Category Archives: Screwed Up Chronicles

Rants, raves, and reviews on politics, products, and more.

Screwed Up Chronicles

Stupid Note

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I found this note at school.

–

Peter
You know Greg, you’re really starting to piss me off

Greg
I’m pissing you off!?
Well, shit, it piss me off
that I’ve come to a new place
and I’m trying desperately to
fit in and thrive in a new school
while your rich, pretty boy ass
hides in big daddy’s pocket
as he shells out mass amount of
Ben Frankling for your fu resplendent
future as a professional jerk off

Peter
That’s it you little bitch. I’m
bring you down one way or
another

–

Suffice to say, I do not know who these people are or the dramatic ending to this story that probably ended 10 years ago.

Screwed Up Chronicles, World

People Bomb

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It sickened me to see the state the 3rd-world countries are in, and we can’t help them because if we poured all our resources into it, we’d become as poor as them, with no improvements.  The US seems to be not overpopulated, but when it tells you about all the energy and food we use, and putting greenhouse gasses in the air, its bad.

Ethiopia can’t seem to educate awareness about things concerning reporduction into people’s minds about all of it.

India looks like there are way too many people for so little resoruces available to them.

The solution:  Shoot them all out into space!

When a species grows very high in overpopulation, it eats all its food, and there isn’t enough for all of them and what can’t be supported die off.

Ok.  They get a lot more population then die off.

Their population will go up as well, so that their prey’s population will go down as well so they can go back down, and then die off because they’re all dead.  The more hosts, the more parasites of that type, the more prey, the more predators of that type.  Water water.  Both.  They both have to have the same amount to contain capacity of the needs of that species.

Games, Game Reviews

Fran Bow (PC) Demo Preview

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Currently in a crowdfunding campaign at IndieGoGo.com.

Developer: Killmonday

Overview:

Children. Strange happenings. Dirty walls. Psychotic medications. These are just some of the things I can’t get grandma to shut up about. These elements are also present in this great preview for an upcoming horror-themed point and click adventure. Fran Bow shares its name with the lead protagonist (Fran Bow, if you’re paying attention).

Story:

Fran Bow is a ten year old, saucer-eyed girl in the Bow family that seems to have trouble making friends. She receives a black cat from her parents and dubs it “Mr. Midnight.” She remarks that the cat is her only friend, although she quite likes her aunt Grace as well.

We all know that in any good story, if one good thing happens, five bad things have to occur right after. Fran Bow finds this out as she comes across her murdered parents one tragic night. This understandably sends her running into the night in a panic. She finds solace only in Mr. Midnight, and eventually blacks out from the traumatic event.

An untold amount of time passes, and we find poor Fran in a psychiatric evaluation center, surrounded by adults that either don’t believe her story, or don’t care. She is given a new medication that sends her into a bizarro world where there is nothing but death and misery every time she takes it.

She knows that her aunt Grace would take good care of her, but no one will let her leave. Can she find a way out? Will she find Mr. Midnight and aunt Grace? Does she need prescription eye drops to see properly?

Graphics:

The characters and setting are very stylized and detailed. Animations are on the basic side but I believe this was done for artistic purposes. Nothing looks out of place, and the game maintains a great visual theme throughout the demo. Little touches like the grainy filter covering the screen help to immerse the player further into the story. The characters are appropriately disturbed looking and mesh well with the creepy atmosphere.

Sound:

All music and sound effects are appropriate for the situation, which is really all I ask for in a game. Still, it would’ve been nice to have a few more sounds, such as a little jingle when you played with a toy.

Gameplay:

Standard point and click adventure mechanics, which you’d expect any game in this genre to have. You click on items to examine or take them, and use things you find to try to escape the asylum. Fran’s a very clever girl, so she can combine different objects together through her inventory menu and use them to reach her goals.

Fran also has a bit of a troubled mind. She carries around a jar of the psychotropic pills that the doctor didn’t want her to have anymore. If you decide to pop one, the room you’re in is transformed into some horrible alternate reality filled with dead bodies, evil spirits, and bloody messages on walls that sometimes hint at what you should do next.

