Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 58

Video game review: Mortal Kombat for the PS Vita

Mortal Kombat is a game which stirs in me mixed feelings of nostalgia. I played this a lot in my teens, and some of my fondest memories include playing the arcade version of Mortal Kombat with my friend Ken at a San Antonio Taco Hacienda at 2 AM. Over the years, I’ve had budget concerns remove me from the arcades, and so I’ve not played anything since the MK3 arcade game.

And, I sucked at the games. But I loved playing them, even when people jumped in, because then I could at least see what the other characters were supposed to do when someone knew how to handle the controls. I got familiar with one or two characters at most, and I still got beat up and lost a lot of money. Hence, the mixed feelings about the MK series.

Hearing about a Mortal Kombat for the Vita, I was eager to sign up for this based on good nostalgia plus the positive reviews I’d seen from other people for this port. And, let me tell you, I was not led astray this time. Mortal Kombat is so good, I don’t even know where to begin with the gushing.

You’ve got several different modes to choose from for your fighting pleasure, and Komplete Noobs and Old Fogeys (like me) who need their memory refreshed will find a practice mode that’s rather useful in exploring different combos without being punished by an aggressive AI opponent. For people looking for meaty play, there’s a story mode that spans most of the cast of hero characters, plus a few of the villains. The voice acting is decent, and the cut scenes have great animation standards. This is by far the best cut scenery I’ve ever seen in a fighting game, and up to a certain point, I loved the story.

Then the bad guys lose about 50% through the game, and they’re like, “Hey, screw it, why not cheat?” So they do, and lose…and still win anyway. This game gets ridiculously grim, and it starts upping the ante with some really crazy matches. I was used to playing as one fighter in a tag-team against two other fighters because that was a standard battle throughout the story mode as a way to shake things up. But then in the final chapter, Raiden must face three enemies controlled by Quan Chi all on the same health bar. Lose the last of the three fights, and you still go back to the first match. And, they do this in two waves, making for six enemies on two health bars.

But that’s nothing compared to Shao Khan, the King of the Spam attack. I gave up on the fight in story mode and later beat Shao Khan in Arcade mode with Baraka using cheap shots. I went to YouTube to watch someone else beat story mode with Raiden, and the fight is a dull spam fest of teleport and flying attack, over and over. All the other fights have this mix of moves, because if you spam a move too much, it gets countered. Lots of characters have cheap moves, but those moves all have some form of counter-move. So in every other fight, you have this violent, ultra gory dance between opponents. That last fight with Shao Khan instead is a chance to demonstrate your ability to spam whatever long distance attack you have to stay out of Khan’s range. If you don’t, he has a whole bunch of attacks to spam, and half make him invulnerable to incoming attacks. If if you stay back, you have to be wary of him throwing his hammer. You can’t block it without being dazed, and given its slow rate of travel, it’s difficult to time a jump to get over it. Just…ugh, hate this guy.

Oh, and on the story mode, ending: DOUBLE-UGH. Yes, I know a sequel is guaranteed, but the ending of this is putting in mind an image of a cow being violently milked to death by Scorpion and Sub-Zero. I also get that this is a Mortal Kombat game, so I couldn’t expect a cheerful story. But man, did that ending suck or what?

But, setting that aside, there is nothing else I dislike about this game. I love playing the ladder challenge, where I pick a character and then have a ladder or random opponents set up for me. If I want to change characters but stay on the same ladder, I can. I can play a tag-team challenge and pick two complimentary characters to take on a short tower of tag-team matches. And this is a lot more fun when I can also tag out to an ally, something that never happens in story mode.

The extra characters rock. In addition to the DLC characters that came out for the home console versions (Rain Kensi, Skarlet, and Freddy Krueger) the Vita version also offers a choice to play Kratos from God of War. I’ve played all of these new characters, and while Kratos is a ton of fun to tank around, I have to go with Skarlet as my favorite of the extras. As for the story mode characters, I think Kung Lao was my favorite to play with. Stryker was the most useless, but I didn’t mind being stuck with him or with certain characters for a few matches because it forced me to keep changing my plans. The game didn’t get old just because I’d played the same opponent twice before. Because now I had to beat them with a different opponent, requiring different tactics each time. Little things about the AI fighting patterns also change from match to match to keep the game play fresh.

Fatalities are a pain in my ass. I can only do a few, and even unlocking the touch screen Fatalities, I can’t sort out how to do most combos right. I have managed to get Baraka’s Babality move consistently, and when I beat Shao Khan in a Ladder challenge, I was also using Baraka. On the beginner level. Like I said, I suck.

Something I can’t test is the online multiplayer. Having a wi-fi only unit, my Vita won’t connect to the network even if I’m sitting right next to my wi-fi router. This is depressing, because I’ll bet getting my ass kicked is just like the old days of Mortal Kombat.

Matches you win give you coins which can be spent at the Krypt to unlock artwork, music, alternate costumes, and secondary Fatality Kodes. There’s no way to tell what you’re buying until you’ve bought it, and playing through the story mode will only net you enough to clear out the first 25% of the Krypt. Aside from winning a trophy for clearing out the area of gory victims, there’s not much here that’s vital. You can Google the fatality lists to unlock moves without buying them, so this is here only for the folks who want to unlock all the achievements.

