JYB MAILBAG

On balance, blogging is a decent way to spend one's time. Sure, you have to deal with the occassional troll, the odd hatemail and the sporadic death threat. The latter usually come from closet nutjobs toiling away in German IT firms, so they don't bug me much. As long as they stay on their side of the pond, anyway.

But blogging has its perks. In the snailmailbag, this blog just got some goodies. Terrorist Takedown, a new arcade shoot-em-up that puts players in helicopters and humvees on the front lines of an unnamed Middle Eastern sandbox, showed up about a week ago. It's a difficult but fun game, with a satisfying number of baddies to, well, take down. The graphics are quite good and with enough detail to keep things lively. I especially like the sunlight effects. The audio quality is solid, though the game could use a bit of polish here and there. It isn't Splinter Cell, but it isnt' trying to be. It's a rail-based arcade shooter similar to the Rebel Assault games, but with less of a story to get in the way.

I have to say it has felt a little shady playing a video game about intense battles against terrorists while our Marines are living that battle in Fallujah, but it's all for a good cause: Five percent of the proceeds from sales will go to benefit the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. According to its web site, SOWF "provides college scholarship grants, based on need, along with financial aid and educational counseling to the children of Special Operations personnel who were killed in an operational mission or training accident." So Terrorist Takedown is a pretty fun game, it harbors absolutely no nuance about who the bad guys are and aren't, and its success will help families of those brave men who have made the ultimate sacrifice for us. As a shoot-em-up, it satisfies while it frustrates. If I can manage to get a few levels into the game I'll write up a more extensive review of it, but the darn thing is tough. It's inexpensive by today's game standards, at $20.

Oh, and watch out for gun jams. They happen at the most inopportune moments. I haven't been in combat myself, but I do think the designers managed to get that particular detail right.

I also got some reading material in the JYB snailmailbag tonight. Steven Vincent's In the Red Zone showed up. I'm only a few pages in, but I can already tell it's a page-turner. Vincent spent about four months as a freelance writer in Iraq last fall and this past spring. He traveled on his own, on a mission to see for himself what was going on in post-Saddam Iraq. Obviously such a stunt could have gotten him killed any number of times, but he managed to survive. I would recommend that no one out there try and duplicate his journey. Just read the book. Vincent is a terrific writer and so far he is bringing a kind of Kiplingesque quality to his travelogue. I'll write up a more thorough take once I've finished it, but it's already on the streets if you want to pick up a copy of your own. It looks like it's going to be worth reading.