There are several fun, just-challenging-enough puzzles to satisfy anyone looking to use their brain. These can vary from finding a key, to combing the right items together to progress the story.

Crappiest Part:

The fact that this is only a demo and the full version isn’t funded yet! That’s a not-very-subtle way of me telling you to go pledge on their campaign!

Overall:

Aside from a few grammar and spelling mistakes here and there due to the company not speaking English as their first language, Fran Bow oozes professionalism (and lots of other stuff if you take your pills). The demo is a good length, being just long enough to make you want the full game. I suggest anyone interested in well-done adventure games, or just games with a good story, to head over to their IndieGoGo page and throw down what you can to help make this great game happen.

Fran Bow IndieGoGo Crowdfunding Campaign

Internet, Quotes

YouSendIt Becomes Hightail

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This entry is part 11 of 13 in the series Dave's Breakdown

YouSendIt, my “favorite” file sharing service (mostly because of the customer interactions and complete buffoonery that seems to run their business) has decided to ruin the one thing that they had going for them — their name.

Hightail is the perfect name for the people who run YouSendIt.  Instead of something that describes a focused and effective service, they renamed to something that is ambiguous, has no real direction, and alludes to asses in the air as they run away from something that is about to explode (which would be their servers and web site, since they suck).

I’m mostly glad they changed their name because, my God — Look at the amazing response they’ve garnered from their “passionate” renaming!

This whole name change thing reminds me of another article I wrote in my Breakdown series…

Also, the video they put up is absolutely asinine.  Look at the corporate gushery that goes around their stupid name!

Screwed Up Chronicles, Dave's Kingdom, Dreams

Dream #23037: The Chip Dream

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I wrote this in 2002.

–

I remember in a dream I had, that I was stuck somewhere listening to some guy who was talking about chips, and something about “maximum dipping power.”

He was explaining the measurements and junk about the chips and there was this other person saying “come on come on let’s go” to me, but I didn’t because I was interested.

Next I knew I was driving a car in a parking lot looking for a parking space.

Then I woke up.

Screwed Up Chronicles, Dave's Kingdom, Dreams

Dream #23036: The Baseball Dream

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I wrote this in 2002.

–

I had a dream that I was the best pitcher on a baseball team, but I knew I wasn’t any good.

So this big championship game or something was there, but I didn’t get dressed, because when I put on my shoes, they caught on fire, then I put the fire out by blowing on it, but it relit, so I put it under the sink and it went out.

But it relit again and I just let it burn.

So the scene changed to the baseball game, and when I wasn’t there, they had a 2 foot tall 10 year old pitch for them instead.

They were losing pretty badly, when the assistant coach finally found me at home, and he said “we’re losing, you have to get dressed and play!” But I said, “no, I don’t want to get dressed!”

Then I woke up.

Screwed Up Chronicles, Dreams

Dream #23034: The Moon Blew Up

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I wrote this in 2002.

–

I had a dream that I was out in the desert or something. The sand was red and there weren’t any trees, but big rocks every so often. There were a lot of people there, and there were a lot of houses. I wasn’t too far from my house. I looked up at the moon (which was very close). It was really hot, and the moon turned around pretty fast, and it looked the same except it had its own “red eye storm” like Jupiter. It’s kind of hard to describe. Anyway I pointed it out to my mom, and she said “that’s normal, they throw all our trash up there, you know?”

I thought “hmm, all that plastic up there is burning making it hot down here…” It seemed like it was raining fire from the moon. All of a sudden, it blew up. Everyone started screaming and went back inside their homes. After the moon rocks fell, I went over to my friends house, and there was my Grandma. She said his family wasn’t there because my friend was at the hospital. She pointed out the window shutters on the window, and said something about how cheap they were because a rock fell through. Then she disappeared.

Then it rained rocks again.  Afterwards, I was crying and I turned on the TV. To get my mind off everything, I turned on the TV and watched cartoons, while there was another TV with the news on. It had a bunch of people talking about the moon blowing up, and how it was more horrible than September 11. The rocks fell again all of a sudden for the last time. I went outside to see what happened, and there were a lot of people on hospital beds, screaming because trash and rock shot into their body.