I dunno, I would have preferred some kind of character upgrade over an alternate costume and a pencil sketch of the levels. Also, I’m not yet clear on how to use those secondary consumes just yet. I can only look at them for now. Which is a little lame, considering how awesome the rest of this game is.

While I love the dual stick controls, some games seem to work better from me with a d-pad. Lumines was a good example and the controls for Mortal Kombat work better for me on the d-pad than they do using the left stick. The right stick is used in tag combos, but it works in a pretty smooth way, and all direction inputs can be sent through the left stick or the d-pad.

I’m still getting back into the swing of Mortal Kombat’s moves, but once I find a character with a broad selection of moves I know, I almost look like I know what I’m doing. But I’ve also lost a lot of matches, and I’ve seen the Fatalities of just about everyone…from the receiving end. That’s not a complaint. I’m really enjoying every level of Kombat, whether I’m winning or losing. The notable exception is Shao Khan, whom I shall hate for all eternity.

Ignoring him, I’ve played most modes in difficulties ranging from the wussy beginner mode up to Medium. And, one day, I may even try hard. Hey, it could happen. The thing is, even playing the game for three days straight, it still hasn’t gotten old. This puts Mortal Kombat of my short list of “games I must keep close by” in case I need a quick fix for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

I know I’ve bitched about the lack of good games on the Vita, but this is starting to turn around, and Mortal Kombat is another release worth the full price of admission. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what this game offers in graphics and special moves, because there’s so much to love about it. If Sony can push out a few more fantastic games like this, Christmas could be a good time to convert some hesitant folks into true believers.

Even with the meh ending and Shao Khan’s cheap ass, I’m giving Mortal Kombat five stars. This is the sort of game that gets better with more time invested in it, and even though I’ve only fought about 100 matches, I feel like I’m just getting warmed up. This is every bit as fun as the original arcade game, but with better graphics, a deeper roster, and a story mode that’s near movie quality. Have I gushed enough? No, but I’ll shut up now and go back to this game. Maybe I can try to rip up Shao Khan with Freddy?

Eek, Indiegogo, please say this is a mistake!

This morning I woke up to a tweet from my editor that Indiegogo had charged $475 to her credit card. This has got to be a glitch of the worst kind. My editor has probably already submitted an email to get this cleared up, but talk about bad luck. We’ve only just start the campaign and have three contributions totaling $45. So according to Indiegogo’s terms for flexible funding they say they want 9% for a transaction fee. $475 is…um, a lot more than we’ve made so far. I sure hope was can clear this up, because it would suck if I had to help pay pay my editor for our efforts to get her some money to pay down her college debts. =^/

We’ll hopefully get this sorted out soon. Once we do, I was thinking about adding a couple of new print books to the raffle, but they’re not from me. They do fit in with the same theme of fantasy, as I’ll be adding Martin Millar’s Lonely Werewolf Girl and Curse of the Wolf Girl. I’d like to add more to make the raffle a big deal, but the shipping costs on those three books will be a leeetle on the expensive side. Still, the winner of the raffle will get three great books in print, plus a few ebooks, depending on which incentive level they spring for.

We could really use more attention on this, so if you have a blog and want to share a link to the campaign, it would be greatly appreciated. Several people on Twitter have retweeted links from me and from Tara, but tweets don’t tend to last very long in a fast moving stream, while a blog post has a better chance of catching peoples’ attention. We appreciate all the help we can get with signal boosts.

And while our campaign is starting slowly, I did get another email last night that a campaign to help pay for medicine for the editor of Loose ID went well past its initial goals, which is fantastic news for Raven. She’s got enough cash to make some breathing room for herself, and money in the bank for extra medication. I donated a tiny amount to this, but some people donated a whole lot more. The campaign actually made its goal in two days. Just…wow.

I’d love to get similar results for Tara’s campaign, but we’ll see what happens. First we still have to find out why so much money was taken from Tara before the campaign collected one tenth of their withdrawal.

EDIT: The charge appears to have been removed, so panic is over for now. =^D

New arrivals at NBP…

I have great timing, as it seems I submitted my books around the same time that No Boundaries Press was updating their site. So it took a little while, but this month’s titles are now on my profile page. You can also check out the new releases using this handy list:

The Life and Death of a Sex Doll

The Sole Survivors’ Club

Mmmm…Crunchy!

In the Grasp of the Devil

Trail of Madness

Zombie Punter

All books on NBP are priced the same as Amazon and my bookstore via Gumroad, so you can choose whichever vendor works best for you.

In other news, I’ve started playing Mortal Kombat on the Vita, and I suspect a good review will be forthcoming within the next week or so. I’m doing web editing as a temp assignment, so writing will take a bit of a nose dive this week. The weather continues to bounce around, so I’m not doing so hot lately.

