Once again I bring you a review of a movie you’ve probably either already seen or don’t care to in my typical timely fashion of waiting for things to come out for “free” on demand of a movie channel.  This time it’s the 2011 remake / prequel of The Thing.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much.  These days remakes are about all that we seem to be able to come up with.  Ideas aren’t fresh, and crappy computer generated graphics fill in for traditional special effects, committing great sins upon the viewers.  Most of the time the remakes not only don’t even try to adhere to the original canon, but often rail against it, trying to make them new and fresh … or something … often resulting in turning what was a brilliant plot into a bad one.

So yeah, that said…

I have to say, I was surprisingly impressed!

The 2011 prequel to The Thing was obviously done with great thought and care.  The painstaking effort to do it right oozed from every orifice.  The plot wasn’t overly amped-up to cater to the modern Short Attention Span Theater youth.  The integrity to remain in the style of the original showed through.  You could even tell that they avoided all things digital.  It’s funny to think that, but just in watching The Thing it was fascinating to realize how much better it looked than modern movies do.  So it didn’t surprise me at all to read afterwards while writing this blog that it was shot on actual film.  It shows.  In a good way.  As a geek normally I’m a proponent of the Digital Era, but honestly film stock still looks better.  Digital is cheaper and easier, sure, but if I had to make a great movie, I’d still recommend avoiding it after watching The Thing.

And the feel of the The Thing just really felt like it belonged with the original.  If you didn’t know any better you’d have thought much of it was the same set.  The pace was in line.  The story was … well, a believable extension.  I mean an alien spaceship and a all was a tad corny, but honestly, what really can you do?  Other than maybe a meteorite or something, there’s not all that much to work from there.  And the acting was actually impressive.  No one was over the top or ridiculous.  It was like everyone was in the groove.  And the art direction, man, was that amazing.  You’d be hard pressed to find better gruesome creativity in graphic novels or video games.  It pushed right up to the very edge of nasty freaky without going over the top into stupid.  All in all, it was all good.

But the best part of all were the special effects.  You could just tell how much of the fx were done by traditional methods.  It was well worth the effort.  I mean I hate to say it, but even this many years after Jurassic Park we still can’t make believably real computer-generated graphics, at least not to my eyes, in spite of the fact that computers are upteen thousand times more powerful now.  CG just always shows through and relying on it heavily instead of using it to touch up minor things just stinks up any scene.  So the less a movie relies upon computers, the better that movie is IMHO.  Which is one of the many great things about The Thing, that they used so many traditional physical special effects instead of just CGing it to death.

About the only two detractions from the entire movie, in my opinion, were the little arm aliens that crossed that line into the ridiculous, and the size of the alien spaceship used by only one alien.  Though the fact that the alien which had abandoned the ship after the crash was able to get the ship back up and running so easily was also a bit of a plot gaff, but that one at least was an acceptable one.

Anyway, to sum up my thoughts on the 2011 The Thing, I haven’t enjoyed a movie that much in years.  I give it five creepy alien metamorphs out of five.

I think everyone involved deserves a pat on the back.  And if you haven’t seen it yet because you hate modern remakes of classics or you thought there was no where else to go with The Thing, give this one a try.  You should be pleasantly surprised.  I wish I’d given it the benefit of the doubt sooner.

So I’ve unpacked enough to set up my “office” in the apartment and crank up the ol’ PC.  So now I can get around to writing on my blog once more.  Huzzah!

Which brings us to the first topic on my mind then, AT&T U-Verse.  What is it?  Is it all that it’s cracked up to be?

Well, AT&T U-Verse is basically just your every day cable/internet/phone bundle from AT&T.  It’s “fiber optic”.  Which basically means DSL in fancy-speak.  Yep, ye olde phone line is what powers U-Verse.  And your cable channels?  IPTV of course!  At least that’s near as I can figure anyway.  I didn’t opt for the phone option, as my cellphone is sorely underutilized as it is, so I don’t know if U-Verse uses VOIP or honest to goodness regular analog phone like old DSL options did.  Either way doesn’t much matter.  The point is thanks to companies like Tektronix, we’re able to find ways to push crappy old lines to data rates never even remotely dreamed of.  That crappy old DSL technology that couldn’t even remotely compete with cable … now can!

Mostly.

First, the caveat.  The setup in my apartment is not ideal.  Let me just say that my apartment complex, The Landmark at Hatchery Hill, has been somewhat less than ideal so far in that the apartment has a plethora of niggling problems and so far hasn’t even acknowledged that they should maybe get around to fixing any of the problems on the move-in checklist.  The apartment manager happily checked off the whole list as all ok, only for us to find 36 real issues.  From cosmetic “small hole in wall” type things, to water damage, mildew damage, shower door problems, phone jack broken, missing screws in electrical covers, etc.  Some things we’ve fixed ourselves out of necessity.  Everything else is a nuisance, but “livable”.  One such obvious hindrance is that broken phone jack in the living room, where our main TV is, not to mention my “office” where both my wife’s computer and my own reside.  So the primary TV and internet usage is in the room with the broken phone line on what is essentially a DSL-based service.  It brings out both the good and the bad of AT&T-s U-Verse.

That caveat stated, first let’s look at the good:  AT&T was able to provide us with a wireless setup.  I don’t just mean Wi-Fi.  I mean a wireless TV signal as well.  The secondary TV in the bedroom is actually set up as primary TV as far as AT&T is concerned.  It gets the wireless router with built in DSL modem.  And it gets the actual DVR.  And to connect to the living room box, it gets a wireless TV antenna connected via ethernet cable to the router.

In the living room we get a wireless TV box that takes that wireless TV signal (effectively one heck of a good wireless router system I guess, on a different bandwidth I hope) and gives us TV.  As a fortuitous surprise, the wireless TV box in the living room also has a network port which I have successfully glommed all of our living room’s networking off of!  I wasn’t expecting that, but it’s been a life-saver since the wireless router has to be in the bedroom in this broken-jacked apartment.  (At least until maintenance finally gets around to doing something about it.)  And that all works.  (Though I have not tested the networking speeds.  They seem quite good, which again suggests that this isn’t a simple Wi-Fi system delivering the wireless TV signal.)

And, like any modern system, you can access your recorded shows on your DVR from the other boxes as well.  So that’s something.

The TV boxes are pretty good in theory.  They have HDMI jacks and even component and composite wires and stereo analog and optical digital audio.  They have coax.  Great!

Now, the less-than-good and the bad.

Yes, the TV boxes all support High Definition.  Almost.  It’s everything that you could ask for in a box, really.  …Except 1. no pass-through and 2. no 1080p.  You read that right, in this day and age, where HD can practically be taken for granted because the standard is so old by now, and we’re all wondering when the next iteration of HD is coming, AT&T limits you to 1080i at best.  That’s pretty sad.  Not life-endingly sad, but certainly not the best technology can offer … has been offering for many years now.  I suspect this is how AT&T broadcasts their HD signals, so even if the box supported 1080p you’d still be stuck with a 1080i signal.  I have no proof, but that’s my guess.  It does significantly cut down the bandwidth after all, even if it is a less-than-ideal technology.

Speaking of substandard technologies, so is AT&T’s wireless router.  It’s an IEEE 802.11 b/g standard with minimal security.  Yes, you read that right.  My personal ancient router is a b/g/n, and AT&T is still pushing g as their standard?  Not only that, but my ancient router has real firewall feature built in and takes security seriously.  AT&T’s router?  Not so much.  So that’s why I have (and likely will keep it that way) my own router as the main point of connection for all of my PCs, wired and wireless.

And while it’s been claimed that we can watch four shows at once, that simply isn’t true.  DVR three HD shows for the same time slot and the thing wigs out and forces us to switch to viewing one of those three shows – at the recording.  It doesn’t even let us watch the channel that it’s recording like my old crappy Frontier cable box would let us do simply at the press of a button.  It forces us to switch to the DVR and watch the recorded show.  Three.  Not four.  Three.

And now for the real kicker, how does AT&T’s wireless TV connection handle every-day life?  Not flawlessly, that’s for sure.  Even with all bars allegedly present, indicating the best possible signal strength, AT&T’s wireless U-Verse TV is … flawed.  It likes to just plain drop its connection on average of once a day.  And I don’t just mean skip for a second.  I don’t mean lag.  I mean flat out FUBAR drop to where the box, after a minute of no signal, finally reboots itself.  (Or if you’re impatient, you get up and yank the power cable out of it to hard-boot it because the box completely stops responding during this time so you can’t soft-boot it.)  Thank goodness this isn’t the DVR!

It did that before I even had my own wireless router plugged in.  Before anything was even using the network at all actually.  Just pure TV, epically failing once a day.  And for the record, those other lags and brief second-long drops happen too, much more regularly.  You’d think you were on an ancient satellite TV system, you get so many flaws.  The only reason that I put up with it instead of cancelling the service is because eventually, when the apartment complex finally fixes my phone jack, I’ll be switching the boxes around so that the wired TV is in the living room and the awful wireless TV signal will be for the rarely used bedroom TV set.

