Agon Review and Local News

 France and Spain are currently suffering through terrible fires, and though they are on a smaller scale than the ones in North America, because of Europe's much greater population density a large number of people are being affected.  Thus it appears in the news quite prominently.  The fires in northern Canada, by contrast, though ten times larger and worse, only affect very small communities, often of Native people.  Not so newsworthy, I'm guessing.  My point?  I suppose even if acts of war, terrorism, murder and other forms of hatred were outgrown and no longer practiced, we'd still have our hands full dealing with Nature.  Here is a map of wildfires burning in North America on Sunday.  See and weep.

 

Orange flames indicate present fires.  Red dots indicate above average temperatures.

We are literally burning our own home planet. 

 

In gaming news, we are not only playing a lot of PC games, but for the past several Sundays we have revived our board game passion, along with MECCG.  For the past two Sundays we have been playing Teotihuacan: City of Gods.  It's a complicated game to learn, but once it is in hand it proves to be one of the best games we own.  It also has the most beautiful game board I have ever seen, with lots of tiny details that don't have anything to do except make the board look better.  Some photos amidst a recent game:

 

Overview of the entire large board.  The board consists of 8 smaller game boards around the edges, a central temple that must be built piece by piece and decorated, smaller temples at which to worship left of the central temple, and the avenue of the dead to the right of the main temple.  Interspersed in between the 8 game boards and temples are very small works of art that enhance the look of the board, illustrating what is actually happening in that specific area.  Wealth is represented in the game by cocoa, gold, stone and wood.  The dice represent the players' workers.

 

Tiny detail of a non-playble section of the board.

 

Detail of mini-gameboard #4, where gold can be acquired.  Note the tiny unusable details, above.

 

More details of the Teotihuacan playing board. 

 

Now on to PC gaming.  We just finished all 4 available chapters of  Agon: The Mysterious Codex.  The first three chapters were released as a unit back in 2006, while Chapter 4 came out in 2008.

 

Chapter 1--London:  This takes place late on a rainy night in the offices and storage rooms of the British Museum.  It is the early 1900s.  The game features 360 degree motion, and the graphics are actually pretty decent.  We played the game on Steam.  Players must use books, maps, telephone, typewriter and make a guard fall asleep.  Though short, this was a good opening segment and teaches the player how to move and handle objects.  There is an inventory and it will grow quite large by the end.

 

Two views of the director's fancy office.  We play as a snoopy old professor who is attempting to uncover a great secret regarding board games.

 

At the end of Chapter 1 we are led into the new chapter by a map and several items to read.  There is an awful lot of reading to do in this game, and it can get bogged down (see Chapter 4). 

 

Chapter 2--Lapland:  This chapter takes place in an arctic winter environment.  I recommend playing it in the summer!  We first arrive at a very small and very lonely railroad station in the middle of nowhere.  The stationmaster is passed out drunk in bed.  We must get the stove going and solve some major puzzles, a few of which are impossible without walkthru help.  The puzzles tend to become quite nasty very quickly.  Solving a Morse Code puzzle (make no spelling mistakes!) playing an organ to call a reindeer taxi, and reading more letters all take time.  Overall, I liked the atmosphere in this section, but was glad to finally move on to the small nearby village.

 

There are 3 points of interest in the village, the main one being the tavern.  We must get the village girl on our side, so it's time to cure her sick dog.  She will eventually lead us to another reindeer taxi, and we are off into the cold and snowy wilderness.  The final part of the game again becomes a bit nasty, but problems were solvable without a walkthru.  Often here the most difficult part was locating things, so hunt carefully for inventory.  The very final puzzle in all chapters 2-4 is playing a different board game against an opponent.  I had to lose about a dozen times here before I finally won, triggering the next chapter.  All in all this was a fun segment, much longer than the first chapter. 

 

In chapter 2 we are deposited at a lonely arctic station.

 

It may be small, but this station holds a lot of mysterious puzzles to solve.

 

I really liked the winter setting! 

 

Now in the village, we are about to enter the tavern.

 

The unfriendly owner, his daughter (part of her), and her sick doggie. Cure the dog and get the girl on your side.

 

Wilderness scene in Lapland.

 

Dashing through the snow...

 

The final part of segment 2 is a board game that the player must eventually win. 

 

Again I liked the segment, though some of the train station puzzles were simply too hard to work out logically.

