Enslaved

Well, it’s been a really long time since I last posted. Sorry about that. But, in good news, I actually have comments on a game and I’m not too late to actually chime in on it. Well, except that I beat it over a week ago, so I could have been right on the bleeding edge, but, no, I had to put off writing about it. So, now, there’s already a bunch of stuff written about it and I won’t actually be adding anything new. Darn.

Moving on, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

When I first heard that title during one of the “Here’s some random stuff we saw at E3” posts, I pretty much dismissed it. That name downright sucks. I mean, even when we shorten it down to just Enslaved, it’s still not very good. It evokes all the wrong images (very MMO feeling). If you even dare try to say Odyssey to the West, you’ll just start feeling foolish. So, yeah, they really should have gone back to the drawing board on that one.

Admittedly, I don’t know what they should have done instead. The main character’s name is Monkey. So, that won’t work. The other main character’s name is Trip. Which is even worse. Trying to use those names in a pun would just be stupid. So, yeah, I give up, let’s stick with Enslaved.

So, let’s start with my reaction to the demo (which, oddly enough, convinced me to go out and buy the game). I didn’t like it. I thought the controls were too loose and the platforming was just weak and the gameplay overall felt incredibly last-gen. Or even older. I mean, even in Super Mario 64, you could fall to your death. But, no, not in this game. Here, you can only go where they want you to go, no matter how hard you try.

Then there was the combat. It skipped locking the camera to hide the fact that it was super simplistic (it feels like you’re doing a lot more when you’re having to always concentrate on where the camera is/should be). But, that was when I saw the first thing I kind of liked (aside from the fact that I rather like simplistic combat since I’m usually pretty bad otherwise).

During one of the fights, I activated one of the slow motion kills that these types of games often have these days. But this one was different. In, let’s say, Batman: Arkham Asylum, the slow-mo effect is used to worship the overwhelming power of the Batman. You can see his grim visage and bulging muscles while the minion is flying backwards, mouth wide open in a silent scream of pain as he is, most likely, not going to be using that limb for a long time. In Enslaved, the focus is on Monkey. And he doesn’t look grim or professional or even all that powerful, really. He looks scared. Desperate. Tired. Probably in a little pain. This wasn’t a celebration of the player character’s power fantasy. This was the look of someone fighting for his life. Again and again and again.

“That was really cool”, I thought to myself. Games don’t normally show me something like that. Later in the demo, the game established that Monkey gets enslaved by Trip and is recruited to help her get back home. His reaction was perfect. Resigned agreement. This character was truly from the world of this game. All he knew was struggle and so it never even occurred to him to question his fate. In this world, everyone deserves whatever they get. It was kind of sad.

And so, I decided that I’d wait and see how the first couple reviews would come out. They all pretty much said the same thing: gameplay sucks but the story is both well-told and worth telling. So, I bought it.

And played through it.

Now, given more time with it, I realized something. Mainly, that the voice of Trip is Lindsey Shaw. Also known as Moze from the Nickelodeon show Ned’s Declassified School Survivor Guide. Which was pretty good. In case you’re curious, she doesn’t really look like Trip. But when I hear her voice, I think of a 14-year old version of her (Lindsey Shaw, not Trip). She’s in her 20s now, though, so...yeah. This isn’t the first time this has happened with a Ninja Theory game, though. Their last game, Heavenly Sword, featured the voice talent of one, Anna Torv, who has now become at least a moderate star since being the lead in Fringe. Interestingly, she didn’t look like her character in that game either. And both characters were both red-heads, oddly enough (although neither of them actually are). I will say that I think Trip is slightly cuter than Nariko, although I don’t think either of their character designs were exactly focused on providing male players with eye candy to convince them to play the respective games. Aside from the exposed mid-riffs.

Gameplay-wise, I actually rather enjoyed the combat as the game continued. Overall, I really liked the pacing of the game, period. I thought that they did a good job of upping the stakes and challenging the player (with the simplistic combat). Early on, the idea of trying to fight more than three of the mechs at the same time was pretty scary, but by the end, you were regularly taking on 5-8 at a time. And you were often in a hurry to get through them, so you were fighting sloppily and Monkey’s post fighting, post damage tired walk felt pretty well earned. The controls stopped feeling loose and started feeling, well, accurate. This was a big guy with a lot of mass and he gets rather beat up. It’s not his fault he can’t stop on a dime (unless there’s an invisible wall, of course).

