Author: Alex Diaz-Granados
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Diving Deep Into ‘Cold Waters’: First Combat Missions!
As I continue to explore the many features of Cold Waters, the 2017 submarine simulation developed by the Australian game developer Killerfish Games, I have finally gone beyond Training and moved on to Single Mission combat mode. After three days of trying out most of the tutorial missions in the game – which its designers…
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Retro Review: ‘Red Storm Rising’ by MicroProse
If you’re a regular visitor to A Certain Point of View, Too, you might have read my posts about a new computer game that I’ve been playing over the past few days. It’s called Cold Waters, a game that puts you in command of a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered fast attack sub during a hypothetical Third…
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‘Cold Waters’: First Impressions
Although Cold Waters boasts sophisticated graphics and an immersive sound design that blends music, sound effects, and voice acting that is light-years beyond anything that Sid Meier and his design team at the old MicroProse could achieve in the late 1980s, there is a lot of Red Storm Rising in its cyber-DNA. They both put…
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Old Gamers Never Die: From ‘Red Storm Rising’ to ‘Cold Waters’
Back in the 1990s, when I first bought my first MS-DOS-based personal computer, I used to play many military-themed simulations and strategy games. Most of them were designed and published by MicroProse Software of Hunt Valley, MD, which was founded by Sid Meier and William “Wild Bill” Stealey in 1982. Although Sid Meier’s Civilization is…
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Random Thoughts & Musings for July 2, 2020, or: Finding Bits of Bliss in Troubled Times
Well, here we are on July 2, 2020, a few short days before the Fourth of July weekend and the fifth – or is it sixth?- month of the global pandemic caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19. And because we live in a troubled and extremely divisive period exacerbated by…
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Music Album Review: ‘Superman: The Movie – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack’
Hi, there, Constant Reader! Well, here we are on the first day of July 2020, and in my corner of Florida all is tranquil at home on a hot early summer afternoon. Presently, the temperature outside is a sizzling 94˚F; with humidity at 56% and a westerly breeze of 11 mph, the heat index is…
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Home Media Comparison: ‘A Bridge Too Far’ DVD vs. Blu-ray
A Bridge Too Far on Home Media When producer Joseph E. Levine’s $25 million adaptation of Cornelius Ryan’s non-fiction book A Bridge Too Far landed in theaters on June 15, 1977, home media as we know it today was in its infancy. Videocassette recorders existed, of course, but they were still mostly used by the…
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Movie Review: ‘A Bridge Too Far’
Lt. Gen. Horrocks: [briefing his XXX Corps officers on Operation Market Garden] Gentlemen, this is a story that you shall tell your grandchildren, and mightily bored they’ll be. [the officers laugh] The plan is called “Operation Market Garden”. “Market” is the airborne element, and “Garden”, the ground forces. That’s us. [points to a map behind him of Holland, showing…
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Book Review: ‘The Last Battle’
All art, no matter what the medium might be, is a product of the times in which it is created. A 1950s-era novel like Elliott Arnold’s Flight from Ashiya, for instance, will resonate with readers or movie buffs who remember director Michael Anderson’s 1964 adaptation, but it will still reflect the concerns and issues of…
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Life in the Time of COVID-19: Rugged Individualism or Self-Centeredness? or: Why America Can’t Flatten the Curve
So what’s next? Ban wearing the color of blue? Or black or red? No more stripes? Plaid only Tuesdays? Why do we have politicians that do not understand what the constitution is. Some sheep are all for this. Give me a ticket and I am suing for violations of my constitutional rights. – Jennifer W., conservative…
