likes to stick around for two weeks and come in waves. It’s like every time I get up and say, “Oh, I might be better,” the cold shows up an hour later to go, “Psyche! Gotcha, bitch!”

While I don’t feel the need to apologize for being sick, I do want to say how sorry I am that I won’t be finishing Wizard of Legend. Every time I think to play it, I also think of a dozen other things I could do that would be better ways to spend my time. Like doing laundry, for instance. When a game is so tedious that I would prefer to do laundry instead, you know there’s a problem.

But, as I can’t finish it, this is not a review. I will cover what I liked about the parts I played, and then I’ll cover what I hated. (Hate is a strong word, but it totally applies in this instance, believe me.) But I will not give a score, so then it’s not a real, really real review.

What I liked can be summed up pretty fast, so first, let’s go over the story. In the modern era of the game’s world, your character is a young wizard visiting the museum of the Chaos Trials, where people admire all the many feats and spells of wizards of legend. It’s basically a tutorial area before an artifact sucks you back in time and into your very own Chaos Trial. You, yes YOU, are now being tested to become A WIZARD OF LEGEND! Wooohooo! Yaaay!

The premise is decent, the graphics are lovely, and the music is nice. Once you have enough funds to buy spells and find a mix that works for you, the visual flair of said spells can look quite spectacular as well. Aaaaand that’s everything I liked. *Deep breath*

It’s a pity that almost everything else about this game makes me hate it so much. I can’t even point to one thing that stands out more than anything else. There’s the shit controls, the wimpiness of every single spell, and then there’s the god damned grind needed to buy anything in this stingy game. Honestly, I kept waiting for a prompt to pop up offering to sell me packs of crystals because this is a level of grind I’ve only seen in games trying to dig extra money out of my wallet.

Let’s take those gripes in reverse order. The grind is what has done the most to burn me out of playing any more than I already have. At this point, I’ve got a mostly good kit of starting spells that will see me through the first biome even if I never find any appealing spells in the shops scattered in the levels. (Or if, true to fashion for these shit show “rouge-lites,” I didn’t earn enough currency to buy anything at all, and fuck you very much to the asshole who designed the economy in this game.) But to buy new spells in the open market before starting any new trial, I had to spend a long time banging my head against each of the three starting biomes over and over just to eke out a few crystals at a time. When most basic spells are 15 and the “signature” versions cost 75,” I am faced with playing over and over and over with no hope of victory. I’m just playing to pay for the next unlock. It’s the most dreadful grind I’ve ever experienced, and not even free to play titles have felt this awful to play.

Adding to the grind frustration is the fact that health is a precious non-regenerating commodity. Let’s say I’ve found the boss of level 1-1 early, and the fight leaves me with half health. I know somewhere is a shop to buy health, but I also know that buying it will require killing every single enemy in the map to even hope to have a chance of affording one stupid health potion. Oh, and of course if I buy that, I can’t buy any spells or artifacts. I can get one thing in each level, and if I’m at 25 health, well tough shit, I can’t have anything else.

There’s an artifact that’s supposed to make enemies drop more funds, but guess what? It doesn’t really work. I earn about the same shit rates whether I use it or any other artifact. So yeah, knowing that this is what every run is going to be like, I’d much rather go play something else, even if it’s a game that also has a grind built in. ANYTHING is better than this.

Even when I do finally get spells that can deal out enough damage to make a difference, they all feel so damned wimpy. The only exception to this is when a signature spell gets fully charged up, but good luck getting that to happen outside of a boss fight. The meter that charges the spell also drains just as quickly as soon as you have nothing to attack, and you will wander through hall after hall with the meter draining and have nothing to use it on.

Then there’s the spell cool down timers. With the exception of your most basic attack, every spell has a timer. So get used to throwing out everything you have at a minion, and then running in circles to dodge it while waiting for those damned timers to refill. “Oh, just use the basic attack,” you say. Yeah, about that. Most of the time, there’s a delay in your combo that gives any enemy the chance for a counter attack, and most minions have a move that will wreck your health while your basic attack is doing chip damage to them. Trading blows in this way is a guaranteed easy way to die in the first level without even seeing the first boss.

In fact, there’s a certain “shop” occupied by a pinata who tasks you with busting him. This shop clearly demonstrates how weak your spells are because it’s entirely possible to hit that asshole with everything you have and have him laugh it off. This is including the spells you’ll pick up from the shops in the biomes. But the real punchline is when you do finally hit on a combination and the pinata drops something completely useless, such as a spell you already have equipped.

Even this could be considered part of the challenge, but then we arrive to the coup de grace, the shitty controls. Imagine running in circles trying to dodge a boss just so you can get one shot at them with your signature spell. The spell queues up, so you turn and fire…and the spell goes completely the wrong direction. GREAT. So now you fire off everything else you have and guess what? You miss with everything except the basic attack, which just tickles the boss. Oh, finally, here’s the signature spell timer filling up, aaaaand…YOU MISSED AGAIN.

The biggest problem I have with this is that there is a circle surrounding the character with an arrow that should in theory indicate where a spell will fire. The problem is, sometimes it’s not accurate. Other times, There will be a lag-like delay in the time between me pressing the button and the spell firing. If my thumb quivers even a fraction of a millimeter from where I needed to aim in that moment of delay, I miss. Finally, if I get the delay and I let go of the direction I was aiming to stop moving toward the boss, the aim arrow re-centers itself, so the shot goes wild.

At this point, I’ve fought through each of the biomes with my current build and defeated each of the three elemental bosses. There’s an earth boss, a fire boss, and an ice boss, and they all have the one single pun intro when I face them. From this point forward, all minions in the next biomes get an upgrade to their attacks. It might be added oomph or a new combo they didn’t have before, but the challenge goes up even for something I feel like I’ve seen before, and I always end up limping into the end of the next biome with like 25 health and no hope in hell of winning.