I woke up then. What a weird dream. I could barely describe it all. You should’ve dreamed it yourself…to truly understand.

Screwed Up Chronicles, People

3 Pennies

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stimpyismyname had 3 pennies.

He told me that if I guessed which they’d all land on, I could keep the pennies.

If it didn’t land on what I guessed, I had to give him 3 pennies.

I guessed that they would all be tails, and when he tossed them on the ground, they were all tails, but he said I said all heads.

The bastard ended up taking the pennies.

Screwed Up Chronicles, People

Edgar Allen Poe SUCKS

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I think I wrote this in 10th grade.

–

Edgar Allen Poe SUCKS.

Very much so.

When I was writing this, I was sitting through my English class listening to a guy on a tape reading the story “The House of Usher” …which is complete and total crap! I hate how he writes his stories and poems.

The stories have too much description or something. There seems to be sentences within sentences within sentences, and it seems like they’re all fancy words put together to they make each other more fancy, and then there is no real story it seems.

Ooooh. The end of all his stories are so scary…you’re expected to get scared with “-she was dead,” like at the end of “The Oval Portrait”

Ooh. Scary. Dumb. “Never more?” Oooh. Scary.

Die.

Screwed Up Chronicles, Dave's Kingdom

Going Blind

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I wrote this in 7th grade.

–

If I had only three days of sight left on the first I would want to start learning Braille (Braille would be in place of school), at least I would be 3 days closer to learning how to read Braille. After that I would play video games and computer games for an hour. Then I will look at my family and try to remember what their faces look like then I would go to bed.

On the second day I would get up at 5:00 AM and play video games and computer games until it was time for me to learn Braille for six hours then I would go outside and look at the trees, the sky, the cloud, the little dog running up to me like it was attacking me then I would go inside and play video games and computer games for two hours then I would look at my family’s faces then I would stay up all night and watch TV.

On the third day I will watch TV, play video games, and computer games until it was time to learn Braille then after that I would look at my house from the outside, then I would look at my family’s faces then go to bed and hope sometime during my life we will have the technology to have eye transplants.

Screwed Up Chronicles

Joy Luck Club (1989 Novel) Review

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Re-purposing a school assignment I had in high school as a “review.”  I had answered the question below and turned it in as it reads below.

–

Do you like this book?  Why or why not?  If you did not like it, you need to be specific and tell me a reason other than it’s “girly.” Show me that you actually read some of it and THEN you decided that you didn’t like it as much as other books that you have read.  This question also implies that you are going to tell me what aspects of other books you DO like.

No, I do not like this book.

This book does not have a rewarding ending, nor does 200 pages of the book between Chapter 1 and Chapter 16 have anything to do with the main conflict of this book.

There is no resolution to any of the stories, and you never find out anything about what happens to anyone.  We learn about stupid things that happen to stupid people we don’t care about.  There are no crossovers in the story or much interaction between any of the different families, that would make us appreciate we know anything at all about these other characters.

When they do actually crossover in the story (I can only remember two times for actual interaction, and only a few times for naming) with anyone outside of their families, it isn’t worthwhile.  If they’re such good friends, shouldn’t they have made more of an impact on them?  I did not see that in this book, and I fail to believe that they really even are anything but flat, stereotypical women who have weird pasts, weird childhoods, and weird ways for coming to America.  All the mothers ever do is criticize Americans.

After I read the last chapter, it made me feel like I wasted many of my weekend hours I could have spent doing other things.

0/10

Screwed Up Chronicles, World

Bowling in Culture

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Bowling is a sport that consists of throwing a heavy ball down a long impasse, called an alley, toward bowling pins.  There are a few different types of bowling, which vary in how many bowling pins are in place.  Ten-pin bowling, which is prevalent in the United States, consists of ten pins.  Ten-pin bowling evolved from Nine-pin bowling which is played in Europe.  Ten-pin bowling, however, is played around the world in championships and other amateur activities, making it the more common form of bowling around the world.