I thought the big action set piece managed to get a nice variety as well. Also, I liked that we saw bosses in multiple contexts. Most bosses first appeared as, essentially, environmental puzzles that would later on become a true “fight”. The game spent a lot of time building up the “Dog” boss as we kept having to run away from it. Finally getting to face up against it, and eventually have it running away from you, was surprisingly satisfying. That was a well told, well executed boss.

Plus, the environments were, quite often, something special. There’s one point, where you’ve lost Trip and you’re trying to find her in this village. Not long ago, it was a peaceful village and you can see how the buildings are made from century-year-old trash. But, in my hurry to find her, I almost missed the playground made of trash. Or the formerly discarded couch that’s now being used for sitting back and enjoying the view from this mountain village. I had to remember that this game is different from a lot of other games. It’s full of imagination and beauty, and destruction and poverty. It’s worth stopping to take a look around.

Like when you realize the mountain you’ve been climbing for the past level is the back of a giant, long-destroyed mech and now you’re walking on its arm, towards the palm of its ancient hands. There’s a history to this world. A bloody and sad one, but we never really get to know it. It’s not clear that anyone knows it anymore. There’s simply legends and remnants of the world that was and the facts of the world as it is now.

So, yeah, is it a bad game? Well, it’s a godawful platformer, no matter how generous you want to be. But, it’s certainly not a bad game. And you have to give Ninja Theory credit for making a beautiful game with the Unreal 3 Engine. The Batman team couldn’t do it and I’m not sure if Epic themselves has ever really tried. While some people liked the ending, I thought it was a pretty typical Alex Garland ending. He seems to really struggle with endings that actually fit within the world he’s been building. At least when he’s working with Danny Boyle, he gets reigned in a little bit. But, no, this one downright disagrees with the world as it’s been established since the first level.

Also, I was never entirely clear who it was that we were stealing the giant mech from, anyways. And what were they going to do with it, for that matter? But, well, that’s Alex Garland for ya.

I will say that if there’s any opportunity to play with these characters more, either in DLC or sequels, I’ll be ready with my wallet out. So, you know what, I’m just going to go ahead and say it. It was a good game. Maybe not a great game, but closer than most games get to being great. It managed to succeed at almost everything that other games struggle with. The character and voice work is flawless. The story is both epic in scale and carefully focused on a small, well-developed cast. Have I mentioned how good the character and facial animations are? Oh, I did? Well, they’re all really good. They tell the story and develop the characters better than all the dialogue in the world.

I just wished they had checked out some of the other platformers that have been made in the last 5 years to see what people have been doing. Because, well, that part feels rather dated. But then again, I think this whole reaction is fairly similar to the way people thought about the original Uncharted (Drake’s Fortune, hey another weak name for a game). So, who knows, that game significantly improved the gameplay in the second one without sacrificing the story telling skills and voice work and animation that they’d pulled off in the first one.

Man, now I really want there to be a sequel...

That is all.

Francis

NBC Mondays

So, I watched all three of NBC's big shows this evening. That would be Chuck, Heroes, and Journeyman. Personally, I had very low expectations for Chuck, fairly high expectations for Heroes, and somewhere in between for Journeyman. So, my thoughts:

Chuck was at least a bit better than I expected. This might be because I am totally biased by the fact that the main character went to Stanford and actually manages to talk about his experience for a good three seconds or so, believably. I did not know this was actually possible. I'm going to assume that there is someone involved with the show who actually went to Stanford, and so made it possible. That is the only explanation I can come up with. So, I have to give the show extra points for employing someone from Stanford.

Oh, it also gets lots of extra points for employing a former member of the cast of Firefly (that would be Adam Baldwin, playing a slightly more evil, and possibly less stupid, version of Jayne).

Hmm, otherwise, there's not too much going for it. The girl is decently hot, I guess. She looks a lot like Christine Taylor (Ben Stiller's wife, who can be seen in Zoolander and Dodgeball).

I guess my main problem with the show is that I think it's better when there isn't violence. Chuck helping people while working at this take-off of Best Buy could probably be pretty funny all on its own, without pointless action with a hot babe (but, some could argue, what's the point if there isn't a hot babe?).