 

Chapter 3--Madagascar:  On to the tropics and time to get warm again!  We arrive (after a lot of reading) on a tropical beach in the morning, later returning near sunset.  In between we visit a hostile native village and two sites withing the jungle: a cemetery and a tree house homestead.  Here there is one inhabitant, an old sailor.  His companion lies in the cemetery.  The story is quite rich and it takes a while to get all of it.  Again some puzzles can be solved through logic, though some cannot.  We got through the cemetery one okay, but the telescope puzzle was simply too bizarre to even try to solve.  At the end of it all (there is a tidal cave which is pretty cool) comes another board game, again taking me about a dozen times before I finally won.  That ended the original game, with more chapters being promised.  There should have been thirteen altogether, but alas only 4 were ever made.

 

Final score for the first 3 chapters: 80% 

 

Our voyage to Madagascar is told through letters sent and received along the way, and the map.

 

We arrive on a beautiful tropical beach. 

 

The tree house has several levels and several puzzles.  First we must feed the dying old sailor. That puzzle was okay and logical.  Not so much for the telescope puzzle.  It's like two different teams worked on these puzzles, one group who understood that people might like to be able to solve them, and another group that thought nobody should solve them.  Ever.

 

Once fed and feeling stronger, the old sailor tells us his sad story.  By the end we are able to help him live out a more comfortable life.

 

We arrive back at the beach near sunset.  We are close to the finish.
 

The second board game, not easily won I can assure you. 

 

Chapter Four--The Lost Sword of Toledo:  After a hiatus of two years, chapter 4 came out.  This is a full game unto itself, about as long as the first three chapter combined.  It should have been shorter, but it really gets bogged down at the start with reading and hearing the background story.  Hardly anything happens that the player can control for a really really long time.  This undoubtedly contributed to its bad reviews, which put the kibosh on any further chapters.  Thus the game ends here, after 4 chapters.  While the story is worthy of an entire film, it is simply too complex for what should have been one chapter of a bigger game.  I see on Steam that some players have put in 100 hours on playing chapter 4!!  If one doesn't use a walkthru in this game, one is doomed to a life of frustration and being stuck in Toledo (Spain).

 

The puzzles are usually way too complicated.  Even the first big one, the music box puzzle, had me scratching my head and using a walkthru (I am a musician).  There are three parts to opening the music box, and all of the solutions are pretty much ridiculous.  There is also a maze in the sewers.  No one likes a maze, yet here it is.  As for the photo puzzle (taking, developing and printing the photo), hours and hours and hours could be spent here experimenting.  This is not fun.  Then comes the big headache, the kaleidoscope puzzle.  It can be skipped over.  Use a walkthru instead.  It's still complicated.  

 

Though seriously flawed, Chapter 4 will provide amusement with a good walkthru.  I liked the graphics and the use of comic book art to fill in transitional passages in the story.  The story was good, too, though it is a long one.  And of course the old professor is one of the better adventure game characters out there.  With reservations (have a walkthru handy) I do recommend the Agon series.  It's an old game, but parts of it are quite good.  I actually won the final board game on my first attempt!  It's unfortunate that the remaining chapters never came out.  However, the professor's great grandson arrived in 2019 with two adventures.  We will eventually give those a try, though being from the same studio I don't hold up too much hope for fair and doable puzzles.

 

Chapter 4 final score:  74%.

 

On our way to Toledo.  The game's intro seems endless, and nearly is. 

 

Players spend a lot of time wandering around central Toledo.

 

Whenever the professor passes in front of a mirror, there he is!  Cool. 

 

A lovely and cool courtyard garden.

 

The pond in a different courtyard garden. 

 

A small parish church.  The bell tower holds a major puzzle.

 

The bedroom of Senor Diaz, with the dreaded music box on the side table near the lamp.  We are aiding his unhappy daughter after his death. 

 

A very beautifully rendered kaleidoscope. 

 

Part of the kaleidoscope puzzle.  Good luck with it, even with a walkthru. 

  

We get to not only light a fire, but make a key.  Yet another very complex puzzle, with which this game chapter is severely overloaded. 

  

The final board game.  I won it first try!! 

 

Mapman Mike 

 
 

 

 

 

 

June Ramblings

It's been sunny.  Very very sunny.  No serious rain here in a few weeks now, and except for the chance of severe storms later today, the outlook for a good, steady all day rain is zero.  Poor farmers.  Last year most of them couldn't plant because the fields were too flooded.  This year the planting goes perfectly, but then...