And then there are all of the weird eccentricities.  For example, the channel guide is neither color coded, nor even bothers to show you when a program is “new”.  It must know it somehow, since the DVR can be set to record only first showings, but you’ll never find any kind of indicator that a show is either new or a re-run.  The preview of the channel as you use the channel guide is theoretically a good idea … except that it lags moving on to the next channel until each and every channel has loaded, making it very slow and painful to scroll through channels.  A simple programming change to delay the preview of a channel until you’ve rested on a choice for a second could miraculously solve that dilemma.  There’s no way to set the default recording behavior of the DVR and AT&T’s default settings are not what I would have thought anyone, let alone myself, would want as a default.  And so on and so forth.  It’s just a lot of poor design.

Conclusion?

So, there you have it.  AT&T’s U-Verse is not cable.  It’s throwing a lot of technology at an age-old problem, that phone lines just don’t carry enough bandwidth.  And a lot of that technology is cutting a few too many corners.  AT&T has come up with an “okay” solution.  It’s not awe-inspiring.  It’s barely keeping up with the Joneses.  It’s not 1080P.  The wireless router is cheap crap.  The wireless TV makes you feel like you’ve got unreliable satellite even at its best connection strength.  The box/DVR software has some less-than-ideal design that makes some things awkward to use.  In all, everything about it only just barely does the job adequately.  But, that said, it does the job … just.  I’d give it a 3 unusable phone jacks out of 5.

Some of you may be wondering, what do I actually think of the Oreck air filters?  How does the Truman Cell approach to electrostatic charging of particulate compare to good old mechanically blocking particles such as the HEPA filter approach?  Which is better?  Blah blah blah.  Well, here’s my two cents, and more, on various air filters in general and Oreck Truman Cells in specific.

Obviously, I’m an irreverent bloke.  I’m not paid to write any of this schnitzel, so I’m not going to force-feed you BS.  This is my honest opinion of a real-life user.  Not some paid advertisement.  Heck, not even remotely linked to Oreck in any way.  They didn’t send me a review unit to write this.  They didn’t even ask me to write this.  I’m not afraid of pissing anyone off.  (Mwa ha ha ha!)  I have no payment nor continued future business to lose, past or present affiliations, etc.

And what I do have are allergies.  Really bad allergies.  Lost and lots of allergies.  Long ago I used to have asthma, but fortunately I grew out of it in my teenage years.  Though I can still feel it a bit, fortunately the constriction is no longer life-threatening air-choking.  Just … mildly annoying.  Thank goodness.  But the allergies, oh how they’ve stayed.

And where as most people when they think of allergies as sinuses and snot, sneezing and running nose, that’s not how my allergies hit me every time.  Some things do. Pet dander and dust especially cause me to mucus-up.  But pollen, and spores (mold and mildew) don’t make me “sneeze” so much.  Some, but not as much.  But what the allergens all do other than that is far more insidious.  They’re, well, essentially contact poison.  On the outside my skin will react, getting not just itchy and red, but when bad enough burning, acid-like pain.  And if direct-enough and strong enough contact, big nasty breakouts in hives.  Especially dust and dander causing hives.  I guess on a scale of one to ten, dust and dander are fifteen.  Where as pollen only eight.  Mold and mildew spores … I try not to find out.  I really really try hard not to, especially since penicillin almost killed me, and it comes from mold.  There’s just no need to find out how far I can push that.  Really.

So anywhen, if I pet a cat or a hamster, I have to wash my hands (arms, face) after.  Whatever was exposed, and if I was stupid enough to scratch my forehead or something while “unclean”.  Otherwise my skin goes all itchy, then sore, breaks out in hives, and is just plain really really uncomfortable.  I can tolerate under controlled conditions, but I surely wouldn’t want to live with it, not  matter how much I’d love to have a cat.

But on the inside, well, imagine the same reaction.  In my throat.  In my sinuses.  In my lungs!  Where I can’t wash any of it!  And I have to wait for my body to naturally remove the invasion.  Do you have any idea how exhausting that is?  It’s pain.  It’s tiring.  Compared to that, sneezing is nothing.  And where I can choose to pet a friend’s cat, or visit a family member with a pet when I’m feeling strong and good and capable of taking that hit, pollen is the seasonal killer.  You don’t choose pollen.  It chooses you.

And on top of that, anything that saps the body’s resources, especially pain, I’ve found, also means exhaustion and a lowered immune response.  On top of that, irritated nasal passages, tonsils, bronchial tubes, etc. are that much easier for infection to set in.  So not only do allergies make me feel like crap, but they make me get sick easier.  For anyone who doesn’t have serious allergies, this is a really important things to read.  It’s not just about running noses and buying stock in Kleenex.  It’s about struggling to stay alive!

Day in and day out I have to be careful and very in tune with what my body is telling me.  I have to pay attention when I feel bad and figure out why.  I have to know when to hold them and when to fold them.  It’s not as deadly as say diabetes and insulin, but it is a serious and constant health concern in my life.  It sucks.  But that’s life.  (Life with allergies at least.)

So that’s what I’m up against.  Pretty much anything living (and if you don’t think dust is living, besides where most dust comes from, there are also dust mites) is poison to my body.  That’s what having allergies means.

I’m even allergic to penicillin.  (And rose hips, of all things.  Which makes Vitamin C supplements and a lot of teas dangerous to me.  I have to be very careful about my holistic care.)

But to a certain extent, I’m used to it.  It’s something I’ve learned to live with.

Until now.

The allergens in Portland, Oregon are trying to kill me this year.  So I had to arm up in my fight to survive.  I really hard to turn up my protection a notch and go back to a product I trust.

Now, I’ve used various air filters in the past.  I’ve tried several.  Heck, I even have a Rainbow vacuum.  Which, for allergy sufferers is expensive, but a good investment.  So much so that I need to sidetrack a moment to explain this brilliant armament in the fight against allergies.  With a regular vacuum cleaner, you have a bag.  Maybe you have a great bag and it filters HEPA quality.  Maybe you have some kind of HEPA filter after the bag.  But when you change the bag, you still get dust everywhere in the air.  It’s just plain inevitable.  A normal person might not notice it, but an allergy sufferer certainly will!  Now, with the more advanced “bagless” vacuums, they’re an improvement in vacuum performance because the suction of the vacuum doesn’t fail as the bag’s “filter” stuffs up with dust.  But, when it comes time to empty that canister, same old problem.  Dust in the air.  Dust on your skin.  Pain for allergy sufferers.  In my case a literal need to take a shower both to wash off the dust immediately as well as to use the steam to break up the mucus in my sinuses and chest.  Just from regular old vacuuming.  This is a day in the life of an allergy sufferer.

Where as the Rainbow vacuum was bagless before bagless was cool.  It’s the hipster vacuum.  Only you fill the “canister” with water.  The water literally traps the dust.  It’s amazing!  It works.  I won’t kid you though, it’s also really really gross.  By the end when you dump it on your lawn or down your toilet you essentially have a dust/hair/god-only-knows-what muddy messy smoothy instead of clean water.  But that means it’s working.  The dust isn’t airborne.  The dust isn’t freed from opening the canister.  The dust isn’t on your skin and in your lungs.  The dust is in the water, washed away.  Bye bye.  It makes vacuuming such a huge relief to anyone with allergies!  Not to mention, just like any good canister vacuum, it has a HEPA filter on the exhaust, so that even if any dust makes it out of the canister, it doesn’t actually make it out of the vacuum and back into the air.

(Keep in mind however, the act of vacuuming itself still vibrates the floor / carpeting.  No matter how good the vacuum is, this still will make dust particulate airborne.  Anyone extremely sensitive, like me, no matter how good the vacuum, will still be exposed just in the act of “dry” cleaning.  Which still can mean a shower afterward, sneezing, coughing, etc.  Just not nearly as painful before, during, and after with the right vacuum.  And not nearly as deadly when you empty the vacuum.  This is a day in the life of a real allergy sufferer.  Think about how unthoughtful you are of such regular household activities.  Now think of someone with allergies.  This is what we have to psyche ourselves up for.  It is not fun.  And now think about what most people do before inviting people into their home.  If you invite an allergy sufferer into your home, please do your vacuuming hours in advance and/or run an air filter afterward, or else in spite of your best intentions, you just made a whole lot of painful allergens airborne.  Fortunately you’ll never notice.  Unfortunately, we really really will.  If we don’t say anything about it, it’s only because we’re being polite, not because we aren’t suffering silently.)

And, in fact, if you don’t mind the noise, the Rainbow makes a good HEPA filter.  If you need to clear the air in a hurry … such as if you just vacuumed and put all of that dust into the air … just run the Rainbow base unit without the hose attached and the ingenious device will suck the air clean in a jiff.

And if you’re into it, with a Rainbow you can even add special after-market scents to the water before you turn the thing on, for that extra-special “I just cleaned” feeling.

