Why you should own System Shock 2

There might be a whole thing to be said here about the impact that this game had on my life back during a time when I was meant to be focussing on those things that "determine your future", but that isn't really important to what this game actually represents.

The game acts as the spiritual ancestor to nearly all current generation survival shooter games. It set the rules and shaped the arena in which later titles have been making their home. If you have ever enjoyed Fallout 3 or Bioshock, then you owe this game some gratitude. These games took a lot from System Shock 2, and then focusing on different aspects moved towards something else. It is still the purer form of these experiences. It is a balance between the limitations of Bioshock and the freedom of Fallout.

There are experiences in your game that will be uniquely yours. Tales that you will recount that will make your friends play through again to find the things that you found. At the same time there will be experiences that all players will share. The experiences, shared or otherwise, will thrive on tension. This is the game's stock and trade. As good as the story is, you will be driven forward by survival. System Shock 2 will at times be unforgiving. You are fragile and (very frequently) poorly equipped, while your enemies are not.

You will be pushed to conserve resources, and avoid conflicts for which you are not prepared. You will hide, and you will run. You will retreat to the defensive positions you have established, and lurk in the darkness to make your plans. You will stalk the enemy until the advantage is yours, and the derelict Von Braun will become your home. It can be harrowing.

This game is now available on Steam for the paltry sum of $10 (only $7 until the 18th of May). Be warned, System Shock 2 is more than a decade old, and it shows its age. While it was never a game that relied on its graphics, you might want to pickup SHTUP, which upgrades the textures, and Rebirth, which improves the models.

Doctor Who Finale Leaked

So, there was some kind of production error in the US that resulted in the early shipment of the Doctor Who: Series Seven, Part Two BluRay boxset.

So early is this release that the season finale that appears on the boxset has not yet been aired.

Both the Beebs and Beebs Yanklandia have implored the public not to spread information on the finale over the internet. This may seem like the kind of request that just doesn't have any impact on the way events will unfold, but this isn't without precedent. Asylum of the Daleks, episode one of this current season, was also seen early by about a thousand people. That time Steven Moffat also requested that spoilers be kept off the internet until the episode had aired, and was successful.

This time around Steven Moffat has offered up a tasty bribe if secrets can be kept until the official premiere on BBC One this coming Saturday. What might tempt fans of the Doctor? How about a brand new clip of David Tennant and Matt Smith? Well that is what is on offer here.

If secrets can be kept for a week, we will be rewarded with a short clip of the 10th and 11th Doctors together.

I will also offer this small warning for those who are want to run out to their local torrent shop and grab the goods for an early viewing. There is a high likelihood that you will not get the episode of Doctor Who, nor in fact any episode of Doctor Who. What you are likely to get is graphic racist homosexual pornography. A film by the name of Gay N*****s From Outer Space to be specific. So, have fun with that.

Coverbot

For those of you who are confused by the title, a coverbot is like a covergirl, but with more hydraulics. There have been a number of covers for Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun, but this one, which looks like it is by Chris Foss, is my favourite:

The robot depicted is clearly very proud of the way his creator(s) chose to equip him. The way that his eye-boxes cast shadows from sun cast across his metallic 'face', his 'hands' in close proximity to his hips, the firm stability of his more than shoulder width stance and the strategic positioning of a spaceship all come together to say, "I may not be able to hurt the punie humans, but they ride in the glory of my robo-manhood."

It's subtle, but it's there.

Writers' rights

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been taking up real estate in my dominant conscious thought processes of late, and the fun-ride that I always spend time on when this thing loops back around is a discussion on the versions that Douglas Adams has released into the wild. There are three truly distinct versions of the story. The radio plays (and the television show which uses the same script), the novels (which were written later) and the film that came out in 2005 all follow varying plots. The key players are the same, but the shenanigans tend to go in different directions at times.

The release of the film version in 2005 prompted a lot of questions that can all more or less be paraphrased to, "Why did they change Douglas Adams' story?" and sometimes, 'Those arseholes changed the story', which is more of a statement. 'Those arseholes' being, in this case, Douglas Adams (the writer). He (the writer) not only approved of, but also co-wrote the altered storyline that appeared in the film.

This kind of behaviour isn't without precedent, as the novels vary from the original radio plays far more significantly than the film does. I first encountered The Guide through the books while in Germany, and for the longest time believed them to be the original version of the story, despite the blurb on the back stating otherwise. Perhaps I never read it. It wasn't until after I saw the film that I found out that the radio plays, with which by that stage was the version with which I was most familiar, was the original version.

Most commonly people cite the altered plot of the film as their reason for not liking it, which isn't really a real reason. Well, it might be, but it doesn't make it a bad film, in the same way that the books aren't bad because they deviate from the radio plays. In fact with all of the multiple universes that appear in the later phases of the storyline, it makes more sense to have multiple versions of events than it does to have a single rigidly enforced plot.

My question, which I have taken the scenic route to, is:

How much right does a writer have to alter stories that they have already 'finished'? 

Other recent players in this discussion are Game of Thrones, the television series based on A Song of Ice and Fire, which has made a number of author approved changes to the storyline to better suit the television format, Star Wars, where the original creator carried out some arguably minor retcons, and Space Pirate Captain Harlock, whose creator, Leiji Matsumoto, has opted to work with a clean slate on nearly every outing with the character.



It is also interesting to note that both Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and Life, the Universe and Everything were originally written as scripts for Doctor Who. Though the latter was never produced, the former was produced twice (with rewrites) as a television story starring the 4th Doctor (later released in its incomplete form on DVD) and as an audio story starring the 8th Doctor.

Hey, Microsoft! 'Pavlovian' is so a word!

I am working on a proposal for an online complementary informal learning platform as part of an assignment for Principles of Professional Communication (PoPComm), and Microsoft Word 2011, keeps insisting on red-squiggling 'Pavlovian'.

Seeing as Pavlovian conditioning is what is most commonly thought to be responsible for computer game addiction, I would have thought that this would have been a clearcut inclusion for the dictionary.

Gmail is all over it.