Um what else? Oh right. I’m still looking for contributions to this Indiegogo campaign for my editor. If you’ve already contributed or shared the link, thank you very much. And now, sorry for the short post, but I need to return to the couch for another rest break. I sure will be glad when the weather commits to acting like any one season with some consistency. =^/

Video game review: Lumines: Electronic Symphony

Remember how I said this game was a little glitchy because of a patch? That’s still true, but I got on a kick for playing this game and finally worked around the glitchy d-pad controls. At this point I’ve beaten the Voyage mode and played every other mode except duel. And that’s only because I only have one other online friend playing this, and we’re never online at the same time. Anyway, I’ve tried out the playlist feature, messed with the Master Modes, and played all level of stop watch mode. I’ve learned that there’s an XP cap at level fifty, but earning XP and gaining levels doesn’t really seem to do anything for me in the game. Doesn’t really matter though.

Lumines: Electronic Symphony isn’t a port so much as a reboot specific to the Vita platform. The blocks had been remade from sprites into 3d tiles, which look really pretty on most levels. This was true of the version I played on Steam last year, and the colorful blocks on highly animated backgrounds is a great way to show off the Vita’s gorgeous screen.

Just the graphics and the puzzle playing aspect would be enough to addict me, but Lumines also goes for my other weakness, a love of all kinds of music. I’ll admit a few of the songs are merely okay, but the vast majority are really catchy, and I found myself humming or singing many in between gaming sessions.

Those unfamiliar with Lumines despite its long history will find the concept instantly easy to grasp, and veterans will find the new Vita features are useful instead of feeling forced in. Blocks of four tiles come down front the top of the screen in combinations of two colors, and to the left of the playing field is a three block preview of the block combinations that are coming up. Match up four or more tile, and you clear those tiles and earn points. As the music plays a time slider wipes away blocks you’ve cleared, and the stack collapses, forcing you to reassess the queue and plan ahead.

I found that there were several more songs in the playlist mode that aren’t in the Voyage mode. This is in no way a complaint because just playing all the levels can take a while. Like, and hour and a half, or so. I’ve done it, and looped the game back over the to the sixth level. But getting toward that finale is almost an endurance event, and the final two levels are simply insane for how fast they chuck block at the playing field.

But those extra levels still deserve mention, and once you’ve unlocked them, it is nice to have something different to mix into the playlist to make it different from Voyage mode. Thee added tracks could fairly be called the B-side tracks, because they aren’t quite as good as what’s in the main playlist, but they’re still catchy, and I didn’t find any of the selections grating. Then again, I loved the original Tetris theme on the Game Boy. So my taste in music may be considered kinda…liberal.

Two special blocks show up randomly, or can be summoned as a power of your player avatar, also displayed on the left hand side of the screen. Tapping the avatar will grant you a special tile with a + symbol on it. This will attach to every connecting tile of the same color, which can lead to some pretty chain reactions with proper planning. With one tile placed well, I can remove a vein of one color all the way across the screen, and on the next sweep of the time slider all the same color blocks of the opposite color are also wiped out. Gotta love it. (^_^)

Other avatars unlock another tile that I’m conflicted about. It also drops randomly, so even if you don’t want to see this bastard, you will. At first, I was calling the symbol shuffle, but the tile doesn’t swap colors of what’s already there on the field. For instance, the random tile can be dropped with a block of all white tiles, and when that block hits the bottom of the screen, all the tiles randomly shift. They may all go the opposite color, say, black, and clear themselves out. Or they may end up with some combination of the two colors.

The problem comes when you’ve lined up a beautiful battle plan and don’t see the random tile coming in the queue. Either that or you do, but the whole bottom of the screen is covered in blocks that you’ve carefully placed for best scoring effect and can’t move out of the way. And then, you scream “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” in slow motion before BLAM, fuck your plan, because all the tiles are now different. Time for a new plan, like now. No pressure.

Now, the thing is, at later levels, random can be your best friend. This is because tiles come down so fast that mistakes are inevitable. So you build up an ugly unworkable stack trying to juggle these tumbling blocks as best you can, and it seem like you’re doomed. Then you hit random, and suddenly lots of tiles are cleared.

Sometimes. Other times you end up with an ugly mess that’s only slightly less unsolvable. Which is why I sometimes ended up calling this the “fuck your plans” tile, because that’s what it does every time. And yet, I kind of like it, because it forces me to constantly adapt to a changing playing field. Add this puzzle solving frenzy to music, and I can lose track of everything for hours.

There is another avatar ability, which will hold a block above the playing field for several seconds longer than normal. This temporary ability can be very useful when you have a high stack problem and need time to think. Trick is, you can only use one avatar ability per “Voyage,” So you have to commit to whatever strategy works best for you. I prefer to use the chain tile for my avatar ability, since it can bail me out in a lot of tricky situations. I can’t bring myself to summon the random tile as a strategy, but it sure does keep me on my toes whenever it shows up on its own.

Where the back touch plate comes in is the recharge period after an ability is summoned. If you don’t tap the back plate, your avatar energy will still fill up, but at a slower rate. There’s a bit of a trick here, in that tapping the back screen makes moving the blocks a little more tricky. I found I could do one or the other, but doing both usually led to problems. Some levels are slow enough that I could position a block and then tap the back while waiting for it to hit the bottom. But a lot of other times the level moved so fast that I just had to let the avatar regenerate on its own.