The Rainbow also has other advantages than just being great for allergy sufferers.  If you don’t want to pay for an expensive carpet cleaner, the Rainbow has an attachment for that.  It’s not a steam cleaner, but it is a wet-vac.  Because the Rainbow is designed to run with water, with the non-electrified wet-vac head for deep carpet cleaning (instead of the stock one with the roller) you can not only wet-clean dug-in carpet stains by soap-cleaning your carpets, but you can also remove those pesky dug-in allergens!  Because as any Kirby salesperson will prove, carpet is a freaking magnet for dust and microbes.  Regular vacuums just get the top level.  If you want the deep-down, you need special hardware.  A super vac.  A wet vac.  A steam wet vac.  A chemical dry or wet medium and appropriate vac.  Something.  The Rainbow is that something.

And, because the Rainbow works on water, and can wet-clean your carpets, it can also serve as a secondary shop-vac if your water heater dumps in your basement or whatnot.  It’s not a huge storage capacity, but it is a water-safe vacuum system.  I know I’ve certainly needed one a time or two over the years.

Also, for people who hate pushing around heavy vacuums, because the canister/vacuum portion is separated from the head, it makes it easier to move around the room with.  I’ve heard from people who know people (and not salespeople either) that many people with medical conditions find this type of separated component vacuum system is easier to use and they prefer buying them.  It’s hearsay in my case, but having owned and used, I see no reason to disbelieve.  It makes sense.

But even with all of that going for it, be under no illusions, Rainbow vacuums are a freaking expensive gimmick of a vacuum cleaner, sold by pushy salespeople, where money is made in optional extras like the carpet cleaner, like the scents, etc.

All that said, ridiculous price and pushy people taken into account, I still love my Rainbow all the same.  As an allergy sufferer, to me, it’s definitely worth the ridiculous price.

But that’s not what this is about.  Just as important as any good vacuum, is a good air filter.  Especially if you’re adamant on having pets even though you’re allergic.  Or you moved out to Portland, Oregon to take a new job and even though the first year was rainy, dreary, and allergen-low, you suddenly find the air is trying to kill you like never before in your life in your second springtime after you’ve uprooted your wife, gotten rid of your old house somewhere healthier, and moved all of your earthly belongings.

Err … yeah.

So you find you need a good air filter.

Over the years, I’ve used many.  I’ve paid for expensive models.  I’ve bought cheap crap from regular stores.  Etc.  Tried them all, as it were.

HEPA?  Simple HEPA filters work.  Okay.  I mean yeah, they work, but man do they ever clog-up quick and easy.  Filter after filter after filter.  And they tend to be noisy.  Why are they noisy?  Well, think about it.  You have a mechanical filter.  That means the filter literally blocks particles of a certain size or larger from getting through.  In the case of HEPA, that’s 0.3 micron target.  Which is really good for clean air.  But the filter works by capturing and trapping particles in the holes that the air moves through.  This greatly blocks air flow even when it’s completely clean.  And the more particles that get trapped into the filter, the more holes are blocked up and the less air can move through the filter afterward.  That’s why you have to replace the HEPA filter regularly.  (Well, replace and/or clean any mechanical filter, air, water, oil, or otherwise.)  So you need a powerful fan for a HEPA filter to work, because a HEPA filter is, by design, one with really really small holes and bad airflow.  When built into your central heating/air conditioning system, it’s not so bad  because you have a big bad filter and fans hiding where you’re hopefully not going to notice the noise so much or can add lots to block the noise.  But when you have independent little filters in someone’s bedroom, in your den, or office or living room, etc. … that gets very noisy very quickly when it comes to HEPA.  And with HEPA, if it ain’t noisy, it ain’t moving enough air to actually work the whole room.  You’ve got to watch just how much area your filter actually covers.

And on that note, actually, if you have a central heating/cooling forced-air furnace and/or AC, but you don’t have a HEPA filter, you can look into buying allergy-specific replacement filters.  You know, those box-like sheets with the funny material that slot in right where your air return duct meets the unit, or if you don’t have an air return system (believe it or not, I’ve seen that), right at the intake vent on the forced air unit.  You have to replace those regularly anyway.  Usually every six months I think.  Now, I’ve never personally run across any that are as good as an actual HEPA rating, but companies like 3M and such do make some of those filters that will catch a lot more than more than just your standard furnace filter.  They cost a lot more, but they are worth it, and can be a much cheaper alternative to HEPA if you’re not sure.  But just like any mechanical air filter, the smaller the hole, they better they trap, the less air flow you’ll get.  Though rare, you may find your fan has to be upgraded to accommodate the decrease in airflow.

And here’s a tip.  Even if you don’t have central air, most of those allergen catching furnace filters actually can be cut up and flattened with not much work to be fit into window AC units to replace those useless washable plastic mesh ones they come with.  Just be careful as some window ACs will actually ice up if there’s too much humidity and not enough airflow.

In fact, mad scientist enough, there’s really nothing stopping you from replacing a crappy air filter’s “filter” with a cut-out from an allergen-friendly furnace filter.  Or for that matter just duct-taping (or bungee-cording) a furnace filter to a standing fan to make your own red-neck air filter.  All fine solutions if you don’t need HEPA quality that will save you a bundle on independent units and/or save you from a lot of extra noise pollution by putting something you’re already running to better use for you.

So anywho, mechanical filters like HEPA work, but independent stand-alone units tend to be noisy.  I personally really only support HEPA (and mechanical filtration in general) for HVAC systems, or when added to a device that you were already using anyway.  It works.  It’s also annoying.  It’s louder.  And you’re looking at replacing those filters frequently, so the after-market cost is up there.  Like any printer and ink.  Don’t just think about the unit itself, but the after-market costs to keep using it day after day.  It adds up.  Quickly.  If you can’t wash it clean, that means you have to replace it, and that means money.

Now, I’ve tried various “ionizing” filters and whatnot too.  Most of them, crap.  Plain and simple crap.  They’re all gimmick and pseudo-holistic nonsense.  They’re more placebo “it works because you believe it works” than they are actual allergen-stoppers.  Not that they don’t have a place.  Especially if they have a UV filter (more on that later), but they’re not going to give you HEPA quality filtration.  They’ll give you better air, but it isn’t going to be enough to someone who seriously suffers.

The one exception to that I’ve ever found?  Oreck.

Oreck’s “Truman Cell” blah blah marketspeak, whatever, is the real deal.  Long ago I seem to recall something about them having been commissioned and designed for submarines by the military.  Blah blah.  Don’t quote me on it.  It may or may not be true.  Though it sounds like a cool story.  Can anyone really trust my memory when I’m on cold medication?  **LOL**  But regardless of any marketing campaign, real, marketspeak/BS, or imagined, the fact of the matter is, they freaking work.  Like a dream!

The concept is actually pretty darn simple and ingenious.  They electrically charge the air particles as they move through the filter.  The charged particles are then pulled onto metal plates.  They’re no longer in the air.  End of story.

It may sound like some geeky techno-imaginary dream.  But it’s real.  And I’ll explain in a nice easy way for anyone to grasp.  Who hasn’t seen a video of someone who rubs a balloon then sticks it to their friend’s head?  (Or a wall?  Or a cat?)  It’s great fun!  Or has unwrapped candy or some such, removing a seemingly ordinary plastic layer, only to have it stick to your hand and not let go even though there’s no glue or anything on it whatsoever?  That’s static electricity at work!  Some objects if you create a static charge in them and they’re light enough, they stick to things like glue.  Fun at parties.

Fun in your air filter too.  It’s that simple.  Same thing, just balloons that are really really tiny.

How tiny?

HEPA’s target air particle size is 0.3 microns.

Truman Cell’s electrostatic approach targets particles down to the size of 0.1 microns.  So little itty bitty allergens, bacteria, viruses, etc. all get caught by Oreck’s Truman Cell-based air filters.  Ones three times smaller than even HEPA.  Yes, that’s right, by catching the particles with electricity the Oreck filter will grab things that HEPA would have let back into the air.

But do they work?  Heck yes, they do.  Many years ago I had an early model Oreck filter.  Back when I had a “pet room”.  In it were various rodentia.  Hamsters, guinea pigs, and even a rat.  As an allergy sufferer, my wife and I were clear that they were m wife’s pets, not mine.  The pets mostly stayed in the “pet room”, and thus the allergens were contained so long as the doors stayed closed.  Well … mostly.  Forced air system means the air return still circulated the allergens.  Not to mention no door is air-tight.  But, with the Oreck XL filter running nonstop in that room, it kept the rest of the house safe by catching those allergens in that room, before they could escape and try to kill me.  For years it worked.

And the advantage of the Oreck filters is that because the “Truman Cell” is just a bunch of metal and plastic parts, it’s easily cleaned.  Warm water will do it most of the time.  Sometimes you might want to lightly soap up to remove sticky allergens and whatnot residue.  If you feel like spending a small fortune on aftermarket cleaners that you don’t need you can even do that, if it makes you feel better.  But you really don’t need to.  Just keep the filters clean by washing them.  They’re reusable.  It’s simple and easy.