I’ve seen the same three bosses over and over, and unlike a game like Binding of Issac where there’s a wide range of possible bosses to fight over the same number of guaranteed boss rooms, there’s nothing here to prevent this from becoming tedious long before I get past the elemental triad and heading to the final boss. (I had a feeling there was one and looked him up on YouTube. Basically, he’s got all the same elements as the previous bosses, plus chaos spells. He looks real cool, and it’s a damn shame I’ll never see him myself.)

So we arrive at the point where in a review, I would give a score, but obviously this time there isn’t one. I got this game because I saw some very enthusiastic review videos. But I have to be honest, and I just don’t see the appeal. Yes, it’s pretty, and the music and sound effects are spot on. But despite the pretty visual and audio wrapping, everything else about this game makes me want to avoid it at all costs. Your mileage may vary, but if you’re seeking my advice, I’d suggest finding something else to occupy your free time.

What’s going on with me…

I must first beg forgiveness for not posting a new review recently. As I mentioned in my last game review, I have plans to write up a little somethin’ somethin’ for Wizard of Legend, but in the time since I said that, I’ve still not been able to force myself to play much of it. Or…any of it, really. (When I can find time to play anything lately, it’s been Magic the Gathering: Arena or Fallout: New Vegas.) Obviously, when I do get around to reviewing it, you can expect it will be light on gushing praise. (Which I feel a little guilty for because it looks pretty and has good music. It’s just, everything else is…no, I’ll save it for the review.)

On the other hand, I have a book I’m reading and enjoying, and yet I can’t say when I’ll be able to review it because I have so much going on here that it’s hard to find downtime to relax and unwind with a book. Maybe I’ll luck out and find some free time tonight, but I’m not entirely sure.

Here’s the thing: we live in a much bigger place, and that means I have to work more often to keep it clean. We also have a yard and a garden that’s supposed to be shared with the neighbors, and I’m the only one free to work on any of this. So any given day here is like “get up, clean stuff, try to fit in a workout, do some office work, do some yard work, and if it’s my turn to make dinner, hustle back to the kitchen to do prep work.”

That’s just a random day without taking into account my upcoming plans for next year. I’ve been hinting at a supa-secret project on Twitter for a couple months now, and I’m not ready to spill the details there or here yet. In my experience, saying “this is happening” too far in advance will doom the whole thing. So for now, all I can say is that phase one of my plan is gaining traction, and that will lead to me being able to earn some cash in order to fund phase two.

Know that the blog absolutely does factor into this plan, and that I’m going to have more stuff for y’all in the future. I just can’t say exactly when because I haven’t worked out all the details yet. My followers on Twitter may be better at eventually guessing the direction I’m heading because I’m already dropping hints with my efforts to engage there more often. But I think that when the time comes for the big reveal, even they’ll be surprised. (Hopefully pleasantly so.)

That’s about all I can say for now, but I promise, I’m trying to find ways to at least get you a weekly post until the plan swings into action. If you want more insight into my daily goals and thoughts, do consider following me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Zoe_Whitten. In addition to daily affirmations and dirty jokes, I’m also posting 2-4 music videos a day to keep folks entertained. So do consider heading over and following me there. I give good tweet.

I want to close this out by thanking all the people who stick with me during my dry spells. I see the traffic numbers, and I am always humbled to see you’re still checking in on a regular basis. I truly appreciate all’a y’all, and I hope to have more to offer you in the coming year.

Game review: Magic: The Gathering: Arena (beta for PC)

I actually planned to do a different review this week for Wizard of Legend, but despite feeling like I’ve played it for ages, Steam swears I’ve only been at it 13 hours. So I figure I’ll give it a bit more time before breaking out the gas and matches to burn it to the ground. On the other hand, only being ten hours into the free to play Magic: The Gathering: Arena (A name with way too many colons for my liking), I already know enough to tell you what you need to know about this game. Really, it’s Magic, but in a digital form. If you’ve played Magic anytime in its entire history, you already know what this means, and have already decided if you’re going to go in on this or not. This, then, is the review for the people who somehow missed out on the game for the last 20-some-odd years.

Before I get into it, I should cover some history explaining why I was originally hesitant to play this and explain why I was kind of right to be wary. I got into Magic: The Gathering at the ground floor with the first generation of cards thanks to my roommate Andy. Andy gave me the “first free hit” that pushed me to start buying booster packs, and after a few weeks of trying to make monster decks of ridiculous sizes, I began to instead create smaller 40 card decks comprised of one or two mana colors and with lots of land and low cost spells and creatures. While most of my friends used mega-decks with high cost cards, I could pull up an army while they were still laying out land to pay for their first summons, and I destroyed them most of the time unless I just had a really bad shuffle.

But I reached the point where I was spending all my free money on booster decks. No, I reached the point where food and bills got shuffled to the side to pay for more cards, and recognizing I had an obsession bordering on addiction, I quit the game and gave away all my cards. Five years later, a random co-worker asked if I played Magic, and I said I used to, but couldn’t afford it. So he gave me a deck to play with, and before you can say obsessive compulsive disorder, I was looking at dwindling finances and a binder full of duplicate cards again. So yeah, even in a digital form, I worried that this game might once again bring out the worst in me. To a smaller extent, I can already feel that tug to spend some real cash to get crystals so I can buy booster packs faster. In this way, Magic can be dangerous even if it’s loads of fun.

