Angry Sascha is angry.

Some games make me angry, others don’t. Tale of Tales’ The Path resides, comfortably sheltered in a motherly embrace, in the second category. “Little Red Riding Hood” provokes fond memories, not the least as the name of my defunct cover band, but I digress. In this case, you’re in for a serious ride. Molestation included. As The Path says: “There’s only one rule. Stay on the path. The only way to win this game is by breaking said rule.” Or something. I can’t remember as I’m sitting in my shirt&ascot and tremble with fear.

This game has balls, even though the protagonists are all girls of various ages. Ages as in kids-growing-up, not a history lesson. Fine by me. All of ’em have to get to grandma’s house and all of them are bleeding idiots for straying from The Path. Probably because the player, i.e. yours truly, is supposed to make them do so. After all, you’ll only see the SUCCESS! badge – in childlike scrawling – onscreen if you’ve actually found The Wolf. You know. Man. The Male Principle expressing itself through its primary sexual organ. Ironic, isn’t it? Me, of a distinct male persuasion, leading girls to their doom because that’s the only way to progress in the game? And feeling like a major shit about it, too? That’s art, I tell you.

At least, that’s my personal interpretation of The Path. A game, I should mention, that has reaped prizes galore for being a “work of art,” so I might not be that far off. Even though I find it questionable that no boy victims characters are present. I smell the reek of simplified reality.

But bloody hells is it creepy.

I mean, you have these six girls, and you lead them through the forest. If you go straight through, guiding them savely to their grandmother’s bed, you’ll get a cut scene and a bloody huge FAILED! If you explore the woods, you’ll find golden stuff that adds up to 144. But to win each level, you’ll need to encounter perverted bastards The Wolf. You have to make them girls suffer! To make you suffer and think about all those people who actually experienced similar things in real-life.

Games as a means to public awareness? Certainly a game not meant for lightheaded entertainment.

At least not regarding the topic. The game is entertaining in a weird sort of way. You know. The same reason you watch Horror movies late at night and then complain about your having nightmares. Getting scared is fun. This game scares the bejeezus out of you, just to make you feel bad about it afterwards, too. At least if you’re a wolf man.

Not for the faint of heart. Or rather, not for the faint of imagination as The Path isn’t graphic, it isn’t violent. It’s, well, creepy, thought-provoking, and bloody scary. Figures it took a woman to pull this off. It’s only about a tenner and well worth the money, but for chrissakes, if you’ve been abused, do not download even the demo!

I just hope more people will pay them Indy Developers. Because, seriously – would you rather have disturbing games about childhood rape or the next Harry Potter fly-about? If the quality of indy games is on par with The Path, I know what I’d choose. It’s about bloody time games lost their childish aura. And Tale of Tales are right in the middle of it.

Serious stuff. For adults. With brains. And a heart. What more could you want?

Today, the Böögg exploded after only 12:54 minutes. Therefore, Zurich’s Sächsilüüte is considered a full success, on par with last year’s, and you people probably don’t have the foggiest what the hells I am talking about. I’ll have to elaborate, then. Here goes:

As in many other European countries, Switzerland features a distinctly pointless spring tradition: the Sächsilüüte (“six o’clock chiming”). A gigantic representation of winter past in the form of a fat white bloke (the Böögg, engl. “booger”) is placed on top of a huge pyre, which is set fire to at the sixth chime of some famous church bells (lüüte and sächsi). The Böögg is also stuffed with explosives. The time elapsing from setting fire to the pyre and the Böögg’s head exploding is supposed to tell you what sort of summer is in for you – the shorter the wait, the more pleasant the summer.

In short: Sumer is icumen in with horses instead of farting bucks.

This endearing tradition reminiscent of 17th century witch executions is accompanied by the top nobs of Zurich, organised in 26 men-only Guilds, holding a parade in colourful tights and tricone hats, gracefully waving at the commoners in the streets. The parade takes some three to four hours, and culminates in the Guilds’ riding in circles around the stake of the Böögg until his shredded remains litter the grounds and they have to stop. Much alcohol is involved, too, and everybody in the greater expansion of Zurich gets half a day off to celebrate this happy occasion.