The origins of bowling can be traced back to places like Finland, Yemen, Germany, Egypt, and India (Tenpinbowling). Popularization came during the feudalism era in England, where there are records of King Edward III restricted his soldiers from playing bowling in favor of working on their archery skills instead (Tenpinbowling).  As bowling became more popular, it spread to the other countries of Europe, and propagated into the rest of the countries where the game is played today.  Variations of bowling play with the concept of how many pins are to be knocked down, or modifications to the score sheet.  (Wikipedia)

Bowling also takes place in other parts of our culture, like film and television.  Movies like The Big Lebowski and Kingpin incorporate the sport into its story, but in different ways (Findarticles).  The Big Lebowski portrays the game as an aside, more like a hobby that characters share in common while events greater than themselves are happening around them.  Kingpin is all about the game itself and the competition involved in it.  The bowling ball is infamous for its weight, and is featured as a “weapon” in Mystery Men.  The Hanna-Barbera cartoon “The Flintstones” also featured many occurrences where the main characters of the show would be bowling at various times during the series.

Even though bowling may not be a defining piece of world culture, it is one of the underlying aspects that create it.  Bowling is a sport that many people can get involved in, whether it be for professional league play or just hanging out with friends during a session of Nitro Bowling.

             Works Cited

“The Game History.” Tenpinbowling.org. November 4, 2007. http://www.tenpinbowling.org/view.php?page=the_game.history

“Bowling.”  Wikipedia.org.  November 4, 2007.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling

“Our List of the Best, uh, Top … Well Here Are Some Bowling Movies – Brief Article.”  Findarticles.com.  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCK/is_1_19/ai_71821872

Games, Game Reviews

Candy Crush Saga (iOS): A Soccer Mom’s Review

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This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Soccer Mom Dave

This is a satire about the way a certain “parent” would look upon a video game. It’s written as if it was for a site that was run by mothers who denounce controversial video games based on third party information rather than actually experiencing it themselves, and making rash judgments about things they have little knowledge about. The name of this “mother” is Soccer Mom Dave.

–

Developer/Publisher: King Games  | Soccer Mom Score:  0/10

How dare they.

They made a game based on candy.

A group of buffoons who have enough gall to create a game so delicious-looking that it influences my children to eat candy!!!!!! All of these developers who made this game will rot in Candy Hell – don’t they know that America’s obesity epidemic starts and ends with the media? Games like Candy Crush Saga influence our children to become stupid, fat, obese adults who want to eat more candy and junk food. Jelly, whip cream, gum balls, exploding candy, chocolate balls with sprinkles that turn everything else into exploding candy! What kind of a sick mind would think of this stuff?

Not only does this game appeal to children, since they put a little child in the game as the main “protagonist” but they also try to appeal to sexy fatherly men who wear suits, just like this butler guy who tells you how to accomplish all of these massively unappealing, evil puzzles while talking in a sultry voice. It is just perfect that this game is a “match-three” game – it influences our children and prospective husbands to always want to eat candy in groups of three, four, or five. Not only that, but you get rewarded for matching higher combos, implying that you will succeed if you eat more candy! What lies are they feeding the general public with their implications!? There are absolutely no disclaimers that this candy is Calorie-Free, or even Fat-Free! Eating candy will kill you. Also, dragons and talking robots do not exist. I don’t know why they even put them in this slow-and-torturous-murder simulator. The dragon probably has diabetes from swimming in sugar water too long.

As if my life wasn’t terrible enough before this game came out, for free, I now have to deal with my children begging me for candy and acting like the whip cream in the game. They hug my knees, and don’t allow me to move until I clear them out. The only way I can get them to leave me alone is by pelting them with candy, just like in the game, and then I can move more freely. Sometimes my children cover themselves with Jelly and the only way to remove the Jelly is by throwing multiple combinations of candy at the Jelly chunks on their faces. My children are also recreating the game board from Candy Crush Saga in our 10-acre backyard with 300+ levels, just like in the game. When my husband gets home, all he does is drink beer and neglect me and my children, so it’s not like he’s going to put a stop to this madness! I wish that I could hire a butler to escort my children around this hugely elaborate candy game that is evolving in my backyard.