One feature that I was iffy on, the World Block, could be fun if it’s been fixed now. It does seem to be improved in the last two days. The World Block is a social aspect where blocks you erase in all other modes count toward a giant block made up of a few million smaller blocks. It’s kind of cute, now that I’m seeing it working right. My initial complaint was that the World Block size was something like six million, and there just aren’t that many people playing every day yet. But the last two days, the starting size has been two million, and so the small team of 1600-1700 players has a better chance of hacking the block out of existence. And as more players join in, the size of the block can hopefully increase so it doesn’t become too easy either.

I was a big fan of the Steam version of Lumines, so pitching a basic remake would have been fine. But these all new level designs and updated music tracks are worth the full price of admission for this reboot, even if I’ve already seen the game before in another incarnation. I’m still having some troubles with the glitchy d-pad controls, so I’m taking off one star for that. Another patch could fix this soon, I hope. But that still leaves the Vita version of Lumines with four stars, and I really can’t gush enough about it. I wouldn’t say its an absolute must have for a day one Vita purchase, but after you finish Uncharted: Golden Abyss, this should keep you entertained for a few weeks.

Another payday…

Yesterday I was checking the Indiegogo campaign, which has $20 from two contributors, and between watering my garden and making tea this afternoon, I was lamenting that I wished I just had some cash to give to Tara outright instead of waiting till the end of the campaign. Then I checked my email and saw that I had a a final quarterly payment from Smashwords for $75. Nice timing!

So Tara got $50 today. True, it’s only 10% of the campaign goal, but it is a nice extra bump in the meantime. I’m sure I’ll send her more next quarter too, regardless of what sells and whether she edited it or not. She volunteered to edit without asking for money, but I’m happy to share my profits with her for taking some of the work off of me. An extra pair of eyes is invaluable in hunting down typos and problematic wording. So if I’ve got some cash on hand, why not send it to the nice lady who’s willing to fix my mistakes?

Of course, I wouldn’t be able to pay her at all if it weren’t for several of you picking up my books. This quarter has been a good one financially, and I’ve been able to use profits to pay hosting fees, buy cover images, and send money to my editor. I even had some funds free to donate to other folks’ Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, as well as sending donations to charities. Your money goes out to others so fast I sometimes have trouble keeping track of how much I made. When I do add it up, I’m kind of stunned that I’m doing this well.

Another thing: I’ve just opened the bookstore, and I’m doing the spammy routine on Twitter. I’ve had a lot of RTs for links to my store, and to Tara’s Indiegogo campaign, and although I’ve said thanks there several times, stuff flows by quickly in the tweet stream. So if you missed it there, thanks for sharing my stuff.

Folks also shared my links to CeCe McDonald’s petition, and they shared her address to write to her. CeCe’s petition is now up to 1,200 signatures, and I want to thank y’all for your efforts. Really, some of you Twitter folks are all right.

Um…so I guess that’s it. I’d say rants will follow soon, but I’m pretty sure my next post will be a gushing video game review. But I’m sure another train wreck is coming soon. I just need to deal with some of this icky positive stuff first.

Amendment 1…

I won’t have to link to any story, because by now you know that North Carolina joined the states who have voted against all forms of civil unions between gays and lesbians. And obviously this law is written in such a way to deny trans folks marriage too.

In the next few days, there’s going to be a lot of finger pointing and blame to be shared. But the main problem here isn’t with any one group. It’s that the people who don’t like gays and lesbians are willing to work together on this issue, even if they hate each other’s guts on lots of other issues. Those people work together, and they make every civil rights issue into a football. Abortion, gay marriage, black civil rights, immigration laws; it’s all the same game to them, and in the political game, they keep scoring points because none of our lobbying teams work together like theirs do.

It isn’t the fault of GLBT groups that they failed to rally more troops, and it isn’t the fault of any one group that this got passed. It’s the fault of people who didn’t see a need to vote, because this is such a done deal. Who’s gonna vote for hate? Those folks who stay at home don’t see a big deal with not caring about an issue one way or the other, and if we can’t convince those folks to stand up for others, then this will always be the way every civil rights issue is treated, as a metaphorical victim of a popularity contest that turned into a gauntlet.

This is why I’m willing to speak up about issues that aren’t in my “core group,” because I recognize that we need all these people working together on the same page for every issue, and not just the problems facing them. This is hard when the problems facing each group are so huge, and there’s the temptation to only want to cover your people. I know there’s enough trans news that I could ignore violence against cisgender women and race issues and still not run out of issues to talk about.

But looking beyond my own group, I can see how abuse has become the standard for a lot of minorities, and this is happening because the people who approve of abuse work together. To stop it, all of us who are affected need to present a unified front on every issue. That’s a lot of work, more work than most people were hoping for. You’re already burdened, so who wants to pick up more weight? I completely understand.

