Blogs about reviews from Pew Pew Laser Blog

Puzzle Quest II.

Oh look, a skeleton. I'ma gonna keel him with my puzzle skillz.

It took 2 and a half years, but Puzzle Quest II is finally here. The core mechanic - match colored pieces á la Bejeweled - remains the same as with Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. But while PQII is better than its predecessor Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, it's not as good as I wanted it to be.

The new mini-games which replace PQ: CotW don't quite measure up. Many of the mini-games in PQ II are required to progress through the game, and they don't modify the character's abilities as in the original game. There is no learning a spell from every foe, no sieging a city, and no epic sessions attempting to forge awesome new equipment.

I figure I'm halfway through the game, and I fear there's only one single dungeon, broken up into multiple levels. This feels much more limiting than the city-to-city traveling approach of the original.

Lastly, there appear to be no game play affecting choices in PQII. In the first Puzzle Quest, you could force a girl to marry an old man, and get a horse. If you let her go free, she'd join you on your travels. Also near the end of the game, you could choose a path of ultimate evil. I haven't yet encountered anything that interesting in this version.

Puzzle Quest II is not as good as I wanted it to be - it's a little less interesting, less polished, and something smaller than the original Puzzle Quest deserves. It's still fairly addicting, and I'm sure my sorcerer could kick the ass of your character, but it won't have the staying power of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords.

Speaking of which, now that Game Crazy is closed, how will I turn used games into new games or cash?

Castle.

Here is a haiku for Castle, with Captain Tightpants:

A silly cop show
An impossible premise
Still, I must giggle

C.S.I.

Here is a haiku for CSI.

I cover my eyes
at gore; the husband giggles.
Don't watch while eating.

The Invisible Hook.

I finished The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates by Peter T. Leeson. I would probably have enjoyed reading about the hidden economics of anything, and pirates proved to be no exception. If you would like a little introduction to economics, or you just can't get enough history about pirates, you should give it a read.

In explaining the apparent race equality on many pirate ships, the author provided the following scenario, excerpted from page 159. (I've added the emphasis.)

Consider a bigoted employer who loves brunettes but loathes redheads. Our bigoted employer owns a shoe factory and needs employees. Redheads and brunettes are equally productive; a redhead with 60 hours of training and a brunette with 60 hours of training produce the same number of shoes per hour. But redheads are willing to work at the shoe factory for $10 per hour, whereas brunettes demand $20 per hour for the same labor.

The author then goes on to explain that it costs the factory owner $10 per hour (per worker) to indulge his preference for brunettes over redheads, and that this profit motive can lead the factory owner to operate the business in a non-discriminatory manner, even though the factory owner retains his personal prejudices.

I found it interesting that (in the scenario) redheads and brunettes were willing to work for different wages. To me this suggests that the factory shoe owner is not alone in this bigotry; that there exists a culture of discrimination which drives the different acceptable wages.

Cook's Illustrated & Adult Learning Theory.

I received a subscription to Cook's Illustrated for my birthday last year, an excellent instructional magazine for cooks.

For each recipe, Cook's Illustrated first devotes an entire page (sometimes two) to the challenges that the author overcame in developing and testing this recipe, which I initially thought was all worthless jibber-jabber. I've since realized that the whole point of the play-by-play recipe evolution story is to tell me why certain arcane steps are necessary. By more fully engaging my brain, it's helping me not to skip a step in the process they've outlined. By involving me, I learn.

Another huge advantage of Cook's Illustrated is that the authors are always kind enough to always provide the weight equivalent for flour in baked good recipes.