They do have two downsides though.

First, The Truman Cell needs to be cleaned or else it gets really noisy.  They go ZAP!  I don’t mean like keel over dead, zap.  I don’t even mean electrocute you zap.  I mean they make a popping noise.  It’s startling.  It’s kind of loud.  It’s a little scary to boot, like some primal fear of electricity.  It’s like a bug-zapper when the mosquito hits the electricity and gets fried.  Essentially, that’s what’s happening.  Only it’s not a mosquito, it’s a dust particle getting caught in the wrong place.  And on occasion you’ll get that even when they’re clean, too.  It is a down side to using electricity to trap particulate.  If the noise doesn’t alert you to wash your filter, a light will.  Cleaning is easy.  It’s free.  (Or at least as cheap as warm water and occasionally a little soap.)  It’s a no-brainer, really.  But the occasional noise is a down side.  You could say that regular cleaning is also a downside, but then any HEPA filter needs regular filter replacing, so it’s really no difference there.  And unlike HEPA, cleaning a Truman Cell is free.

Now, side track a moment: here’s a sad story, and how I know the Truman Cell really really works.  (And how my first marriage didn’t.)  My ex-wife destroyed our first Oreck XL by neglecting to clean it for goodness only knows how many months straight until the fan bearings were destroyed by the built up dust inside of the thing.  That’s how well the Truman Cell will work.  Keep in mind, this was in the “pet room”, where there was a lot of crap in the air.  Which was the point of putting the air filter in there.  And also keep in mind, this was my now ex first wife.  There’s a reason we didn’t have kids together.  Her neglect of the air filter in the pet room was just one of many signs of neglect on her part.  We were very clear that having the pets was conditional on her taking care of them because I have allergies and just can’t do that many pets, and that wouldn’t be fair to the pets to not keep their cages clean regularly.  So they were her pets.  It was her “pet room” to look after.  It was a room I avoided by necessity.  It’s not like we buried pets frequently, so she was taking care of them … I’d assume.  But even with a light on and that popping zap noise, that Oreck XL got so ridiculously choked up with dust when I finally found it.  (And if you saw a Truman Cell, you’d know there’s a LOT of space between the metal plates, so that’s really darned hard to do!)  So much so that the dust built up past the filter and in the fan itself, until the bearings ground down and froze up.  I can’t even imagine!  The level of neglect it would take to accomplish that is mind-boggling.  By far that won’t happen to you.  No one can be that stupid.  It takes intentional and willful neglect to break an Oreck XL like that.  All you have to do is every month wash out the filter.  It’s super easy.  She probably didn’t wash that thing out for over a year, in a high dust and dander environment.  (Food pellet dust.  Wood chip dust.  Pet dander.  Etc.)  But even then, even with the light on and the zap noise going on for goodness knows how long in the back of that room, with dust and dirt literally crawling out of the exhaust vent, that Oreck filter kept on trucking and pulling in dust.  For goodness only knows how many months after months after months of neglect, it still did it’s job.  And meanwhile, in the rest of the house, I was completely oblivious to those allergens and that filter’s death throws.  That Oreck XL was a champ for fighting the good fight without being cleaned for over a year in that high-pollution room.  And it pisses me off to this day to think of how she could have just let that thing stay dirty for so long when it did everything imaginable to tell her that it needed cleaning, and when cleaning it is so ridiculously simple!  It wasn’t something you could ignore.  It had to be a passive-aggressive attempt to poison me.  Yeah.  There are many reasons our marriage didn’t last decades.  And the reason that Oreck XL didn’t last even one decade is just one of them.  A sad marriage story, and a pretty useless plot against me at that, but nothing speaks to the absolute effectiveness and determination, the sheer quality of an Oreck XL, than that story does.  It’s sad.  It’s inspirational.  It’s strangely funny too.

Really, Oreck builds their products to last.  That’s insanely above and beyond the call of duty quality right there.

But that brings me to the second flaw of the Oreck Truman Cells.  The wires that run the voltage to charge the air particles are super thin, relatively easy to break, and I think after years of use will probably even burn out until they snap, just like a filament in a lightbulb.  (Same concept really, running electricity through a small wire burns it up.  Technically big wires too, but big wires are so much bigger that we’ll all be dead and gone before enough has burned up to be a problem.)  And likely, I wouldn’t expect that those wires are covered under warranty because Oreck has to make money off of you somehow.  (I haven’t checked the paperwork, but I’d imagine they’re expected to burn out.  Just like tires, oil and air filters, belts, brake pads, etc. on a car, they’re just expected to wear down and so aren’t covered under warranty.)  So it’s something to be aware of.  You might break a wire accidentally.  One might burn out eventually, after many years of faithful service.  A cost will probably come.  Eventually.  Maybe.  With a little care to avoid accidental damage, it’ll take years before it comes.

Even if it does happen though, and even if it wasn’t covered under warranty, frankly, it still beats HEPA.  The cost to fix or replace a broken Truman Cell will be a heck of a lot less than having had to replace countless HEPA filters over the life of a Truman Cell.  (Like replacing a $5 incandescent bulb with a $20 LED bulb.  The lifespan alone of not replacing it makes up the cost, even completely ignoring the energy efficiency.)  But yes, fixing/replacing a Truman Cell will cost more than a single HEPA filter replacement.  (At least unless you’re mad scientist enough to fix it yourself.  It is just a wire after all.)

So even though it’s still far more cost-effective versus a mechanical filter, I’m sure there are some people who will complain, and who will say how bad it is.  Just like there are people who complain when their brake pads wear down or their printer runs out of ink or toner or their roof needs reshingling.  As if this isn’t any regular part of ownership.

Just be careful when you wash the filter and they’ll last you at least two years if my first Oreck was anything to go by.  They’ll probably even last just up to the warranty if you treat them well.  Of course they’ll probably break immediately after the warranty.  That’s how things are these days, unfortunately.    But that’s life.

There is one other weird potential flaw … and this verges on the ridiculous to most people, but it occurred to me theoretically.  It’s that any electrostatic or ionizing filter is designed to work electrically.  Now, if you watch those ghost hunting type shows, they often talk about how high electromagnetic fields can cause symptoms of hysteria where people think they see ghosts.  Or if you’re a believer, maybe actually give ghosts the energy to manifest more often.  Whichever way you believe, either way, I do have to wonder what an EMF reading near one of those filters would be like.  Maybe if you find yourself paranoid, or seeing (or believe to be seeing) apparitions, it might be something to contemplate.  Evil spirits?  Maybe it’s your air filter. 

But, then again, any fan is a big electromagnet.  That’s how fans work.  I’d imagine without proper shielding/grounding, any fan can put out loads of EMF, by design.  So can your cell phone.  So can your wi-fi devices.  Etc.  Heck, so can the electrical wiring in your house without proper shielding/grounding.  That’s what electricity does.  EMF pollution is the new black.  Or green.  Or … err … something like that.  But anyway, it’s food for thought.  I haven’t got a meter to whip out to test, but maybe if your iPad connection sucks, or you’re about to call Ghost Busters, maybe look at your air filter.  Just a random stray thought that may or may not have merit and/or humor. 

Speaking of green, one other area of comparison of air filters is … electricity usage.  Now, you’d think that an electrostatic or ionic filter like an Oreck might suck up juice.  But actually the filter, allegedly, is typically about as “low” cost as a lightbulb.  In theory.  Granted, I’m sure that’s compared to like an incandescent lightbulb, like a 60W juice sucker, not to some green solution like compact fluorescent or LED.  And who the heck leaves a light on all the time like you would an air filter?  So it’s a comparison that’s maybe not so applicable today as it may have been in yester-years when we didn’t give a fig about energy consumption and Energy Star wasn’t even a phrase.  And people left porch lights on all night in case Bobby came home from shore leave unexpectedly, or whatever.

Still, running the device and using that electricity is relatively small, and a worthwhile price to pay for being able to breathe to any allergy sufferer.  It’s less than leaving your Xbox or PS3 idling.  (Heck, it might even be less than turning if off but leaving it plugged in if the rumors are true.  Gotta love those “energy vampires”  Mwa ha ha ha!)

But, you’d be surprised to know that the Truman Cell Oreck air filters actually use less electricity than HEPA fitlers.  (And Oreck would know, because they also make HEPA filters.)  How is that possible?  Well, keep in mind that the Truman Cell works by metal plates, far apart, attracting charged particles.  Air flows through that filter extremely easily.  Where as HEPA filters block air flow with holes as small as 0.3 microns to physically catch particles.  And because they clog up and block air flow even more as they work, they need to still be able to move air even after they’re semi-clogged.  Which takes a lot more powerful fan.  Not only does that make more noise, it sucks up a lot more electricity to power that uber-fan than the electrostatic method takes to charge and attract the even smaller particles and run a low-powered fan.  So it’s not only more effective at trapping particles, but it’s also more energy efficient as well.  And more audibly friendly.  Something for the environmentally aware allergy sufferer to consider.

