A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Single Mission menu from Cold Waters, with Junks on Parade selected. © 2017 Killerfish Games   Death in the Taiwan Straits If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I've been playing a cool submarine simulation by Killerfish Games, Cold Waters. Released three years ago by the Australia-based game designer behind Atlantic Fleet, Cold Waters is the spiritual successor to one of my all-time favorite games, Red Storm Rising,  Like that 1988 MicroProse classic based on Tom Clancy's eponymous 1986 novel — which I've written about in both my blogs — Cold Waters puts the player in command of a nuclear-powered attack sub in a hypothetical conflict set in the latter part of the 20th Century. Unlike Red Storm Rising, which posited a Third World War in what would have been the "near future" in 1986, Cold Waters examines three different "alternative histories" set in three different time periods: 1968: In this alternate version of the tumultuous year...

A Soviet warship cruises into battle in Cold Waters. © 2017 Killerfish Games   Greetings, A Certain Point of View readers! Well, it's Friday evening here in my corner of Florida; as I write this, the temperature outside is 88℉ (31℃). With the sun coming down and the wind blowing gently from the north at 5 MPH and humidity at a sticky 67%, the feels-like temperature is 98℉ (37℃). It isn't as hot as it was five hours ago, but it's still not good walking weather, at least not for me. Today was not a productive day here. I went to bed late last night; it was well after midnight when I finished watching two episodes of The War: A Ken Burns Film, that much I know. I'm guessing it was at least 2 AM when I finally hit the sack. I slept well, I think, but because my Significant Other is lax about food shopping, we didn't have milk and we were out of orange juice. As a result, my breakfast - lunch, really - was two slices of pepperoni pizza that someone had taken from the fre...