With that out of the way, let’s cover the very basics of the video game version. You and one online opponent have 60 card decks, either the pre-made sets or something you build yourself. The computer decides who goes first, and you each draw seven cards. If your hand doesn’t have anything you can use effectively, you can redraw six cards and shuffle the first hand back into your deck. You can actually keep doing this “mulligan” until you have no cards, which isn’t typical, but I have seen opponents get so screwed by their shuffles that they had to concede the game before we ever laid out a single card. (This fortunately has not happened to me yet.)

Once you’ve both got a hand of cards, whoever goes first lays out one land card. Land cards provide mana, the currency to pay for all other cards. While most times, the first land phase leads to a player giving control over to the other player, there are in fact cards that cost one mana to cast. But most creatures usually cost two, so the second player also lays out land, and then the turn reverts back to the first player. Once enough lands have been laid out to summon a creature, the creature card is set down on the “field of battle,” but it suffers “summoning sickness,” preventing it from attacking in the same turn it was summoned. (But not from blocking attacks should the second player do so. Helpful to know when throwing up an initial defense in the early phases.) Every creature has two numbers defining their attack strength and defense strength. When two creatures go head to head, those numbers determine who lives and dies. (For instance, a 3/2 creatures will kill a 2/3 creature and live to fight again. two creatures with matching 2/2 stats will thus wipe each other out.) Many creatures also have special abilities, but if that seems complicated, simply pointing the mouse cursor over the card will explain the abilities in plain English.

There are also spells and sorceries to harm enemies and their creatures, or to buff your own army up to make them harder to kill. In addition, there are artifact cards that can have similar effects to spells, or can be considered creatures. Whatever flavor of card you have, you still need mana to pay the cost of using it. So every game phase goes like this: lay out land, summon critters, attack with critters you’ve already summoned and use sorceries to help do damage to your opponent. Both players start with 20 health, and whoever makes it to 0 first loses.

That’s the simplified version, though there are many cards that can complicate matters by healing the players. There are cards that can remove your creatures from the game, or return them to your hand, forcing you to summon them again and wait another turn to use them. There are special cards that can summon token creatures without paying mana to get them on the field, though they do still suffer from summoning sickness. The list can go on and on, but you don’t need to know about any of that going into the game. Just knowing the basic phases and strategies will get you by until you have a better understanding of what special cards can greatly help or royally screw you.

As I said, if you’ve played Magic in any of its past incarnations, none of this is going to be alien to you. It can be a fun time provided you do a bit of work to the pre-constructed decks, and that’s the caveat that needs to be addressed for complete newbies. The base decks given to you for completing the tutorial are horrible about giving you bad shuffles. Either you end up getting lots of land cards and nothing to summon or use, or you get a hand full of high cost cards, but never get the land needed to pull anything out. A new player won’t understand why they’re losing so badly all the time, and it could lead to them giving up when all they need to do is drop a few of the higher priced cards and add more land cards to the deck. Even as a veteran, I spent the first day being trashed due to bad shuffles before actually looking through my decks and recognizing what was happening. A total newbie might not see the problem and just give up, and in my opinion, that’s on the game makers for creating such horrible starting decks.

If you get past that and build your own decks or at least edit the preexisting decks to be less punishing for bad shuffles, the game can become intensely addicting. The game also encourages that addiction with rewards for playing. Some rewards give out coins or cards for playing a certain number of cards or one color, and this is brilliant because it will convince you to cycle through all the decks rather than stick to just one color. You get to see how each deck works, and once you have a feel for the game, you also begin to see how to tweak decks to suit your style of play. Do you go with a lot of small and cheap critters to nibble opponents to death? Or do you rely on spells to fend off opponents until you can afford to summon big beasties that can steamroll over most creatures and still do massive damage to the other player? These are but two examples of how to play, and in just a few hours, I’ve seen dozens of strategies, some of which are more effective than others.

In addition to getting booster packs for winning games, you can also use coins won through games or by completing challenges to buy more packs. As you get more cards, you will be able to further customize the starting decks or build your own, creating a very satisfying game loop without needing to spend any real money. But as I said, the temptation is there early on to buy crystals and more packs because eventually the drip feed of two to three packs per day just isn’t enough to feed that “urge” for new stuff. But if you can resist that siren call, sure, you can play this for free.

I do have some complaints, though, which if you know me won’t come as much of a shock. The first, though, is that the ranking systems seems to be bjorked. I’ve won around thirty games per day for two days while only losing maybe two or three in the same time, and my rank never improves no matter how often I win. Maybe my position is so low because of the number of games I lost on the first day, but I’ve read online that during this beta play, the ranking is rigged so that a single loss can wipe out any and all progress made. That certainly seems to be the case for me, so before this comes out of beta I hope the ranking system is addressed.

The other problem I have is more of a wish than a complaint. Playing against one other player can end up being pretty boring, especially if I or my opponent get unlucky shuffles. On a good hand for both of us, the game is more about our individual strategies, but even then, an all or nothing surge attack can end a game a few turns in, and it’s not really as satisfying as the games I used to play with 3-6 players. So what I want to see is a game mode where I can open a lobby with a certain number of seats and wait for the other players to jump in. That would result in longer games, and it would force every player to be more careful about committing all their forces into one attack. (After all if you have to cover your ass from two more possible attacks, you don’t go all in against one player. You play the long game and be smart about using your spells at the right time to push the “war” in your favor.)

As of right now, Arena is in beta, so it’s possible that both the ranking issues and the need for more players could be addressed. But even as it stands now, the game is satisfying and yes, highly addicting. When I click on Play, most times I get connected to another player in two to three seconds even with my crap connection, and the longest I’ve had to wait is twenty seconds. (Wait times that long are VERY rare, in my experience.) The more time I invest into it and get more cards to customize my decks, the more satisfying it become to log in and play.

