The Role-Playing Jew

Capsule Reviews

2012-01-17T07:26:00.000-08:00

Don't really have time for in-depth reviews on these things, so let's rustle up some quickies.

An oldie but a goodie. Sleuth (the original 1970's version, not the 2010 remake) is both staggeringly simple and surprisingly complex. There are a grand total of three characters in the entire movie, which is more than two hours long, and takes place in a single mansion. It sounds stifling and incredibly boring, and the fact that it keeps your interest non-stop is a testament to the excellent script and the bravura performances by Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine (whom I kept thinking was Eric Idle at times).

The plot involves Andrew Wyke (Olivier), an eccentric murder mystery writer who invites the young Milo Tindle over to his gewgaw-scattered demesnes. Milo is carrying on with Wyke's wife, we learn quickly, but Wyke professes to want nothing more than to be rid of her. Is he telling the truth? Is the scheme Wyke proposes to Milo simply what it seems? Who's playing whom?

Olivier in particular was a treat to watch. He runs the gamut: childlike, manic glee; frothing, eloquent rage; amused snootiness; abject terror; pitiful sorrow. Caine's Tindle is the perfect foil, suave, cheery but deadly serious about what he wants. Although the picture quality could use plenty of touching up, the film remains just as enchanting now as it was then.

I grew up on Tintin books when I was a kid, so as soon as I saw the trailer for this I was hooked. Amazingly enough, Spielberg and Jackson have managed to capture the feel of the books perfectly while crafting a movie that has every right to be in a 21st century theatre.

Following the story of the first three Tintin books pretty closely, intrepid reporter Tintin accidentally becomes involved in an ancient feud and treasure hunt when he purchases a model of a ship called the Unicorn. Accompanied by his trusty dog Snowy and aided (somewhat) by the bumbling detectives Thompson and Thomson, Tintin travels through deserts and oceans yearning to unlock the secret of the ship - and to manage his newest acquaintance, the alcoholic Captain Haddock.

What struck me about the movie is that it managed to hit a very fine line between earnestness and action. There are plenty of funny and jaw-dropping scenes, but Tintin has none of the fourth-wall-breaking, winking humor of contemporary kids' films. Even the 3D, which I usually try to stay far away from, was put to excellent use, really making one feel like they were in the scene. I also have to put my hands together for the director's use of imaginative imagery, especially in scene changes, which were quite unexpected but elicited peals of surprise from me. An extremely enjoyable movie, and here's hoping for the sequel.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is hardly really a book. Written from the perspective of Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old boy with serious Aspberger's Syndrome, it is part narrative, part explaining how his mind works.

The book is intriguing and thought-provoking in getting into the mind of Christopher and putting his thoughts down onto paper. Christopher, like many with his condition, has major problems with social cues, can't handle crowds, has decided that the colors yellow and brown mean bad things, and thinks very logically (if unusually) about everything. His reaction to things he can't deal with is to groan or shout until they go away, and he can spend hours in an almost catatonic state, thinking about math problems.

Of course, there is a story here, and the emotion of it still comes through despite Christopher's lack of understanding of it. It begins with a dead dog, Christopher's own dogged attempts at sleuthing out the murderer (a la his favorite character, Sherlock Holmes) and his subsequent discovery of much more family drama than he thought he'd ever see.

The book is a good read, but Christopher's voice gets monotonous after a while and it's hard to say it was actually "enjoyable". "Enlightening" would be a better word.

The World Ends With You

2012-01-12T14:13:00.000-08:00

Innovation is a buzzword in game development. No one wants a retread of the same old stuff; stagnation is death. On the other hand, innovation itself is sometimes deadly. Final Fantasy XIII, for example, messed with some of the tried-and-true formulas enough to anger both critics and players. Creativity is a double-edged sword, and game makers need to be very conscious that change simply for change's sake can often backfire.

Luckily enough, The World Ends With You stands on its own two feet as a captivating, groundbreaking game, with top-notch writing, direction and world building, an addictive battle system and enough content to keep you playing for a long, long time. Many DS games are average-to-good; TWEWY is the excellent exception to the rule.

The game is directed by Tetsuya Nomura and has his trademark art style taken to extremes (almost everyone seems anorexic). The art is in fact a major part of the game's charm. There is a strong hip hop/urban feel to it; the place names are displayed in graffiti text when you enter, and at least one character speaks in ebonics. The soundtrack is an eclectic mix of J-Pop, hip hop and rap, which sounds surprisingly good on the DS's speakers and can be insanely catchy. This combines to create a unique feel for the game which sets it apart from its RPG cousins.

The story is no less unique. The main character, Neku Sakuraba, awakes in the famous scramble crossing of Shibuya, Tokyo. He has no memory of how he got there, and no one else seems to be able to see him. (This suits him fine; he's anti-social and would prefer that everyone just leaves him alone.) What's not so fun is that strange creatures who seem part stencil start attacking him. He confusedly partners up with a girl named Shiki, she of the shorts riding so low you can see her hip bones, and exposition ensues.

Neku has apparently enrolled in the Game, a seven-day endurance mission, competing against other Players. Quitting is not an option. Along the way he is stymied and attacked by Noise (the strange creatures he first sees) and Reapers, a set of colorful afterlife characters determined to make his life annoying. Pulling the strings is the Game Master - or is he?

TWEWY has a complex original mythology which comes with some very specific rules, and is extremely satisfying to uncover. The characters aren't deep but they are fun, and the plot is rife with twists, turns, and reveals. The game doesn't simply explain things one at a time, but shows bits and pieces of things that happen, both in the past and the current storyline, keeping you guessing and salivating for more. The dialogue is excellent, and rarely gets bogged down in the sort of vague corniness that JRPGs tend to espouse. When it does, the philosophy is much more interesting than usual. The main themes are individuality and connections between people - where to draw the line? How is it really possible to connect to someone else when both of you are trapped inside your own mind? Neku's character development is also a pleasure to take in over the course of the story.

What's more, TWEWY manages to jury-rig the fantastical plot and characters into the real-life neighborhood of Shibuya, a trendy area of Tokyo populated by a plethora of youngsters and fashionistas trying to assert their own individuality. Although they have obviously taken liberties with certain aspects of the place, they have managed to capture its heart and character very well. Although I've never been there, judging from sites like these, they've done their research.

All this would be cool but boring without interesting gameplay, and TWEWY delivers the goods here too. In fact, I can't think of another DS RPG that makes such good use of the stylus and makes it feel so natural.

The battle system has two main systems. The first involves pins. Neku has up to six slots for pins, which he receives as the game progresses or wins from enemies. Each pin has a particular "psych", or gesture that activates it, ranging from slashing, touching, drawing a circle, pressing for several seconds, or even shouting at the microphone. While most are attack-based, some will heal or provide support. Pins have a limited number of uses before they have to "reboot", making sure you can't keep overusing the same one. This gives you a fast-paced, dynamic and variegated battle system which is a ton of fun. The only frustrating part of this aspect of the game is moving Neku, as you must basically drag him around the screen, which can sometimes interfere with the flow of battle.

The second system involves the top screen, where your partner fights the same Noise you are. Your partner is controlled by the D-pad or ABXY buttons, although they can be put on auto-pilot. Each partner has a "combo map" where a successful combo done the right way can add "fusion stars", and when you gain enough you can unleash a powerful Fusion Attack.

There is also a "light puck" which moves between you and your partner as you rack up combo finishers, and whoever has the light puck is more effective in their attacks (and some enemies can only be hurt by the puck bearer). You can simply ignore the top screen if you like, or try to use strategy to pay attention to whoever has the light puck. You can also just keep jabbing the left or right arrow to get quick combos while ignoring the fusion stars, since you'll often get enough of them this way anyway. This dual battle system can be overwhelming at first, but the top screen can be ignored through most of the main game if it bothers you.

What about equipment? TWEWY's emphasis on urban culture and fashion means that clothes make a big difference. You can equip up to four items, each of which has a hidden effect that can only be unlocked by gaining the trust of the various shopkeepers around Shibuya. Each piece also requires a set amount of "bravery". Walking around with a T-shirt and jeans is easy. Doing so in high heels and fluffy ears takes a lot more mojo. Bravery (and other stats) can be raised by eating food, which gets digested as you battle.

There's even more than I've mentioned - for example, the somewhat addicting mini-game Tin Pin Slammer, or the post-game, where you can revisit any chapter at will, or the difficulty settings or ability to change your level in exchange for better drops, or chaining battles... suffice to say, this game has a ton of things to keep your mind engaged. I most enjoyed the bonus chapter, "Another Day", which took all the characters, completely changed their personalities, and turned the story into a hilarious parody of sports anime. It's great to see them poke fun at themselves.

What about downsides? The only thing that really chafed was the "PP" required for pins to gain strength and "evolve" into new ones. You gain PP by battling, which is simple enough, but some pins won't evolve this way. There are two other ways to gain PP: Shutdown PP, which accrues when the game is turned off, and Mingle PP, which requires you to open Mingle Mode and meet up with other TWEWY players nearby. (Luckily, Mingle Mode will still score you Mingle PP randomly though slowly even if no one is there, which for most people will be all of the time).

This means that about two-thirds of the pin evolutions must take place when you're effectively not playing the game. This is annoying enough on its own, but taken up to eleven when you realize that the game doesn't tell you which pins will evolve which way. You must consult an FAQ for this, because you simply can't experiment with evolving pins. You'll lose the pin you have and the evolution takes far too long to try save scumming. (What's more, you have only a single save slot, which discourages experimentation as well). This is probably the worst-thought-out part of the game.

TWEWY is a breath of fresh air, an unparalleled success in showing what innovation can actually do. It boasts enjoyable, lengthy gameplay, a stellar story, engaging art and music, and plenty of replay value. It's truly one of the best things to ever be released on the DS.

L.A. Noire

2012-01-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

L.A. Noire is an odd mashup between Ace Attorney and Grand Theft Auto, combining ground-breaking graphical advancements with gameplay which is both freeing and frustrating, and a story which is gritty, realistic, but at times plodding.

You are Cole Phelps, a new recruit to the LAPD in the mid-1940's, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and cursed with a conscience in a department that seems to consist entirely of cynics, officers turning a blind eye to crime, or outright crooked cops. Paired with a series of partners as he rises through the ranks, Cole is determined to get to the bottom of every case, regardless of who he has to upset to do it.

The gameplay has several modes. The main one consists of walking around and examining clues, aided by musical cues and vibration when you're close to one. You'll also have to interrogate suspects, though, and here's where L.A. Noire is unusual. Team Bondi has made leaps and bounds in capturing facial expressions, and the interviewees and suspects go hurtling right past the Uncanny Valley and out the other side to where they actually look real. In fact, it's a big part of the gameplay, since you need to look closely at them to figure out whether they are telling the truth or lying.

Unfortunately, this part of the game can be extremely frustrating. If you have evidence, you have to confront them with a "lie", otherwise you need to "doubt" them; and like many similar games, the evidence and its properties often seems arbitrary as to its power to enforce a "lie". A piece of evidence can be damning because of where it's found, but the game might not allow it anyway; or it might seem innocuous but Cole will make a leap of judgment that the player might not. Sometimes characters will be telling the technical truth in their sentences but you're still expected to doubt them because of what they're not saying, or because of implications in their statements. And some characters are so good at lying that figuring out how to respond is a plain old crapshoot. FAQs become necessary if you want to get a good result for your case.

Other gameplay modes include driving, fistfights and gun fights, along with the occasional unusual mission like tailing or chasing a character, or doing set puzzles. The action sequences can be avoided entirely if you fail them three times, which is good, because the controls in all three sequences are overcomplicated and very aggravating to use. The camera will often conspire against you in heated gun battles, and later high-speed chases can be almost impossible to get through correctly due to quick turns and tight spaces. I was particularly annoyed when having to tail another car without being spotted, because pressing the left stick too hard turns on the siren, resulting in an instant failure. Who thought that would ever work?

Graphically, as mentioned, the facial expressions are a huge leap ahead, but unfortunately it seems like the advances haven't transferred to body movements, which can be oddly jerky and unconvincing. It's like they took a perfectly realistic head and transplanted it onto a marionette's body. And it's a little odd that not a single female character anywhere in the game has long hair or, in fact, anything but a bun. After a while they all start to look the same.

Where the game really shines is in its world building. The team has done an outstanding job in recreating Los Angeles of the 'forties; there are hundreds of streets, dozens of locations to enter (which are all fully interior decorated); over 40 vehicles on the road, even radio stations which play actual radio shows and songs from the period. Landmarks have been rendered faithfully and the sheer size of the city is almost overwhelming at times. (Thankfully you can skip driving to your next location rather than doing it manually.)

There's plenty of side content for those who want it - there are about 40 "street crime" cases that occur while driving; you can find hidden vehicles or try and visit all the landmarks in the city. Wide-open sandbox play has never appealed to me, though, so most of that remains unfinished for me and always will.

L.A. Noire does have an overarching story, though it takes a very long time to get going. Each chapter is interspersed with Cole's memories of World War II, and newspapers scattered throughout the cases slowly uncover the story of one of Cole's fellow soldiers and his unfortunate attempt at reintegrating in society, with the help of an unctuous psychologist. The cases themselves are full of period jargon and the speech often goes at such a fast clip that nuances can be easily lost; thankfully, there is a full dialogue log to jog one's memory or hearing. (Note to those easily offended: There is plenty of swearing, blood and extremely disturbing crime scenes here.)

Ultimately the overarching story is a bit more mundane than gamers are used to, and doesn't do that great a job of characterizing those involved. (In fact, there is a rather jarring revelation about Cole which seems contrary to his characterization to that point, and is never really explained.) The mood is unceasingly cynical; in some cases Cole is sure he's got the wrong man, but despite my misgivings there is no alternate ending. The ending of the game itself is downbeat and rather disappointing. In general the game doesn't do a great job at emotion or suspense; I imagine with better direction, both of the action and the accompanying music, it could have been much more powerful.