And then there’s some folks in minority camps who don’t want to work with each other, either for past slights, or for ongoing issues that have remained toxic topic for both sides of various minority camps. I’m not going to list slights, because no matter who I name, it’s just going to anger someone when my intention is the exact opposite.

But putting it simply, if we can’t stand together, we will all find ourselves politically hung by the same influential lobbies. We can’t win when each of us is bound to defend only our turf, and no one can win a popularity contest again hate, because hate is always popular.

Got the store open!

Yes, at long last, I have a store for my books here on the blog itself. I’ve organized my titles into shorter lists to be more manageable and help readers find what they want instead of guessing what might work for their individual tastes. So someone looking for sci-fi can see which titles they want to read and skip dark fantasy and horror.

I’ve also added some freebies, and I’ve offered my two complete series at discounts, giving new readers an incentive to pick up all three books at the same time. All books are DRM-free, and readers are welcome to use a converter to any other format, or even to print out a copy, if they like.

In other writing news, my editor Tara seems just about ready to start her Indiegogo campaign for Roll the Bones, book 3 in the Peter the Wolf Series. You may be wondering whether to donate to her or wait until the book comes to this site. Well I want you to donate to Tara, so I’m going to release the book two weeks early for folks who donate to Tara’s campaign. I’ll also be giving away other titles depending on which incentive level you choose, so this is a good chance to pick up several of my “furry fantasy” themed titles with a nice discount off the cover price. The lowest donation amount, $1 will gain readers entry to a raffle for one print copy of The Life and Death of a Sex Doll, one of a VERY limited run of print copies from Belfire Press. All other levels will also be eligible for the drawing, but you’ll also get a lot more books for your generosity. Oh, and all people who donate will be listed at the back of Roll the Bones, thanking them for their contribution.

I really do want Tara to get enough money to meet our target of $500, which is why I’m offering all these titles as incentives. But we’ll need help to reach the goal, and I’m sending out a pre-campaign plea for help. If you have any way of sharing a link to the campaign page on Indiegogo, we could use the extra exposure. So perhaps tweet it, or post it on Facebook. Or post a little blurb about it on your blog. Any way you help spread the word is appreciated.

EDIT: It appears the campaign is now live and has a goal of $555. Hope you’ll stop by and look over the incentives, or poke your friends and send them the link. Thanks for your help. =^)

Um…hrrrrmmm…how to feel about this?

Okay, I was passed this article by someone who wanted me to read the one comment posted. I did, but then I wasn’t sure what the context was, so I read the article too. And, I’m…conflicted about whether to nod or huff. I agree with like 98% percent of what she’s expressing here, but then there’s this:

“…gays and lesbians should shift their struggle from rights to marriage for same-sex couples, to domestic partner benefits for any formation of people who share economic and emotional resources. Domestic partnership would replace marriage, thereby removing the coercive ability of the state to promote certain types of family formation as more valuable than others.”

Now, the could author have phrased this: “I think liberals should shift their struggle from rights to marriage for same-sex couples, to domestic partner benefits for any formation of people who share economic and emotional resources.” Had she done it this way, the article would not end up reeking of privilege and dictating to another minority what they should do about their problems.

BUT, and this is another part of my internal conflict, as it happens I DO think that GL lobbies ought to remember that they always use BT in their letterheads, and it would indeed be nice if their political pushes reflected that with a wider stance on civil partnerships than just gay marriage. But as a minority in an already minority group, the B and T factions both end up having their letters co-opted to a lobby which never once supports them. Which is irksome, and sometimes I bring it up, being that I am bi and trans.

But it’s problematic when a straight woman and a proud feminist says “I gave in to my man’s request for something I didn’t want, and I gave up on my principles and allies, sooooo here’s what the queer lobbies should be doing to fix the marriage problem.”

Bwa? Lady, you don’t think that maybe, you could…I dunno, get married, and also pitch in your vocal support for a more fair form of civil partnerships? This is just something that the gays and lesbians should do…but not you? Maybe you could poke your husband and ask him to write letters to whoever he votes for, Republican or Democrat, or to whomever is in office if the person he voted for lost? Maybe you could write to the same folks with a letter of your own? Those guys in office vote the way they think the wind is blowing, and right now, I’ll wager they’re hearing a lot of hate. So guess which way they’re voting?

An all-inclusive ENDA is strangely seen as a T issue. That’s strange because with one law, everything else considered legal discrimination crashes and burns. You can’t deny a bi relationship if there’s an all-inclusive ENDA. You can’t mistreat anyone, regardless of their skin color, sexual orientation, gender, or lack thereof. Nothing. No one is legally allowed to treat anyone else like shit, just because. Done. The super be all and end of fair play. It’s so good, it even has straight women of all ethnicities covered like a jimmy hat.

And yet, it’s a “controversial” T issue because it means you can’t mistreat trans folks, according to some gay lobbies and a certain gay politician who personally torpedoed an all-inclusive ENDA multiple times. That fractured the lobby enough that even the ENDA only for gays failed. They needed the T faction, but they abandoned us, and it caused them to look weaker, not better. It also has made it all but impossible to support any lobbies that would wear the BT letters with pride, but never actually support our policies or acknowledge our needs.

