Rant - Humans' De-evolution into mobile phone zombies

Dungeon Hunter 4 -
another 'IAP-plagued' iOS game

I posted this rant in TA comments on Touch Arcade's Dungeon Hunter 4 preview - an ok game plagued intentionally with "IAP" (in-app purchase) design which is money-grubbing and evil (and makes gamers pee their pants with anger). 

Actually the GAME looks cool.
But the IAP / store mechanic looks like a game-killer.
Meh. Who cares, really?

The whole 'hack/slash' genre is a bit ... sad ... at this point. Where is the adventure in it? Overpowered dudes run around kill weaker grunts who ave no chance, looting their corpses which vanish into money (leaving no blood on the killer's hands). Can you see this stuff ain't good for society?
Domination and violence are a bad solution for almost every scenario in life! This virtual violence is part of the conscious attempt to dumb down the masses.
If religion was the opiate of the masses, mobile gaming is the crack.

This 'dumbig down with mindless domination & destruction' issue is far more significant than these endless IAP rants all mobile gamers must make.

What is needed is creative games that give people an opportunity to think, not point and kill games that make meat-heads even more 'Bill & Ted'-like. Last comment in my 'human de-evolution rant': Bill & Ted, Dumb & Dumber, & Wayne's World were all comedies -- they weren't meant to be reality shows!
Turn off the devices, use your hands, brains, minds, and bodies. Don't just be another programmed vegetable idiot moron who only fiddles with their little 8" screen all day long!
It's pathetic!

There's a whole world being stolen from you by corporations and polluters to enjoy! Better do it now, b/c all those rare elements being mined for our smartphones are destroying the environment so badly that soon all we'll have is the virtual world to live in!
Wake the f**k up!
/end rant

SOL - the app, dude! A new form of sun clock!

I randomly noticed in AppShopper website that SOL app went free today.

I checked it out -- and I love it.

 

It's an app that shows you the sun's position all throughout your day AND midnight AND sunrise AND sunset.  And it looks so cool!

 

Their website is entertaining b/c it links to their blog, which had a very funny entry called Marketing’s a Bitch: Lessons from the App Store.  It was insightful into the mind of dev's, and hilarious.  I posted a long ranty comment, hasn't shown up yet.

 

Get it today for free (!!!), or wait a bit & you'll pay $3. Either way, it's cool. Take a look at the website & see what you think, watch the video, etc. http://www.juggleware.com/iphone/sol/

Get the app from iTunes!

Looper - review

Redbox'ed "Looper", a scifi movie w/Bruce Willis, Jason Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt. I give it 6 stars out of possible 10. (Sidebar -- saw Dredd ~ 2 weeks ago, and thanks to Karl Urban nailing it, I'd give that 7stars out of 10. Had mor...e style points and a convenient 'slo mo' drug that looked cool, & had some RoboCop spirit / style.)

Anyway, I wouldn't say Looper was a great film in any sense of the word. But it had some interesting bits. Happy to watch scifi that had a little mental stimulation. I didn't think Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a good job as a young Bruce Willis at all, but didn't seem important for the overall film.

*SPOILER*

Observations:

• Advertising really misrepresented film.
• If you follow the logic, has some serious incest going on...?
• Missed how kid becomes "Rainmaker" during his life. Guess that info wasn't necessary...?
• Had some cool steampunk references, like "Gat Man" and "Blunderbuss". (Flying bikes didn't make any sense but you could tell someone said "c'mon, we gotta have 'em". Incongruency points!)

While I like 'time travel' movies which have the 'no paradox possible' concept, and that time resolves itself (via some undisclosed mechanism which, frankly, makes zero sense -- but needs some scifi name like "temporal particle rebalancing", ha ha), generally the writers can't hope to keep stuff 'in sync'.