In the end, L.A. Noire is a fairly enjoyable, immersive game riddled with annoyances and places that could have been improved. I'm not sorry I played the game, but towards the end I was definitely playing just so it could be over.

Snuff

2011-12-30T06:41:00.000-08:00

I've been a little worried about Terry Pratchett. It frankly blows my mind that he manages to turn out books of great quality despite being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers (or, as her refers to it, The Great Embuggerance) several years ago. I've seen a few mainly negative trends that have been introduced in recent books, and while they remain in force, they are more manageable with Snuff, which is one of his strongest recent offerings, though not quite up there with his best.

Snuff is almost the antithesis of Unseen Academicals. While that book follows three or four threads and easily a dozen characters, Snuff is almost quiet and bucolic by contrast. Commander Sam Vimes (whom I suspect is Terry's favorite character) is packed off to Ramkin Hall on vacation, rather forcefully. But where there's a policeman, there's crime, and Vimes soon realizes there are secrets everywhere in the small town, and what's more, there's murder afoot.

Some of the flaws of recent books are still apparent here. There is a small part of the book which follows the Watch back in Ankh-Morpork; it lacks focus or meaning to the plot, fails to deliver a payload, and seems tacked on almost as an afterthought. Terry also seems resigned to putting in more emphatic references to earlier books; the Summoning Night from Thud! plays a part in the story, although again, it doesn't really go anywhere except to fill a plot hole midway through the book.

Terry also seems dedicated to exploring the racism issue lately; between the dwarves in The Fifth Elephant, trolls in Thud!, Mr. Nutt in UA and now goblins, a heretofore unmentioned race who are described as rather disgusting, thieving vermin. This is really the other side of the racism coin; previously it was fear, now it's revulsion. Still, the message is rather Anvilicious, relying on the recognition that goblins can play music beautifully; one imagines that the moral would be far more shocking and effective if the protagonists resolved to treat goblins as people despite them actually being disgusting and not all that nice to be around.

There are shades of The Fifth Elephant and Night Watch in the story, where Vimes is alone and without his normal coterie of Watchmen. To compensate, he has the help of Willikins, his "gentleman". Oddly, Willikins' character has changed drastically. In Jingo, the reveal that the unflappable, formal butler was a rather dirty fighter was almost a one-off joke; although mentions were made in subsequent books, it's almost as if Willikins is now completely without pretense to gentility. Admittedly about four or five years has gone by since Thud! and he and Vimes have had time to get used to one another, but it's still rather jarring.

The relationship between Vimes, Sybil and young Sam is a treat to see, though; Vimes loves his family to death but doesn't always quite know how to deal with them. On the other hand, Sybil knows exactly how to deal with Vimes, including when to sit back and let him go out and kick ass.

Vimes remains an extremely entertaining character to read, and we are given little else than his viewpoint, which manages to be both cynical and idealistic at the same time. There's a downside, though: Vimes is now such an experienced leader, fighter and policeman that he frankly wins everything. There is little sense of conflict or danger; even in the climactic scene depicted on the cover, where Vimes is fighting against nature rather than man, it's difficult to be afraid that he'll do anything but beat it down.

Although I've spent most of the space here seemingly slagging the book, the truth is anything but. One can see minor flaws much more clearly in perfectly smooth glass than rusty metal. The book is a treat to read; the comedy is in top form (a bit more subtle but nevertheless more effective than the last two or three Pratchett works), the story moves at a surprisingly brisk pace, and Vimes remains one of the best protagonists ever conceived. It is an excellent read, and here's hoping that Terry manages to keep the trend going.

Indigo Springs

2011-12-21T06:37:00.000-08:00

Indigo Springs was a pleasant surprise - a methodical, very personal story about loss, madness, magic, the walls people put up between each other, love and fear, and both the frailty and strength of human bonds.

Author A.M. Dellamonica tells a two-part story. The first, told in present tense, is from the perspective of Will Forest, a police investigator trying desperately to fix a world gone mad. In the present, an outbreak of "magic contamination" has caused natural disasters, disfigured people, and given others magical powers, which they use as part of a cult of terrorization. The leader of the cult is Sahara Knax, a charismatic, beautiful, driven lunatic.

A key figure to the whirlwind is Astrid Lethewood, who in the present is a raving madwoman, muttering phrases about the past, future and present which are uncannily accurate but still devoid of sense. However, she still has powers even more mysterious than Sahara. Will is tasked with trying to get Astrid to talk about her past and to find a key to breaking Sahara - who was Astrid's best friend.

And here the perspective shifts to the past and Astrid's arrival in her hometown of Indigo Springs, along with Sahara and her step-brother, Jacks. The story unfolds slowly, taking care to sketch out a full picture of Astrid's short but difficult life - her father's obsession with buying junk, her mother's delusions, her deep desire for Sahara - a selfish, crackling firecracker whose every statement has two meanings.

Only complicating this further is the discovery of a blue spring beneath Astrid's house - one that gives magical properties to whatever it touches, but also bestows madness and mutation. Astrid slowly begins remembering things her father told her about the "vitagua", and while at first she keeps atop of her newly discovered (or re-discovered) talents and responsibilities, her relationships soon begin fraying.

Dellamonica's gambit - giving us the ending before the story begins - is a good one; it gives direction to the tale, which starts very slowly and could otherwise have been a turn-off. She returns to Will's perspective every few chapters to drive home the difference between the good-hearted, lovely Astrid of the past and the wasted mental case of the present. While Sahara's descent into madness was obviously little more than a light step down, we continually wonder what could have happened to Astrid to destroy her so thoroughly - and whether Will will succeed in restoring her.

The characterization in Indigo Springs is strong; the author paints an arresting picture of awkwardness, pain and things that remain unsaid. Astrid herself isn't much of a protagonist, but her attempts to keep her life afloat, her brief visions of the future, and her irrational love for Sahara all weave a web of missed chances and attempts to get through to those around her. Astrid is a lone Cassandra amongst chaos, the only one who really understands the situation and yet whom no one will listen to.

Other than an rather vague and unsatisfying ending, and my personal dislike for the word "vitagua" (which is too long and unwieldy for the frequency it's used), Indigo Springs drew me in and kept me there, though it took about halfway through the book for it to happen. It's an impressive first effort.

Gunnerkrigg Court: Reason

2011-12-14T06:59:00.000-08:00

As amazing as Gunnerkrigg Court is online, it's even greater in good old dead-tree format.

Reading the first two volumes straight before the new third one, my admiration for Tom Siddell's storytelling and artistic ability just keeps rising. He is never complacent, always stirring up the mix by evolving his art, changing up his moods or altering forever the relationships between his characters.

The third volume introduces no new characters to the cast, allowing us to explore and spend time with the colorful group we've already met. It is a slower, deeper experience. We learn more about Annie's past, that of her parents and the Court in general; we find out about the relationship between Coyote, Ysengrin and Renard; and the ghostly shade of the betrayed Jeanne casts a shadow over everyone.

Siddell somehow manages to continually introduce new story elements while still making the full tale feel organic and full, as if every new piece was really just uncovered rather than made up on the spot. There are a few episodic chapters, but most have significant impact on the overall plot. Through all this, Siddell punctuates his creations with incredibly dry British humor, warmth, anger, sorrow, fear, curiosity, and love.

He continues to experiment with his artwork, both in the psychic visions of Annie and the technology of the Court, at once bleak and intriguing. Every so often a page just zaps my brain. One panel shows an upset and angry Annie running towards buildings, just a few panels before straight and uncaring, now bending and twisting, reflecting her rage and discomfiture.

Gunnerkrigg Court is one of the best stories I've ever read, populated with some of the best artwork I've ever seen. I have yet to be disappointed by it.

Prince of Persia

2011-12-08T06:53:00.001-08:00

Prince of Persia (the 2008 reboot) is a mediocre game masquerading as a great one.

Let's start with the production values, which are clearly excellent. The game looks amazing, with cel-shaded graphics for the characters and gorgeous locations that manage to pull off awe-inspiring feelings without excessively dreamlike architecture (like most recent Final Fantasies, for example). The voice acting is impeccable and there are no noticeable bugs.

For all that, though, the dev team seems to have missed some major lessons in video game making.

First an overview. As the Prince, you stumble across a beautiful yet sassy princess named Elika, fleeing from guards. You save her, but quickly get caught up in a mystical war as an ancient god named Ahriman threatens to burst forth from his prison. You and Elika need to team up to heal the various Fertile Grounds in the area to keep him trapped. You are opposed by Ahriman's Corrupted, four baddies who fight you several times each as you progress.

The story isn't much, and there are only three characters in the entire game (four, if you count Ahriman). The Prince and Elika have good chemistry and some great lines, but their banter is viewed the wrong way. In each area, you'll have one or two short conversations automatically, but all the others must be triggered by the L2 button. Doing this stops all the action and lets the two talk, and there are generally six or seven conversations per area. All they had to do was let the talk happen while moving, and not tie it to a particular place, and it would have been much more enjoyable. As it is, it slows down the action and doesn't really feel natural. Sure, we'd miss their expressions, but other than the very serious ones (maybe 10% of the conversations) it's not much to miss.

Next is the gameplay. I played a demo of the game first and loved the idea of it: the Prince is agile like a cat, and his clawed gauntlet lets him do moves like wall-runs, roof-runs, and double-jumps with Elika's help. This gave a great feeling of adventure for the first hour or two, but soon began to feel old when it quickly became evident that the game wasn't going to actually throw anything new my way.

The problem here is the level layout. Ubisoft decided to let you do most of the levels in any order you liked - which means that every single level could be the first one you do. There is no progression of difficulty and no new tricks to use (other than the "plates" which become usable as you progress, which do little more than let you spring to a new part of the level when you use them). Even the Corrupted lairs, which require at least four levels to reach, don't offer much except more plate usage.

The game is just plain easy. Part of this is the fact that you can't die. If you leap off a gap, Elika will save you and deposit you on the last solid ground you were on. If an enemy slashes you, she'll save you again, at the cost of the enemy gaining a chunk of health. There are obstacles like "corrupted air" or evil butterflies, neither of which seem to do much. But most of it is that the game refuses to teach you new skills or challenge you by using what you have in unusual ways.

Oddly enough, the exhilaration of the gameplay is destroyed by the quick realization that every level is nothing but a single pathway which sometimes branches to reach a different level. It's almost a rhythm game rather than a platformer: look at which obstacle is coming up, and press the right button to get past it. That is, if you can get past the sometimes frustrating play control, which insists on mapping half of your actions to the same button: while on a ledge, the same button can jump up to the next ledge, across to a wall-run, or off into thin air depending on which direction you've got pressed and where the camera is situated.

The combat looks promising but again leaves much to be desired. There are one or two fights per level, and a grand total of about six or seven combatants total. They will eventually use some special skills, like hiding your view with black ink or reversing your controls, but they are easily dealt with by holding the Block button and waiting until they're done.

Your own skills consist mostly of combos involving regular attacks, Elika's magic attacks, and throwing the enemy up in the air to continue the combo. Most people will find one or two combos which are long and easy to do, and use them throughout the game. Sometimes the enemy changes state, which requires a combo that starts with a particular button, but since the long combos all use all four buttons anyway, it just means starting the same combo halfway through. Most combat will be "wait for the enemy to attack, block to get them off-balance, combo them, rinse and repeat".

Most egregious, though, is the fact that you do not unlock new areas by beating existing ones, but by collecting "light seeds". These seeds only appear when you heal a Fertile Ground. This means that in every level, you must beat it, then backtrack to the previous level, then repeat for every road leading to a different level. Oh, and you also need to get back to the Fertile Ground, since light seeds have appeared on that path as well. It's needless repetition and adds nothing to the enjoyment of the game.

Prince of Persia has lots of potential, and beautiful aesthetics (I would seriously consider ordering and framing some of the bonus art unlocked after the game for my wall) but squanders most of it on repetitive and unchallenging gameplay. It's not torture to play by a long shot, but it is a disappointment.

The Wild Ways

2011-12-07T06:34:00.001-08:00

Tanya Huff failed to wow me with her novel The Enchantment Emporium back in 2009. I felt it had difficulty finding its groove and in the end, didn't have much to say for itself. The follow-up, The Wild Ways, improves in many ways upon the original, but still seems like it's missing something somewhere.

The main protagonist of this novel is Charlie, Alysha's rebellious musician cousin. Charlie is a much more well-defined character than Alysha was, and while still a member of the mysterious Gale clan, does as much as possible to avoid them all. Charlie is a Wild Power, a term which is never satisfactorily defined but seems to have something to do with having the powers of the Gales but not the responsibilities, whatever they are.

The secondary protagonist, interestingly enough, is Jack, the dragon prince who unexpectedly showed up towards the end of the last book. His entrance and story time seemed tacked-on, and the fleshing out of his character (a combination between every teenaged boy ever and an enormous fire-breathing dragon) in the sequel is surprisingly entertaining.

Charlie unexpectedly finds herself in the East Coast, reuniting with a Celtic band she's played with before, in an attempt to win a competition for a record contract. She's also got to take care of Jack, who's a handful for Alysha back in Calgary, what with his tendency to fly around the countryside and eat livestock.

As if that weren't enough, Auntie Catherine, another Wild Power and the impetus for the entire plot of the previous book, is messing with environmental politics. A powerful oil company is vying to drill a well right near a selkie homeland, and Catherine is helping the wrong side. (There's some clever satire involving the much-publicized Canadian seal hunt there.) The whole Gale mythos remains murky, with references to circles and rituals but no real explanations, which is just as frustrating now as it was previously.

The plot of The Wild Ways is a bit tighter than its predecessor but still tends to meander. This isn't helped by the huge emphasis on East Coast music. Song titles and bands are name-dropped constantly, and very few people will have any idea what any of them are. Hell, Great Big Sea makes up a decent percentage of my playlist, but I was practically at sea myself (har har). At least the references to unrestrained sexuality and frank incest have been dialed down a little. There are spotted attempts at comedy and banter but many of them don't work very well. At least the outright parody from the last book has been smothered; it didn't work either, but was much more blatant about it.