And one thing that the Oreck Truman Cell filters are, is quiet.  At their lowest setting, they’re almost completely inaudible.  Even with one on my nightstand, on low, I can sleep soundly.  I barely even register that it’s on, other than the gentle breeze in my face.  And this from someone who can hear the electric hum of a computer monitor or laptop when it’s on from a couple of feet away, so much so that he has to turn off his computer monitor from the power-supply switch at the back whenever he meditates in his living room.  Yet I can sleep soundly with my new Oreck ProShield running on low.

On medium however, it’s definitely audible.  Quiet enough to be okay, except maybe when sleeping, depending on how much you like white noise or prefer silence instead.  Certainly you can hear a TV over it easily.  But it is audible.

And on high, well, jet engine.  But then, that’s okay.  You want a jet engine when you need to clear a room quickly.  It’s not like you’d leave it running on high any normal occasion.  As Microsoft would say, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.  It’s there for if you want it.  Every other time, a setting that’s quiet is what you want most of the time anyway.

And my new Oreck DualMax is also really quiet.  Instead of Oreck’s typical XL/ProShield fan design (which I happen to like) the Oreck DualMax uses those industrial square fans like you see in computer cases.  Which, as someone who has a history of intentionally building silent and near-silent PCs with RPM-regulated quiet fans (and as often as possible/affordable/sane completely passive heatsinks) I know just how quiet those fans can run when they’re quality and when you turn down their RPMs.  Which they are, and Oreck does.  And sure enough, the DualMax is just darned whisper quiet on low too.  Even on medium, it’s pretty quiet.  That’s what I leave it on most of the time in my living room.  The same one where I meditate as well as watch TV.  It’s no worry.  In fact, even on high I can still watch TV with only a minor volume increase.  But, and here’s where it kind of lets me down, I get the impression (not scientifically tested) that on high the DualMax doesn’t actually move as much air as the ProShield does on high.  Which is kind of counter-intuitive because it’s like literally twice the size, twice the machine, twice the Truman Cell, twice the air-purifying power, twice the room size.  But then again, move too much air and maybe you’re letting dust back into the air by sucking it off of the plates of the Truman Cell.  Too much power might be counterproductive.  I don’t know.  Or maybe not.  But I do know the filter works.  (And I do know that because I know those fans, to me at least, they’re very user serviceable should a need ever arise.)  If I were a betting man though, I’d wager that Oreck is switching to that fan type because it’s probably cheaper for them to just buy someone else’s fans than it is to build/contract their own fans.  I don’t know that they do.  I’m not saying that’s the case.  But I’d put money on it if I put money on anything and had to wager on why they changed fans so drastically.  It’s a huge difference in fans.

And another side note, if you don’t mind invalidating your warranty completely, I’d sure feel safer monkeying around with (or even breaking down for parts in some other project) the Oreck DualMax compared to the Oreck XL or Oreck ProShield.  It just has that more approachable feel to it.  The parts.  The enclosure.  The layout.  Not that this likely matters to most people.  But for anyone saddened by failing to see an Oreck product to fit into their home’s forced-air system…

The only real disappointment about Oreck’s air filters is this: their exhaust vents aren’t adjustable.  So you can’t direct air to wherever you might want them to blow.  It’s a little thing, but especially in the case of the smaller Oreck ProShield units, I really am not so keen on where it blows out its clean air.  I’d really have preferred to have been able to adjust that.  I can’t recall, but I seem to think my old dead Oreck XL could do that.  If so, I wonder why Oreck changed that.  Because the design is really not ideal IMHO without it.  But oh well.  It still filters air.  It just makes it a lot harder to find a good place to set it up.  They should really make adjustable vents on them.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on air filters.

Almost.

But what about biological aspect to filters?  Namely, UV…

Now if you’re worried about bird flu, swine flu, or whatever blah hyped-up epidemic that will never happen nor never be deadly to many if it does, you can care about those UV stages built into various air filters as well.  I’m sure they must work.  Just as I’m also sure that the less exposure your immune system has to bugs, the less prepared it is to fight them when it is exposed to them.  The immune system works by learning how to kill.  There’s literally a learning process to it.  That’s why immunizations work.  Inject your body with dead (or near-dead, or harmless mutations) diseases, and your body learns how to kill them more effectively so that if you’re then exposed to the real thing, your super-deadly-trained-assassin white blood cells can ninja the disease before it can hunker down into your cells and try to kill you.

So the last thing that anyone should do is take away that training.  You don’t want your immune system to send out little old ladies with one course in self-defense to kill off a potentially lethal disease, do you?  Heck no!  You want your immune system to be well trained.  You want your immune system to be a third-degree black belt with a ten foot sword, a rocket launcher, and a sickeningly dark intimate knowledge of pressure points and other vulnerabilities.  You want your immune system to be elite!

And that means exposure!

It sounds bass-ackwards.  Why would any sane person want to be intentionally exposed to diseases when you could kill all of the little buggers off and live free of them?  But it’s true.  That’s what you need to be healthy.

So if you have an air filter with UV, I highly suggest you turn it off when you’re not sick.

Now, when you are sick, darn skippy, turn that UV filter on!  Or if you or a loved one is highly prone to catching a disease and needs to live in a virtual (or literal) bubble, then heck yeah, use UV.

But when you’re healthy, keep your immune system highly trained.  Expose yourself.

(And eat things that also help your body fight bad bugs, like yogurt.  The live cultures, literally bacteria, are not only harmless, but create a barrier against the bad harmful bacteria.  It’s like hiring body guards and security agents to protect against nefarious evil-doers.  Or other pro-and pre-biotics that promote good guys to keep the bad guys away.  Promoting good bugs is actually healthier for you than indiscriminately killing all bugs.  It’s a symbiotic relationship that works.)

So let me wrap it all up.  I have allergies.  I have serious allergies.  Would I personally spend my own hard-earned money to buy an Oreck Truman Cell air filter?  Absolutely.  I bought two!  They work.  They’re quiet.  They cost less money to own and operate over a lifetime.  They’re greener than HEPA.  I love them.  What more can I say?  If you have allergies and you need a stand-alone filter, I would highly recommend trying one before spending money on any HEPA filter or any gimmicky “ionic” filter.  Go hard-core science.  Go Oreck Truman Cell.  They deliver.  You can’t ask for more.  Five out of five.  Ten out of ten.  0.1 microns out of 0.3.  I’m not a customer because I bought into flashy marketing.  I’m a customer because I’m an owner.  I use them.  They work better than anything else I’ve ever bought.  And having suffered from allergies all my life, and being no spring chicken, I’ve bought plenty.

And as a side note, if you have a forced-air system in your home for heating or cooling, look into better air filter replacements for allergy sufferers.  They cost more, but they work.  You’ve already got an air filter that you use regularly.  You just maybe don’t know it yet. Maximize it’s potential.  Make it work for you. 

And Oreck, seriously, consider an HVAC Truman Cell product line.  When (if?) I ever buy a home again, I’d like to buy one from you instead of buy a bunch of DualMax units and go all mad-scientist on them.

I’m Arah J. Leonard, and those are my unsolicited unpaid opinions on air filters for allergy sufferers.  (If I had one, I’d even stamp a seal of approval.)

This blog entry brought to you by: Breathing.  Its underrated, until you can’t.  And then you really really miss it.  Breathing.  Congratulations!  Now you can again.  Breathing, it’s what’s for dinner.

Or something like that.  (See, that’s why I’m a software engineer, not an advertising agent.)

(P.S.  I am a little legally medicated right now.  Goodness only knows how the allergy medication, cough syrup, etc. are all interacting right now.  Bronchitis sucks!  But at least it’s not pneumonia!  Or oldmonia.  Or midlifecrysismonia.  Okay.  I’ll shut up now.)

So what did you do over your Christmas holiday vacation? I played video games, of course! And to not be entirely too behind the times, as a gift I received The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Now, whether you can call me a TES fan at this point is very muddled. Many years ago I loved TES. With a passion. Growing up I was an avid fan of role playing games. And I don’t just mean Dungeons and Dragons. (And in fact I prefer AD&D 1st Ed, though 2nd Ed is okay if you don’t go too heavily into some of their more ridiculous expansions. D&D 3rd and up: right out. WoTC totally ruined it in my opinion.) I also mean games like Rifts, Rolemaster, and of the earlier White Wolf stuff. In fact, I was even a fan of FASA for both Shadowrun and Mechwarrior. (Okay, Battletech too, but that’s more a tactical game than an RPG.) If it was an RPG, pencil and paper, dice and all, I was generally a fan of it.

So of course I absolutely loved TES, the video game series that brought role playing to the computer in a very real, true to RPG way.  Not just in an action/adventure way.

In the beginning.