For that reason, I’m giving the beta version of Magic: The Gathering: Arena a solid 4 stars. If they can give me a multi-player lobby and fix the ranking system, I’ll issue an updated review that will likely hit that 5 star rank, and either way, I can tell you, this is gonna be my down-time jam for a long time to come.

Book excerpt 4 from Wolf in the Headlights

Here we are with the fourth and final excerpt from Wolf in the Headlights (Alice the Wolf 4), this time from chapter 47. I hope you’ve enjoyed these previews of the story, and that you’ll consider picking it up for some fun Halloween reading. In any case, now that this is done, I’ve got some paid editing work coming up soon, and then I’ll be getting to work on my next book release, which should be in December if I don’t get too lazy with the editing. But for now, here’s Alice involved in yet another bad day already in progress…

___

Okay, I need to think and put together a plan. My apartment is off limits with the cops looking for me, and I don’t want to be seen in town looking like I tripped and fell in a swamp. If I’m dealing with a warlock, I’ll need help from friends better equipped to handle magic. So, that’s Peter, who’s probably at work right now. I can’t fathom a run to Matilda’s, and Sophia is out given that she’s in Philadelphia for an art exhibit. I’ll give her a call after I’ve got some clean clothes, though.

I call Mona’s cell phone first. After two rings, she picks up and says, “Alice?”

“Mona, I need you to pack up a clean change of clothes for me, along with my pelt and my geode. If the cops show up before you leave and ask about me, tell them you don’t know where I am.”

“The cops? What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain once you get to Heather and Jake’s house.”

“But I don’t know where they live.”

“Right, sorry.” I raise my other hand to rub off flakes of drying mud from the back of my neck. “I’ll give you the address, and you’ll need to call a cab. I’ll pay them for the trip, so don’t worry about money. Just hurry, because I’ve got a busy day ahead of me before I can turn myself over to the cops.”

“Can you at least give me some idea of how bad this is?”

“Sure, a monster tried to kill me at school and about forty witnesses saw me fighting at super speeds.”

“Crapsicles,” Mona says.

I bark a laugh. “That’s good. I’ll have to remember that. Anyway, get moving. The longer you sit around, the better the chances are the cops will be paying you a visit.”

There’s an explosive knocking on Mona’s side of the conversation, and she says, “I think they’re here.”

“Yeah, that’s a cop’s knock. Just tell them you don’t know where I am and get rid of them.”

“All right.”

The line clicks, and I call Lilith. She answers, “Alice?”

“Hey Lilith, I need your help again.”

“Oh no, did Regina send someone else to harass you?”

“I’m not sure who sent the killing squad after me, but they dropped a mud golem off outside the school.”

“What?”

“I disassembled it and captured the soul in a crystal, so we have someone to interrogate. I’m running to see Heather and Jake so I can clean up and make a plan before I let the cops take me.”

“What?” Lilith’s voice takes on a shrill quality that makes me pull the phone away from my ear.

“I’ll explain soon, but the short version is, lots of people didn’t run when the golem showed up. Regina won’t have to worry about outing me now, because I’ve just outed myself while fighting with the golem.”

“Shouldn’t you be calling the FBI?”

“I will call Bat later, I swear. But there’s a vampire warlock involved in this mess, and I’m not wearing any charms to protect me against scrying.”

Lilith is quiet for a moment. “All right, I’ll bring you something to fix that.”

“Good, and thank you.” A branch snaps and falls to the ground maybe ten yards ahead of me and I wince. “Lilith, I’ve got to let you go. I’m about to be busy.” I hang up and lower the phone. “I know you’re up there, so you might as well come down.”

The vampire drops from the tree, a pale white blur dressed in all black clothing. He doesn’t bother with speeches before he leaps at me. I sidestep his charge and slam the base of my phone to the back of his head. He crashes to the ground, and I use the pause to pocket my phone and get out my switchblade.

The vampire gets up and spins, glaring until he sees the knife. Then he laughs like I just told a great joke. “Do you think that’s going to kill me?”

I relax into stance. “Nah, but it is going to ruin your day.”

___

Wolf in the Headlights is available for $4.99 at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and my blog bookstore. If you review books on your blog, you can request a free review copy by emailing me at zoe_whitten (at) yahoo (dot) com, and if you haven’t read the first three books and want to review the whole series, you can also request them. (In your request email, be sure to post a link to your review page.)

Thanks for reading these excerpts, and for sticking with my blog during my drought of posts. I’m really trying to get my shtuff together and get back to regular posts so y’all have a reason to stop by. If werewolves, witches, and vampires aren’t your things, know that the next book coming out is sci-fi with androids, techno-terrorists, and cyber-politics. As I said before, I’m aiming for a December release, hopefully in time for you to give yourself a book for Christmas.

That’s all for now, and again, thanks for reading my stuff.

Game review: Mark of the Ninja Remastered for PS4

Mark of the Ninja dropped a newly remastered edition along with their debut on the Nintendo Switch, (a device I lusted after, but feel less attracted to now that the paid online features have been implemented) and I had vague memories of not liking it. But, my reason then for not liking it was the sales pitch that you could do a fully pacifist run and even get rewarded for it. But in reality, it’s only possible to do said pacifist run in New Game+, and so much of my review on that older version was griping about what I saw as a bait and switch ad. So I thought, “I know I have to kill everything on the first run anyway, so why not buy it again and see it through to the end?”

How does that old saying go? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’m a complete dumbass who got what I deserved. Because of that, I shall temper my temper and avoid my usual rage filled f-bombing. I did it to myself, knowing what would happen. But I suffered through this, for you. In the words of Courage the Cowardly Dog: “The things I do for love!”