There is little contact between Charlie and Amanda, the bitchy head of Carlson Oil, and most of the book is pretty much one thing happening after another. It isn't until the last third that the plot actually picks up. It's a surprisingly slow narrative, and my patience teetered for most of the other two thirds.

I've enjoyed most of Tanya Huff's books, and figured she deserved another chance after my disappointment of The Enchantment Emporium. While the sequel is marginally better, it hasn't done much for me, and I'm not sure I want to see what comes next.

The Science of Discworld II: The Globe

2011-11-29T06:09:00.001-08:00

Sometimes a book can be enjoyable and frustrating at the same time. So far I've got two in a row.

The original Science of Discworld was chock-full of information, and at the same time, somewhat of a slog to get through. Consisting as it did of bite-sized teasers of a Discworld story surrounded by hard science chapters three or four times their size, I found it a slow read, and the subject matter (the history of the universe) wasn't my favorite. The story itself was written well but little more than an exploded example for the science chapters.

The sequel, The Globe, is overall a better experience, with some caveats. The Discworld story follows that of the original book and involves the elves invading Roundworld and the wizards having to get rid of them... although as it turns out, that course of action isn't necessarily the best one they could take. The story is much stronger and stands on its own rather than relying heavily on the science chapters as in the first book.

The science chapters are also more easily digestible. Truthfully, "science" is a misnomer, as much of the content is actually philosophy. The subject this time around is not the history of the universe but how the mind works. Their thesis is that humans are pan narrans, the storytelling ape, whose ability and propensity to tell stories both gave it an evolutionary advantage and inspired the creation of everything from religion to art to science itself.

Although the actual content was more interesting to read (being much closer to home than the vastness of space and time), there were many bits of it that annoyed me. The writing sometimes seemed unfocused or slightly incoherent. Cohen and Stewart make sweeping, often controversial statements without citations or references (this is a book about science, after all).

A particular peeve for me was their attitude towards religion. Pratchett, as a humanist, has always been ambivalent or suspicious of religion, but Cohen and Stewart are downright antagonistic, lumping all religions together and treating them as simply a means to control people. While they spend time discussing modern art, they spend little discussing modern religion, concentrating on ancient barbarism or tribalism and ignoring the complexity of religious thoughts and beliefs. Cohen goes so far as to imply that ancient Jewish priests (kohanim) engaged in human sacrifice or murder. If any religious book was so nonchalant about science we would be rightly enraged, so their attitude towards it here was a major turn-off and arguably clouded my reaction to the rest of the book.

There are nuggets of wisdom and insight to be gleaned from this book, certainly, and the ping-pong list of subjects (from the scientific method to neurology, psychology, biology, history and anthropology) are diverse enough to keep interest. The Discworld part is, as always, a welcome diversion. But the science forms the meat of the book, and it's decidedly stringy.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter

2011-11-18T06:16:00.001-08:00

The Professor Layton games are starting to get old.

Level 5 is hardly Capcom; although the gameplay remains the same, each Layton game has over a hundred completely original puzzles and a fully voiced story, punctuated with a good chunk of full animation. Still, the games are beginning to get stagnant.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter is a prequel of sorts; it showcases how Layton met Luke. While Luke tags along for a good chunk of the game, Layton's assistant Emmy is really his sidekick for most of it. Emmy is much more likable than Luke, being the kind of motorcycle-riding, karate-chopping power girl that likely never existed in the old-timey London the game is set in.

The place is the village of Misthallery, a rather bland place that's kind of like St. Mystere but with more water. Layton and co. are investigating reports of a giant specter who's terrorizing the city. The mysteries seem a bit desperate this time around, and once again they resort to a mysterious villain who goes on a rampage near the end for no discernable reason. The story has its moments, but we're a far cry from the satisfying tragedies of the first two games.

The puzzles themselves are a good deal more difficult than earlier games, and often rely on tricks or catches rather than skill - often the answer is based on information that just isn't there in the question, and some puzzles are just stated confusingly or ambiguously. Many of them are just rehashes of puzzles we've already seen. There's more algebra and geometry, making the puzzles basically impossible for those without an early high-school education. Luckily hint coins are plentiful, so don't feel bashful about using them.

The game comes with the requisite mini-games. As in previous games, there is one which is fun (fish), one which is rage-inducingly frustrating (trains, in which the most important obstacles are impossible to gauge until you actually run the simulation) and one which is largely pointless (puppets). There is also a hit-the-gopher mini-game which the game gives you no incentive to play, and a collection of items you can fill for no apparent reward.

Finally, there is a second game included with the cart, Layton's London Life. Billed as a 100-hour RPG, it's more of a simulation game than an actual RPG. You create a mute protagonist and arrive in Little London, which is populated by pixellated Layton characters. Most of the gameplay consists of doing errands for your neighbors, which are even more inane than most RPGs. Essentially, you wake up each morning and read the newspaper to find out what missions are there for the day. Each mission generally consists of talking to someone to start the mission; then either talking to someone else, finding a sparkle on the ground, or buying something at a store; then talking to the original person again.

There are a myriad items to buy; some will raise your Happiness, some let you change your outfit, others are room furnishings. You can do a few jobs, but they're little more than collection or delivery quests which barely count as mini-games. There are a few statistics that affect various parts of the game, but there is no real goal short of accumulating more Happiness and Wealth, and no real challenge, either. The graphics are intentionally old-school, the music is annoying, the gameplay is mind-numbingly boring and pointless.

All in all, Last Specter offers little new and even less improved. My interest in the series is starting to wane, and I'll consider the next game very carefully before buying.

Amulet 4: The Last Council

2011-11-18T05:58:00.001-08:00

I thought that Amulet creator Kazu Kibuishi had reached his limit. Book 3 was consistently good quality, but seemed to be lacking some of the power of the previous two. My lack of faith has been joyfully rebuffed with the fourth book in this striking series, which is definitely the most solid so far.

At the end of the third book, we left our intrepid protagonists, Emily the Stonekeeper, her mother and brother, and several other ragtag allies, at the entrance to the fabled floating city of Cielis. Emily is there to ask the Guardian Council for help fighting the Elf King - but all is definitely not what it seems. The people of Cielis live in fear of the Council, and Emily's friends are soon parted from her, some more roughly than others. The "tests" Emily must face to become a member of the Council are deadly, immediate, and non-negotiable, and while Emily fights her way towards freedom, her friends investigate the secret of the city.

Amulet's biggest strength has always been Kazu's art. Although his action sequences always come across as more of a series of still shots, his imagination and skill are unparalleled. The Last Council really lets him shine, as he showcases not only more fantasy elements (such as the roiling, sinuous shadow of the spirit of Emily's Stone) but also some amazing architecture. There are several full-page or even two-page shots that are breathtaking at first glance and reward second glances with a ton of loving detail.

Book four also has the strongest story so far. Emily has solidified into her own person: passionately dedicated to her family, but unwilling to show vulnerability; she is aware of her own weaknesses and fiercely fights to overcome them. Meanwhile, the supporting characters such as Prince Trellis, Leon, and even Emily's great-grandfather Silas are given more screen time and depth. Even the mood of the book is evocative: despite accumulating more and more allies, every one of them feels alone, and the sense of fear and wrongness is palpable. The story has more twists and turns as Kazu fleshes out the political and historical pieces of his world.

Amulet is marketed to youths but remains an excellent read, with gorgeous, vibrant art, characters who are finally starting to become more real, and a gripping story. I can't wait for the next volume.

The Last Dragonslayer

2011-11-17T06:20:00.001-08:00

I'm starting to have mixed feelings about Jasper Fforde.

When he started off his career with the twin imagination explosions that were Thursday Next and the Nursery Crime I thought he could do no wrong. Then Shades of Grey turned me off with its obtuse and difficult world-building. His first "young adults" offering, The Last Dragonslayer, is an extremely original and entertaining book, but I'm starting to feel I've seen a lot of it before.

Many urban fantasy novels grapple with the Masquerade that underlies its premise. How can something take place in the real world, but also feature magic, when the real world clearly doesn't? Jasper Fforde has cleverly sidestepped the issue by simply rewriting history from the ground up.

Although his book takes place in what we'd recognize fairly quickly as our own, there are some significant differences. For example, democracy never seems to have caught on, with the UnUnited Kingdoms consisting of dozens of small monarchies. For another, magic is still around, although largely used for pragmatic purposes such as unblocking drains or rewiring houses.

Jennifer Strange is a foundling who, through an unusual set of circumstances, is the acting manager of Kazam!, an agency which employs wizards and magicians and keeps them on the job. Jennifer loves the bizarrity of her work; when a new foundling, named Tiger Prawns, arrives, we get the grand introduction to her office in a very Harry Potter-like montage.

But things are stirring up - even though magic has been slowly dying, suddenly it's building up again, and a prophecy making all the news channels indicates that the last dragon is about to be killed on Sunday. And Jennifer's life is about to get even weirder.

Fforde has always delighted in skewering the celebrity-starved, capitalistic society we live in. When the last Dragonslayer is discovered, it's less about cavorting with royalty and more about the product placement deals, real estate opportunities and morning talk show appearances. In some ways Fforde is downright cynical, especially by the ending of the book, which is somewhat unsatisfying.

The author excels at giving us a heroine who takes no guff, has a highly developed moral compass which she does not hesitate to stand behind, and can breezily shrug off almost any bizarre episode with aplomb. After a while, though, I realized I was essentially reading another adventure starring Thursday Next, albeit younger and less complicated. The character type works wonderfully to make an entertaining book, but it's a little disappointing Fforde couldn't find someone a bit different to star.

He also has made little progress in being emotive; while there are one or two parts of the book that demand sorrow or anger, he seems flummoxed at how to convey it convincingly. The book is good at being funny but makes it hard to feel for the protagonist.

The Last Dragonslayer is short, sweet, and effective, though still feels like it's missing something; it ends too abruptly and doesn't really explore a lot of the world it gives us. Still, I can't deny I read it voraciously and found it extremely hard to put down. I'm looking forward to seeing what else Jasper Fforde can do with this promising start.

Discord's Apple

2011-11-14T06:52:00.001-08:00

Taking place Twenty Minutes Into The Future as well as in the distant past and several points in between, Discord's Apple weaves a three-part tale of gods, men and apocalypse. The main narrative stars Evie Walker, a cartoonist hailing from the miniscule town of Hopes Fort. Evie's world is in political and social chaos, with war in Asia, threats of nuclear attacks hanging over the world, gangs and militias running riot in America and checkpoints and curfews a daily occurrence.

Evie's job, writing scripts for the patriotic Eagle Eye Commandos comic book, helps distract her from the turmoil around her while simultaneously focusing her on it - her plotlines are intentionally synchronized with international news, though the sheer speed of the revolutions make it almost impossible to keep up. In the midst of the tornado, Evie returns home to Hopes Fort, to find her aged father Frank dying of cancer - and not doing much to stop it. But even that's not enough; it turns out the Walkers are hereditary custodians of the Storehouse, an ancient repository of magical artifacts, and when Frank dies, Evie is going to have to take over. That is, if she can fight off those who want to force themselves into the Storehouse and take what they want.

The second part of the story follows Sinon of Ithaca, the mythical Greek figure who convinced the Trojans to accept the famed horse as an offering, and hence one of the pivotal figures in the fall of Troy. Quickly captured by the god Apollo, Sinon is cursed with eternal life and eternal servitude.

The third section works backwards, illustrating in short vignettes the history of the Storehouse.

Carrie Vaughn's narrative is certainly captivating; her quick movement from one part of the story to another, and her weaving of them together into a whole, works well and keeps the words jumping off the page. She spends little time in description, content to let the dialogue and thoughts of her protagonists work for themselves.

Vaughn also leaves the edges of her painting intentionally blank; some details are never filled in. This is a somewhat daring move which can work beautifully when done with the right amount of balance between what we know and what we don't. Vaughn misses the mark, though; the lack of context or history in Evie's political situation makes one feel not that we're viewing a window into a larger puzzle, but that we have most of the puzzle and are just missing some of the side pieces. Similarly with the contents of the Storehouse, which Vaughn gives us a tantalizing view of, but most of which have little impact on the story.

Vaughn does a good job of creating mood. The sense of danger in Evie's story is palpable; her world and her own life is slowly falling to pieces around her. Meanwhile, Sinon's resignment to a life of servitude and punishment is slow but all-encompassing, and gives his part of the story a wistful feel of someone given a terrible lot but making the best of it.

Discord's Apple is a good yarn which takes some chances, but ironically it fails to evoke the timeless, mythological feel that this kind of story aspires to (and done with success in books such as Neverwhere or Running With The Demon. Its original mythos relies too much on existing ones, and at the end it feels a little washed out. Still, Vaughn is a talented author who presents her content with flair and interest, and the book is oddly hard to put down.

Blaze of Glory

2011-11-07T06:55:00.000-08:00

Blaze of Glory is an odd take on the superhero story, one that shows lots of promise but doesn't really get there.

In this world, superheroes and supervillains are essentially all one big act. Oh, their powers are real, but as soon as they're discovered, they're snapped up by the Agency, a Men In Black-style government organization that separates supers into villains and heroes, trains them, and puts them in front of the cameras for epic battles to benefit North American viewership. Sort of like pro wrestling - the wrestlers are eminently capable of doing their jobs, but all the moves are scripted.

All well and good, but when an alien attack turns out to be entirely unscripted, and begins slaughtering supers by the dozen, everything turns upside down. Especially for Surf, a.k.a. Jo Tanis, a Canadian superhero with the ability to manipulate electromagnetic energy. Bereft of her Guardian, sidekick and sometime lover Metal Mike, she finds her way back to Toronto, where she begins to map out her plan to defend the world from the mysterious attackers.