My left thumb is giving me grief again, injured during the build up to last season's concert.  If I am really careful I can get through a practice without any trouble.  But I must have overdone it yesterday, for it is very painful today.  So no morning practice, and the afternoon one will be very light, if at all.  We may be hiding in the basement, if storm predictions come true.  They sound really bad.

I have just returned from my weekly shopping expedition.  It was a two-stop run today, first for birdseed, and then on to the grocery store for food, and 6 cans of heavenly dark beer.  Imagine, my local A'burg grocery store has London pride and London Porter, from Fullers in London!  The trip was uneventful; it wasn't very busy anywhere i went, except the roads.

Earlier in the week we played a full round of Teotihuacan, City of the Dead, a vast and involving board game that has become our favourite game.  Set up takes about 30 minutes, and play lasts about two hours.  We played on Saturday evening, then continued on Sunday, then finally finished it on Monday.  It was the first time we played with the full rules, instead of starter rules.  Later this week comes the next game in our MECCG tournament.  We haven't played in a while, but the decks are ready to go.  In computer gaming news, we have finished 4/5 parts of Kentucky Route 0, and hope to continue on again to finish it.  The game is so good, and it is replayable, since the conversation trees chosen by the player are nearly infinite.  The graphics and sombre mood make the game very unique and mesmerizing.  And I am still plugging along with Return To Mysterious Island.  I am almost ready to board the Nautilus!

Deb's recent movie choice was called Where Is My Friend's House?  It is an Iranian film from 1987, and chronicles the nightmarish adventure of a small boy trying to return his schoolmate's notebook, which he has mistakenly grabbed.  Viewers will never forget his little face, as he embarks on his epic journey to the next village, a journey fully as eventful as the quest for the Holy Grail.  Most of the film, at least the first hour, is heartbreaking, as this child is put through the wringer by a village of uncaring adults, most of whom don't even hear him talking to them.  But the final half hour makes up for the rest, as the boy is befriended by an old man who attempts to help him.  My favourite kind of film is one that really gets inside an exotic place, a place which outsiders would never see, and really makes that place worth visiting and truly memorable.  Highly recommended, if you can sit through the first hour of near torture.

 Scene from the last section of the film.  

A memorable, iconic scene from the film.

Mapman Mike

Syberia 3, Teotihuacan, and Fred and Ginger

First, the rain.  Since Thursday afternoon, we had 4" of rain through Sunday night.  That's a lot of rain, especially for an area already suffering from record high water levels in the surrounding lakes and rivers.  More is expected tomorrow, and possibly Wednesday.  What to do with it all.

For the past several weeks I have been playing Syberia 3, a game for PC, off and on in the evenings.  It's a rather tedious game, and not very special.  I am playing it only out of loyalty to the first two games in the series.  Anyway, as per usual, when I turned on the game to play, Steam downloaded an update.  Then, when the game finally loaded, all my progress was erased.  No saved games, no nothing.  Weeks and weeks of work down the tube, with no desire to start all over again.  I downloaded some saved games from the web, but so far they refuse to load.  Harrumph (and under my breath, many more worse words).

We finally sat down and played a mostly full round of our newest board game, called Teotihuacan.  It is certainly one of the better board games we now own.  It is an evening's commitment to set up the board and play, but it is a lot of fun, and as the game board changes with each new game, no sure fire strategy will help you win the next game.  And you get to build a pyramid, and decorate it.  How cool is that?  I think Tokaido Road and this game are our two favourites.  Now that the basement had been reassembled, I have room to store and display all of our board games.  Some have never been played yet.

Deb's weekend movie pick was Swing Time, starring Fred and Ginger.  From 1936, and directed by George Stevens, this b & w classic has some superb dancing and some memorable songs, including "The Way You Look Tonight," and "A Fine Romance," written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields.  Great dance numbers (and music) include "Never Gonna Dance," and Fred's black face tribute to Bill "Bojangle" Robinson.  Some great hoofin'.  The plot, of course, is virtually non-existent. 

 Showing on the Criterion Channel until the end of August. 

And now we return to our regular programming, featuring another fine landscape painting from the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Bernardo Bellotto

View of the Tiber in Rome with the Castel Sant'Angelo, 1743 or 1744

oil on canvas, 34" x 48", unframed. 