For those of you interested in only the hot take, that’s all folks! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time.

If you’re sticking around for the full showcase of shite, I intend to break down all the problems I have with the game, and I will say that this time I did play all the way to the end. Thus I can more accurately articulate why I want to hunt down the developers, tie them down on a bed of scratchy wool blankets, and make them listen to Puberty Love for 24 hours straight. (You young’uns who decide to look that up for context, I am so, so sorry.)

Let’s start with the controls, which marred the whole…no, you know what, let’s start with the story. You are a Ninja-Mang who got a badass tat just hours before your clan is attacked by a private mercenary army for…reasons. (I played the whole game, and I’m still not clear on why the bad guys decided attacking ninjas was a good idea. There are cut scenes with the big bad boss, separate from the protagonist’s perspective, but they offer nothing to explain his motivation.) The bad-a-tat Ninja-Mang saves some NPCs and the leader of his clan, who sends him on a mission to go slay the bad guy.

Now, if you haven’t played the game and don’t want spoilers, I’ll advise you to scroll right past the next paragraphs until you see spoilers in bold again.

Ninja-Mang is aided in his mission by a woman named Ora, who is in fact a hallucination brought on by the magic tattoo ink. This is probably my biggest complaint with the game because Ora is constantly pointing out stuff WAY off screen, acting as the navigator to guide Ninja-Mang toward all of his goals. This begs the question how a hallucination could have any of this information. But then again, I have to wonder if any of this game is happening at all.

Bear with me. What if Ninja-Mang is just some broke-ass white boy who went to a back alley tattoo shop and got a tattoo with moldy ink? All at once, every problem with this story is solved. The bad guy with a cheesy accent attacking a clan for no reason? Drugs, mang. The shitty level designs that sprawl all over the place in nonsensical fashion? Drugs, mang. This way, the story is all about a guy drooling on his shirt and whispering “ninja vanish,” living out a fantasy of what being a ninja is like without actually having a clue of what ninjas do. In any case, I feel my headcanon makes far more sense then the nonsense this story is handing out.

With those spoilers out of the way, now I can talk about the controls, which as I was saying, marred my enjoyment almost throughout the entire game. The first few levels weren’t so bad because I only had a few options for dealing with the sneaking and slaying. But as soon as I started unlocking new items and attack techniques, everything turns into a frozen turd masquerading as a popsicle. Or a poopsicle, if you will.

Take for instance the dive attack. You climb over an enemy, press square when the button prompt flashes, and then, in theory, press square and either up or down on the stick depending on which QTE appears. Only, there are times when it doesn’t appear, so Ninja-Mang would drop with a thud, alerting his would-be victim to turn around and provide him with several free lead samples.

This by itself wouldn’t be bad if it was a random occurrence, or if death didn’t put me back to the last checkpoint. But imagine spending five minutes carefully sneaking and slaying through a maze to arrive almost at the next checkpoint (you can see it as a bird in a circle and a swirling yellow marker) and botch that last assassination due to a wonky button prompt. So, do that again, and then again. See the problem?

Then there’s the movement problems in general. Ninja-Mang can cling to walls and on certain ceilings with handgrips on them. (Leading me to a side thought: “Hey, boss, you wanted this place super secure, right?” “Of course! “Okay, so why do we have handholds installed on the ceilings in strategic places to help someone bypass our security measures?” “Because they look cool! DO NOT QUESTION MY GENIUS!”) But actually getting him to maneuver the transitions between wall and ceiling or vice versa often leads to Ninja-Mang plunging straight down into a horde of soldiers. Similarly, there are puzzle sections requiring clambering around a moving crate to avoid lasers, and Ninja-Mang will often decide he’d much rather take a laser in the butt than actually move to the next side of the box. I had to do these kinds of tasks over and over until he finally decided he wasn’t lasersexual.

THEN there’s the problems with tossed items. You’re supposed to pull the left trigger and use the left stick to aim where these toys land, but the controls are so damned fiddly that I’ve spent way too much time rolling the stick back and forth, swearing loudly because the target I wanted was highlighted only a quarter of a second before the aim indicator veered wildly off in a new direction.

Late in the game, there’s also a teleport power added, with puzzles tasking Ninja-Mang to do stuff crazy fast. As an example, he needs to crank a crate up to the ceiling, run under the crate as it’s dropping back down, pull a lever to open a door, and then target the area behind the door before the crate blocks the shot. With tight controls, this sort of puzzle could be interesting, possibly even fun. But these controls are super sloppy, and this one puzzle took me way too long to complete even though I sorted out the solution ten seconds after Ninja-Mang arrived on the scene.

As I recall, I gave up on the original version pretty early on. I’d gone to YouTube to look at the ending, and everyone I looked up chose the good ending. So I figured, “Hey, why not just do the bad ending to see how it is?” It’s ten seconds long. Seriously, I’ve seen more efforts from NES games, and I’m talking about “Hahaha, thanks Bad Dudes! Let’s go get a burger!” I don’t get it. They made all these fully voice-acted, fully animated cut scenes throughout the rest of the game, but the ending is just so..so meh.

So in the end, I have to give Mark of the Ninja 2 stars. I didn’t like the story, but I can usually forgive that because video games are rarely well written. But coupling that with crap controls and a meh ending, and I can’t find much to recommend this to anyone.

“But Zoe,” you say, “Wasn’t there also a DLC in the remastered version?” Yes, kindly invisible counter-point maker, there is a DLC, and I will review that separately because I am desperate to make new content for you in these financially lean times. I may even do another review based on a pacifist run attempt now that I can do New Game+. Oh, and I’ve got plans to try and turn around the money problems, so hopefully we can get back to more regular reviews soon. But returning to the review at hand, I wouldn’t gift this game to anyone except someone I really loathed and wanted to see suffer. Being honest, I can’t think of anyone I hate that bad. Don’t spend your money on this, yo.