TES I: Arena was good. It reminded me a lot of Ultima Underworld, but in many ways more polished as an RPG. TES II: Daggerfall was, frankly, my favorite of all Bethesda’s TES games. Still is, really. In theory. I still run it on DOSbox. I don’t mind the bad graphics. It’s just the play control which is really awful. But everything about Daggerfall was just … inspired. And because of that, I think in a lot of ways it still holds up today. If you could take the exact same game and just put it on a more playable engine, even with the same crappy graphics, you’d have a real gem.  Heck, cellphone app, anyone?

It was when Bethesda hit TES III: Morrowind that things started going south. The world was so small! But the engine was infinitely more playable, so that made up for a lot. Even if you did lose a lot of skills and character customization, it was still a distinctly unique game and retained enough intelligence behind it that you could still call it TES without question.

But, it was the start of a trend: The trend of dumbing down TES for the masses.

And indeed, by TES IV: Oblivion, you had just that. It was the lowest-common-denominator TES. There was so little RPG left that you had to strain to even want to consider it part of The Elder Scrolls. Things had tipped from depth of storyline to “look how cool this skeleton blows up!” From variety in skills, options, and items to, “it plays well with a game controller!” Meh! And with so much twitch-control and easy minigames that would let you bypass your character’s skills it went from the character’s skills mattering in the success to the player’s skills determining success. As such, it could only vaguely classify as an RPG anymore.  It was now a First Person Shooter with RPG-like elements. And it was the biggest disappointment in any video game that I have ever had in my entire life. Not because it wasn’t in its own way a good-enough game, but because it just wasn’t enough of an RPG to fill the title The Elder Scrolls.  You can argue that all you like, if you care, but that’s my opinion.

And as soon as my smooth negotiating thief style character, a true bardish rogue, ended up impossible to play because he’d gained too many levels to accommodate Oblivion’s level scaling, even with the difficulty turned down horribly simple, that was the last and final straw. From then on, Oblivion would be known to me as Oblivious. For that, truly, was what its creators must have been.

And, frankly, the game engine wasn’t even that significantly improved to warrant the loss of everything else. You could take Morrowind and texture-pack it to be almost as stunning as Oblivion.  Polygon count and a broken physics engine were the only real improvements. And frankly the water as well as the lightning and thunder are still better in Morrowind than Oblivious, in my opinion.

What was so good about Oblivious’s engine? The physics? You mean that programming that causes a table full of stuff to explode when you pick up a sweet roll? Or you mean that thing that replaced all of the perfectly devilish traps with completely boring physics-based ones that any gimp could limp past?

Or how about the archery. Yes, well, that’s fine if you like archery. But if you preferred having a few throwing weapons to soften your opponent with while closing in to melee, then there wasn’t anything to love there at all, because Bethesda took all ranged weapons that weren’t a bow away.

Basically, I could rant pretty much forever about how bad TES: IV was. Oblivious was just sooooo very bad in many varied and sundry ways. The least of which being the pathetic PG-13 watered-down version that only earned a Mature rating by accident, not intent.

So you can imagine my trepidation when I was gifted with TES V: Skyrim. TES with dragons. You mean those things that TES kept out of the modern TES world canon, like the Dwemer, as being very long dead and gone? As if Oblivion hadn’t thrown canon to the dogs already by turning the jungle-like Cyrodiil into thin woods and sunny vales?

But, okay, it’s a TES. Maybe Skyrim wouldn’t be so bad.  Maybe.  Surely Bethesda got an earfull and a half after Oblivious., so they know they should do better with Skyrim, right?

Well, after playing for a goodly number of hours now … I’m still not sure what to think. Like Morrowind, Skyrim is such a mixed bag that it has me greatly befuddled. In a lot of ways Skyrim carries on the sins of Oblivious. Axes may no longer be “blunt”, but at least now daggers and two-handed swords are separated skill-wise. Still no crossbows, shuriken, throwing knives, or any kind of ranged attack other than bows and magic. Still a lockpicking minigame that is so very easy. (In fact even though I like the concept, I stink Skyrim’s lockpicking minigame is even easier than Oblivious ever was to bypass a lack of character skill.  Ridiculously easy in fact. I haven’t even bothered to put any perks into it at all and I can easily pick any lock quickly and with only a couple of picks.)

And what of level-scaling? Hmm… I’ve heard it said that Skyrim no longer has level scaling. I find that very implausible. Having found loot which surely scales to my character, there’s at least treasure-level-scaling. And I’d swear on the divines that draugr and bandits at the very least scale to my level. Maybe others too. I don’t know. But there is definitely a feel of level scaling going on. It’s just not as ridiculous as it was in Oblivious. It’s been tamed, like it was in Morrowind. Which is fine with me.  If somehow, some way, Skyrim doesn’t actually have any level scaling, I’d be extremely surprised.  It sure seems like it has it.  Just not as stupidly done as Oblivious.

But at least I know without a doubt that in some places level scaling is indeed thrown out the window in Skyrim. I know this because I was on the early shout-about quests, wending my way up to High Hrothgar. The NPCs on the way up told me all that I had to worry about were wolves. No biggy, I thought. I can take a wolf. Hmm … then I ran into a darn spider that nearly got me. And then I ran into ice wolf after ice wolf. Died a few times. I was a very low level character after all. But eventually through cunning, luck, and burning through my potion stash, I got past the ice wolves. …And was later jumped by a frost troll! A freaking frost troll for a low-level quest. The darned thing just ran down a slope, leapt off of a rock overhang, and landed right smack dab in front of me on the path to High Hrothgar. Fortunately I found I could run faster than it. So bit by bit I whittled it down with my flames. But if it weren’t for the intervention of one of the NPCs on her pilgrimage, I’d have still been squashed flat.

As it was, she gave me my first set of scaled armor (which was great) and a Talos amulet (also nifty) …but strangely not her shield, which was marked as “stolen”. Funny that, since I had nothing to do with her death. She’s the one that leapt into the path of an angry frost troll and got herself squished. But alas, so many strange behaviors, carried over from Oblivious. “Stolen” markers being one of the worst and most illogical sins I can imagine for any thief-type character.  As if somehow, magically, one vendor from the next could actually tell the difference between a stolen apple or one that was bought legally. Or plucked from any … barrel. (So many apples, but where are the trees?)  Let alone something stolen in one town and sold in another.  Or “stolen” from any of the waypoints that you raid, on a quest or not, that have the stolen flag set on various items.  Clear out an evil vampire nest, as part of a quest to protect this town, but don’t you dare loot the shelves of those vampires or you’re going in jail, buddy!  Eh?

But anyway, clearly, level scaling isn’t completely in effect. If a very high level monster can jump you on one of your very first quests, level scaling isn’t entirely in effect.

And even though dragons and birds can fly in Skyrim, I still can’t help but feel like we’re in Oblivious all over again. Because I can’t fly. I can’t levitate. I can’t even so much as climb. I am vertically challenged. I guess to keep me from going someplace that I shouldn’t? But darned if that doesn’t make dungeon crawling very two-dimensional.  Or exploring a whole world for that matter.  Climbing walls was one of my favorite little oddities in Daggerfall.  Locked out at night when they shut the city gates to keep the ghoulies away?  No worries.  I can climb.  *sigh* Alas, not for a very long time.  Bethesda has shuttered us away into a 2D world.

Still, in Skyrim dungeon crawling is a lot better than it was in Oblivious.  (That was really bad.) It’s not quite as good as it was in Morrowind, which was nowhere near as amazing as Daggerfall, but at least it’s not awful like Oblivious was. In fact there’s enough 3D trickery that it’s really not so bad in Skyrim. Though I do think most of those caves and dank dark dungeons are awfully well lit. So far I barely ever even bother with a light spell or torch. I haven’t found a single need for night-eye. But then since I haven’t found a single spell, scroll, or potion of night-eye, I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t need it!  Just as Bloom lighting made Oblivious dungeons shiny and bright like they were fixed up by Martha Stewart, Skyrim dungeons are still a little too cheery, and even better lit!  Strange.  Very very strange.

In fact, a bit of a gripe here, dungeons in Skyrim are very anti-thief.  If you favor the sneak skill, you’ll find all of that insanely ridiculous lighting awfully frustrating.  And worse, only in a very small number of dungeons are you actually capable of removing the torches from the walls to improve your sneakiness.  Seriously?  Why can you shoot down some lit pots, but not all of those chandeliers hanging from the ceilings?  Why can you take some torches off of the walls, but not all of them?  Not to mention the candles.  I can shout someone across a room, but I can’t blow out a single freaking candle?  Eh?  Epic logic fail, Bethesda.

Back to some failings of Skyrim, some of the skill-ups are a little ridiculous. Just as a matter of principle, I started sneaking early in dungeons. I think the last I checked it’s up to level 79, and I’m not even actually playing a thief or assassin. It just raises so darned easily! And some of the fights I’ve run across, like an insanely powerful vampire, could only be bested with bowshot and flee sneak-based tactics. The AI is pretty bad in that respect. Get enough distance and they give up. Go back and do it over, and over, and over, and with patience and one arrow at a time you can pick apart pretty much anything.

