Ideas for the future. And also Star Trucker.
I have been playing some Star Trucker, and it is good. More of that in a few minutes.
I mentioned, briefly, in the last post (email? newsletter?) sent out to you all that I would like to try and write a little more. Well, here we go. I'm not sure if I'm committing to a schedule exactly, just yet at least. But I do have some ideas that I would like to share with you.
First of all, as I've mentioned briefly here and there, I am working on a book on video games and history. I have a lot of ideas scratched out in various places but the rubber is hitting the road and it is time to put together a book proposal. I thought I might share some of the thought processes in that project and maybe some ideas, if that's helpful.
Also, unlike my other books, I think this project is going to produce a lot of writing - largely free writing type stuff - that won't be needed in the final manuscript. Maybe some of these ideas will become journal articles, but certainly in rough form I might share them here. Ultimately a lot of the things I write for this newsletter do come from those ideas, or lead to them after; I figure why not talk about them a bit more directly?
Secondly, I have had a lot of fun with how this newsletter works. I am usually writing about games that interest me; some posts take things in a more specific direction in terms of ideas or how I might use the games in a classroom setting, some don't. I am still okay with that... balance, I guess I would call it. Mostly because I cannot think of a better word right now. But hopefully you will continue enjoying reading these posts as much as I like writing them.
So that will be the blueprint. More explicit posts about my attempts to wrangle a lot of... ideas... into a book; and probably a lot of commentary on trucker related games.
Well, Star Trucker anyway, at least this week. I am back on the Xbox Gamepass train, and it's going better maybe than it ever has before. I'm playing a fair bit of Avowed, and Star Trucker is slowly inching its way into my life. I like it so far, Star Trucker - not that I'm shocked. It's one of those games that landed on my Steam wishlist quite a while ago now, and every sale gets me closer and closer. I knew it was like American/Euro Truck Simulator, but also unlike those games; it turns out the ways in which it is similar and the ways in which it is dissimilar are just what I wanted.
It's a funny, finicky little game. To move from one area to the next you have to line up in front of jump gates, and then pull down a specific lever in your cab to make the jump. Having been interrupted, by about twenty-four hours, between the game teaching me this and my actual needing to do it, I completely forgot the lever part. Turns out I am not the only person on the Internet who did.
If, like me, you are just too rock and roll to be contained by the space highways and just want to travel in a straight line, your truck is going to get hit by debris. At which point you don your spacesuit, head outside, and hold the left mouse button. There's quite a bit of PC vibes in this game; whereas I like to play American Truck Simulator quite stripped down, almost entirely with the controller, I prefer Star Trucker with a keyboard. Not least so I can use the CB space radio thing and feel like a boss.
I wonder if I'll get derailed soon though. My hull integrity is, um, not great. And the first tutorial chain appears to have drawn me into smuggling, which is not doing well for my nerd trucker vibes. I like getting things to their places on time, thanks very much. Maybe with a podcast on in the background.
Despite being perhaps a little systems heavy in some ways (I'm getting worried about my power cell supply, too - I seem to need... eight of them at a time?) Star Trucker is particularly beguiling when it's basically an easier version of other space games. The docking camera works REALLY well. I am reversing my space truck like a boss. Is this what I was supposed to feel like bringing my ship into dock in Elite: Dangerous? Is this how people feel when they park the truck for full XP in American Truck Simulator? Maybe I'll never know. Maybe this is enough. 3D space also works really well in this game. So far station areas are relatively horizontally organized, but getting from one point of interest to the other typically involves lovely, leisurely swoops through space up and around corners. It's lovely.
I'll need to play more to get a sense of what this game is trying to do with its theme. Obviously the theme is "space trucker", but I'm most reminded of Starcraft/Starcraft 2, when some good 'ole (space)boys needed their confederate asses whupped by a good good 'ole (space)boy and his pals. This universe is full of southern American accents that kind of exist, but don't really, all in service of the idea of a basically well run place full of people just getting by. Or livin'. It's a relatively benign type of Americana, and it's laid on thick enough but not terribly deep to give the game an identity, which is all it really needs to do. The US-style interstate signs linking parts of the galaxy feels just about the right level of "we did this because it felt right, just go with it". Which I can appreciate.
I know some reviewers got a bit worn down by having to maintain the truck, so we'll see how that goes. My time with the game has been limited in part because I just want to sit down and play it for five hours, and I'm not sure if I'm going to spend five hours in a row playing any game this decade. Star Trucker demands I chill and get on the radio and move some stuff. At least so far. And that's all I needed it to be. Also it's in space.