Book excerpt 3 from Wolf in the Headlights

Welcome back to the sneak peekage into my newest novel, Wolf in the Headlights (Alice the Wolf 4), and this time I’m posting short cuts from two chapters, 29 and 30. (Quite a jump ahead from the first two samples.) Neither of these are complete chapters, but they help show how Alice is having a bad night out while trying to help one of her newer packmates out of their shell.

___

Half an hour passes in this sweltering crowd, and my throat soon feels dry and raw. I look for Mona and Jesse, and I find them not far away. Mona wears a huge grin despite being covered in a shiny layer of sweat.

Jasmine leans closer to shout. “She’s doing fine. How about we go and get a drink?”

I nod and shout, “Jesse!” He looks around. “We’re going to the bar!”

Jesse nods and waves, and I grab Jasmine’s arm and let her lead a path through the crowd. Just getting to the bar takes five minutes, and the whole way, I’m running across teens who could use a rinse job. Maybe their deodorant ran out, or they skipped it. Either way, they’re pretty funky.

It takes another five minutes to reach the bartender, and he smiles at Jasmine and says, “What up, dog?”

He’s similar in appearance to the bouncers, and I think the whole coven is the same race. Which is probably normal, though I don’t know that for a fact. Most of my experience with vampires comes from my contacts in the FBI, where they’re all different races mixed together.

Jasmine grins at the lame joke. “Funny. Four cokes, lots of ice, please.” When the bartender turns around to fill the order, Jasmine turns her head to give me a wilting look. “Of all the clubs you could have picked, why did you have to pick a vampire hideout?”

“I didn’t know!” I shout back. “I ran a search for clubs that would let in teens, and this was near the top of the list.”

“Damn, chick, you know how to pick ‘em.”

The bartender sets the drinks down and I try to pass him a twenty when he grabs my hand and pulls it up to his nose and snarls. I pull my hand back, and he shouts, “How did you sneak in here?”

Jasmine speaks before I can. “We didn’t sneak in! We came in together, and the bouncers let us in!” She glares to match the bartender’s look of disdain. “Are you going to let my friend pay for the drinks or not?”

The bartender holds out his hand, and I pass him the twenty and shout, “Keep the change!” I’m not being generous. I just want to get away from him as soon as possible.

“I don’t take tips from your kind,” the bartender shouts.

He walks away, and I grab two cups while Jasmine get the other pair. We turn around, and Jesse is half a foot away, fists tensed like he’s ready to brawl.

I look to either side of him, and he’s missing his dance partner. “Where’s Mona?”

“She said she wanted to dance by herself!” Jesse looks over me. “What’s the deal with sourpuss?”

“Leave it alone,” I snap, handing him the drinks and stepping around him to look for Mona. When I find her, my jaw clenches, and I shout, “Way to go, Jesse!”

“What?” He looks around and groans, “Shit.”

Mona’s dancing with a guy, only she doesn’t look the least bit happy about it. He’s pulled her in close, and she’s got her hands on his chest, her head turned toward us with a pleading expression.

I growl deep in my throat and push through the crowd forcefully, making my way to Mona by shoving people out of my way to reach the dance floor, and I grab the shoulder of the guy humping Mona’s hip.

“Back off, Romeo. She’s not interested in you.”

The guy sneers at me and snorts, blowing enough of his breath on my face to alert me to the vodka he’s been drinking. “She can make up her own mind.”

“She already did! Now back off!”

“Up yours, cunt!”

He raises his hand to sling a backhand slap at me. I catch his wrist, his hand inches from my face, and my jaw tenses. “Big mistake,” I growl, squeezing his wrist and sending him to his knees.

A second later a hand grabs my arm, and I spin around ready to knock out whoever just touched me. I drop my fist when I see the two bouncers.

One of the men hooks his thumb over his shoulder. “Out! Both of you!”

I think to argue that we didn’t start the trouble, but I swallow my objection. “Relax, we’re leaving!”

I grab Mona’s hand and pull her with me, the whole time growling to vent my temper. We get to the exit, and one of the bouncers says, “And don’t come back!”

___

Mona loses it completely right as we’re passing the same convenience store we went into earlier. She’s sobbing and apologizing like the whole thing is her fault. By then, I’m calmer, and I know there’s plenty of blame to go around.

I have her sit on the curb, and I crouch in front of her. “Will you stop apologizing already? Nothing about what happened is your fault.”

Jesse plops down beside Mona and says, “It’s my fault for leaving her.”

I blow out a long breath. “All right, that one is all yours, but I’m the dumb ass who picked the club without checking it out. Since we’re playing the blame game, I’m the one who got us kicked out. About the only person who can’t be blamed is Jasmine.”

“Damn right,” Jasmine says, sitting down on Mona’s other side. “Hey, calm down already. You’re melting your mascara with all those tears.”

“I’m sorry,” Mona cries.

I stand up and take a step back. “I’ll go to the store and get something to clean you up. Do you want anything to drink?”

“Just water, please,” Mona says.

Her makeup is running with her tears, and she looks terrible now. Like I needed another reason to regret this trip.

I cross the street and push open the door, and the clerk asks, “How was the club?”

“It was a disaster, but thanks for asking.”

The clerk’s smile falls. “What happened?”

I wander to the drink coolers in the back while I talk. “Some drunk jerk started harassing my friend, and when I told him to back off, he tried to slap me. I broke his wrist, and we all got kicked out like we started the fight.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Aren’t we all?” I pull a pair of water bottles from the rack and shut the cooler door, pausing to look around. “I need some tissues and wet wipes if you’ve got them.”