There are a lot of elements that should work in this story. Jo herself is a good protagonist, a mixture of toughness and a fierce determination to fight for what she holds dear. The unusual setting of the novel allows for some gentle slagging on the superhero genre, and the author succeeds in turning the superheroes and villains into plain people caught up in something bigger than them.

Unfortunately, most of it falls flat for a variety of reasons. First is the gaping plot holes in the underlying setting. While the capturing and training of supers is eventually explained, the televization of it is not. There are also handwaves as to how the supers are captured and kept captive, despite the obvious advantages they have in getting loose. Some superpowers featured in the book seem to defy putting on a show at all - for example, one man can melt things with his hands, which seems to be ineffective at long distances and instantly lethal close up, and another has mind-blast powers, which can't be captured by cameras.

Another problem is the lack of an appreciable villain. For most of the book the aliens are enigmatic ciphers who give no reason for their attack. Once the veil is lifted, though, they're still more of a force of nature and less of a villain. While Surf and co. obviously need to complete their fight, it's hard to root for them fully when we can't really tell who or what they're up against.

In general I just had a hard time getting my mind around the "soul" of the book; it kept slipping and sliding out of my hands, and all I was left with were words. Perhaps it even had something to do with the font the book is printed in, which is colder and more clinical than most books. But by the end of it, I didn't really feel I'd been part of anything.

It definitely has a kickass cover, though.

Ico

2011-10-31T07:28:00.000-07:00

I guess it's important not to get too inflated by hype.

Ico is one of those games that is constantly touted as the answer to the eternal question "Are games art?" Knowing little more than this set me up for a grand, emotional tour de force. What I got was a sweet game, evocative and unusual, perhaps groundbreaking for its time, but more of a breath of air than a tornado of change.

Ico's main goal is simplicity. There are no gauges, points, equipment, statistics, or other mechanical distractions from the gameplay. There is very little story, with perhaps two dozen lines spoken in the entire game, all in artificial languages. For most of the game, your main character is armed with a stick (upgradable to a sword and one or two secret weapons much later on). You have no health points; you're either alive or dead.

The little introduction we are given shows us the game's protagonist, the eponymous Ico, a boy born with horns which is apparently unlucky in some way. He is ceremoniously shoved into a stone receptacle in a giant temple, apparently to die. By luck he manages to escape and soon stumbles across the ethereal Yorda. Ico and Yorda must work together to escape the ridiculously enormous temple to freedom.

The vast majority of the game consists of set puzzles. Ico's skills mainly consist of pushing and pulling boxes, lighting fires, jumping gaps, climbing ladders, and swinging from chains or ropes. He's no Prince of Persia; his abilities are cursory and just good enough to solve the puzzles he finds himself in. The play control takes some getting used to and feels awkward at times.

The main issue, though, is that Yorda can't do most of those things. While she can climb ladders and jump some gaps, most of Ico's problems aren't how to proceed himself, but how to ensure that he can take Yorda with him. If he leaves Yorda offscreen for too long, she'll be captured by shadow men and Ico will have to rush back to her to save her. If he's too late, it's game over.

Speaking of which, the shadow men will show up at other times as well. They'll never attack Ico directly, preferring to go for Yorda. In fact, they'll actively run away from Ico, meaning that beating them requires faking them out. The combat system is simplistic and little more than an afterthought, and often frustrates the puzzle in progress. It would have been better left out entirely.

The puzzles themselves are fairly prosaic. Once you understand what Ico is actually capable of doing (e.g. realizing that those little round grey things are actually bombs, or that the giant cylinders will activate if Yorda steps on them) they're relatively easy. The only real challenge is the enormous size of the areas Ico is in. It's easy to miss a block hiding away in the corner, a ledge leading to a walkway several stories up, etc.

Also challenging is the fact that Ico can't leave Yorda alone; a few of the puzzles take up multiple screens, and many times Ico can actually continue forward but needs to go back to pick up Yorda. It's sometimes hard to figure out if a new screen is part of the puzzle or essentially a barrier which Ico can't pass without getting Yorda where he is.

What of the art? It's true that Ico evokes emotion in the player. As you explore, there is no music and no sounds other than Ico's grunts and calls and the sound of birdsong or wind or waterfalls. More importantly, it's Ico's direct connection to Yorda and his caring for her that brings out caring in the player. Ico and Yorda speak different languages, so their communication is entirely through their actions. Yorda doesn't just follow Ico; if you want to get anywhere fast, you'll need to actually hold her hand and run with her. Ico will help her up steps, catch her when she jumps, and fight for her; in order to save the game, both of them must take a break together on a stone sofa. That connection is surprisingly strong.

But other than that connection, the game's claims to artistry (or those ascribed to it) aren't very apparent. The visuals are stunning, but only at times; most of the game is spent staring at the same yellowish brick, miles and miles of it. Some of the hints to story are intriguing, but others seem cliched. I personally found myself put off by the sheer size of the temple and the fact that it didn't seem to be made for any purpose other than giving Ico and Yorda puzzles. Obviously such things are common in video games, but spending all this time making a graphically realistic world and then populating it with nothing but ladders and switches just shines a light on our acceptance of it.

Ico is also surprisingly short; I finished it in less than six hours. I did have the aid of an FAQ, but I didn't use it anywhere near as much as I expected to. The PS3 HD remake version, which was the one I played, seemed to add resolution but not much texture or model complexity; it still looks like a slightly shinier PS2 game.

It's perhaps too strong a term to say Ico was a disappointment, if only because it means my expectations were too high rather than that the game wasn't good enough. Ico is a very good game, unusual and oddly emotional, but I'm not sure I would call it great. The power of Shadow of the Colossus isn't there yet; it's very slow, meandering, calm, and thoughtful, but without much to think about. In the end, it's not much more than a very pretty, haunting block pushing and climbing game, and it seems to be missing something.

Wicked Appetite

2011-10-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

It's common to hear a book being described as "lighthearted". Essentially, it means that it plays down the drama and seriousness and allows itself to have fun most of the time. Wicked Appetite is so lighthearted it's practically floating. The entire book can be described as "nonchalant".

The rather refreshing main character is Lizzy Tucker, a baker in small-town Massachusetts right near the kook capital of Salem. Having inherited her batty great-aunt's house, she is resolved to do nothing more exciting than bake really good cupcakes and possibly get her cookbook published, if an agent would give her the time of day.

But then Diesel shows up. Big, magnetic, and with mysterious powers like being able to open doors, he cheerfully invites himself into her house and declares that he needs her help to search for a mystical stone. In fact, the stone's in four parts, and all of them have something to do with Gluttony. And, of course, there are six more representing the other Deadly Sins, but let's leave that for now.

Diesel is searching for the Stones mainly so that they don't fall into the hands of his cousin Wulf, who burns people at the touch and disappears whenever he feels like it. Wulf is largely an evil cipher, but he and Diesel have a surprisingly cordial relationship and there's little tension there.

In fact, there isn't much tension anywhere in the book. Lizzy soon picks up a litany of wacky problems, including a monkey too smart for his own good, a one-eyed, possibly ninja cat, a ditzy coworker whose mishaps at trying to cast spells keep Lizzy constantly busy, and a gang of ghost enthusiasts convinced her house is haunted. Lizzy herself is affected when near the pieces of the Stone, so she suddenly finds herself intensely desiring fast food or with a hankering to be an extreme hoarder.

The book is so laid back it's practically buried. Almost everyone takes Lizzy's entourage of weirdos and tales of the occult in stride, exchanging witty banter and arguing with each other. Diesel intentionally introduces sexual tension you could cut with a knife; at first I mistook him for a classic romance novel Lothario, whom the heroine immediately falls in lust with and can't stop thinking about, but he redeems himself fairly quickly.

Lizzy is a heroine in the Bilbo Baggins model: she would rather have nothing whatsoever to do with this magic stuff, is a self-proclaimed coward, and can never tell whether Diesel is telling the truth about any given thing or not. Her descriptive paragraphs do a great job at layering facts about locations and creating mental imagery, without being metaphoric or going overboard.

The book is not quite a comedy, but it doesn't mind dipping its toes in the waters every so often. I laughed out loud three or four times, and each time was entirely surprised, because it doesn't feel like a farce. It feels like a serious story which nobody can take seriously. It's short and light, a literary snack which doesn't fill you up but tastes pretty sweet. Apparently it's part of a series, so it's going in my list of things to watch.

Lost in Austen

2011-10-27T07:41:00.000-07:00

An intelligent what-if story, Lost in Austen is a multiplicity: both a love story to a classic novel and a deconstruction of it, both a paean to and a dismissal of old-time chivalry and courting, a comedy and a tragedy. (It's a four-part TV series which aired in Britain, but is available on a single DVD, so I treat it as a movie.)

Amanda Price, a twentysomething Brit (and that right there should tell you most of what you need to know of her character) is in love, bordering with obsession, with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. With a boyfriend she can barely stand, a job she barely tolerates, a mother who doesn't understand her and a life she wants to hide from, Amanda finds solace in the language, customs and romance of long ago.

And then, one evening, she finds Elizabeth Bennet in her bathroom.

Turns out her deep devotion to the story has opened up a door to it, and before you can say blink, she and Elizabeth have swapped places, with Lizzy heading out to the heady future and Amanda stuck in the grandiloquent past.

The first third of the series is a classic fish-out-of-water tale. Amanda has to clean her teeth with a twig! Amanda has to go to a ball where she can't dance! Amanda is totally out of place and has no idea what to say or do! But of course there's more to it than that. With Lizzy gone, the entire narrative of the book is threatened. Amanda's bluntness, impropriety and bad habits electrify all the men around her. Some are repulsed but more are attracted, and soon everything is imperiled: Jane's marriage to Bingley, Mr. Collins to Charlotte, and of course Lizzy to Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Amanda is determined that the story should play out as it's meant to, and her hamfisted attempts at matchmaking generally only make things worse. Things begin spiraling out of control, and Amanda soon finds herself with many enemies and few friends, and most of her actions have destroyed the "fates" that Austen has assigned. She must reconcile herself to the world she's in, as well as detach herself from her single-minded dedication to the story. She must allow herself to become a player rather than an observer. Ironically, it's only then that those "fates" begin to come true, organically rather than mechanically.

(This is a very pleasing deconstruction of the Mary Sue phenomenon, by the way. A character who inserts herself into her favorite story and twists everyone around her, without thinking of the results of her actions, may regret it very much indeed!)

What's interesting is that the movie does what Amanda, for a long time, refuses to do: see the cast as actual people rather than characters. The writers have done an excellent job of being able to see what each character really is like, and extrapolating their reactions to Amanda's whirlwind presence with depth and insight. The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet is rewarding, as well; despite Mr. Bennet's applause-worthy wit, his lack of parenting skills becomes evident as the series continues, while Mrs. Bennet's hysteria is slowly replaced by a tremoring, barely repressed anger.

By the end of the movie, the characters are in very different positions, but still remain unshakeably themselves. Some characters are given surprising secrets, ranging from the mundane (Mr. Bennet's first name) to the shocking (the truth about Georgina and Wickham is not what it seems), and it's evident that Jane Austen either didn't reveal everything about them, or was just plain wrong when she wrote them.

The writing itself is very well done; they're no Jane Austen, but they do an excellent job of capturing the flowery cadence of the times, the repartee and wordplay. Sometimes the dialogue is delivered almost too quickly to catch (especially by Darcy) but it's rewarding.

There are a few things that bothered me about the movie. For starters, its 3-hour running time is far too long - and yet I couldn't think of anything that could easily be cut. I was a little taken aback by the informed attributes of Jane's beauty and Charlotte's plainness; to my eye it was the other way around. The ending didn't really know where it wanted to go, and went two places at once. Oh, and if you're not familiar with Pride and Prejudice, the movie makes no attempt to give you a summary.

Lost in Austen is an intriguing tale, a loving ode to Austen's best-known novel and a powerful study in contrasts and character. Gorgeous sets and costumes, great writing, a little slow, but powerful, especially for fans of the novel. It's well worth a watch.

To Heal A Fractured World

2011-10-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

Judaism is a unique religion. As the People of the Book (a moniker we never used but happily embrace) we pride ourselves on our devotion to intellectual study. No self-respecting Orthodox Jew would be without a religious library. There are thousands of books on a range of Jewish topics; it's quite likely that if one would collect all the commentaries there are, one could literally write an entire book on each individual verse of the Torah. The structure of the Talmud encourages vigorous debate on laws and precepts that run the gamut from ritual sacrifice to financial legislation.

Part of the downside of this enthusiastic engagement in Judaism is the tendency not to see the forest for the trees. When a different section of the Torah is read every week, one tends to focus on the weekly section; when parsing a difficult aspect of the Talmud, one often shuts out other relevant topics; and when discussing the intricacies of practical law, one ignores other aspects of religious life.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, has taken a holistic view of Judaism and uses words of fire to sear its message into the soul. What is Judaism really about? What is our relationship with God really like? Can one detect an actual theme in the Bible? Rabbi Sacks answers all these questions with passion, astonishing insight, painstaking research and great skill of language.

As his central thesis, Rabbi Sacks uses the words of Rabbi Isaac Luria (the Arizal), who uses the kabbalistic metaphor of the world being full of spiritual fractures. It is the job of the Jew to mend these fractures in the world, one piece at a time.

Unlike other religions, Rabbi Sacks argues, Judaism is not fatalistic. God's omnipotence does not indicate that we have no power to change his plans. God, in his perfection, has made an imperfect world, one which we as humans are tasked with fixing. This means not only to improve ourselves spiritually, but in practically every aspect of our lives: looking out for fellow Jews, improving the lot of the non-Jews around us, ensuring that the impact we have on others is positive rather than negative; even prayer is an active, rebellious gesture rather than a plaintive, helpless one.

