Ender's Game Movie Review

Original Ender's Game story didn't even make the cover page of Analog

Today, after over 30 years, I got to see the Battle Room from Ender's Game. For those who don't know, the new movie, Ender's Game, written and directed by Gavin Hood is based on a novelette and later book by the same name. Ender's Game the novelette was written by Orson Scott Card and first published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine in August 1977. The novelette was expanded to a full length novel published in 1985, winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

In the future, some 50 years after contact and war with an alien race, the Formics (or Buggers), mankind is training for another conflict. To prepare, children are monitored in their early childhood and then the most promising are chosen to go to battle school (and later command school) to train for the future conflict. What follows is the story of children, including Ender (played by Asa Butterfield), training into soldiers and commanders. Training that mainly takes place at the space-based Battle School run by Colonel Hyram Graff played well by Harrison Ford.

Hard to see here, but in the future there are still Audi cars

My ten-year old and fifteen year-old self really connected with this story. For many years it has been one of my favorite stories. There are details of the plot and backstory that I won't spoil in this review. My most favorite part of the story is the Battle Room, a zero gravity space where cadets in suits battle with "freeze rays" against other students in mock battles. I could imagine what it would be like flipping, flying and floating in that room while firing on opponents. Even back then I thought that this would make a fantastic team-based video game. I am happy to say that Ender's Game the movie nails the Battle Room in every detail (which unfortunately the picture of the room is blurry).

Ender's Game the book is a dense story with many plots and sub-plots that can't all fit into a movie (naturally). Some threads are cut entirely from the film, but are not central to the plot of the story. What I think is a detraction for those going to see the movie is that everything seems a bit rushed. I don't know if someone not versed in the story of Ender's Game will get the same detail and sense of character development in the movie that happens in the ~300 pages of the book. This means that some details of Ender's development at the Battle School don't have the impact or depth that I hoped to see.

Where's my damn holo display tablet?

The movie is visually stunning with terrific special effects. All of the story elements that matter are present, if not told in the same way as the book. What I am left feeling at the end of the movie is a little sad over how brilliant this story could have been as a three season run of 11 episodes TV show from the BBC or HBO. There the sub-plots that were dropped and the depth of the character development could have been fully realized along with more Battle Room and other training scenes. Instead we have all of the pieces, beautiful to look at, put together well with good acting but not the depth the whole could have had with more time.

Yeah, this looked pretty awesome on the huge IMAX screen

Ender's Game is worth watching and in IMAX looked great. The film, however, feels rushed and some of the details of the story lost their impact by fitting them into the 1 hour 50+ minute run time. Overall, I give Ender's Game 3.5 Mick Happies. Well worth seeing, but I recommend seeing it after reading the book to get the full impact of the story.

FTL: Faster Than Light Review

FTL: Faster Than Light is a space simulator where you and your crew are piloting a ship trying to run from a Rebel fleet bent on stopping you from delivering key data to the Federation. FTL was developed by Subset Games (Matthew Davis and Justin Ma) and partially funded through a Kickstarter campaign. The game is available (Mac, PC, Linux) via the FTL website or through Steam.

I first heard about FTL from listing to the Major Nelson podcast where E mentioned that he was playing the game. From there I searched for the game and found the FTL website. There wasn’t much detail there, so I happened to come across this YouTube video of a play-through that gave a really good overview of the game:

FTL has minimalistic top-down graphics and real-time combat. You control all aspects of your ship from how much power you put into various ship systems to where you station your crew (they add bonuses as they become more proficient at a job – faster weapon power up, etc.) and how you upgrade your ship. The items you most have to manage are fuel, missiles, drone parts and scrap - the currency of the future. The controls are point and click and easy to learn and you can pause when necessary – which it is if your ship has been boarded, has a hull breach and is on fire – to help you think about where to move crew or what part of an enemy ship to target.

The basic elements of the game have you jumping (using FTL drives) to various spots in a given star sector. At each stop you may run into hostile ships, potential quests, black market stores or other challenges or dangers. At each you will have a series of choices to make that may help or hurt your overall goal to escape the Rebel fleet and reach the Federation. With each jump you make in a sector, it will (hopefully) take you closer to the exit point (where you can jump to the next sector) and away from the Rebel fleet (shown on the jump screen as a growing danger area you want to avoid – read you fight enemy ships every jump).

FTL doesn’t waste much energy on the graphics, but the sound is great and the game play is really engaging. It is similar to rogue-like games (Rogue, NetHack, etc.) in that death of your ship and crew is permanent. I found that it made me think fondly of NetTrek and similar minimal graphics starship games of the past. There are also Stats and Achievements to help you track how well you have done on each game. There are also multiple ship designs that can be unlocked by various achievements. I have played six games so far and unlocked one new ship design and haven’t come close to winning the game on normal, succumbing to a different death each time.

FTL is hard, fun and re-playable and at $10, you should go out and get it. If you wonder if FTL is right for you, watch the video above for a little while to get a feel for how it works and how quickly things can go from great to running at the edge of your seat. FTL gets 4 Mick Happies. Safe travels in the darkness of space.