I can imagine some alternate version of Chuck, that's more like House, only for the geek audience. With people coming in with stupid problems while him and the rest of the Nerd Herd solve bigger problems, typically involving video games. Okay, fine that probably wouldn't be any better. But, hey, it probably wouldn't be worse either. Besides, poor customer service is totally funnier when it isn't coming from someone who's supposed to be saving your life.

In conclusion, yeah, I might watch it again next week. We'll see. It depends how much time they spend being stupid at work versus how much time they spend being stupid with violence. Also, completely unrelated, why is the current explanation for the story that the people from the NSA and the people from the CIA are on such poor terms that they're okay with killing and fighting each other? Couldn't they come up with a situation that doesn't just hurt my brain with the stupidity of it all?

I'm praying that there's going to be a twist mid-season where we find out that somebody' boss (either Jayne's or Christine Taylor look-alike's, or even both!) has actually gone rogue and so the former roommate that got Chuck into this mess was actually not turning against his country, but instead was thwarting said evil boss. On the other hand, if that doesn't happen, I probably won't mind because I'll have given up on the show by then.

Moving on to Heroes...

So, facing the classic problem of not really knowing what to do or where to go, the writers apparently have decided to use the classic "add more characters to an already bloated show" strategy to continue the story. Luckily, they backed this up with the equally classic strategy of "kill off popular, cameo type side-characters to reduce clutter". Admittedly, this combination doesn't work as well when you add like six characters and only kill one off, but, whatever. They've still got time to kill off the others.

I do have to admit, I'm glad to see everyone again. Mohinder is still mixing it up with the wrong people. Hiro is still a ridiculously awesome control freak. I think I'm going to enjoy watching him try to write (or would it be rewrite?) history so that things happen the way he was told they did, hundreds of years later. I'm sorry for Matt, that his marriage was unable to work out (it sucks that it didn't work out in either the bad timeline or the current timeline). And Peter... Oh, how I heart him. It's good to see him alive and kicking (well, telekinetically kicking, at least). Also, why is Nathan still alive? I was totally counting on him to die. But, whatever.

And, of course, we can't forget about Claire, can we? I swear she's cuter. Although, I liked last season's boy a lot more. Admittedly, at least this one's a special person (is it frustrating that they are basically doing X-Men, but refuse to call themselves Mutants, or use any other simple noun to define themselves?). On the other hand, this guy has the same power as Claire's father. Somehow, if they were to get together, that would seem really incestuous to me. But, whatever. Also, her new high school looks just like the high school in that movie Orange County (which also talked about Stanford, but not nearly as well as Chuck did).

So, yeah, they were quick to keep pushing this scary dude that young Molly's afraid of. I'm not sure how many lone wolf, evil guys with crazy powers the show really needs, but it looks like they're shooting for at least one more. Otherwise, it's hard to really tell where they're planning on going with this. I'm surprised that we don't see anything about people reacting to the fact that a nuclear bomb went off in the sky above the New York City. I was kind of expecting that to be a source of tension in this new timeline. But, whatever.

Also, I'm not passing judgement on the people traveling to find Mohinder just yet. Although, I can't help but be curious about what foreign language we'll have regular characters speaking in next.

Lastly, Journeyman.

Personally, I thought this could be good. I actually read that book, The Time Traveler's Wife, which is a semi-obvious inspiration for the show. Admittedly, I kind of regretted reading the book, but that's not the point. I didn't like it because it paid too much attention to the wife, instead of the time traveler (which it had given me fair warning about, considering the title). This show looked like it was going to be paying more attention to the time traveler, himself, so that should be a non-issue.

Anyways, it was kind of a letdown. I want to give it another chance. I really do. But, well, ouch. I'm not sure I really appreciate this whole idea that over the course of the episode, he figures out what he has to do when he goes back in time. It's just very contrived. I mean, I knew it was going to be contrived, but it was still very contrived. I think I like that word (contrived, I mean).

It is funny to see him interact with his former fiancee when he goes back in time. Although, it is REALLY weird to see him interact with a time traveling version of her to explain what the heck is going on. This just feels like really lazy writing. It's like the writers were like, "We need someone to tell him what's going on, because he's never going to figure out why we're doing this to him on his own. So, let's get his dead fiancee to do it, since he'll listen to her."