And just like the real-life version in my backyard, Candy Crush Saga was probably play-tested by all of three people, none of them paid. What’s the point of balancing a game when you can charge people anywhere from a dollar to FORTY damn dollars to cheat on an unbalanced game? Instead of trying to make the game a “fun,” balanced, and healthy experience, they’ve created a death machine meant to extort money and make the obesity epidemic even worse! Candy Crush Saga takes over the minds of the sheep we call our fellow humans and bleeds them dry for “power-ups” that shouldn’t even exist in a balanced game. No wonder they made 300 levels – you will inevitably be stuck on level 30, and never be able to play the other 90% of the game unless you pay to cheat! The temptation is absolutely unbearable! My children, both with iPhone 5s, have spent nearly 200 dollars each on this game to cheat. In real life, cheating is free — all you have to do is skirt around your obligations and make the other guy pay for the hotel. This game doesn’t teach my children any valuable or “useful” lessons.

Why can’t they make Health Food Saga, instead? It would have relieved my potential stress levels immeasurably. They should have used Fat-free milk, Baby Carrots, Asian Pears, Romaine Lettuce, Cherry Tomatoes and Vitamin Pills.

To conclude, this game needs to be more like real life – STOP PUTTING DELUSIONS IN MY IMPRESSIONABLE CHILDREN’S HEADS!!! LOOK AT WHAT IT HAS DONE TO MY LIFE, MY HOUSE, AND AMERICA!!! BAN CANDY CRUSH SAGA FROM YOUR iPHONES, PARENTS!  THE RESISTANCE STARTS WITH YOU!

Games, Game Reviews

Pocket Planes (iOS) Review

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Developer/Publisher: NimbleBit LLC || Overall: 5.0/10

Hardware Used: iPhone 5 with iOS 6

Pocket Planes is a somewhat-sequel to another NimbleBit game, Tiny Tower. Instead of managing an endless tower of floors, you are in control of your own endlessly expanding airline full of planes and airports across the Earth. Eventually you’ll be able to grow your airline from using planes that can only carry one person or one piece of cargo to planes that can carry up to 17.

The goal in Pocket Planes is to deliver stuff to different cities in the most efficient way possible. You take people and cargo in varying combinations from different airports and try to end up at your destination in the quickest/cheapest way possible so that you can have more capital to expand your reach. The idea is pretty interesting to me, personally, because I like Tycoon games, and at the end of the day it is one.

From a game design standpoint, Pocket Planes is a nice evolution from Tiny Tower. In Tiny Tower you basically had to micromanage your endlessly expanding tower. While there is still micromanaging in Pocket Planes, it isn’t nearly as stressful to keep up with since there is some actual strategy involved instead of just mindlessly spam-tapping you finger against a screen endlessly. When you want to deliver a person/cargo to a city, you have to figure out the best way to get there and the best way to make profit from the venture.

As opposed to Tiny Tower, you don’t necessarily feel like “time” is a resource. All of the planes in your fleet operate independently of each other, and you don’t feel like you’re “losing money” by having your planes sit at an airport waiting for instructions. Technically you could always be sending your plane on a job to make money, so there is that element of wanting to keep your planes busy, but the inclination is much less urgent. You can also dump a person/cargo at another airport without any penalties (other than fiscal) so that another one of your planes can take them wherever they need to go.

However, there are still some inherent flaws that the developers at Nimblebit just don’t seem to grasp that are present in both Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes — being able to FIND what you’re looking for EASILY. You’re going to have to memorize and hunt-and-peck for the airports you’re trying to get to. An arrow indicator or at least some sort of noticeable color that grabs your attention instead of slowly pulsing white text would be a real help here. Why are they trying to make me memorize where all of the airports in the game are? It looks like there are a hundred airports, at least.