Rabbi Sacks also concentrates on the second aspect of this theme, which is responsibility - as he puts it, "response-ability", the trait of how we respond to others and our own situations. He convincingly argues that the entire Bible (essentially a book of laws) is riddled with stories that showcase various aspects of how man and the Jewish people grow in maturity and in taking responsibility for themselves and those around them. He meticulously illustrates how the Jewish people go from relying on God to supporting themselves, almost like how a child learns to walk.

Throughout all of this, Rabbi Sacks, a true modern Renaissance man, peppers his writing with quotes from practically everywhere: classic Jewish texts and commentaries, modern secular Jewish writers, non-Jewish philosophers, politicians, artists, and his own personal anecdotes. Not content to let his message speak for itself, he imbues his words with passion and poetry. What other rabbi could write about Job with such beauty?

The book of Job is the space God makes for the human voice taken to its very limits and beyond - sacred scripture giving human protest its hour on the stage and conferring on it a lonely but unshakeable dignity. Job is a sustained cry of pain at the inequity of fortune; a cry that penetrates to the heart of heaven and threatens to shake the foundations of the world.

Rabbi Sacks does not shy away from listing challenges to his thesis, and meets them all with equanimity. He knows that, as the Midrash states, there are "70 facets to the Torah"; there are myriad interpretations and in some way, all of them are correct. He does not claim that Judaism has captured modern values or is a messenger of equality. It remains a highly ritualized religion full of picayune details. But Rabbi Sacks has given an electrifying view of it that cannot be discounted.

As someone who has studied Judaism classically for his entire life, I have never read something that showed me so much about my own religion that I never knew - despite knowing all the facts, I never thought to see them in the light Rabbi Sacks sheds. It is not a light read, but it is a world-changing one.

Although written from a Jewish perspective and sometimes assuming some Biblical knowledge, it is most definitely intended for non-Jewish eyes as well. Those who want to know the truth behind the ritual will find it rich in wisdom.

Dissidia 012: Duodecim

2011-10-19T07:17:00.000-07:00

Final Fantasy Dissidia 012: Duodecim is a mouthful, but the Colon Cancer of a title is just evidence that this is more of a revamp than a full sequel. Most of the game remains the same as the original Dissidia, including the story, though several gameplay elements have been refined, overhauled, or replaced, and an enormous amount of bonus content has been added.

The basic system remains the same: equipment, accessories, EX mode, play plans, shops, PP catalogue, etc. If you have a Dissidia save, you can carry over most of your PP catalogue buys and (optionally) your levels. There are expanded multiplayer options, such as "Artifacts" which you can win off of Friend Cards, and the capability of creating your own quests.

The main battle system has only three major changes. The first is the nerfing of EX attacks, which are no longer a one-hit kill most of the time. Second is EX Revenge, where you can use up a full EX gauge to break out of a combo and score some hits. Third is the addition of Assist Characters: you can assign (or be assigned, in story mode) a second character who you can call to help as long as your Assist Gauge, which fills as you attack, is high enough. The character will do a single Bravery or HP attack and then disappear. I didn't find either EX Revenge or Assists to be all that influential; they rarely turned the tide of battle, either for or against me, and simply complicated further an already ridiculously complex system.

It's in the story where most of the changes occur. First is the addition of multiple story modes. When you start you only have Scenario 012, which is new content starring six new characters: Lightning, Kain, Tifa, Vaan, Laguna, and Yuna. 012 is surprisingly short but narratively far superior to the drivel that is Scenario 013 (the original Dissidia story, which is unlocked after finishing 012). The writers have finally realized that most of the reason we like these characters is their original stories, and have made some effort to incorporate their histories and relationships into the Dissidia plot. They've even addressed the fact that all the Dissidia characters have lost all their memories and pasts, and turned the laziness of the first game into an actual plot point. Seeing a previous "cycle" of the world also gives us more insight into what we see in Scenario 013. It still won't win any writing awards, but it's far more watchable than previously.

More important are the gameplay changes. The chessboard-style levels are still there, but they have been turned into "gates" connected by a full-fledged world map (the map of FF1, in fact). You can move your character around, initiate manikin battles, use teleporters, find treasure chests, collect Skills such as Cure and Maser Eye, and visit moogle shops. Speaking of which, the frustrating Destiny and Story Points from Dissidia have been replaced with Kupo Points, redeemable at moogle shops. You gain more points from doing chains and entering gates with lower levels (levels can be manually adjusted for this). This means you don't need to worry about repeating a level three times to get all the prizes in it, since KP are the same everywhere.

The actual gates themselves are a bit more interesting as well. As you continue in the story mode the gates will include effect panels which change the tide of battle - e.g. by doubling stage bravery, making all physical attacks do no damage, etc. Some work for you, some against you. The Chain skills you can collect/buy allow you to take advantage of these by attacking enemy units long-range (chaining also lets you build up KP and make a tactical Skill work for more battles).

Finally, you can take an entire party of 5 characters with you in some story areas. One advantage of this is that EXP will be shared with inactive party members. There are also Party Battles, in which your party goes toe-to-toe against a party of enemies. This encourages having at least three characters you build up rather than sticking with one, although really you only need one awesome character (*koffCloudkoff*) and two decent ones.

Scenario 013, while keeping all the cutscenes, has been transformed into using the new system as well, which makes it at least somewhat fresh. (Protip: Skip all the 013 cutscenes you've already seen. Spare yourself the agony.) There is also a giant optional story, called Scenario 000, in which you can take any character, even the 012 or Chaos ones. As with the original game, some of the side content, particularly the later stages of Scenario 000, borders on the frustratingly cheap. Enemies are fast, smart, far stronger than you, and can read your moves. Luckily there are one or two builds that make beating even overpowered enemies fairly easy, but I still felt miffed at having to resort to them.

One thing I resented enormously was the new Labyrinth mode. This is the spiritual successor to the Duel Coliseum from Dissidia, and has replaced an addictive, fun game mode with a frustrating, pointless one. In the Labyrinth, you start with zero equipment, summons, or accessories. Battles yield almost no experience, AP or Gil. You have to find or win all your equipment from scratch, and if you exit the Labyrinth you lose it all except via the head-bustingly stupid Cottage and Tent methods. The actual game mode is a bit more refined than Duel Coliseum, but the lack of rewards and punishment for leaving was too much for me.

I frankly have no idea how they managed to fit so much content into this game. Pretty much everything from the original game is still there, including voices, with the addition of new stories, characters, outfits, battlefields, music, icons, summons, items, skills... it's pretty mind-boggling, and you could keep yourself busy for months ferreting out everything.

Overall, Dissidia Duodecim did a lot of things right, particularly its revamped story mode and new story elements; several of the new characters are fun to both play (Kain) and watch (Gilgamesh). Although I felt the Assists and Labyrinth mode were missteps, in general it is a tighter, more enjoyable game. The story has been bumped from "bad" to "decent". This is the definitive version of Dissidia; there's really no reason to buy the original at all if you haven't got it yet. Don't expect miracles, but there's a lot of fun to be had.

Ghost Story

2011-10-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

Warning: Spoilers for the Dresden Files series, especially Changes.

One thing's for sure: Jim Butcher has no problems messing with a working formula.

At the end of Changes, the unthinkable has happened: Harry Dresden has actually been killed. Shot right through the heart, no funny business. This being fantasy, of course he isn't quite gone just yet, though. He finds himself in a version of purgatory, where a brusque afterlifer informs him that he's going to have one more chance to go back to the real world as a ghost to find his own murderer, or risk having his friends hurt or killed.

Of course, this changes the entire game. Bereft of his body, Dresden can't affect physical matter; can't stay outside after daybreak; can't speak to most living beings; and most importantly, can't use magic. He's little more than a whisper in the wind, and going from super-badass wizard to helpless observer is almost as shattering to him as his death was.

Luckily, Harry has a series of teachers to help him figure out how to be a ghost. Butcher essentially invents this new ethereal world from whole cloth, and does a great job populating it with new characters, challenges, arcane rules, emotional turmoil, and his trademark awesome fight scenes. The new Chicago, sans Harry Dresden, is a darker, scarier, more dangerous place; it's rare that someone can actually see the difference they made in their lives and deaths, and have to come to terms with their choices in such a stark way.

As always, Butcher's Harry is a joy to read, a unique mixture of film noir detective, sci-fi geek, world-weary Gandalf, Spidey-grade snarker, and noble hero. Few books are page-turners like the Dresden Files, and that hasn't changed with Harry's situation.

Jim Butcher has no interest in the status quo. When his Buffy-ish "sorcerer of the day" stories started getting old, he began raising the stakes, introducing political machinations and threats of war, then an all-out war. After the game-changers that were Changes and Ghost Story, there's every indication that nothing will be the same again. The ending of the book is a little abrupt, but it's just a taste of the next chapter in the Dresden saga, which will doubtless be as entertaining and high quality as this one.

A Nameless Witch

2011-10-11T06:48:00.000-07:00

The fourth book I've read by A. Lee Martinez is giving me a bit more of a feel for his writing. He is no genius at comedy, dialogue, depth or character, but his books are oddly entertaining, and all have very original premises.

In this case, we have a cursed girl shunned by her family and taken on by a witch. She is cursed to be a horrible monster, and so of course she is locked up in a cellar soon after she's born. When the witch (whom she dubs Ghastly Edna) takes her in and cleans her up, they discover to their shock that she is not only unmonstrous but inhumanly beautiful and nearly immortal as well. Of course, that won't do for any budding witch, so the girl quickly learns how to uglify herself into, if not a monster, at least a witch.

The tragic death of her mentor early on drives the new witch's journey for revenge, accompanied only by her familiar, a demon-possessed, bloodthirsty duck, though she later befriends a troll (who can take himself apart), an animated broomstick, and eventually a celibate White Knight named Wyst whom she finds herself unaccountably drawn to. To her dismay and curiosity, around the same time she discovers she has a taste for human flesh, which only complicates her feelings further.

A Nameless Witch is not amazingly long, but it feels like it is, because it's almost three books bundled into one. The first part details the witch's short journey to a military outpost town. She spends a good chunk of the book there, helps defend it from a goblin invasion, and then must journey yet again, and deal with this newfound "love" thing. The change in story archetype serves more to tire the reader out than keep their interest, and feels oddly disjointed.

The witch herself is an interesting protagonist. As the title indicates, she has no name and has no interest in giving herself one; luckily, the book is in first-person. She is serious and almost fanatically devoted to the trappings of "being a witch"; this apparently involves looking ugly and making mysterious statements that sound meaningful but have little thought behind them. We're never really given any reason behind these things other than "that's the way it needs to be", which struck me as rather lazy. She has few social skills and not much interest in developing them, but she does know how to handle her friends quite well.

Unfortunately, other than the protagonist, the other characters are given little depth, often being reduced to a single personality trait for most of the story (Newt is aggressive and nasty, Gwurm is stolid and rolls with the punches). The dialogue is decent and elicits a few smiles but didn't break me out in laughter nor thoughtfulness. The story is a pretty unusual take on the "journey" story but didn't always know where it wanted to go nor how to get there.

I'm going to continue sifting through Martinez's work in the hope of finding another gem like Monster. Books like this aren't disappointing; they're a decent read and I don't feel my time was wasted, but I feel little accomplishment after finishing one.

Childhood Under Seige

2011-10-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

Joel Bakan has a mission: To shine a light on the greedy, money-obsessed corporations and how they destroy the lives of children. And he's written a book about it. But, oddly enough, he seems to have forgotten how to aim his spotlight, letting it shine all around the issue but never quite illuminating it.

The basic idea is sound and rather frightening: Because corporations, as part of their nature, are interested in nothing other than profits and growth, they'll run roughshod over children in order to reach their goals. This might include targeting advertising to them, endangering their health or education, or using them as tools against their parents.

While Bakan has some good points, he unfortunately chooses to begin the book with his weakest arguments: that violent media is destroying kids' lives. (By the way, it is important to note that to Bakan, anyone under the age of 18 is considered a "child" for the purposes of this book, a notion that often dilutes his message.) Pointing to the fact that violent games such as Grand Theft Auto are designed to be addictive and that children generally have access to such games, Bakan makes the leap that corporations are to blame, and must be stopped!

Except, of course, that GTA and their ilk are adult games, not children's. They are marketed to adults, their (industry-mandated) M-rating clearly indicates that they are not for kids, and stores are expressly forbidden from selling them to kids. The fact that kids manage to get hold of them despite all this points not to the evils of corporations but a lack of parental understanding or effort.

The entire two chapters here are filled with head-slapping moments. He makes much out of the fact that he could find games on a site such as AddictingGames.com which are clearly, shockworthily adult. Because the site is affiliated with Nickelodeon, he assumes that it's targeted at kids. Considering there is an entire "For Parents" page on the site which tells you that "mature content" is flagged with an icon and that many games are not aimed at kids, it's hard to understand where he got the idea.

Bakan unfortunately seems to keep his old-school ideas that video games and animation, no matter what they claim to be, are always for kids - and he refuses to give parents any responsibility in protecting their progeny. Failing to understand the industry he's slagging doesn't win him any points, especially when such enormous ignorance is right at the start of the book.

And when he talks about softer sorts of games like NeoPets, he decries their "addictive" nature - again, something that is inherent in all video games and is not necessarily a negative thing, provided the adults are there to manage it and have enough strength to resist the nagging to buy more stuff (which is going to happen in today's materialistic society in one way or another whether children are directly targeted or not).

Bakan is on firmer ground when he discusses things like the increasing prescription rate for kids for things like ADHD and new diseases that keep being labeled. Drug companies have never been the most scrupulous of entities and Bakan's look into the seedier side of them is shocking. However, his other major points are diluted by rather obvious counterarguments.

For example, he spends much time talking about how industrial chemicals are used in places they shouldn't, and their impact on the health of the inhabitants. Two problems here - by his own admission, there are thousands of such chemicals in millions of products, and the amount of testing he seems to be demanding is far beyond the capabilities of any corporation to administer, especially since the majority of them have indeed not been proven to be harmful. Second, this seems to have little to do with children, who suffer along with their parents and grandparents.