Likewise smithing is ridiculously easy to raise. I’ve just been taking the hides off of anything I run across, foxes, deer, wolves, cats, bears, anything as tough as I can handle, as I travel from town to town. Then strip it all down into leather (and leather strips) and craft a boat load of leather gauntlets, which at one piece of leather and two leather strips is only 1.5 pieces of leather per craft. Easy peasy and efficient and before you know it you’re forging with the best. For an occasional change of pace, one iron ore becomes one iron ingot, and with one leather strip you have one iron dagger. Piles of iron daggers. Skill jump! It seems like maybe the value should be part of the equation…  Maybe I shouldn’t be able to raise my smithing skill to 100 just by making leather bracelets.  Maybe?  Or at least not so easily and quickly.

Meanwhile I can roast baddies with flames all day and night and day again (time still moves way too fast) and barely scrape up a single destruction skill-up.  Seriously.  I mean while I started off a balance of melee with destruction, I’ve dropped the melee part entirely … just to raise my destruction up one more point … eventually.  Not because that’s the style of combat I want to play, but because destruction stopped going up!

I’m also reaching a point where I’m getting kind of miffed that there’s no spellmaking. Not that I want to gimp with a weakness to fire combined with a fire spell. Or worse, multiple weaknesses. But darn it all if I wouldn’t like a flamethrower with more oomp! I’ve got mana to burn and no short-ranged combat spells other than the dinky beginning ones. Oh, sure, there’s cloaking myself in kindness, but that’s just not the same. Not the same at all. As the old saying goes, “You can build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a night. You can set a man on fire and he’ll be warm the rest of his life.” I want more. Not more range. I want more damage at the same range.  I want instant-fire, not delay.  I want short-range flames with some power.  Is that really too much to ask for?  Enemy not blocking: hit them with an ax.  Enemy blocking: hit them with a spell.  It’s a tried and true method … except for when you can no longer make a decent darned spell!  I can sharpen my ax to ridiculous levels of damage, and then enchant it for even more.  But I can’t sharpen my spells.  At all.  Eh?!  Even destruction-based equipment only reduces casting cost, not damage!  But what I want is more damage.  Every other TES had a solution.  Even crappy Oblivious.  But no, not Skyrim.

And so on is pretty much how it goes in Skyrim. In a lot of ways it is significantly improved over Oblivion. So much so that I actually find myself enjoying playing it. (Unlike Oblivious, which I stopped playing pretty quickly and never gave it another glance.) But there’s still so much left to fix in Skyrim. Less is more only up to a point, and then less is just less. And Skyrim is still too much less than Morrowind, which itself was less than Daggerfall, so much so that I was already disappointed a bit way back then. (Oblivious being right out, obviously!)  So Skyrim, while at least enjoyable-ish, is still less of a TES than we’ve seen for decades now.  How sad is that?

Why in Skyrim aren’t there any people you can hire to do things? Like enchant something for you if you don’t have a decent enchantment skill. (And don’t want to raise yours.) Or improve quality of weapons and armor for you if you don’t have a decent smithing skill. (And don’t want one.) Etc. These are some pretty basic concepts here…

And then there are the bugs! Backwards flying dragons were funny at least. But you can instantly tell playing Skyrim that it just wasn’t designed to be played on a PC. (Even though on a PC is likely the only way that you’ll ever get the construction tools and third-party mods!) For starters the keyboard mapping is just … awful.   Truly truly awful!  I think it may be the first time in forever that I’ve seen only one key/mouse action mapped to a command. In today’s world, at least two is pretty standard. But worse, I can’t even use all of my mouse buttons! It’s not like I have an abnormally button-heavy mouse. There are only three extra buttons, a whole six buttons total, and yet only two of those extra buttons can be used. One of them can’t. That’s pretty lame. But the biggest clue of all that Skyrim isn’t meant for PCs is that when you remap your keys, the game’s in-menu guides don’t know that you’ve remapped them. So, say, you remapped “e” to be “y” (for a strange example) in-game it will tell you to press “e” still. It has no idea that you remapped to “y”. Which gets very confusing if you went and remapped a lot of keys, or worse, put them on mouse buttons. It’ll basically keep telling you to press the wrong keys. No indication at all in-game. You have to remember that the game lies when it tells you to press “r” for this or “e” for that.

Which is especially a big thing for me because for a very long time, I’ve been using waxd instead of wasd. And I reserve the use of “s” then for interact/activate type activities. Been doing it a coon’s age. No reason I’m gonna stop now. But in Skyrim, while you can technically do this, the cake is a lie. You have to be smarter than you should. It should be a no-brainer that if I remap one thing to a different key, that in-game it tells me the key I remapped it to. Every other game that I’ve ever played gets that right. Skyrim doesn’t. Why not? Because clearly it wasn’t meant to be played on a keyboard, that’s why!  Seriously, Bethesda?  How … droll.

Likewise, don’t use the scroll wheel on your mouse unless you want bugs! Especially to read a book and then go back to your list of books when you’re done reading it. Massive amount of bugs. Heck, just even clicking menu items though after having used a scroll wheel often enough results in either that menu item not being clicked (and the menu closing) or the wrong things being clicked (happens a lot in conversations with NPCs). Because, again, mice are only used on PCs and Skyrim was definitely not designed for play on the PC.

Why not?

Lowest. Common. Denominator.

Bethesda, stop ____ing on PC users.  We were your bread and butter.  Why are we second-rate customers now?

And I have to say, in a lot of ways, in general, I just feel like Skyrim is Oblivious recycled. Sure, the graphics are way better. But just as I could be walking down the street and run into an oblivion gate out of nowhere and be assailed by random daedra, I can be walking down the street and BAM, a dragon lands on top of me. Or as often as not lands on some poor random unsuspecting NPC. I’ve lost a few now. I sure hope none of them matter to a big quest or anything. I’d swear, even some of the same boring music has been recycled. It’s so out of place with the Nordic feel of Skyrim sometimes.

Still lots of the same sins of Oblivious too.  Bad editing job on the voice acting with NPCs completely changing tone from one line to the next, or worse, their voice gets a different character’s voice entirely.  What’s the point of all of that effort of voice acting if you can’t even get it right?  Does no one play test?  Does no one find these bugs?

I’ve also already run into the infamous invisible wall. Turn back. You can’t go that way. Why not? Because that would break a quest or something and we’re too lazy to have just made it impossible to get there or put it in a dungeon where it belongs. Oh. Okay. I guess I’ll just stop exploring this open world then. Eh?

Bethesda also seems to have failed to crack physics yet. You can still send things reeling by picking up an object touching another object. And goodness knows how many times I’ve walked into my house only to find things have moved, often ridiculously so, nowhere near how I last left them. Or have found objects (and even dead NPCs now) fallen through the floor enough that I can’t grab them anymore.  Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can fireball them back into the room.  Often, not.  I even once had a live troll vanish through a floor.  I could hear it.  It kept trying to attack me … wherever it was.  But it had no way to break on through to the other side, as it were.

So yes, many sins of Oblivious are in Skyrim. But at least there’s enough new and interesting, or at least enough fixed, that unlike Oblivious, Skyrim is actually enjoyable. It’s still low on my list of TES-iest TES games, but at least I don’t hate it with a passion. It’s a right direction (from Oblivious) for Bethesda … but it’s still not enough. Mage guild quests where they still hand you scrolls and items to complete the quests in case you’re a mage who can’t actually cast any spells at all … WTF? Why on earth would you think you should be head of the mage’s guild if you can’t even cast a dratted single spell? It’s ludicrous!

And while shouting draconian words might be entertaining, it gets you into trouble more often than not. They rarely do much for you for that matter. It’s kind of … sad. But then at least they don’t unbalance the game either I guess. To the point where, hopefully, in TES 6 there won’t be anyone listening whenever someone whines about not having their shouts anymore.

So my order of least to most favorite TES main titles then still remains unchallenged for the most part. Oblivious is still the worst. Arena (not the worst, but not exactly worth fighting the bad playability anymore) comes close though. Skyrim third place. Morrowind second  place. Daggerfall is my most liked gold medal shiny star winner. Since Oblivious is an absolute zero in my book, I guess that means, overall, I give Skyrim a score of 3 elder scrolls out of 5.

I really wish Bethesda would start putting the RPG back into their TES sometime before I die of old age.  Or just stop buying their games entirely. If we just wanted a first person shooter, that’s what we’d buy! We want an RPG. Can we please have one? Sure, Daggerfall may have been large and complicated, but it gave you options.  Enjoyable options! And you had to actually pay attention on occasion.  You know, use that gray squishy thing between the ears that we homosapiens are known for. That was nice. I remember having to actually think. I miss that.

Not to mention a game being mature not for trying to be immature, but for actually simply being grown up.  You know, something being there because in reality, it’s there.  Not something being put in gratuitously because it’s Duke Nukem.  Simply being rated mature because it mimics reality too closely for the kiddies.