User interface can also be a little wonky at times. It can lack intuitiveness, and the biggest issue is trying to figure out what is the most profitable flight path for a particular plane. You can’t easily switch out cargo to another piece to figure out if you’re going to make more money from shipping one piece versus another if you’re at the airport screen – you have to go back to the airport, go back to the load out screen for your plane, and THEN back to the map screen. You can’t just go back to the load out screen and back to the map screen back and forth. I feel like there are a lot of unnecessary taps involved in trying to send a plane on a new order. It should be more refined in this aspect and instantly bring up certain screens once you tap certain items instead of having to tap the button that explicitly has them occur. Or allow you to go back to the immediately previous screen.

Stability of the app is a huge issue. The game freezes, lags, and even crashes. Tiny Tower had some lag issues when you had a lot of floors, understandably, since it was trying to display all of the info at the same time. In Pocket Planes, there is much less going on, so it makes no sense whey I have to wait a minute or force quit the game to get anything going when it decides to go haywire.

The currency system in this game might actually be more ridiculous than Tiny Tower’s. Tiny Tower pretty much only had one place to sink your Coins into – more floors. In Pocket Planes, there are at least ten things you can spend Coins on, and more things to sink your Bux into. Coins are used to buy new airports (which come with a bonus plane part) and upgrade airports/airplanes. You can also advertise airports to get more traffic in and out of it. Bux are used to make planes instantly arrive at their destination, buy more Coins, and buy more planes or parts. Once you have enough parts for a particular plane, you can spend more Bux to build that plane and put it into service. If you don’t have enough available airplane slots, you have to buy another with more Coins. Airplanes have three stats that you can upgrade with Bux: speed, range, and weight. Speed and range seem self-explanatory. Weight, however, can be a little bit ambiguous. Weight will improve the efficiency of the plane and make them cheaper to fly, which means more profit in the long run. All three stats can be upgraded three times.

Of course, Bux are the all-important currency in this “free-to-play” game. Bux allow you to pretty much excel in the game, and if you have too many you can exchange them into Coins. While Bux are the more valuable currency and you are “allowed” to buy them with real money, Coins are the most needed and you need gobs of them to do anything profound (we’re talking tens of thousands). There is also the cost of actually having to spend Coins to have your planes fly anywhere, so if you don’t have any Coins, your planes aren’t going anywhere. When a piece of cargo or a passenger is paying Bux to get to their destination, you are essentially paying Coins to get those Bux. Spending Coins in this game to make Coins doesn’t have the same problem Tiny Tower does – in this game you can actually influence how much profit you can make by your flight plan for each individual plane. In Tiny Tower, all Coin costs were essentially fixed and could have easily been taken into account so that you wouldn’t have to “spend Coins” to make Coins.

The prices of airports range from 1000 Coins to 75,000 Coins, or maybe less/more. I’m not really inclined to tap a ton of airports to figure out how much they cost. Airplane slot costs slowly increase from about 2000 Coins to infinity. There is a leveling system in place that restricts your maximum amount of airplane slots you can buy (as if you would be able to buy them all) and the amount of airports you can own. Gaining levels gives you extra Bux to use as you please. Once you get to the point where you don’t want to use your one or two passanger planes anymore, you can remove them from service, which go into a repository named the “Hangar.” If you want to put those planes back into service, it costs Bux to do so.

One of the redeeming factors of the game is that it allows you to “collect” all of the planes in the game in your Hangar. It is also pretty cool because they have fun planes like a Starship or Hot Air Balloon. Another cool aspect is that practically every screen allows you to instantly look up Help information in-game if you are sketchy on the details of a particular option. The Help icon in the top right is pretty helpful at times, and is nice to have.

Notifications are also a problem that carries over from Tiny Tower. This game constantly notifies you if you are going in and out of the game. Every time one of your planes land it buzzes to let you know. You can temper the notifications – there are two options: “First & Last Landing” and “All Landings.” You can only disable the notifications if you go into your iPhone’s settings — not something you can do in-game. If you are constantly playing the game you are going to get buzzed quite a bit, and it can become tiresome during those points. There needs to be some sort of way to group up notifications – such as every 30 minutes (or something you can customize) the game should at that point tell you there are “8 planes ready for directions” instead of resetting the “First & Last Landing” counter every time you go into it.

