The Women of Modern Combat 5: Blackout

    Hey, everyone. I stopped by Best Buy the other day and had a nice chat with a rep from Samsung. He was a pleasant bloke and he had his own display there at the store, devoted mostly to tablets. He had a thick piece of magic glass there on the counter and told me that if he hooked an I-Pad to it, that the device would sense the apps contained on the I-Pad and install the Android equivalent on a Samsung tablet, free of charge.
    This is brilliant marketing by Samsung, because many people believe themselves locked into the Apple system once they have the gear and the attendant apps, music and games. Apple is King of tablets, but the competition grows more fierce as each day passes.
    I walked down the tablet isle at Best Buy and marveled at the variety and prices. There were tablets as low as $47. I started to buy a new tablet myself, just for something new to mess with. My son has been showing me his new tablet with its split screen and other cool features. My other son still likes the I-Pad better than the Samsung, but his wife took over his I-Pad and he uses a Kindle Fire. He likes it a lot as well. They are all good devices.
     True to your suspicions, I have been playing Modern Combat 5: Blackout. This war game is $6.99 on the app store and currently holds the #2 slot for popularity amongst paid games.
    This has no in-apps, thank goodness. How wise of Gameloft to refrain from risking the success of their massive 'cash cow' franchise.
     I have enjoyed this game, though I have not taken a lot of time for it. The graphics are exceptional and the gameplay is fun and varied. For instance, at one point we are told to clear a series of rooms in a Tokyo building. Some rooms are straightforward. Breach, shoot, kill bad guys. Then, just when you feel that you are invincible, you enter a room with a hostage situation. If one shoots the hostage, you lose and must replay that mission.
     I confronted some tattooed rascals in a hallway and kicked a stretcher into them. That was fun. I also used a drone to recon rooms as well. It was a glowing green, as big as a softball, and could hover effortlessly and silently. A must-have item for voyeurs, I imagine.
    Hey, did you see where some tourists called the police on a hovering drone outside the Space Needle in Seattle? They caught the guy using it. I have written several times about this tech and I consider it a cultural shift of monumental proportions. The negative possibilities of this tech in the wrong hands boggle the mind.
    The women of Modern Combat 5 are certainly thought provoking, speaking of unsavory people and their use of drones. Roux is a comrade in arms. She fills out her 'uniform' exceptionally well. (See above.) Her hair is red, like her name, and she has a bad temper.
     For those of you who prefer the girl next door type, there is a Doctor named Riko(?). She is a Japanese lady, so I guess she is not really next door, but she is much more conservative and normal than Roux. Of course, once while I was escorting the attractive Doc, she saved my scrawny butt from a killer. I was ever so grateful.
     Hey, while fighting in this warehouse I had a neat combat experience. The upstairs has apartments, rooms that are sometimes quite sumptuous. They have the portable room dividers with lovely designs, made of paper. I could see red dots that indicated an enemy presence on the other side of the wall and shot the guy through the paper. One second he was sneaking up on me, then he was clasping his hands over his wounds, trying to hold the life in his body. War is a grim business.
     I forget why we are fighting at the moment, but I will go back and check it out this afternoon. I do highly recommend the game, however.
      I am only 10% of the way through the story. One accumulates stars on every mission, with a possibility of three stars per mission. A certain number of head shots will usually earn you a star. I don't play multiplayer on any game but you have that option with this game. I don't understand some of the game yet, like choosing if you play as an assault squad soldier, a sniper or whatever. Oh, that place I was talking about was the Rinnoji Temple in Japan. The bad guys had stolen a bunch of medical supplies and the lady Doctor and I had to go and fetch them. We sure made a mess of a nice temple; my apologies to the owners.
     There appear to be a mere 6 Chapters in the game (654MB), with nice locales like San Marco and Venice. One must complete each chapter before going to the next, with several missions per chapter. I am so happy that your progress is saved after each mission rather than after each chapter.
    I will try to give you an update on my progress through this action packed game, and its women. I'm CE Wills. (Cayden is my name in this game, I guess.) 
   I almost forgot about the pictures. The game starts with you swimming through an underground stream to attack some bad guys. This episode in Venice is cool, with a nice boat chase in which I had to shoot down a helicopter. While swimming, I wondered if anyone had urinated in the water, but we soldiers must persevere through unsanitary conditions as well as bullets. Once I saw a red bicycle on the street. It had the bar, which in my day indicated a boy's bike and could prove murderous if your foot slipped off the pedal. Ha, ha. But, this bike was pink, with the bar. It is dangerous to reflect on such details when armed men seek your life.
     Later, at the Japanese temple, I paused to meditate on the beauty of a Cherry tree in full bloom, before I went back to the deadly mission. Because I am a poet, as well as a soldier, at the author's green retreat.