Needless to say, most younger people don’t give a bugger about tradition and leave Zurich as fast as they can to get drunk elsewhere. Rumours that the Sächsilüüte was the prototype for modern gay pride parades may seem a bit far-fetched, but considering there’s hardly any women around and those fancy pants make the gentry look rather dashing – you get the idea. Have I mentioned they also throw sweets and flowers all over the place?

Anyway. A bloody enormous exploding snow man told me that Switzerland is in for a nice summer, so I won’t argue and just lie back and look forward to June. I wonder whether this means that the rest of Europe will have dreadful weather, Switzerland not being in the EU et al, but unfortunately the meteorological proficiency of burning straw and wood doesn’t seem to reach quite that far.

Thanks a bunch, Adobe. You had heard the cries of pain, mostly from Windows users, thus Reader 8.x: Much faster! And later, Reader 9.x: Even faster!

But where did those speed improvements come from? Apparently mostly from trial-and-error rendering of Postscript-flavoured (OpenType) fonts. Ironic, sort of, considering you guys pushed Postscript to begin with. But TTF-flavoured fonts still display just fine.

But hey, it’s not a biggie, is it? Just use web fonts or the € 600 Acrobat Pro package to generate PDF documents. Thus, all obscure hinting information necessary for proper font rendering will be included. Never mind documents generated with other PDF writers showed up perfectly in Reader 6 and 7, and still do so with alternatives such as Foxit or Apple’s Preview. Who cares about alternatives anyway?

You’re smarter than this … You are perfectly aware of the fact that 99 % of end-users read PDF documents with your software. Hence people producing loads of for-screen PDFs require both your software and 600 bloody Euros to make sure customers won’t throw up over their keyboards when opening invoices or letters. At least them invoices and letters that include serif Postscript fonts.

I am deeply humbled by this display of sheer ingenuity. PDF is a rather open format? Well, let’s make sure only documents generated with our stuff displays fine with our stuff. Microsoft should avert their eyes, blinded by your glorious rip-off dedication to deliver integrated solutions.

Ya, the Moloch called Pharma eats its kids. Alive. Or dying, for that matter, because it likes to pull the legs of depressives and other psycho cases, hoping for some bells to go ringadidingding.

Bells that say: Money! Lotsa Money!

So, rather than taking your SSRI et al, feeding Pharma Moloch, you’re looking for alternatives. Such as …

… Dietary supplements.

Damn them physiological facts! Them vitamin capsules can’t properly be absorbed by my body so they wash out through my kidneys and intestine? But hey, I don’t feed Pharma Moloch! And anyways, who says they can’t work? Big Brother Pharmaceuticals™, naturally! Forget about hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific studies saying the same thing. Pharma! Because, well, they fear for their income from anti-depressants and anxiety drugs! You know, those drugs you need a prescription for and, hence, aren’t sold nearly as ubiquitous as them mineral-vitamin complexes with funky names and colourful packaging!

It’s just basic logic that the evil pharma complex won’t dream of selling their own dietary supplements, in billions of doses per year, without any control by health services. No, naturally they rather want to peddle their evil chemical drugs that require a physician to sign a slip of paper and drug stores to, well, store them bad boys in a lockbox rather than putting them next to the teller.

It’s a conspiracy, I tell you. Pharma Moloch doesn’t want easy money, he wants to eat his customers. Alive and … wriggling.

Cooking a herring rather than swallowing them Omega-3 capsules each day? And what’s wrong with my vitamin C supplement? Hey, they treat cancer with that stuff! D’accord, via infusions and not using pills, but that’s besides the point! I read this book by this European dude nobody outside the Circle of Illuminated has ever heard of! That dude that is wrongly accused of killing people through malpractise. Wrongly! He can’t be wrong! He’s one dude against the mighty

MOLOCH!

Yeah. Right.

How better to commemorate the Nazarene’s rebirth than with a Zombie flick marathon on TV? But no, we get Quo Vadis, too many Temptations of the Christ, the odd stupid Gibson movie, and cartoons.

We want zombies!

I call 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, and Shaun of the Dead. With a side order of Raimi, Romero and Fulci. Okay, Life of Brian isn’t to be avoided either. BRAAAAINS. Err, Brians. Anyway:

You got red on you!

Seriously. Why didn’t they play Die Hard on Good Friday? You do want to cater for your audience, no?

Your mother ate my dog! So, yeah. Giev Zombies. Now.