He is vehemently against child labor, and discusses some of the terrible environments they can work in. Another two issues - here, the culprits are often small businesses or farms rather than corporations; and secondly, his inclusion of kids working on farms owned by their parents seems like he's taking an absolutist position here where children should be forbidden from doing any kind of strenuous work. This argument would probably surprise most "children", especially those over the age of thirteen. Perhaps they should be exempt from chores as well?

He does make some good points about the drive to privatize schools and emphasis on school testing, though - again - the blame seems to be mostly that of nearsighted government than corporate sponsorship, and the fearmongering he stirs up seems to be of a future that's rather far away.

In Bakan's world, the solution to all of this is more and more government oversight, as if governments aren't just as fallible as corporations are, in other ways. All in all, Bakan may have a case but he's entirely failed to make it stick. The book is short - just under 180 pages, though with another 100 pages of footnotes, many of which are musings rather than references - and not really worth the read.

Valkyria Chronicles

2011-09-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

Valkyria Chronicles reminds me of a tri-Ace game; a solid underpinning, some excellent ideas, but with just a few tics that drive me into a murderous, all-consuming rage.

The premise is intriguing and brims with potential. The story is presented in book form, with each cutscene being a scene from a chapter (with the added bonus of being able to go back pages and replay any cutscene you want). Being a strategy RPG, the setting is one of constant war. In this case, the setting is a mishmash of World War I technology (tanks!) and World War II genocide; there are blindingly obvious analogues to Hitler and Jews that indicate that the writers wouldn't know subtlety if it bludgeoned them on the head with a ball-peen hammer.

The cast is fairly strong, as these things go. Welkin Gunther is a kindly nature student, returning home from university, only to be conscripted into Gallia's militia when the evil Empire invades. Welkin proves himself a surprisingly able commander of forces, and soon teams up with Alicia, a pretty but determined baker; his sister Isara, a meek engineer with a hidden core of iron; Rosie, a tough-talkin' barmaid, and Largo, a career military man. Welkin's Squad 7 ends up practically winning Gallia's war singlehandedly. (This eventually started grating on me; while Welkin's unconventional tactics could account for a few early wins, that part of his personality is ignored soon enough, and eventually he just wins against overwhelming odds because he does, okay?) The cutscenes aren't eye-gougingly awful, nor do they offer much in terms of emotion or enjoyable performances.

VC's gameplay is an intriguing take on the strategy RPG genre. There's your usual menu-driven preparations before battles - level up your characters, engineer new weapons, outfit your units, choose your recruits, etc. There are only six types of units, but using them effectively can be quite challenging and fun. You've got Scouts, who can go a long way but have little attack or defense; Shocktroopers, with high defense and attack but low movement rate; Lancers, who are anti-tank specialists; Snipers, who can shoot from far away but have limited ammo and range; and Engineers, who can't take or dish out much, but can repair tanks, restock ammo, and heal allies. And of course there are the tanks themselves: slow, powerful, with high defense, but which use up two turns instead of one.

When the battle begins, you are shown a birds-eye map with you and the enemy scattered around as little icons. When you choose an icon, you are thrust into a fully 3D area as one of your units. You must navigate the battlefield, keeping under cover whenever possible (the enemy can fire on you when you move near them), acting where and when you can. You can only act once per "turn", which is denoted by a "CP" or Command Point. Moreover, using the same character multiple times per phase will continually lower their movement rate, to the point where after three goes they can barely move at all. This, along with the limited ammo of snipers and lancers, encourages a larger, robust set of allies rather than overusing the same two or three folks.

One area where VC shines is the ingenuity of the battles. Because of the simplicity of the units, it's the battlefields where the challenge lies. There are story battles where you must avoid particular areas at the end of your turn due to mortar fire; some have giant tanks you must weaken in various ways; others you just have to get to particular points to achieve strategic goals. You must make use of terrain and cover, and deal with pesky superpowered enemy units whose specialty is making your life a living hell.

Speaking of which: The battles that are fun are really fun. But that only accounts for about half of the story battles in the game. The rest of them are mind-blowingly annoying.

There are several reasons for this. The first is the surprisingly high impact that randomness has on your success. Each character has a set of "Potentials", which randomly activate when they take their turn. These can make an enormous impact on their performance - for example, destroying a tank in one turn instead of two, immediately healing a character for all their HP, getting a free shot, and more. And it's evident that later battles are balanced to assume Potentials fire more often than they do.

Worse is the emphasis on accuracy. When you sight an enemy with your gun, and the game tells you he'll go down in five shots, you have to make five shots. Most of the time, even at point-blank range, you'll miss a few. It's incredibly frustrating to waste five valuable turns trying to take down an enemy who should have dropped in one if the Random Number Gods hadn't frowned on you. It's possible to save mid-battle to make up for this, but that just encourages save scumming; and in this game, where loading during a battle can easily take 10-15 seconds, such tactics are even more annoying than usual.

Another issue is the fact that the game actively tries to hide information from you. When the battle starts, you aren't told how many or which enemy units there are. They only show up when you get them in sight - and if they get out of sight by the end of the turn, they disappear again. Halfway through story battles, new reinforcements will often completely turn the tide of battle - which is also cheating, since your own side has a frustratingly arbitrary limit on how many units you can call in. The only way to beat some of these battles is taking advantage of glitches, or pretending you know the future by restarting the battle once you've seen what happens and preparing for it before it does. And considering battles are, on average, about an hour long (there are only about 20 in the whole game), this can feel like losing a lot of work for no real reason.

Keeping your characters alive is a tough call as well. Until mid-game, if you lose a unit in enemy territory, you have to actually send someone else into it to get them back. Fail, and that unit dies forever. What's worse, the units with enough range to retrieve them have low defense themselves, so it's quite likely that whatever killed the first unit will get them as well, resulting in a pileup of unnecessarily dead bodies that made me want to punch something.

Finally, the enemy just plain cheats half the time. One battle pits you against a highly placed unit who can fire practically anywhere, with perfect accuracy, and can do so during your own turn. Others have you up against tanks with insanely strong armor, a large number of snipers with near-perfect cover and high accuracy and attack power, invincible yet powerful enemy units, or (in one case) enemy reinforcements that are completely replenished every single turn. Particularly rage-inducing are those battles where you have to struggle to keep your head above water, as enemies are constantly trying to actually take back the progress you've already made, for example by recapturing the camps you've taken all that time to capture.

These battles are of course possible to beat, but not without very specific strategies that by themselves are essentially cheating, or at least feel like they are. I found myself chasing GameFAQs practically every second battle.

Oh, and did I mention that if a single lancer gets behind your main tank, it's an instant game over?

I enjoyed the game very much the first four or five battles, because I felt like I was learning how to use the system. I liked the variety and intelligence of the different battle goals. And every third battle or so, I got a good experience with a great balance between challenge and difficulty. But as time went on, I found myself shouting at the console far more than celebrating with it. The aforementioned variety of battles should have been enough for them - they didn't need to stack the deck against the player as well, and turn what could have been an enjoyable, challenging game into a frustrating chore.

VC has many smart and well-designed aspects to it - but I'm glad it's over.

The Bromeliad

2011-09-16T06:31:00.000-07:00

One of the neat things about Terry Pratchett is that his "children's" stories are often just as enjoyable for adults. He has learned how to make a story entertaining and fun for kids while still providing loads of puns and humor to keep adults' attention.

Unfortunately, he hadn't quite learned this lesson at the time he wrote The Bromeliad.

A trilogy of three books aimed at younger readers, the story is about a race of tiny people called nomes. Nomes live sped-up lives; one day takes about three times longer for nomes than it does for us. We are first introduced to Masklin, a thoughtful and serious hunter, who protects his little group of family and friends from all the dangers that nature has to offer to people four inches tall. Until one day they sneak aboard a truck, and find themselves in a strange place. A richly dressed nome introduces them to the Store, and culture clash sets in with a vengeance.

The Store, built by Arnold Bros (est 1905), is so huge to a nome that the ones living there have forgotten that there ever was anything outside it. The Store is a country, a caste system, a religion, and how the nomes get all their food, clothing and furniture. Masklin's mere presence shakes things up, but when he discovers that the Store may not be around forever, major chaos begins brewing.

That's Truckers. In Diggers, the Store and Outside nomes must work together in their new home, a quarry, where both sets have begun to learn to fend for themselves and build their own culture. The tension between the past and present hasn't gone away, and the nomes find themselves increasingly in conflict with the humans who bizarrely want to take their new home away as well.

And in Wings, Masklin, accompanied by Abbott Gurder, brash young skeptic Angalo, and a square computer named only the Thing, must try his darndest to fly all the way to Florida and put the Thing on a rocket ship, so that nomes may finally find their way back to their real home, which is nowhere near Earth.

The books have a good message, namely that everyone has a world, but that world always has a border, and there are always things outside it. And perhaps one day we manage to break down the border and see the beautiful world outside it, and then fail to realize that that one has a border as well...

The writing is entertaining but doesn't pack the punch of his later works. The comedy is largely driven by the nomes' extreme literalism and misunderstanding of human signs and sayings. It's funny at first but by the end of the third book it's gotten old. The characters have good chemistry but tend towards being a bit exaggerated. (Poor Gurder is a great character, though, and goes on a believable journey of self-discovery throughout the series.)

True, The Bromeliad is aimed at younger audiences than the Tiffany or Johnny books. But one feels that the later Pratchett would still have found a way to make them more relevant and fun to read for adults than he has. They're not bad reads, by any stretch, but as a thirty-year-old sitting alone reading in bed, it's hard to justify choosing them.

A Few Flash Games

2011-09-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

Being bored is a good way to indulge in that perennial favorite, the Flash game. These games generally are programmed by a small team (often only one person), lack the polish of games that are, you know, actually published, and have no editing or self-censorship. Here's a few I've tried out recently.

The Legend of Kalevala

The Legend of Kalevala is the most refined of the games I've played recently. It has a surprisingly unique plot, for both the genre and the medium. You wake up in a futuristic, alien planet. You yourself aren't human: you're a sort of extraterrestrial dog with wings and quills. The quills are your only weapon against the various creatures of the world, who all want to kill you. (Oddly enough, there is actually a reason for this.) You don't remember who or even what you are, or how you got there, or what you're supposed to do other than survive.

The gameplay is classic Metroidvania; as you continue through the game, you will find new abilities (such as a glide, fast run, or more powerful quills), unlock doors, collect crystals to power artifacts, etc. Interestingly, you also come across dozens of brain symbols, each of which gives you an internal monologue that acts as a window into your character's head.

Graphically and musically, the game does an excellent job of capturing 16-bit video game goodness. The sprite work is impeccable and the art is solid. Although the play control is a little too sudden and the lack of a jump shot was initially frustrating, the game was fun and even a little thought-provoking. Relatively long for a Flash game (clocking in at about two hours).

Alice Is Dead

Alice is Dead is a horror-themed point-and-click adventure game. You wake up just beneath the rabbit hole. But you're not Alice - she's a rotting skeleton. You (again) don't remember who you are, but you're trying your darndest to get out.

The game is rough around the edges and it's difficult to tell what's clickable and what's not - and the background music is annoying as all get-out (luckily it can be turned off). The art style is a bit amateurish and the puzzles can be opaque. There are three episodes but I got frustrated midway through the second one and quit.

Belial

Belial is another point-and-click game, but a good deal more cartoonish. You play as a smallish red imp named Belial, who's determined to overthrow Satan and take over Hell in the name of his father, Lucifer. Unfortunately, Satan has other plans, and casts Belial out of Hell and into the Earth. There are shades of Disgaea in the story; while it's nowhere near as funny or original, it's a refreshing take on the adventure genre.

There are three chapters to the game. The first details Belial's attempts to get his powers back and re-enter Hell. The game is quite rough and even sophomoric, but is a good way to kill half an hour. Just before the ending, you are presented with a choice. The first results in Chapter 2, which is a good deal more polished, both graphically and in the puzzles, and involves Belial's amassing of a set of allies to attack Satan.

The second choice (Chapter 2.5) invites Belial to awaken his inner power and turn himself into the demon Baal, and is a quest into his own subconscious. An interesting idea, but badly implemented; the puzzles are generally nonsensical and difficult to figure out, and the characters are less appealing. Also weird is the fact that your inventory won't keep your items together; by the end of the game I had ten or so spaces between important items. Chapter 2 is the only one in the series I'd tag as really enjoyable; the other two aren't bad per se but don't have much to offer.

Trapped

Trapped is yet another point-and-click game, this time of the "mindscrew" genre. You find yourself in a room with a dead man lying next to you. You don't remember how you got there, but you can't get out of the house you're in. Heavy on symbolism and "moon logic puzzles", the games are extremely difficult without a walkthrough (luckily there is one linked on the page). Graphically minimalistic and with imperfect grammar, the story takes a mystical turn and will definitely keep you thinking.

The Big Over Easy

2011-09-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

Genre-busting author Jasper Fforde loves stirring things up.

Here, he tackles the mystery genre with gusto and a marked tendency to throw in everything and the kitchen sink. The Big Over Easy is a wonky mixture of mystery, fairy tale, mythology, science fiction, comedy and a dollop of the trademark Fforde metafiction.

Jack Spratt is a detective in Reading's Nursery Crime Division, dealing with the vagaries that inevitably come up when characters from nursery rhymes live amongst society. He's just failed to convict the three little pigs for the murder of the big bad wolf and the NCD is on the verge of being disbanded... when fate sends a nice juicy death into his lap: the body of Humperdinck Jehoshaphat van Dumpty, more commonly known as Humpty Dumpty, found at the base of a wall, shattered into eggshell.