Which is why it makes sense to appeal to more than just a group of lobbies who don’t just focus on a single issue. We also need to hear more lobbies speaking from the GLBT factions who are also POC, because the current marriage-only platform doesn’t do much to support their multi-tiered discrimination issues.

This is why I think straight people who like marriage, but think other people should also be allowed to receive the same legal benefits, should write to their representatives, and work diligently to change their minds about limiting who can be legally defined as a family. And, at the same time, an endorsement for an all-inclusive ENDA might not be a bad idea either. I can tell you that there are plenty of people who write against these issues, and so any fight going for an ENDA or civil partnerships is an uphill fight. It cannot be won by the so-called GLBT lobbies alone, because it’s freaking easy to predict what will happen, because it happens again and again. Lucy says, “Come on and kick this ball, Chuck.”

So the GL will look fractured from the BT, and the Republicans, sensing an easy win, will slam dunk the bill with a few choice Democrats who are “religiously opposed” to an all-inclusive statement of legal equal treatment for everyone. Which is confusing, because that’s not what Jesus taught at all, is it? No, not really.

No, we need the feminists to join us on these issues, and not to tell us, “You’re doing it wrong, so change your policies.” Sure thing, but…uh, a little help, here? Maybe?

And this goes most of all to straight white dudes who vote Republican, but claim to have gay friends. I’m not asking you to vote Democrat. I’m asking you to speak up for your friends and try to change your representative’s mind on a few basic civil rights that are kind of important to those friends you claim to have. You can be fiscally conservative and still be in support of these laws. You have nothing to lose by doing this, and certainly not a seat in the power game that politics has become. All it means is, your elected official enacted two bill with the will of the people taken into account.

Without the support of outside groups, these bills will always be political footballs, and it’s because the support for them from other groups isn’t there. Yes, it’s fucked up that civil rights have to be a popularity contest, but to get civil partnerships and ENDA both passed, we’ve got to gather a few voices from every group, including the straight white male voters, regardless of their political affiliation. Because if we can’t get together more allies than G L B and T, recent history has clearly taught us that it won’t work.

In conclusion, I agree with the sentiment, but the phrasing in a few spots is problematic in a way that insults some of the same allies the author claims to support. It’s not just gays and lesbians who have to get behind this legal shift. All of us need to work for this, so we can show that hate isn’t more popular.

Right now, I’m sorry, but it looks to me like hate is far more vocal and likely to get coverage. We need everyone else to speak up if they find this offensive, because if they don’t, it means they silently condone the mistreatment. And saying “this is what others should do” implies that one plans to take no responsibility for the problem. It is pushing the burden onto people who are already burdened. And that reeks of privilege.

Clear? Okay, now you see why I’m conflicted.

Book news…with some ranting, free of charge

Not quite the same as a writing update, as this is about stuff I’ve already written and published. If you’ve been a regular reader for a while, you know I started sending titles to No Boundaries Press after Smashwords dropped my three flagships titles for being “inappropriate.” (Still would happily tell Mark Coker “Fuck you, hypocrite” in public, so it’s probably good that an ocean’s worth of distance separates us. Bastard wrote how PayPal would stop him from carrying Lolita, and the fucker wouldn’t carry it BEFORE PayPal pushed the issue. That’s some major bullshit hypocrisy. But I’m alone in not loving Mark these days, so what the fuck do I know? Aaaanywaaaay…) You also know that I considered the move to NBP less than ideal after realizing that even my milder titles would be sold with porn ads lining the book descriptions and my author profile. I’m not being prudish, but I can’t really refer teens to a YA book if right beside it is a list of BDSM, incest, and other choice pr0n selections. (Okay, I only have one YA title so far, but I plan to have more in the future.)

But I really do want to offer my books to NBP readers, and it is another vendor willing to carry my stuff without giving me shit about their fake moral standards, (Mark fought PayPal for incest erotica titles but unceremoniously dumped my books, and yes STILL bitter about that shit. Thanks for asking.) something I’m deeply grateful for. However, last month, I just couldn’t find the motivation or the energy to convert books. It’s not really a difficult task, but it didn’t matter how little energy it requires. I couldn’t do it.

Last night, my number one superfan and WebLit author Becka Sutton pointed me to Gumroad, a very simple file distribution service. At first, it felt too simple because I couldn’t even sort out how to post a picture of the cover until Becka looked around and explained what I was doing wrong. Still, I thought the site layout was too simplistic before I had a revelation. Since every book listing has the address of the direct link to the file, it dawned on me that I could make a page for the blog listing all my books, organized neatly by genre, and with each series grouping the titles together so readers don’t have to hunt the whole list to see if a trilogy is complete or not. The links could lead right to the Gumroad listings, and from there, people could buy my books without worrying about being secure.

This also works out better for me because I don’t have to set up another plugin for WordPress Plugin require constant updates, and in any case, I can’t have the same store on the free mirror. This would be a far more elegant solution, and I could direct anyone to the store page without worrying about what else they’re going to see in the list. Well, I might be reluctant to direct young’uns to the store, but I don’t really know any young’uns personally. So it’s probably a moot point.

