Cav's Place

Finally managed to finish reading Tongues of Serpents today, after letting it sit on my desk for a good month and a half after I started it, and put up a tiny one-paragraph review as well, so at least that should count as doing something. I now see that a seventh book was also released, but the paperback edition is only scheduled to appear next April, so I have time to get mildly excited about it again, after some sections of this sixth book somewhat dampened any slight enthusiasm I might have had.

Otherwise, earlier this week I went to a hypermarket that I hadn’t been to in nearly a year and was quite surprised to find Fate of the World: Tipping Point there, for just 37.90 RON, which is about €8.40 or $10.80. Now I see that the price for it starts at 35 RON on on-line shops, but being so cheap you’d have to pick it up from somewhere if you didn’t want them to add the shipping too, and either way I never even looked for it before. I was certainly curious about it ever since the original version was released, but never thought that something like this would ever be sold here, yet it would appear that an importer thought otherwise and it’s therefore relatively easy to find.
Anyway, even though I said I won’t be doing much of anything while I’m still on this old HDD, I did install and start playing it, only to confirm what all the reviewers were saying, namely that it’s next to impossible to complete anything other than the tutorial. This version includes some additional options and scenarios, but I’m not particularly keen on diving straight into those or on trying the new “easy mode” just to say I got past something, if I’ll manage it even then, so I kept trying, and obviously failing, to beat the original game’s second scenario. Of course, saving the environment is rather easy, but it can’t be done in any nice or ethical way and this game proves that wonderfully, the problem being that, save from a few covert options which have risks of their own, including triggering a loss condition if word gets out that you’re behind them too many times, you’re not offered the means to enforce the measures required to meet those environmental victory conditions. People will refuse to do what’s right on their own and will fight back if somebody tries to pressure or trick them into it, so you’re expected to constantly deal with that annoying reality without having any of the the coercive options required to break this resistance available to you.

But I have some more things to do this evening and tomorrow I’m planning to go out again, so I’d better stop here. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to say that I got that HDD replaced by the time I’ll write the next personal post, so I sure hope it’ll happen before the end of next week, because I’ve been on this old one for quite long enough already…