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Review of The Room VR

Review of The Room VR Rating ****

There are a lot of things to like about this game. I definitely liked having the ability to play seated. Standing is good when you have free motion. It’s not as necessary when it is jump-to-navigation. I can only play standing up for about an hour before my back starts to ache. I also liked the hint system. There is nothing more frustrating than getting stopped in your tracks by a puzzle or not knowing what your next move should be. I especially liked that I didn’t have to stop the game and head online to look for answers. I used hints sparingly. I got stuck once with the lantern, but instead of looking for hints I left the game and came back to it later. I figured out the puzzle the second time around with no problem.

The game offers excellent VR immersion thanks to well-crafted graphics and good use of music and sound effects. You can’t go wrong with this one.

Filed Under: VR

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Three can’t miss docuseries

The three docuseries below all have one thing in common – they each deal with what can happen when there is unchecked power.

First up is the four episodes Showtime docuseries Spector. This series tells the story of Phil Spector’s trial and conviction for the murder of Lana Clarkson. The question from the very beginning is whether or not Spector is guilty. If you look at it strictly from a logical point of view, Spector’s claim that Lana killed herself is ridiculous. The two had met only that evening. She didn’t even know who Phil Spector was. There is no possibility that she just decided on the spur of the moment that she would choose to end her life in a stranger’s house with a driver waiting outside. Spector’s past behavior with guns and his treatment of women all point to someone who was rejected for sex and who had so little respect for human life that he thought nothing of pointing a gun at Lana, sticking the barrel of the gun in her mouth, and pulling the trigger.

There’s more than logic, however, pointing to his guilt. For one, after he shot her, he spent forty-five minutes trying to clean up the crime scene. At no time in that forty-five minutes did he call the police. It was his driver who called, unbeknownst to Spector.

The filmmakers go through Spector’s musical accomplishments, which are noteworthy, but they also give equal treatment to Lana Clarkson. She didn’t deserve what happened to her.

The second can’t miss docuseries is FIFA. This series delves into the corruption scandal at FIFA. It’s especially timely now with the World Cup going on in Qatar, which was susspected of using bribes to get the Worldcup. One question I had throughout was whether or not FIFA President Sepp Blatter was part of the corruption. I kept waiting for the bombshell evidence of Blatter taking or handing out bribes. As it turns out, the only nefarious thing he did was to fire the person he hired to oversee the organization’s ethical standards. He has a level of culpability, but nothing like the dozens of FIFA officials who were later identified. Unfortunately, none of them suffered any consequences.

You can catch this four-part series on Netflix.

This last docuseries is one I inadvertently stumbled upon while channel surfing. It’s called The Vow. This is an HBO series whose first season aired in 2020. I started watching season two and was so enthralled with the story that I had to go back and start with episode one season one.

This docuseries tells the story of NXIVM and it’s founder, Keith Raniere. NXIVM, pronounced Nexium, started as a self-improvement group. It grew into a cult fixated on money, power, and the sexual gratification of Keith Raniere. For all the good that Keith and co-founder Nancy Salzman had in the beginning, helping people overcome personal issues, the cult of personality that developed and the harm that resulted outweighed everything else.

Between season one and season two, there are fifteen episodes. There’s not a single episode that can be considered fluff or filler. This is as suspenseful of a docuseries as you will find. The viewer gets to see the unraveling of NXIVM from the inside out, thanks to the participation of insiders who left the organization and the hundreds of hours of recorded video and audio by long-time member Mark Vicente.

There are many similarities between NXIVM and Scientology. And like Scientology, NXIVM didn’t take kindly to members who bad-mouthed the organization. One person who dared to quit and ask for what they believed was owed them ended up in a multi-year legal battle and over $700,000 in legal fees.

Don’t miss this one.

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Review of Rachel Maddow’s Podcast Ultra

Review of Rachel Maddow’s Podcast Ultra Rating *****

Rachel Maddow’s last podcast, Bagman, was about the corrupt Nixon and Spiro Agnew administration. Her latest podcasts deals with corrupt politicians in the early 1940s. The story she tells parallels the current and recent political climate: Foreign interference in elections, propaganda and misinformation, fascism, anti-semitic speech, autocracy, and the weaponization of the justice department.

As much as I enjoy listening to audiobooks, podcasts offer something more – audio immersion. Rather than set in quotes what was said, a Podcaster can provide the actual speaker making the quote. Add in some music and a few sound effects, and the listening experience is totally different. Rachel makes good use of embedding audio from recent interviews as well as audio from various archives.

The story concerns Germany’s attempt to sway U.S. public opinion toward the Hitler regime using U.S. members of Congress and Senators to spread propaganda. As the facts concerning this seditious activity come to light, those same members of Congress and Senators do everything they can to thwart the investigations that followed.

It’s interesting to hear politicians from the 1940s talking about witchhunts and political hit jobs. There’s even a trial that foreshadows what a prosecution of Trump and his co-conspirators would look like should they ever find themselves in a courtroom facing criminal charges.

As bad as things could have been had these corrupt politicians succeeded, the American people saved democracy when they voted them all out of office. Lastly, the ultra in the title refers to the ultra-right.