Fforde puts a new spin on almost every aspect of the story. Spratt's family, with five children ranging from university age to toddler, is surprisingly happy. This fact doesn't sit well with the powerful Guild of Detectives, to whom genre norms (such as being addicted to drink or a heavy womanizer) and excitingly readable murders are often more important than simply nabbing criminals. Although Spratt is envious of the status and power of the Guild, he's cool to joining it, largely because of the overbearing pull of his old coworker Friedland Chymes, a superstar detective and all-around jerk.

The author strikes an excellent balance between the more absurd aspects of fairy tales and nursery rhymes, and the necessarily prosaic and grim nature of detective work. He gives each character a generous, rich backstory and ties them firmly into the real world - such as the coroner's study of Dumpty's albumen and pattern of shell fractures in determining the ballistics of his death. It's a thoroughly enjoyable and fresh take on things.

The mystery itself unfolds at a brisk pace, with all the twists and turns of a really good murder yarn. Fforde's prose is lean and careful; there is no desire to skip sentences or paragraphs. The banter between characters is fun to read and their well-realized world, despite its somewhat random inclusion of aliens and Greek mythological figures, is enjoyable to peek into.

The Big Over Easy is constantly interesting and entertaining, and a great example of a book that hits all the right notes of a mystery while injecting countless other facets to the story. Highly recommended.

Godel, Escher, Bach

2011-08-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

There are some books out there that just plain defy description. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is not a book on mathematics, nor on logic, nor music, nor art, nor Zen, nor psychology, neurology, philosophy, or biology. And at the same time, it's about all of them.

The ultimate goal of the book is to study what "intelligence" - or, if you like, "consciousness" - means. Is it inherently possible for a computer to actually be "intelligent"? Can it have an "I", a being who makes choices and has their own thoughts? What is the meaning of "meaning"? How do our brains really work? And it is ever really possible for anyone to know, absolutely and completely, how they think?

Douglas R. Hofstadter, a modern Renaissance man if ever there was, thinks it can, and he takes 750 pages to say so.

Oddly enough, his thesis takes up only the last two chapters of the book. If you didn't know it was there, you'd have no idea it was coming. Hofstadter begins with the notion of formal logical systems, giving us simple ones, then slowly layering complexity on top of them. He ties together formal logic with number theory, the complexities of a Bach fugue, the delicate and frankly mind-blowing power of DNA recombination, and ends with several speculations on the nature of artificial intelligence.

The book is divided into two; each chapter is preceded by a Dialogue, whose main actors are Achilles and the Tortoise, two characters whose life began thousands of years ago as part of Zeno's Paradox, and were reinvented by Lewis Carroll in his skewering of it. The Dialogues have a sort of quaint, ho-ho-ho-isn't-that-grand archaism to them. Some Dialogues are nothing more than characters discussing Hofstadter's current topic, ranging from number theory to Bach's music, while others are, more cleverly, an example of the topic as transformed into story.

The book could easily have been called Godel, Escher, Bach, Watson, Crick, Buddha, Turing. Or, on the other hand, it could simply have been called Godel, because his seminal theorem is the basis for practically every thought-provoking idea in the book. Essentially, Godel's Theorem states that any system that's smart enough to know about itself can never be complete. Basically, as soon as it starts having self-knowledge, it turns out there's more of it to know, resulting in an endless loop. His usage of the great composer Bach and the genius mathematical artist Escher, while illustrative, aren't as central to his theme, any more than the DNA discoveries of Watson and Crick, Zen koans, or the Turing Test.

Hofstadter is enamoured with self-reference and so-called "Strange Loops", the kind of situation where, as you keep continuing forward, you end up back where you started. Alternatively, one can think of them as "Tangled Hierarchies", where confusion between different "levels" of complexity or formalism ends up back where they started - unless you are able to "jump out of the system" entirely.

Hofstadter's cleverness is continually on display. One of his Dialogues is almost entirely palindromic, while another mirrors a particular kind of Bach piece. Several pieces of artwork, which he drew himself, can be viewed on multiple levels.

Make no bones about it - this book is heavy reading. It's full of formulae, references to complex mathematical concepts, advanced musical techniques, and assumptions that you absolutely remember and understand everything that's been said until that point. My advice is to skim the technical aspects if they're over your head. I've taken several logic courses, so the formal logic aspects weren't difficult to me, but the talk of music went right over my head. Still, I was able to enjoy the parts of the book I did understand, and the various proofs and tangents are in no way a requirement to finish it.

Godel, Escher, Bach is a one-of-a-kind work, a cross between a textbook, a philosophy book and a book of puzzles. It is thought-provoking but about as far from "light reading" as it's possible to get. It is a rewarding read, but not, I think, one that most people would dare attempt more than once.

inFamous

2011-07-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

inFamous is my initiation into third-person shooters, a genre for which I've never felt much love. However, it convinced me to take the plunge, not because of its art direction, smooth gameplay, wide open locations, or badass protagonist, but because it was a free download as part of PlayStation's Welcome Back package. What can I say - I likes me my freebies.

In this game, you are Cole MacGrath, a mean-looking courier who gets caught up in a mysterious, enormous blast smack in the centre of Empire City. Emerging from it, he discovers he's somehow developed electrical powers, with the ability to shoot lightning from his fingertips.

In the aftermath of the blast, the island-bound Empire City is quarantined from the rest of the States, and gangs of marauders known as Reapers begin roaming the streets, gunning down anybody they don't like the look of. Cole vows to clean up the place, aided by his corpulent Elvis-impersonating friend Zeke, his girlfriend Trish, and an enigmatic FBI agent named Moya.

Although the story is surprisingly well-plotted, you're not going to get much emotion of out it. The cutscenes, such as they are, are told rather than shown, in a gritty comic book-style, simply animated, which illustrates but doesn't really narrate. There's far more gameplay than story, though.

The gameplay is extremely solid. You'll be spending much of your time climbing up and over buildings, riding on train tracks and electrical lines and in general having a great old time up in the air. Cole will automatically grab anything close to him, making climbing and jumping a breeze. While you're doing this, you'll have to fight, of course. Holding L1 activates aiming mode; you can move and aim at the same time. Aiming can be a bit finicky, especially since most enemies take multiple shots and they tend to jerk around while being hit, but it does the job quite well.

There are a surprising variety of moves, ranging from your garden-variety lightning strike to lightning grenades, lightning rockets, lightning storms and lightning sniper strikes. Most of them are actually quite useful in various situations (the only moves I didn't feel useful were the shield and the Gigawatt Blades, which I always forgot I had). Most moves use up energy, but you can handily drain it back from any nearby energy source. You won't need to drain anything for the first third or so of the game, but later on it becomes crucial.

The game is fairly challenging, even on Normal mode. Cole takes damage quickly, but he also heals quickly simply by standing in one spot or by draining electricity. Most of the time you'll be fighting the same two or three enemy types, but the missions themselves (there are over 80 of them) have a surprising amount of variety. Most missions are repeated several times, but you've got general "kill the bad guys", "protect the medical supplies", "find and disable security cameras", "escort good guys/bad guys", "tail bad guy without being spotted", etc. Some missions even give you unlimited electricity so you can concentrate on dealing maximum carnage. Each time you complete a mission, you'll "conquer" a part of the city, where enemies won't reappear.

Another piece of the pie is your Karma, which ranges from Hero (great guy) to inFamous (boo hiss villain). Your Karma slowly goes up and down based on your actions; outside missions, capturing Reapers and healing civilians makes it go up, while draining them dry or killing NPCs makes it go down. Inside missions you'll often have "Karma Decisions", which are nearly always of the format "either do the obvious thing, or do the cartoon villain thing". Practically speaking, if you want all the best stuff you need to commit to being a Hero or inFamous at the start of the game and work towards it. Being a Hero is more difficult (civilians die very easily) but yields rewards in that the townsfolk will help you out by throwing rocks at the bad guys. While inFamous, they'll throw rocks at you. Frankly, despite my goal of being a Hero, I could never really see Cole as one; he looks like the kind of guy you avoid on the subway because he freaks you the heck out.

The game makes a good effort at making Empire City feel alive. The place is freaking huge, for starters - three districts, each of which are a few miles in diameter. There are pedestrians everywhere (and if you're trying to be a Hero, they can annoy the heck out of you - Get out of my line of fire, you dolt!) who will call things out to you based on your Karma. Oddly enough, though, there are no open businesses or stores; people are either wandering around or lying on the floor gasping or dead. Also, it seems like what you do to the environment doesn't really last; bad guys' bodies disappear pretty quickly, and if you destroy a building (a gas station, say), a few minutes later it'll be back in pristine condition.

inFamous knows well about trial and reward, and tries hard to make the experience challenging while cutting down on pain and frustration. You can upgrade your moves with experience gained from missions and enemies, though some require particular Karma levels or side missions done. You also unlock new moves as you play, with a very tight and enjoyable reward progression. If you die during a mission, you'll generally continue while having completed a good chunk of what you've already done. Even the start of the game is nice to you, skipping all the title/load screens and jumping right to the action. The only thing you can't do is pause or skip cutscenes, but they're all on the short side anyway.

If there's one thing I disliked about the game, it's the length. inFamous probably takes about 20 hours to finish every mission and grab enough of the collectibles to satisfy yourself. I found the middle part of the game the slowest; they could have cut it down to two districts and not lost too much. After a point, shooting bad guys with lightning gets boring, believe it or not.

inFamous knows what it set out to do and does it well. It won't win any awards for story (though a few twists near the end come out of nowhere) nor are the graphics jaw-dropping. But it gives us a large world, a ton of useful powers, and the fun of a shooter without all the blood. I'm not sure I'd pay a full $60 for the sequel, but I'll keep it on my radar.

In the Company of Ogres

2011-07-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

I always find it humorous when aspiring comic fantasy writers get compared to Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Robert Rankin. I find it even more ironic when they're compared to Robert Asprin, whose writing is only funny if you enjoy groaning terribly every few minutes.

A. Lee Martinez is no Terry Pratchett (lacking the wit and wisdom), no Robert Rankin (lacking the drug-fueled insanity) and no Douglas Adams (lacking the creativity). He is good at mocking fantasy tropes, and on paper his story is inventive and entertaining, but he can't quite follow through with enjoyable writing.

We begin with a lowly accountant in a legendarily chaotic military legion, which employs fantastic races of all kinds. Although his boss has a tendency to devour dishonest or underperforming employees, this particular accountant has a gift for the numbers. But this is no ordinary accountant - this is the legendary Never Dead Ned, a misleading name, because Ned has died many, many times; he simply keeps coming back to life again.

The military is somewhat flummoxed with what to do with a soldier who can never die, but also seems to have all the martial prowess of a fried fish stick, and so they make the inspired decision of sending him down to head the Brute Legion, an overlooked and underused band of ogres with a few orcs, goblins, elves, humans, and a sprinkling of other races, including Regina, an extraordinarily beautiful but man-hating Amazon, and Miriam, an alluring but somewhat fishy siren.

The Legion don't quite know what to make of Ned, who seems unlike any other leader they've had in that he doesn't preen about, shout orders, or claim he knows what he's doing. Most of the company spend most of their time confused about him, not least of whom is Regina, who finds herself falling in love for the first time, and her somewhat murderous contest with Miriam for him takes up a good chunk of the book. More chunks are concerned with the mysterious Red Lady, who always raises Ned from the dead - except when she suddenly doesn't.

The story proceeds at a quick clip, and the numerous characters are unique enough not to confuse us. Several of them are rather pointless, and the book could easily have been a few chapters shorter, but they do contribute to the sense of chaos inherent in the Legion. Ned is a good and surprisingly practical protagonist who never quite strays into Marty Stu territory despite several warning signals heading that way. The supporting characters are well-defined and do their jobs well.

Despite all this, I found myself not really getting immersed in the book. The narrative has a hard time figuring out when it's trying to be funny or serious, and the jokes often fall flat. The writing, while not quite amateurish, does little to distinguish itself. There is no coherent feel to either the setting or the plot, falling as it does into Fantasy Kitchen Sink territory. There's little real emotion on the part of any player.

In The Company of Ogres is a good time-waster, and will keep you entertained if not guffawing or on the edge of your seat.

The Wee Free Men

2011-07-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

Night Watch showed us that Terry Pratchett could create a tighly plotted drama, full of twists, turns, excitement and emotion. With The Wee Free Men, he shows us that his talents are equally suited to a methodical, thoughtful, almost melancholy adventure.

The Wee Free Men is marketed towards young adults, but really there's little to differentiate it from the normal Discworld canon except that the protagonist, Tiffany Aching, is only nine years old. Living down on the Chalk, on a farm that specializes in sheep (as most do on the Chalk), Tiffany is very unlike most of her peers and equally unlike the sort of plucky young leads that tend to populate young adults' books.

Tiffany's world has no schools, little education, and lots of hard work. Her age is never even considered as an excuse to run around and play - she makes cheese, and does it well. Tiffany is, amazingly, bookish and intelligent (one of the only books their family owns is a dictionary, and she read it cover to cover - no one told her she shouldn't). She's also courageous to a fault, and has a tendency to observe rather than take part. In short, she's everything that a budding young witch should be.

Tiffany's encounter with Miss Tick, a shrewd but somewhat pathetic older witch, touches off her journey of discovery. Starting with her encounter with Jenny Green-Teeth, a water monster, she soon finds herself overrun with Nac mac Feegles, tiny blue ~~fairies~~pictsies who wear kilts, enjoy drinking, fighting, and stealing, and are nigh-unkillable. Although uncomfortable with their cheerful audacity, she soon must enlist their help in rescuing her rather sticky baby brother from the clutches of the sinister Queen of the Elves.

While we first saw the Feegles in Carpe Jugulum, they're a little more understandable and a little more personable this time round. And by far, they're one of the funniest things Terry's ever written. I don't know what it is about a Scottish accent, even a written one, that makes everything in it sound hilarious. Probably the same thing about an Indian and Yiddish accent, I suppose, but the cross between farce, slapstick and juxtaposition of the crass and the high-brow make them a goldmine of comedy.