A lot of the art in the game is re-used from Tiny Tower. The art style is basically the same as its predecessor, on account of the recycling, so it meshes well with it. It is nice to look at, but not as upfront humorous as Tiny Tower, since most of the time you’re spending it on menu screens. The sound is also sort of annoying since it is ambient airplane burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. And you can’t make it go away unless you go to an unoccupied airport. Recommend to turn it off, sirs and madams.

Pocket Planes may become as cumbersome as Tiny Tower does later in the game. As you expand airports, you might have a tough time remembering where anything is, and since there isn’t an easy way to figure out how much profit you can get from alternate choices, it may compound even further. You also shouldn’t get smart and try to start having airports randomly across the world – you will start getting requests to go to those airports you can’t reach with your main fleet, so it’s better to expand from your first airport out.

Playing the game for a longer period of time, you tend to hit a “wall” where you can’t buy any more airports or add any more planes to your roster. Gaining Coins is such a cumbersome task that it is hard to gain because your smaller planes only make so much in one delivery run. Expanding to the larger planes is also a difficult prospect, because the “class” of the plane allows it to only land at “bigger” airports. A Class 2 plane can only land in Class 2 or higher Airports, and so on. That means your larger planes won’t visit any Class 1 airport you bought and as a result, you won’t really be making money from a Class 2 plane until you have a lot of Coins. But you can’t make a lot of Coins with smaller planes… unless you grind forever. It is a vicious cycle, and sort of impedes any natural “progression” that you may have. The level restrictions are just an additional unneeded barrier since the thing that is really holding you back is the amount of Coins you earn.

I suppose recommending this game would be something I would do, but it’s not really all that fun, just more attention-inducing than anything else. You kind of wait around a lot and get tons of notifications. There’s a few “meta objectives” that consist of you delivering thousands of jobs and competing in some sort of social competition thing called Flight Crew where you can qualify for bonuses if you achieve a certain mark during an event, but they don’t really change the game that much – it just “inspires” you to play more.

Games like this tend to not be anything more than a time waster. There isn’t any skill involved with playing, and there isn’t any “fun” progression. The natural progression of the game is lassoed by the intent to make you buy Bux, and that is pretty sad. If it weren’t for the endless grind, stability of the app, and the recycled art, Pocket Planes might actually be fun.

Screwed Up Chronicles, World

The Truth About Recycling

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Recycling is not all it’s cracked up to be.  It isn’t going to save our planet by itself, but it does accomplish one thing for sure: it becomes a social burden on society.

We’ve all seen people digging through trash and random dumpsters for cans and bottles.  Those five cents that we couldn’t care less for (it IS why it is in the trash can to begin with) are the major source of income for these types of people.  In and of itself, it isn’t necessarily something that is bad or you have to feel bad about — these people somehow make their way in life by doing what they’re doing.

What recycling does, when taking this into account is create a class of these people who do nothing with their time but scavenge and dig through trash, with little to no assurance that they will make even a dime.  Imagine having to wake up in the morning everyday and go on the same route, checking the same trash cans, day in and day out.  Not only because its necessary, but they have no time to do anything to get out of the situation they are in — otherwise they wouldn’t have to do what they’re doing.

States that charge recycling fees profit big time from recyclables.  They use the noble cause of recycling to charge you an extra tax, a majority of which will never be recovered from recycling.  People then scam the State out of these extra taxes by filling up cans and bottles with sand or something to get higher weights when redeeming their recyclables.  Then the people who receive these items then scam the State even more and bump up their numbers of received recyclables for a bulk rate.  Then these recyclables are sold to major vendors who ship most of their stuff to China to be processed so that it can be re-sold back to us.  Don’t even worry about how most of our recyclables that we toss into the bins is basically “free” money for the waste contractors who employ hundreds of penguins to go through and get all of the recyclables they can.

But this is all very grand and elaborate.  You have to go back to the people who scour the world for recyclables because they have no other forms of income.  It is sad, and if recycling were abolished, then that would force people to not want to carry around 50 pound trash bags full of cans or shopping carts full of bottles.  Recycling may be good for the Earth, but its bad for society.