The thing is, last night, I converted and uploaded 11 titles to Gumroad, and five of those were titles for NBP. I crashed on the couch, and when I got up this morning, I emailed the files to NBP. As it’s Sunday, I don’t expect they’re in the office to jump on those submissions. But here in a day or two, or three, those files will be up on their site under my profile. (I’ll post direct links once they’re available,) The files for this month are The Life and Death of a Sex Doll, Zombie Punter, Trail of Madness, In the Grasp of the Devil, and Mmmm…Crunchy!

I wanted to slam out more files for Gumroad and get my whole back catalog completed, but I converted only two more titles before back pain and swollen joints sent me to the couch for all of the afternoon. Since the weather is likely to keep me in painful repose, I expect to get a few more files converted throughout the day, and during this next week, my main goal will be getting ePubs copies of all my books listed on their site. By next weekend, I hope to open a storefront here and on my other blog.

Which doesn’t mean I’m going to rest on my laurels and not look for more vendors. Also, I won’t just sell ePubs. But I want to first get a DRM-free format out that will work on most ereaders, and which can easily be converted to other formats should readers need it. Once I’ve got the main store open, I’ll go back and upload files for Microsoft LIT, Abode PDF, and for Amazon’s MOBI format. (Even though it’s more likely that Amazon lovers will buy the same titles directly through their vendor.) If there seems to be demand for Sony’s LRF format, I’ll go ahead and add that too. Cause I’m all about giving y’all more options, not less. (If you do want LRF, please let me know by email: zoe_whitten(at)yahoo(dot)com.)

And speaking of which, Becka had another great idea about grouping completed trilogies into a zip file and uploading that to Gumroad with a discount for buying all three books at the same time. I like that idea a lot, and so one of my immediate goals for the blog storefront is making those zip files. So, say you want the Campaign Trilogy. Instead of buying three separate files and paying $8.97, you buy the zip file for $5.99 and save $2.98. Amazon won’t be able to lower my prices on my books, because this isn’t a discount on the individual titles, but the series, and they don’t offer anyone the option of doing this. So maybe I can steal a few Amazon readers and get them to visit my store to bargain hunt. We’ll see what happens.

I’ll close by again thanking readers with your patience during this transitional period. I’m finally getting my shit sorted out, and I hope to have more updates for you soon.

Sony, what are you doing?!

So, last night, I got on YouTube to look at new Vita trailers. Instead, what I found was reviews of demo games, all of which were out in Japan. Of those, the most exciting was Ragnarok Odyssey, which looks amazing. The wild fighting style shown in that preview got me itching to play a new game. So I rush over to my Vita, fire it up and go to the PSN store, and…there’s still no new demos. NONE. The Japan PSN store has demos for games that won’t be out for many months, and yet, here we are, almost a month away from the launch of Gravity Rush, and Sony still can’t be bothered to give us something to nibble on. For fuck’s sake, Gravity Rush has TWO DLC packs out in Japan, and we don’t even have a working demo one month before the game’s delayed release!

This by itself would not be so bad, but I just bought Lumines: Electronic Symphony, which I loved on the first night I got it. And I mean LOVE, like after the first two plays, I was in need of a ciggie. Alas, the very next day, Sony released a patch, which they said would “address stick stability issues.” I was using the D-Pad for control, so it wasn’t a big whoop to me…EXCEPT, the patch fucked up the D-Pad. So even when I tapped the control to move one space, my tiles flew to the far end of the screen. I’d go to tap down to drop one block, and that and the next three blocks would come slamming down, one right on top of the other. On slower levels, it’s easy to compensate for. Alas, Lumines doesn’t have many slow levels, and on the faster levels, I’ve spent more time screaming at my game than I have enjoying it.

This patch also broke the “World Block” a social portion of the game, where blocks I erased from my game counted towards a huge cube of something like 7,000,000 blocks. Actually, this idea is kind of stupid because there aren’t enough players of Lumines worldwide that I’ve ever seen the blocks brought down to 0 before the 24 hour clock cycle restarts. One would think they’d adjust the World Block goal to something more realistic given the smaller pool of players, but that’s a logical decision, and we haven’t seen many of those made when it comes to Vita games.

But anyway, the point is, after the patch, I got errors just trying to check my progress from the previous days. So, within the same day, I can check and see that I’m contributing 9,000 blocks while the average player is only contributing 1,500. But if I go to check those results one minute after the clock turns over on a new World Block, it’s “unconfirmed data,” and accessing it results in an error.

Sony released yet another patch only a day later, this time declaring that it would “address World Block stability.” Not only did it not work to fix the World Block’s data errors, but applying the patch made the D-Pad controls even more finicky. I can’t play the game anymore. I can’t give a full review for it in this condition, and yet, I’m itching to play it based on that sweet first night, before Sony took away my good game and replaced it with this shitty mess. It’s like having an amazing honeymoon with a demure goddess of pure beauty, and waking up the next day to a foul-tempered demon who wants to rip my penis off and sodomize me with it. Without lube, and with a condom made of barbed wire. (FTW, I don’t actually have a penis…I left it in my other pants back in Thailand. I do, however, own a strap-on. I just don’t know anyone willing to let me use it.)

