Thanks for all the kind words, everyone. I'm getting by as best I can, but it's not easy. This community really is pretty much the only place I hang out online, so with all of the pizza talk, politics, mother-shaming, frequent pointless spats, you guys are my second family, as lame as that sounds. Fades and those of you who actually did what I asked, I thank you; I think it's easy in this crazy world to lose sight of what's really important and that's friends and family so hold onto whatever of that you've got. Mooby, you're right, she was so young, 44. It seems crazy to me still. Fun fact: my ringtone for her was Mary Chapin-Carpenter's cover of "Grow Old With Me" and we always thought that, well, we would. (Her ringtone for me was "Next Stop Everywhere" from Doctor Who, because I'm a giant nerd.)
As promised (or threatened), my thoughts on Jurassic World: Evolution:
I noticed there had been some discussion about this game, and while I'm not going to bury the lead--I do like it--many of the criticisms in early reviews were, in fact, spot on. This game is sort of like watching a presidential election night. There's probably a better analogy than that, but I don't seem to have one at the moment. It's moments of joy punctuated by boredom followed by moments of terror or frustration punctuated by boredom, et cetera. Many "sim"-type games have time sliders that let you speed up parts and eliminate the mandatory waiting-around bits that you usually expect mainly from Facebook games these days, but Frontier said, "To hell with that. When we say it will take two minutes for your expedition to get back from China, by god, you're going to wait 120 seconds for it!" The game is peppered with these timers: generally very quick ones for constructing buildings and others for incubating dinosaurs, extracting DNA from fossils, sending vehicles to pick up dinosaurs or medicate dinosaurs or tranquilize (which, for some reason, is spelled "traquillize" in-game) dinosaurs, completing research projects of six or seven different types, et cetera. Yes, it's a real hurry-up-and-wait sim. Another (so far) minor annoyance that is a holdover from Frontier's earlier stab at a Zoo Tycoon game is the fact that once you unlock the sandbox island, you still have to play through the regular campaign progression in order to unlock items to use in your sandbox. This is why I may never actually get to the sandbox in the new Zoo Tycoon game--there are a kajillion campaign scenarios to play through in order to unlock all of your animals, decorations, buildings, and gemgaws, and some of them just aren't that fun, but most of them have you largely doing the same things over and over again. At least Evolution has an edge over that because there are only five total islands, each presenting slightly different challenges, and as you increase the numbers of your core structures (fossil centers, research centers, and expedition centers), you gain access to new dinos and new technologies that keep things fairly fresh (so far at least--I'm still only on island 2). There are some other quirks that other reviewers have pointed out that seem to exist only to add gamey elements to the game--missions that actively encourage you (sometimes given by the security staff!) to release dinosaurs to eat or trample your unsuspecting park visitors or set up dino fight club scenarios and the entire mission system, with its built-in potential for park sabotage, is a little weird.
So having said all of that, it's still pretty damn fun. BD Wong, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Jeff Goldblum pop up every now and again to offer you nuggets of wisdom (well, to say frequently smarmy things). The dinosaurs look and sound fantastic. The musical cues from the movies are all here. If you're a fan of the movies, there is a fair bit of fan service in this game for you to enjoy. Also, Frontier is releasing a free DLC on Friday that includes new dinosaurs from the Fallen Kingdom movie. If you like this kind of game, and you're tolerant enough to overlook its flaws, it's worth diving into, IMO. If those flaws sound seriously aggravating to you, wait for a price drop.
]So the more astute or less irregular among you may have noticed that I haven't been posting much lately. A seismic upheaval (I think that's appropriate) took place in my life on May 12, when my wife died suddenly. We'd been together for 18 years and married for 17. It's hard for me to, well, everything's hard for me right now. She knew that I hung out online with you degenerates and she still stayed with me, so that should tell you something about the kind of woman she was. I'll post something a little longer later about the new Jurassic World game so as to completely take us off-topic once again.