“They’re on the last aisle,” the clerk says, pointing. “Look on the bottom shelf.”

“Thanks.” I walk across the store and around the corner, tucking the bottles to my chest with one arm while I grab a pack of facial tissues. Three fifty for this little pack? And he wants four fifty for the wet wipes. Good grief, can this night get any worse?

Someone answers my rhetorical question when they slam the front door open and shout, “Hands in the air, now!”

Hugo says, Oh you’ve got to be kidding me.

My sentiments exactly.

Ducked down like this, I don’t see who came in or the clerk, who speaks in a shaking voice. “Take it easy.”

A gun cocks, a revolver, I think. The gun owner says, “I want all the money in the register and from the drop safe.”

I look up, finding a big round reflective mirror in the corner. Under it is a barrel shaped security camera aimed down on me. Oh, this is great. The perfect end to a wonderful night in Pittsburgh.

The guy holding the gun spins around to check out the store, and his eyes lock on mine in the reflection of the security mirror. “What the fuck?” He starts walking toward me, and when I turn my head, he’s already at the top of the aisle with a snub-nosed revolver aimed at me.

___

So, there’s the second to last preview, and because you may be asking “Wait, who is Hugo?” he’s the wolf who lives in Alice’s head. In this version of lycanthropy, every person infected must at some point find and slay their soul-matched wolf and tan their pelt, binding wolf to host for life. Alice’s wolf is male, and after they first bonded, Alice chose to name him Hugo T. Wolf. (T is short for The. Alice tends to be like that sometimes.)

Wolf in the Headlights is available for $4.99 at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and my blog bookstore. If you review books on your blog, you can request a free review copy by emailing me at zoe_whitten (at) yahoo (dot) com, and if you haven’t read the first three books in the series and want to review them, you can also request them. (I forgot this lat time, but in your request email, be sure to post a link to your review page.)

Thanks very much for reading these excerpts, and I hope you’ll give the book and the full series a shot. And if you’re worried that I’ll leave you hanging without concluding the story, the fifth and final book is already written. I just need to edit a few more times to catch a few more typos. (Though I’ll have something else coming out this winter before Alice’s last book is released, a little set of sci-fi novellas intended to close the story on another series I started several years ago.)

That all for now, and again, thanks very much for reading my stuff.

My biggest problem with modern mobile games…

I got a Kindle Fire last year as part of my efforts to engage viewers on Twitch. The plan was, I’d have my tablet streaming the chat from my channel, so that way I could keep up with what folks were saying whether I was on the PC or my PS4. That plan didn’t work because the Android Twitch app was bugged and wouldn’t show people’s comments. So I’d finish a stream wondering why no one said anything, only to check the channel on my PC and see that folks did try to say hi, and since I didn’t respond, they didn’t bother saying anything else. (And on that note, for the love of God, Twitch fix your shit, PLEASE.)

But after moving to the country, where streaming isn’t possible, (seriously, on a bad day, even YouTube can hang if my husband and I dare to watch videos at the same time) I thought I’d use the tablet to play all the mobile games I’d been missing out on by owning a Windows Phone. (This is the last one. Microsoft gave up on their music service, the only reason I was loyal to them, so fuck them.)

Which leads me to the real meat of my gripe, which is a consistent problem I’ve seen is way too many mobile games. You might think I’m taking about microtransactions or “energy limits” to keep me from playing without sitting through a timer, but neither of those bug me. I don’t worry about microtransactions because I don’t have money to spare on random loot boxes with no guarantee of getting the item or character I want. The timers don’t bother me because I pretty much play solely in the bathroom, and right about the time the game is ready to hold my session hostage, I’m ready to shut it off and get back to work, or back to a game on my PC or console. (Granted, I’m old, so bathroom breaks can sometimes take a while to get everything moving out the back door. But I digress.)

No, the real problem for me is constant downloads. You see a game has a 100 MB install file, and you think that’s big. But then right after you install it, it’s got to download updates, and these can end up being around 300 MB or higher. No sweat, though, it’s all installed and patched so now…no, finish playing the tutorial level and here’s another 300 MB download. Five minutes into a game, it’s already nearing a gigabyte of space for a mobile game with static image cut scenes and “voice acting” like “Ah!” “Aargh!” and “Nani!?” Every time I load up the game, it has to download more, and more and more. No, even worse, I might play one level and instantly get another download, halting my session for several minutes. You thought loading screens on your console were bad because you had to stare at them for a minute? Try waiting ten minutes between levels, and then that one minute wait seems pretty mild in comparison.

I might understand if the game was graphically intense and with a lot of video cut scenes, or with a fully voiced script. But we’re mostly talking about puzzle games and side scrolling RPGs with extremely simplistic animation, midi music, and very short game levels. So why is this file bloat getting so out of control?

My only theory is, just like with other games, once storage space and memory became more available, the programmers stopped trying to clean and compress their code. When a game had to fit on a cartridge with 512 KB of storage space, programmers had to work to make the game fit. But then we moved on to CD (starting at 650 MB and later evolving to an impressive 8.5 GB) and then consoles installed hard drives of 250-500 GB, and suddenly, there’s no need to compress or clean anything. Because of that, we’ve seen game file sizes leap higher with every generation.

On consoles, it kind of makes sense. Most modern games are extremely dense with little details, and with characters that are walking near the edge of the uncanny valley, about to step into photo-realism. We’ve had reporters mistaking games footage of multiplayer shooters as real conflicts, and yeah, that level of detail explains why the games are so much larger.

