Smith's Shorter Sagas

Completed: 24 Apr. 2025 Grade: A This was a surprisingly good game. I have long had a small interest in dinosaurs, but never really pursued that interest in great detail. I often saw this Dinosaur park builder on sale for the Switch, and so had put it on my want list, and recently decided to pull the trigger when it was available for about $5. The game's campaign mode takes the player through an easy progression to learn the mechanics at a satisfying, but not overwhelming pace. The dinosaur models are fun, and the combination of trying to find fossils to get 'Dino DNA,' piece together gene sequences, and even manipulating them to bring out certain traits is fun on its own. But then there is the extra challenge of trying to make sure the environment for the dinosaurs is enough to keep them docile, and to also satisfy the needs of guests visiting the park.  This was a great game to play while also watching television in the evening. As such, I racked up over 105 hours in the ...

Completed: Feb. 22, 2025 Grade: A+ This was a fantastic story game. My only gripe is that sometimes I was unsure of my objectives, and that early on I didn’t realize I had more time to getter evidence (but I worked this out as the game went on). Otherwise, there is so much to like about this, particularly as it appeals to my background of being a Medievalist. The game takes place in the midst of the upheavals of the later Middle Ages that ushers in the renaissance. The Reformation is starting, as is the printing press, and humanistic research into the past all play background roles in the lives of the small Bavarian town of Tassing. The creators of the game really did some excellent research into the time period, and this plays out in the character actions and visuals (such as the use of different handwriting to denote status, and even how the characters walk!). The game is essentially a murder mystery that the player attempts to solve by finding evidence and interviewing the townsp...

Date Completed: 10 Apr., 2025 Grade: B- This is quite the improvement from he first volume. The highlight for me would be Marvel Fanfare #10-13. This seemed more like the classic spy story I expected from Black Widow and didn't get from the first volume. The Daredevil/Black Widow: Abattoir graphic novel was also good, with some great artwork. The other stories ranged from okay to bad, that mostly suffer because this is mostly a collection of one shots, with some random elements added to the Widow's background with little continuity. I did appreciate the one-page introduction which fills in the Black Widow's story from her stint in Daredevil and the Champions, but in a way I'm sad these didn't make it into their own collection. I guess the Daredevil issues can be found in the Daredevil epics, and it suggests that there will be a Champions epic at some point.

A challenge I have had with cataloguing my coin collection is how to best photograph my coins. For the longest time I used a digital 'point and shoot' camera that I would take with my on vacations, since it had a higher MegaPixel count than my phone. I recently upgraded to an iPhone 15 Pro, which supposedly had a 48 MegaPixel camera. And yet, coin photography with the iPhone camera still wasn't great. Old Photo Set-Up The difficulty with my phone photos has been controlling the focus, as usually one part of the coin would be in focus, but the other parts out of focus. Focus Stacking (where multiple images are taken, at different focal lengths, then merged together) seemed like an ideal solution. I had been aware of Focus Stacking for some time, but could never find a good program on my phone to use; and when I had found a good program, I had no way to merge the images, unless I tried to do it manually. Well, after leaving the matter for some time, I decided to do some diggi...

Date Completed: 30 Mar. 2025 Grade: B- The "Blood and Thunder" crossover is something that I remember encountering when I was young and first getting into comics. I never read the whole thing, but I had a couple of the comics which had the distinctive cover images which denoted them as being part of this long epic crossover. I decided that I would try to find all of the issues that belong to the crossover before reading it. Of course, this never happened, so while I was familiar with the event, this is my first time reading it. I was honestly a little surprised with how much this volume went back to the well of earlier Thor issues. The "Blood and Thunder" event even went back to what I thought was one of the more ridiculous parts of the Lee/Kirby era, which was the idea of "Warrior Madness" which Thor (supposedly) contracts. As such, Thor was actually the villain for most of the event, which instead focused on the Infinity Watch trying to stop him. After t...

Completed: 29 Mar. 2025 Grade: B- I've decided Kirby games are the right thing to play during the Spring time. Probably because of the pastel coloring and its association with Easter, but also because this is a tough time of the school year, and so an easier and relatively mindless game is welcomed. Kirby Star Allies was a fun little adventure which had the typical Kirby abilities, copied by swallowing enemies, and a silly progression to epic proportions. The gimmick for this outing was the ability to turn enemies into allies, have them fight alongside, and then combine powers together. The power combining was interesting, but sometimes difficult to trigger, and was usually only helpful with a power which emulated a weapon (such as the sword or cutter abilities), which encouraged me to favor those powers over elemental powers (Such as fire or freezing). I wish I had played through some of the other Kirby games before getting to this one. While I have played some, Star Allies felt l...

Date Completed: 17 Mar. 2025 Grade: C A few caveats before I begin. Firstly, I did not intend on reading this Omnibus at two different times. However, as I was reading through it, I noticed that it essentially collected four trade paperbacks that Dynamite had published separately, and as I was nearing the end of the second of those two TPBs, I was getting a little bored. Having learned from previous experience, that if I get too bored I might fall off this push to read, I decided to just split this in two, and read the second half at the end of my next rotation. My second caveat is that I wasn't planning on reading the Red Sonja books. I've been trying to prevent myself from expanding too far away from the Marvel Epic lines until I read through a bit more (and lord knows there are other books I'd like to try... but discipline is needed!). However, as I was reading through the classic Conan books, there was a crossover with Red Sonja's own title that I enjoyed, and the R...