I guess the zombie genre is an easy one for writers. For some writers, they deal with difficult characters by killing them off. Not getting rid of them somehow seems pretty difficult to me provided there's no magic in the story. There are many ways to removing characters but killing is:
1) dramatic
2) perfect for tying up any related lose ends
3) able to give closure to the reader so that he won't have any lingering doubts after the story ends
The zombie genre gives writers this choice at any given moment, even when things are perfectly safe.
For games, this has an additional benefit.
The thing with options in a game is that it causes the story to grow branches. If I pick A, the story goes this way. If B, that way. More choices, more branches. Eventually you're going to get an entire tree. Imagine how many difference scenarios the voice actors would have to go through and how much more animation the developers would have to create.
By killing off characters, the writer ensures that the branches do not continue to split till they get out of control. Whenever it's going to get messy, they snip off a character to keep things neat.
That, I feel, was exactly what happened the Walking Dead game I just finished. After reading the synopsis on Wikipedia (full of spoilers), I realized (slightly to my disappointment) that all roads led to Rome. The difference is in how they went.
But anyways, I probably should have waited till Season 2 is out before playing it. There's something of a cliffhanger in the end and I don't like cliffhangers.
This game won excellent reviews and awards for each of the 5 episodes, so getting it for just 50% off was a very good deal IMO. Anyway, the Steam discount is back to 25% for the rest of this sale, so it's going to get that (or maybe 66%, because I don't see it hitting 75% this year at all) again only in the Christmas sale.
Home was a nice distraction from the lingering thoughts about the Walking Dead game.
Supposed to be horror and it kept me tense all the way. I stopped bracing whenever I opened doors after a while. I guess it takes more than simple atmosphere to keep a player that tense.
The next time I play, it's not going to feel like a horror game anymore.
Anyways, short game, nicely made, very much worth the US$1.01 I spent on it. 66% off wasn't ok for a game I wasn't really looking out for but it didn't make sense for me to wait till it hits 75%. The difference of 9% would only have been US$0.27.
Planning to get a printer that can handle fax, scan, copy and print from my iPad and most brochures and people recommended the Brother MFC 7860, which also does PC fax, an unnecessary function for me.
Then I found that the MFC 7360 could do all of those functions at S$100 less.
The difference is that it requires third-party apps to print from the tablet.
So I tried and managed to get Cortado Workplace working... except everything I printed was extremely small. Words were tiny and images were shrunk.
No way to get it working properly.
I could probably use my old Acer laptop as a proxy somehow easily but I didn't want to rely on it at all. The motherboard's battery is already screwed so who knows when it's going to die.
Looks like I'm going to have to spend the extra $100.
I initially wanted an inkjet like my home's. Well, before that I wanted a printer to replace my home's so that I could use the older printer for work.
Then I learnt that laser printers cost less in the long run due to cheaper toner vs expensive ink.
To reduce the cost, I settled for monochrome - colour would have needed another $100. I didn't need colour anyway since I now show images through my iPad. All I needed was really a fax machine that I could occasionally print stuff through from my tablet.
Still, $350 for this is going to be a major expense for my business. I have doubts but my old fax machine is in need of repair. I have only a vague idea how to get someone to repair it and I don't want to have to hunt down the paper and ink when they finally run out. I heard they were expensive and I know they aren't easy to find.
Might as well get the MFC, a machine I'm more comfortable with. Plus it comes with 3 years onsite warranty and 2 more limited carry-in.
I could have also got this machine for about $150 less on Amazon but that lacked the warranty. Somehow I feel safer with lots of that when it comes to machines for my work.
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