The museum did a complete reorganization several years ago, something which I think destroyed the overall layout and made finding any specific painting much more difficult.  One of the newer spaces is called The Grand Tour," and purports to show how Italy was on everyone's grand tour in the 18th Century, and the artists who did souvenir type works of art.  Canaletto, Guardi, Panini, robert, and Bellotto are some of these artists, and thanks to them we have some rather good impressions of Rome, Venice, and other cities because of their painstaking renditions for rich tourists to carry home.  This particular painting has always been a favourite of mine, and it is large enough to get in close and observe all of the wonderful details of the time.

Detail of the bridge.

 Detail of far left side.

Detail of St. Peter's dome.

Detail of the Castel, which once served as Hadrian's tomb.

Castel, further detail.

Paintings like this hang in every great museum of the world, and are always worth stopping to look at more closely.  This one has an evening twilight colour that cannot be captured in a photo, but is magical and difficult to describe in person.

I had my first piano lesson this afternoon with Philip Adamson, bringing him my newest program.  We got to work on the Bach Prelude and Fugue, and the Schubert Impromptu in C Minor.  Very helpful.  I will return in a few weeks for help with the Haydn Sonata and the Bartok Allegro Barbaro.  I will not likely make my August memorization goals.  For every three notes I stick into my head, two of them pop out the other side.  I'll get there, but it will take more time.

Mapman Mike

Black Jack, a Film by Ken Loach

We are one day away from completing our 28-day walking program, the one we always use to go from a zero activity level (following Deb's surgery, and a very hot early July), to a basic level of walking fitness.  Today we undertook a 90 minute urban hike in Windsor.  It was sunny, pretty warm, (about 83 F) and very humid.  We stopped for lunch halfway through at Pause Cafe, a place with more and more vegan options every time we go.  He makes soup from very old recipes, and today he had one of our favourites, a cold soup from almonds from a recipe from Spain.  It is so delicious, and our bodies were ready for a cold soup today.  His gazpacho is also fearsomely good, but today it was almond soup.  We also split a large salad plate with tofu, cucumber, onions, kidney beans, and other delicious things.  By the time we were ready to leave, we were prepared for the long walk back to our vehicle, left way uptown.

Deb continues to have films shown on virtually every weekend this summer, and on into September.  We are two weeks away from attending the festival in Cincinnati, where three of her films will be screened.  One of them is nominated for an award.

Our listening program is in progress, and we have completed 70 of Haydn's symphonies, and 70 opus of both Brahms and Britten.  Next up is Symphony #71 by Haydn.

Deb's weekend movie choice was an odd little children's film from 1979, just released on the Criterion channel.  Called "Black Jack," the film is difficult to watch without subtitles (there were none).  The soft spoken Yorkshire accents are difficult enough, but the sound miking was less than good as well.   Shot on 16 mm film, it is still engaging, and the mostly outdoor settings and the costumes were absolutely perfect.  A very large man escapes death on the gallows by choking down a metal spoon before he is hung.  He awakens in his coffin, in a house where an old woman sells the bodies of such men to the local medical society.  The time is 1750, and the setting is Yorkshire. 

In his escape he kidnaps a young boy, and they disappear quickly into the countryside.  Here they encounter Belle, a young girl who is being delivered to a mad house.  When her carriage breaks down she escapes, and she and the boy (Tolly) link up and become friends.  The girl quickly loses her madness, and the two of them hook up with a "doctor" and his travelling medicine show.  From a novel by Leon Garfield, the film is worth a second viewing, perhaps after the novel has been read I have ordered a copy of the book).

 A wonderful little film from 1979, but pretty hard to understand the dialogue. 

On our trip to Detroit last Thursday we went downtown, spending some money at Vault of Midnight, a game and comic store.  I bought the complete comic of The Watchmen by Alan Moore.  The novel contains all 12 comics, as well as written fiction by the author that goes along with it.  I will read one complete comic each time I finish up a book on my Avon/Equinox list, so it will take me 12 books to complete the comic.  I'm currently reading a volume of 21 stories by Silverberg, which is nearly 400 pages long.  We also bought a new board game, called Teotihuacan: City of Gods.  It has an enormous and very attractive playing board, as well as about five thousand small pieces needed to play.  So far I have set up the board so it is ready for two players to play.  That took me two days!  We might get started tonight.

 The box.

 The game board.  For 1-4 players. 

Some possible heavy rain is predicted overnight.  Despite flooding still everywhere around us, mostly due to the high lake levels from the winter snow melt (record setting), we badly need some rain.  Just not 3", please.  Half an inch or so would be nice.

Mapman Mike