I mean, wow. It just feels lame. I think I'm going to try to force myself to give it another chance, because I was really hoping for the best for this thing. I mean, NBC put it after Heroes, so they must have high hopes, right?

So, yeah, that's the review. Too bad these are pretty much all the shows I wanted to check out. At least it was convenient.

That is all.

Francis

I love being a Chemical Engineer

I recommend reading the above title the same way that Michelango screams "I love being a turtle!" at the end of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Not that this is relevant at all...

Anyways, today I was approached by a coworker (also a chemical engineer) for input on a problem he had been thinking about in the back of his head for the past couple days and couldn't come up with a solution for. Basically, he was trying to estimate the rate at which we consume Argon during operations. Nothing all that exciting.

The trouble was that for the Argon system, everything is measured in PSI. This is a annoying, since the Argon system is supplied by a big tank which keeps the stuff at liquid temperatures (around 85 K). Typically, pressures become a little less meaningful as a unit of measurement when there's a phase change going on (read as, we were pretty much like, "oh, shit, how do we account for that?").

So, we started just chatting about it. You know, throwing out all those classic chemical engineering buzz words we all learned in school, hoping that the other one would know what the words actually meant and could magically write down an equation that would just solve all our problems. Examples would include such gems as "pressure differentials", "saturated vapor pressure", "vaporization energy", and "thermodynamics" (okay, we both had at least an okay idea of what those last two mean). To make a long story short, we agreed that the problem seemed a lot harder than it should be, and I promised to try to come up with a way to get a approximation for it.

So, I started thinking about it. Around this point, it occurred to me that, well, we have this Argon system and it's only about 30 seconds of my time to walk over and use it. So, maybe I should stop trying to come up with ways to predict the rate of vaporization based upon the pressure differential that the boiling liquid is experiencing (and assuming there's no heat input since obviously our 85 K tank is well insulated) and just see how long it takes to fill up a tank.

But, wait! That's too easy. I didn't spend four years studying all sorts of complicated chemistry, math, and physics applications to just hook up some pipes, turn a valve and look at my watch.

So, how do I make it more complicated? Well, remember, everything we measure is in PSI. So, how do you define a tank as "full"? Well, the simple thing to do is just pick a goal PSI and fill it to there. Then, since Argon is about as close to an ideal gas as anyone could possibly ask for, just use that law to figure out how much we actually put in. Simple.

But still too simple. That would just require me to hook up some pipes, turn a valve, look at my watch, and type some numbers in my calculator. I didn't go to school for four years to be able to do that, either.

Here's where I finally got to bring in some serious chemical engineering. I pointed out (to me) that the tank has a resistance to increasing the pressure. The closer we are to the final tank pressure set point, the weaker the driving force is to actually bringing the tank to that set point. The result is that if I were to just fill up a tank to a specified pressure, I would significantly underestimate the true capabilities of the system. This would be especially problematic during tank purges, when the valves are left open so the tank stays at atmospheric pressure (resulting in a constant maximum driving force).

There we go. Now we have a problem worthy of the attention of a chemical engineer. The fact that it took a significant amount of the chemical engineer's attention to actually create the problem is irrelevant.

So, the end result? I had to make a simplifying assumption and stated that the molar flowrate is linearly dependent on the pressure differential between the tank and the pressure set point of the valve (which I have no way of justifying but intuitively makes sense, especially since the evaporation rate of the liquid Argon is almost certainly not going to be a limiting factor). From there, I built a simple differential equation from the above assumption and solved it with respect to the number of moles in the tank. With these, I just needed the actual time values, so that I could plug them in and determine the slope of the molar flowrate vs pressure differential graph.

So, I did have to eventually go out and just fill up a tank, but now it was with the goal of determining the rate constant, which is way cooler than a normal constant. In case you're curious, the difference between just filling up a tank and using that value vs. my analysis was around a factor of 2 (which is why we chemical engineers make the big bucks).

I love being a chemical engineer!

That is all.

Francis

PS - We just needed a reasonable value for approximation purposes, so I'm definitely not interested in the far better approximations that actually deal with the fact that there is a phase changed involved, thank you very much.