But, there are also some good old-fashioned 2D platformers for consoles that total up to around 300 MB, and that’s a game with 10-20 hours of play time. That’s music, levels, cut-scenes with voice acting, all the bells and whistles, all in 300 MB. So why do these crappy mobile games need upwards of 1 GB for their stuff, and with the need for constant updates every day?

I don’t know. I just know that with a lot of these games, I burned out on playing them precisely because I just knew before I could actually get into the game, I’d have to wait five to ten minutes watching the same four ads while a download bar slowly fills up. I quit most of them so soon after I got them that I can’t even do reviews because despite “clocking in” 20 hours on a game, I’ve played much less than half of that time. The rest is just more tedious downloads. And if that’s the future of mobile gaming, it’s a pretty bleak landscape that will surely send me back to my PC and consoles where all the real action is.

Book excerpt 2 from Wolf in the Headlights

Here’s the second excerpt from Wolf in the Headlights (Alice the Wolf 4), this time from chapter 9. You may notice that instead of posting these one day after another, I’m posting them a week apart. I’m doing it this way to spread out the promotions a bit longer. If I do them in the same week, I’ve spent all my efforts too soon, and with the way social media streams run so fast, it’s practically an eye-blink before I’m off the social radar. So, new plan, yeah? One post a week and multiple promotions in the stream, hopefully leading to catching more peepers.

Aren’t these glimpses into indie marketing for social media so fascinating? No? Yeah, I didn’t think so either. So, let’s move on to the book excerpt…

___

Monica is surrounded in her bed, with me and Jesse standing over one side, and her parents on the other. Pi and Josie are at the foot of the bed, and Evan is sitting in a chair across the room with Uncle John and Brandon standing on either side of him.

Out in the hallway, Lilith and Bat are talking. The door is open, and Bat is eating a lot of humble pie in an effort to win Lilith back. So far it’s not working, and I kind of hope he fails. If the FBI loses Lilith, it’s a big chunk of their power missing long before Regina is ready to deal with them.

Monica’s eyelids flutter, and we all lean over to watch her wake up. She looks at her parents first and whispers, “Hey.”

Tony laughs quietly and leans over to take her hand. “Hey back, princess. Do you want anything?”

“I could use some water.” Monica’s eyes roll up as she blinks slow, and she smiles. “Whatever’s in that bottle, i’s good stuff.”

“It’s one of the perks of being in the hospital,” I say, and Monica rolls her head on the stack of pillows to look at me. “They’ve got all the best drugs.”

“I should get hospitalized more often.”

“Please don’t,” I say.

“Maybe with a better injury. I could go for a nice appendicitis.”

Oh yeah, she’s really enjoying the drugs.

Tony raises the top half of the bed with a remote and Monica takes the cup from him and drinks on her own.

Dana says, “Honey, the doctors say you’ve got some kind of infection.”

Monica lowers the cup and says, “S’cause I’m a werewolf.”

Both her parents look at me and their mouths fall open.

At the foot of the bed, Pi comments, “Maybe we ought to back her off the drugs a wee bit.”

Josie says, “You think?”

Dana recovers from shock enough to ask, “A werewolf?”

Monica nods. “I’m in Alice’s pack. I found out her secret and asked her to bite me. I wanted to tell you, but the FBI is making us keep it a secret.”

“The FBI is changing their policies,” I say. “I wanted to tell your parents after you were upright, but I guess we can go with the full confession now.”

Tony asks, “Are you planning to bite us too?”

“I’m planning to offer you a place in our pack, yes. But if you refuse, I wouldn’t force you into this.”

Dana says, “This is why you wanted our daughter out of town. You were trying to avoid a fight with…with other werewolves.”

“Yes.”

“And your parents were monster hunters.”

“Yes, and that’s why they went to prison. We’re an endangered species, although at the rate the other wolves are recruiting, we should already be off the list.”

Both of Monica’s parents stare at me until Monica breaks the silence. “You might as well start at the beginning. We’ve got time, right?”

“Good point,” I agree, and I really do start at the beginning, explaining how I met Peter, and how his mother kidnapped me. The doctor comes in to check on Monica, and after he leaves, I go on with my story. By the time I’m up to Miriam’s part in the tale, the nurses arrive to check Monica, and they gasp when they pull back the gauze and find the wound sealed.

That’s one more piece of evidence backing me up, but I know I have to wrap this up because the doctors will be rushing in any second now.

I tell Monica’s parents, “I’ll explain the rest tonight, after we get Monica home. I know this is all shocking, but I have to tell you the truth. Otherwise you might move out of town to avoid trouble. The problem is, trouble is coming for all of us, and Monica is safer with us than she is living in isolation.”

Tony glances at Monica and says, “She would have been safe if we’d listened to her and let her get out of town.”

“Nah, that’s a lie,” Monica says. “I would have left, sure, but the wolves would have taken over the school, and I’d come back to fight with them on Alice’s side.” She smiles dreamily. “It’s what I do now. I’m a superhero.”

I laugh and go to the bed. “Pi, grab some gauze out of those drawers. We’re getting the little princess off the drugs before she confesses to the doctors.”

“Damn,” Monica says, making a sour face. “I was liking this. It’s way better than being drunk.”

Dana folds her arms over her chest. “How would you know?”

Monica stares at her, and then looks at me and nods. “Yeah, okay, get the IV out.”

___

Wolf in the Headlights is available for just $4.99 at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and my blog bookstore. If you review books on your blog, you can request a free review copy by emailing me at zoe_whitten (at) yahoo (dot) com. Oh, and if you haven’t read the first three books in the series and want to review them, don’t hesitate to request them. I need all the help I can get, and I need more reviews, especially these days while I’m struggling to get my proverbial toe in the door with new readers. Anywho, if you’re reading the excerpts, thanks for checking them out.