I miss the simple complexity that was Daggerfall.  Think we’ll ever see were-bears and were-boars again? Or have walls that can be climbed? Daggers thrown? A left-handed character? Sometimes it’s the little things. Sometimes more is more.

And if you’re going to give us less, at least make sure that you get that less right!  Sheesh!

But still, at least Skyrim is better than Oblivious.

So I recently picked up Gothic 4: Arcania (I absolutely refuse to use the correct title) for dirt cheap and ran through the game from beginning to end. Here’s my review:

The first sign of something gone incredibly wrong is right there in the title. Actually, two signs. First, “Arcania” comes before “Gothic 4″? Besides making absolutely no grammatical sense, it speaks of extreme arrogance. As if all of the prior Gothic titles were less important. Not as if you were playing the fourth installment of a well-established series. But it’s even further compounded by that awful insistence on capitalizing the last A in Arcania as well. It’s not just some goofy image trick. That last a is actually meant to be capitalized. How … droll.

Once you get past the title itself, then there’s the developer. Gothic 4 was developed by Spellbound Entertainment, not by Piranha Bytes.

Aha.

Which then puts the demented title into perspective. And that insult in the title is very much intentional, as the second “Gothic” (and I use that term very loosely at this point) game written by Spellbound Entertainment is not Gothic 5: Fall of Setarrif, but Arcania: Fall of Setarrif. So you can see that Spellbound Entertainment is very much taking new ownership of the rights of the Gothic series and is going in their own direction, called Arcania. It is no longer Gothic.

Which itself is a real shame to anyone who is a fan of the Gothic series. But maybe it’s not all bad, right? Same canon, right?

Well … err … not really. No.

You can draw some lines from Point A to Point B, but it’s an awfully rough journey and a lot is lost along the way, unfortunately.

Frankly, renaming this so-called extension of the Gothic series to Arcania instead of Gothic is about the best thing that Spellbound Entertainment did for Arcania.

And where Gothic 3 was, quite frankly, setting a whole new bar for explorable open-world role playing games, Gothic 4 is a pathetic claustrophobic nightmaric mess of an RPG. Not just in the size of the world or the number of quests, but also in the ability to actually make choices. Frankly, nothing that you do in Gothic 4 affects, well, anything. Other than winning or not I guess. Not like Gothic 3’s constant balance of world powers, who you can impress, who you piss off. Or for that matter Gothic 3’s multiple endings depending on the path that you choose.

Gothic 3 was almost everything that a good RPG should be, with a lot of interesting extras thrown in. (Like how the AI of most animals will first try to scare you off, and then attack if you keep pestering them.) The only real lacking was in initial character choice/customization. There basically was no initial character creation, naming, stat setup, etc. But everything after that point is pure RPG.

Gothic 4 on the other hand … well … not so much. No real world choices. Even though familiar characters return, even their feel seems … off. And the storyline was pretty bad. Oh, sure, there was some character customization … but if you liked magic, you’ll probably hate Acrania as most of the spells are gone and you’re basically just reduced to throwing simple ranged attacks. You’ll also miss, well, pretty much every skill.

Even the game engine is completely different. On the plus side, it runs on a faster clock, so it feels more smooth. On the minus side … everything else. Really.  Everything.  It’s extremely melee-combat based. Even though archery exists, it’s been hamstrung by attempting to make it more … realistic? (Except even that is highly questionable.)  And as I said, being any kind of mage is pretty hamstrung as well. And in fact in Arcania being a thief is just kind of a given. There’s only one skill: sneak. Lockpicking only works on chests and is super-easy. (And can’t be used on doors, ever.) And no one seems to care whenever you steal their stuff. Just grab whatever you feel like taking, anywhere, any time. Right in front of anyone. No one cares. It rather takes the fun out of robbing anyone blind, really.

While I did kind of like the flurry concept, taking a melee attack into animated barrage of attacks … it was kind of overpowering I thought. And needed some work. Especially the timing indicator, which by the time you see it and click the mouse button to start a flurry, is already too late. You have to learn to anticipate when the indicator will glow, not watch for the indicator will click. Which rather defeats the point in my opinion. But it’s a trainer, not an actual indicator, basically.

And that pretty much goes with everything else about the game. Lots of interesting ideas … but all flawed. Even though exploring is supposed to be encouraged by multiple “find all the items” type quests, if you dare to actually try to go beyond a “boundary” in the game, you’ll be pushed back towards “safety”. In theory. In practice, the only times I ever died in the game were when that worked the opposite way and it pushed me to my death without letting me escape the impending slide to my doom in any way. Doh! Or “falling” to my death. (As in intentionally jumping to a ledge that should be quite reachable, but causes my death when I land because I went past whatever invisible imaginary boundary they intended.) Oh, or except for the times when I tried to swim, and quickly learned that water equals death. There is no swimming. If you try, at best you’ll hit a wall. At worst you’ll just suddenly die.

So basically, “explore” at your own peril.  And peril it will indeed be! The world of Arcania itself is far deadlier than any of the monsters in it. But with multiple “gotta collect ‘em all” quests, make sense of that.  Highly schizophrenic.  Very unbalanced.  Extremely discouraging.

Further departure from the wonderment of Gothic 3 is regeneration. In Arcania health and mana regeneration is practically handed to you on a silver, gold, nay ­platinum platter from practically the very beginning! They’re item enchantments, and are pretty common to armor. So no going through most of the game trying to find the penultimate symbol of bad-asterisk. Nope. They’re handed out to every plebe. Congratulations on your achievement! Meh.  It’s certainly not any kind of achievement anymore.

Further gross departure from Gothic 3 is how armor is thrown at you. Whereas in Gothic 3 you practically had to topple an army and sell all of their loot just to afford a decent armor upgrade, because strangely no one actually carried armor, in Gothic 4 it just rains down on you from the heavens. Seriously. You just can’t go ten minutes without some new armor being thrown at you. If not strictly true in the suit of armor sense, than at least in some new helm, gauntlet, ring, or amulet sense. You’re just constantly finding super-power-ups. It verges on the ridiculous.  It’s a wonder that the whole world of Arcania isn’t populated with veritable gods, what with all of the super-duper equipment strewn about everywhere.

Speaking of the ridiculous, so is the crafting in Gothic 4. You don’t have to use specific world objects to craft anymore. You can just open up the crafting menu at any time, regardless of lacking any actual tools to do so. But as if that wasn’t bad enough from an RPG perspective, here’s where it gets weird:  Tthe recipes for the next upgrade tend to either be handed to you on a silver platter, or are sold at ridiculously high prices. If you don’t find the recipe you need, you’ll hardly ever be able to afford buying the good ones. And by the time that you usually can afford to buy that recipe finally, you’ve already found something better. Especially when the new and better weapons are thrown at you just as fast as the new and better armors are.  But even if you have to buy the new equipment at the shops, they’ll cost far less to purchase outright than the recipes for the old stuff will cost.  So there’s really almost no point in crafting whatsoever. Except for potions. Which you pretty much don’t need anyway because you regenerate health and mana (and get insanely large stat bonuses) from your armor. So if you’re far too impatient to wait a couple of seconds before charging after the next fight, then maybe you’ll use crafting. Maybe.

Even the world bestiary is sorely lacking. I only remember encountering a single solitary one troll. (And not even a black troll.)  No dragons.  Nada. You’ll see scavengers and such amped up, sure. But there’s so very little inspiration to the fauna of Gothic 4.

As for the game itself, it’s just far too short. Like dropping a lit cigarette in a fireworks factory, it’s over in a flash. In fact when I hit the final boss battle, I hadn’t even realized it was going to be the end of the game. And was kind of surprised that there wasn’t even a token adventure afterward.

So to sum up, Gothic 4 is an insult to the Gothic series. It’s over too quickly. It feels uninspired. Characters in the world are dull and uninteresting, even the established carryovers. Storyline is third-rate at best. It punishes you for exploring. The world is far from open. It lacks character development. It robs you of any sense of achievement with victory constantly being served on a silver platter. And the only type of character to even play is “combat”. You get three choices of “combat”. That’s it.  You could maybe argue four if you want to technically split up melee into one-handed and two-handed, but … meh.  Not really.  The difference is minimal.

Oh, and as a spoiler: Whatever type of combat character you play, invest in using the freeze spell anyway. Because of its slow-down effect, it makes it easy to outrun anything you go up against. And with mana regeneration a given, all that you have to do is outrun it until you have enough to throw your next snowball and you can take down _anything_ in a one-on-one fight. Just run in circles with the lowest-level version of the spell and you’re pretty much invincible … one-on-one at least.

Basically, I give Gothic 4 just one sad leap to my death out of five.

Though if you can pick up Gothic 4: Arcania for dirt cheap, like I did, maybe you’ll find it worth playing through at least once. At a very low price, if you put a piece of tape over the game’s title so that you can’t see it’s allegedly “Gothic” related, it has some vague merit as a quick little hack-and-slash adventure.