And again, I still wouldn’t be pissed, except what we have in the store right now amounts to a lot of half-assed efforts mixed in with some scamware.

“Scamware?” you say. “How do you mean, Zoe?”

Well let’s start with Treasures of Montezuma Blitz, a free-to-play game that’s extremely cheap in its tactics so as to force players to buy new lives at the PSN store. Lives regenerate slowly over time, but the game doesn’t make that clear in the sales pitch, and in any case, the game play just isn’t that much fun.

Next is Stardrone Extreme, a game which is not free, but which will offer you the chance to skip some of its harder levels…for a small additional fee. This is bullshit. The game makers are not stuck at a 0.99 cent price point. They can charge any price they need to in order to recoup their costs, so they could have tacked a few cents onto the price and just give people the ability to skip levels. OR they could drop the cheap fucking tactics, not have any levels intentionally made to encourage skipping, and stop trying to scam people out of an extra purchase.

But the latest game to provoke my ire just arrived in the PSN store for free, Frobisher Says. I’d seen a review for this last month where the reviewer was gushing how this game was better than all of his triple A titles combined. He called his Vita a $250 Frobisher Says Unit. “Man,” he gushed, “This is what real gaming is all about! Just having fun with a stupid premise.”

WELL, that certainly sounds like something I wanted, and yet, I couldn’t find said game in the PSN store. Not at any price. But, at long last the game arrived, for free even! YEAH, a free game! Okay, I’ve already been burned by free games from Sony, but surely, with this game getting such a glowing review, I wouldn’t feel burned again, would I? Hahahahahahahahaha! Yes, yes I would.

Task one in the game? Tap the right shoulder button to make a train carry a pudding to Frobisher, at which point he splats his face in it. A bit simplistic, and not really funny, but okay, I’m sure tougher challenges lie ahead. My second task? “TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS THAT YOU’RE PLAYING OUR GAME.” Really? So despite the fact that the Near network has already broadcast to all of my friends “Zoe has just started playing Frobisher Says for the first time,” you still want me to mail a SPAM bomb to the few friends I have…for a game I’ve played for two fucking seconds?

Sony, what the fuck are you doing? These are shit games with nickel and dime cheap tactics, all of them released with your blessing. You’ve got no new demos for the European market and the demos you’ve offered are extremely short, to the point of being stingy. I’ve seen tech demos from the makers of Half-Life that are longer than your game demos. And, they were more fun to play!

When I first got the system, Near was telling me there were 45 players nearby. On launch day! Man, that made me feel good, thinking that the system was going to be an easy success and tons of game were sure to follow. A day later, that player count was up to 57. And now? Now there’s 27-30 people playing. And most of them are only playing one game, where they were playing many titles before coming to realize, “This game is shit.” That’s why I’m not playing those games anymore either. Because the European launch titles were terrible. I keep looking at the Japan offerings and wondering, “Why aren’t we getting any of these demos?” If Sony is so desperate to keep players hooked into their hardware, why aren’t they showing it by giving us something to look forward to?

Yes, Sony, you’ve made the prettiest and bestest portable gaming machine I’ve ever laid hand on, and I’ve played them all; the Game Boys in all their incarnations, the Game Gear, the Lynx, and the Neo Geo Pocket. I’ve even played on the dread Virtual Boy, the worst headache inducing portable ever, and you got that bitch beat hands down. But while you have the bestest hardware, your launch games showed a distinct flavor of “don’t give a fuck.” And since then, there’s been nothing new to give me a reason to squee with fangirl glee. To the contrary, you’ve given me plenty of reasons to scream and pull my hair out. You keep teasing me with the promise of real triple A games, and yet every game I wanted is listed as TBA for the European release date.

And I’m not even thinking about Ridge Racer because of your shady as fuck business model of selling me a fucking three track demo with the rest of the game locked up behind nickel and dime purchases, both cars and tracks. Yeah, Forza 4 has new car packs once a month, but they gave me a ton of cars just for driving and gaining XP, and every completed race opened up new sections of the same tracks I was already playing. Turn 10 has earned my trust because they gave me a Gallardo, and let me paint it hot pink with black racing stripes. So when they come out with a new car pack, I run over to the marketplace see what’s in it and decide if I want those cars. But I’m not going to even buy a game that charges me twenty fucking euros FOR A DEMO.

Sony, I want to be in your corner and sing your praises, but at every turn, you’ve treated your market like a toilet, and you won’t stop eating at Taco Bell and dropping the nastiest shit on us. Can you at least try eating some moral fiber and giving us shit that isn’t quite so offensive or runny? Or can you maybe polish up some of these turds so they aren’t such a slap in the face when you drop another log on us?

Your hardware is very pretty, but without something decent to play on it, I find myself wishing you’d either commit to supporting your paying players or kindly drop dead and stop treating us like that old desperate ho who will let you take a dump on her chest.