Add this podcast to your listening queue. I listened on Spotify. As an added bonus, there is a very informative website containing images of the various people in this story at MSNBC.com/ULtra.

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All The President’s Women

Review of She Said written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and directed by Maria Schrader
Rating *****

In 1976, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford made investigative reporters look cool when they appeared in the movie All The President’s Men. The film, and the book it was based on, tells the story of how two reporters blew the lid off of Nixon’s attempted coverup of Watergate.

You might not know the names Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan, but they played reporters equally as important as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The two New York Times reporters at the center of this story are Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor. Their reporting into sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein led to a book and film titled She Said.

The film She Said made some news recently as a box office bomb due to its poor opening. That’s unfortunate. We need more movies like this. I saw an afternoon show in a theatre with three other people. Despite many scenes involving phone calls, text messages, and computer screens, I’m glad I saw it on the big screen. You don’t have to have explosions or gunfights to tell a compelling story.

Weinstein’s fall was at the front end of a long list of powerful men whose career’s took a nose dive after they were exposed for sexual misconduct. Weinstein, however, is in a class all his own. He spent more time trying to use his influence to coerce women into sex than he did making movies.

See this one while it’s still in theaters. I have a feeling it won’t be available much longer. They need to make room for the next superhero movie.

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How to spot a psychopath

Review of At Any Cost: A Father’s Betrayal, a Wife’s Murder, and a Ten-Year war for justice written by Rebecca Rosenberg and Selim Algar Rating *****

Psychopaths walk among us. They live down the street. They work alongside you. You may even be in a relationship with one. Once you learn the signs to look out for, they’re much easier to spot. Once identified, break off all communications with that individual. Nothing good can come from any interactions with psychopaths.

Rod Colvin

The book At Any Cost tells the story of Shele Danishefsky and Rod Covlin. Shele is a successful businesswoman making a high salary working alongside her father at his Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Group. Rod, on the other hand, can’t keep a job, has an unjustified sense of superiority, and cheats on his wife. Outside observers were able to identify Rod as a psychopath. Unfortunately, Shele didn’t catch on until it was too late.

The two authors, Rebecca Rosenberg and Selim Algar, describe the relationship between Shele and Rod from their first meeting until Shele’s daughter discovers her mom’s lifeless body in her bathtub. The book then follows Shele’s parents’ efforts to hold Rod accountable for their daughter’s death and gain custody of their two grandchildren.

Here’s one sign that you might be dealing with a psychopath. He starts talking about various ways to kill his parents, or when he comes up with hairbrain ideas of involving his daughter in some of his nefarious plans, like having her claim that her grandfather raped her.

I get that someone like Rod doesn’t see anything wrong with dreaming up different ways to kill people. What I can’t understand is how someone upon hearing those plans doesn’t call the police the very first opportunity they have. I’m talking to you, Deborah.

Pysocpaths can be charming. They can even convince people to vote for them. But sooner or later, their true identities will be revealed.

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Review of Wanderer VR

Rating ****

The developers of Wanderer got a lot of things right. There were, however, a few things that could have been better—first, the good. The graphics and sound are excellent. I spent a lot of time just admiring the attention to detail. Every time I put on the headset and loaded up Wanderer, it was total immersion. As the name implies, Wanderer is a time-machine game that lets you explore several different time periods and locations. A few of the locations you will revisit at later dates. A talking watch guides you along the way while providing much-needed tips and hints.

The game is supposed to take ten to twelve hours to complete. I spent over fifty hours. More on that later. The first part of the game is all about getting to your grandfather’s apartment. There are just enough obstacles and puzzles to make the journey challenging. Once there, you’ll discover that all of your time jumps start and end at the apartment. You’ll also learn quickly that many puzzles require objects from other time periods.

The story is a bit convoluted. At the start of the game, the world is suffering from an environmental catastrophe. So, one goal is to prevent this from happening. Or, at least, that’s what I think the goal is. Let’s say the story doesn’t follow a straight line. There are several time periods that require guns and a bow and arrow. Here’s a hint. You can’t shoot your way out of a situation. I could have saved myself a lot of time had I known that.

As for what could have been better. I would have liked a save game option. There is an auto-save function, but it doesn’t always save the game where you would want it saved. There seemed to be a lot of emphasis on something called resonating objects. I did not resonate every object. I also never saw any use for an object that had been resonated. You will, however, find a need to increase your wrist storage capacity. That’s how you carry objects between time jumps. At least three or four puzzles required a search online for the solution. The spinning disks puzzle with the frog was one of them. Another was the light puzzle for the time machine vials. I enjoy the satisfaction of solving a challenging puzzle. I have the opposite reaction to puzzles that halt me in my tracks for hours on end.

One puzzle I enjoyed at first was the drum sequence at Woodstock. It was fun the first five or six times I tried it. It wasn’t so much fun after the thirtieth and fortieth try. The solution was to choose to play the drums as an amateur. I had to go online to figure out how to do that.

If you’re looking for an immersive VR game with a good mix of puzzles and a little gunplay, you can’t go wrong with Wanderer. I’ll be back for Wanderer 2.