Interestingly enough, Tiffany herself does not make a giant leap of personality in the course of the book (or, indeed, all of her books). I've always found it faintly difficult to believe the sheer distance between teenage protagonists at the beginning of their books (brash, foolish, stupid) and at the end (world-weary, intelligent, kind). Tiffany has a little ways to go, but not much; and she has no one to teach her but herself. As a character says near the end of the book, with witchery, first you take the exam, then you find out how you passed it.

Tiffany is resolutely and constantly down to earth. She's arguably further along than even Magrat in Wyrd Sisters and Witches Abroad, whose rather damp, hopeful views of witchcraft tended towards mystic sigils, complex spells and sabbats. Tiffany must use her eyes and ears, but more importantly her instinctive knowledge of the the way things are and how they must be.

What really makes this book stand out, though, is not necessarily the journey or the characters, but the history and geography. Terry paints the Chalk with a steady hand, showing us a hard-working land with little time for magic and even less time for those who take advantage of their fellows. Tiffany's narrative is often interrupted by memories of Granny Aching, an almost mythical figure to many, but simply her grandmother to her. These vignettes give a broader view of the place and the people in it, and the solid grounding that led to the creation of such a unique protagonist.

The Wee Free Men is vintage Pratchett - aged to perfection and distilled to a concoction that warms the soul. By turns funny, contemplative, harrowing, and thought-provoking, it's a narrative that sucks you in and puts you in a larger context, with great humanity. It's an excellent read no matter how old you think you are.

Musings

2011-07-06T06:47:00.000-07:00

Random thoughts spiralling through my head.
----

Sometimes I think I'd like to live in a small town or a suburb, where you might actually interact with the same people at the same place more than once; where a stranger on a quiet side street might actually give you eye contact, let alone a "good morning"; where neighbors might actually speak to each other just because they saw each other outside on the front lawn.

Then I remember that big cities have all the kosher food and all the good stores.

----

Video games have come a long way since the NES days. Perhaps it's nostalgia talking, but I wonder if my kids will ever have the sense of adventure, novelty and wonder that I had as video games got progressively more complex and better-looking. I remember being wowed by Super Mario World:

Bullet Bills the size of houses! crowed Nintendo Power (which, back then, was my one and only connection with anything gaming that I didn't actually own). Would you look at that! Gaming was still small enough that I could actually read reviews of every single Nintendo game ever put out, for a nice long chunk of time, and re-read them. And read all the in-depth coverage of games I knew I would never play. It was my ambrosia.

And then, a few years later, Final Fantasy VII came out.

I don't think it's possible to understate the sheer awesomeness that FF7 oozed. For one thing, it was the first Final Fantasy game that wasn't fantasy or steampunk; it actually focused on visual style and coolness. Seeing that Final Fantasy gameplay plunked into a futuristic setting, with glorious full video and a cast of badasses, was the height of excitement.

Even though most of the game itself looked like this:

I simply can't imagine my kids being so wowed at a new game as I was then. I wonder if we've lost something?

----

If you're not familiar with SlutWalk, it's the brainchild of Toronto women who were incensed that a police officer told them that, if you want to protect yourself from rapists, don't wear revealing clothing. Perhaps the cop in question used unacceptable language, but the thing the organizers railed at was the very idea that the type of clothing a woman wore would have anything to do with whether or not she would be raped.

The issue immediately began getting fuzzy, because people interpreted "don't wear revealing clothing because rapists are more likely to attack those wearing it" as "don't wear revealing clothing because you're then asking to be raped". The former is, possibly, a statistical fact. The latter is a quite emphatically ridiculous opinion.

The problem is that advice to protect yourself does not imply that failure to do so means you are responsible for the crime.

Take burglary. In my neighborhood, there were three break-ins over the course of a day or so. We were understandably nervous. Obviously we wanted the cops to catch the person or people responsible, but we also asked the police what we could do to protect ourselves (their answer: leave lights and music on, make sure windows are solidly shut, if possible get inside window locks).

If we failed to follow their advice (how dare they ask us to change our behavior - we're not the criminals!) and then got burgled, would that mean we were responsible for the burglary? Of course not; 100% of the fault lies with the perpetrator. The difference is that we could have ensured that the victim wasn't us. It's common sense, not blaming the victim. It's the reason people have locks on their doors and alarm systems in their houses and businesses.

Now, the question of whether the clothing of a woman predisposes her to sexual assault is not answered, as far as I can tell. Many victims are elderly or quite dowdy. A quick search didn't show any actual victim studies trying to figure out what percentage of them (compared to the percentage of the population at large) wore revealing clothing. Speaking as a man, I find it logical that wearing revealing clothing will call attention to you in all sorts of ways - that's almost certainly why a woman wears it in the first place - meaning that not doing it is a good way to avoid being attacked. Again, back to common sense - if you know you're going somewhere at night, alone, in a non-residential area, either pack some serious defense mechanism, or dress accordingly. The rapist is at fault - but do you want to be his victim?

----

Tzedakah (charity) is a big deal in Judaism. Each of us resolves to give at least 10% of our income to a charitable organization. (Unfortunately, considering that religious schools can easily cost upwards of $15,000 a year per child, and I'm not talking yuppie private schools here, most of that money tends to go to tuition during the education years.)

I generally do not give (at least more than a dollar or two) to meshulachim (collectors) who go around during prayers or to homes asking for money. Pretty much all of them come from Israel, speak little English, and are haredim. And a large majority of them have no jobs - not because they're out of one, but because they don't want one, preferring to sit and study Torah all day.

I am well aware of the importance of people who form the backbone of our religious corps, but right now there are far too many of them. I support one kollel (adult learning centre) here in Toronto. I have no interest in doing so for the tens of thousands of people in Israel and North America who refuse to give back to the societies they're welching off of. It's an unsustainable generation, and has led to the unfortunate fact that any time I see a haredi I assume he's going to ask me for money. (It's almost always correct, much to my dismay).

And then there's Kupat Ha'Ir. Although an organization that apparently does good work giving money to poor people in Israel, it is the one foundation I will never, ever donate to.

Kupat Ha'Ir does not spend most of its fundraising telling you what good works it does. Instead, it uses the names of great rabbis who support it to convince you that they will pray for you, in particular places and ways, and of course all your prayers will be answered - whether it's for a better livelihood, a match for your child, better health, or what have you.

Wow, do I have problems with that.

First off, Kupat Ha'Ir spends lots of time telling you all the wonderful "salvation" stories it does. Of course, stories of people who've given hundreds of dollars to it and got bupkis to show for it (such as my own sister) won't get in. And of course that person who just married off his daughter has absolutely no clue whether it was because of Kupat Ha'Ir or simply because God wanted it to happen at that time.

Judaism has always flirted with easy answers to things, but never so much as today. We think that by throwing money at something, it will fix it and get us in God's good books. It's like the indulgences offered by the Church during the Crusades. We don't work that way. The Torah has commandments - hard ones, like not doing work on the Sabbath and eating kosher. It does not have quick fixes. The one commandment that has a reward attached to it (long life)? Honoring your father and mother.

So a rabbi prays for you. Does he know who you are, or your situation? All he has is a name on a piece of paper - one of hundreds. Snap! All your problems solved!

Cynicism, exploitation, misunderstanding of Jewish fundamentals... all in one tidy package. Good job, guys.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

2011-07-05T06:51:00.000-07:00

Terry Gilliam is a fractured genius. It's not always easy to figure out what he's thinking, and often I'm quite glad I can't, but there's no denying his work is unlike anybody else's.

Such is the case with this eccentric fantasy, which defies easy categorization. Evocative, confusing, mysterious, oddly unsatisfying, and a bit too long, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus will stick in your brain long after you want it to.

The titular Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is the proprietor of a piece of throwback entertainment - a mobile, horse-drawn vaudevillian stage proclaiming the magic and marvels of the doctor's powers of the mind. Parnassus is aided by his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), an overly enthusiastic young trickster named Anton (Andrew Garfield) and a tiny performer named Percy (Verne Troyer). Troyer in particular played his role surprisingly well, in the first real bit of acting I've seen him do. Percy is both the comic relief and the long-suffering babysitter of the doctor, who has a tendency to get falling-over drunk.

The reason for this is uncovered early on: Doctor Parnassus is thousands of years old, a situation brought about by a deal with a certain Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), a cigarette-chomping, be-hatted devil played surprisingly subdued for such a hammy role. Parnassus is in an age-old wager with Nick. Those who enter his Imaginarium are treated to a vision of their own imagination. Somewhere in that vision, they make a choice. Choose light, and Parnassus claims the freedom of their soul; choose darkness, and to hell with them.

A new wager clouds Parnassus's mind, only to be confused further by the sudden discovery of the dead body. This turns out to be Tony Stephens, who isn't as dead as believed, and shows himself to be a dapper charmer played by Heath Ledger. Unfortunately, Ledger died partway through filming, resulting in Tony being played by three other actors (Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell) in various "imagination" scenes. It works surprisingly well - I found myself being unable to tell who was doing what in some scenes, yet each brought a slightly different tinge to the actor - particularly Depp, whose comic timing remains impeccable.

These scenes naturally form the backbone of the film's artistry, ranging from brightly-colored, trippy dreamscapes to sinister swamps and gaudy neon nightclubs. As in Gilliam's Brazil, the wonder of these sequences is tempered with terror, as the dreamscape changes suddenly and dramatically, much like real dreams do. Each of them has at least one thing in all the brightness that rings a wrong note and is plain old scary.

Although the movie has several standout performances (I enjoyed every moment Nick and Percy were onscreen), I felt something off about the performances of the two main youngsters. Lily tries with varying success to juggle her obvious seductive aspects, her love-hate relationship with her father, and an innocent, too-chubby face, while Anton's stuttering, childish antics turning me off entirely. Plummer is a giant, of course, and in his best moments treats the Doctor like an ailing, booming Prospero, but unfortunately he spends much of the film depressed, drunk, muttering or mumbling. (My wife had the inspired suggestion of turning subtitles on, which helped immensely to figure out what was happening.) Ledger and his stand-ins all do great work as Tony; while we know he isn't what he seems, they leave us guessing as to the extent of his misdeeds, up until the mind-blowing climax.

Although The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is undoubtedly one of the most original things Hollywood's released in recent memory, it's hard to say that I really enjoyed it. The sense of constantly being off-balance stayed with me for most of the movie. Now, perhaps that's what Gilliam was trying to achieve, and more power to him if so, but rather than finding myself moved, I found myself moving on.

One of Our Thursdays is Missing

2011-06-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

Spoilers ahead for First Among Sequels.

The Thursday Next series is definitely unlike anything else out there. Its description of the BookWorld inside fiction wraps in on itself like a crazed labyrinth designed by M.C. Escher, with self-references on top of clever asides with a dash of cyclical logic. The driving force behind it all is Fforde's determined protagonist, Thursday Next, who is equal parts bravery, cunning, morality, sass, love, and no-nonsense kickass.

In One of Our Thursdays is Missing, Fforde moves the narrative almost entirely to the BookWorld, and in fact moves the protagonist as well. Although the main character is still Thursday, it's the "fictional" one - who, at the end of First Among Sequels, took over the train wrecks that were the in-universe "Thursday Next" novels. By that I don't mean the book that you're reading now, but the books as described inside the Thursday Next series. The in-universe books themselves are, of course, different from the life of Thursday herself, which we read about in our own Thursday Next novels, and the Thursday Next who leads this book isn't really Thursday, but only plays her in the novel...

If your head's about to explode, keep it in check. The book hasn't even started yet.

Fforde, to his credit, has realized that the BookWorld makes for a great adventure novel but not a good journey novel; spending the entire narrative in the existing one - especially when the star is not a member of Jurisfiction, the policemen of Fiction - would be weak. In an inspired hand wave with only the barest justification, the BookWorld is immediately remade from the ground up in the first chapter, resulting in a map of the BookWorld. Here, books are sort of like mobile homes residing in the large Fiction Island, moving back and forth among their genres as current thinking dictates. In fact, the very first thing you'll see upon opening the book is a huge illustration of the current borders, which made for a very entertaining ten minutes.

Due to this, the fictional Thursday (whose own books are rarely read, unlike Fforde's real versions, which are smashingly popular) is free to explore (via train, taxi and boat) the BookWorld, whose cross-genre borders and politics are suddenly a biting satire on both the actual genre and the countries they pass for. Some of the best parts of the book are hearing which pieces of literature pass for fiction (example: MPs' Expense Reports) and who their neighbors are.

Fiction!Thursday is a member of JAID (the Jurisfiction Accident Investigation Department), and investigating the remnants from a crashed book lead her to a mysterious encounter with a red-haired man who whispers the shocking news - the real Thursday is missing! It's up to our protagonist and her clockwork butler, Sprockett, to find out where, how and why, and evade the sinister Men in Plaid all the while. Fforde finds time to skewer a wider and more modern variety of fiction than previous books (which concentrated on the classics), ranging from fanfic and vanity publishing to conspiracy tracts and thrillers.

On the whole I found One of Our Thursdays is Missing to be the weakest of the series so far, and not only because of the unwieldy title. For one thing, this Thursday isn't quite as fun to be with as the real thing. She lacks the skills, bravery and experience of Real!Thursday, and eventually tries to make up for it by having a What Would Thursday Do? moment whenever possible. She's also less of a fully realized character, without a backstory, and hence lacks the sort of motivation that makes Real!Thursday so captivating.

Fforde's satire has also gotten less subtle. Whereas previous books did a great juggling act between giving us satire and a storyline, here the satire is sometimes obviously so, by simple reason that the fictional version - the satirical object - makes little to no sense. It's as if Fforde took the satirical subject and simply replaced a few nouns (e.g. "nuclear waste" or "gold") with ones that would work better in fiction (e.g. "metaphor" or "description"). This attempt to make abstract nouns do the work of real ones is reminiscent of his Shades of Grey, which I found quite difficult to figure out until I got the hang of it.

Finally, removing the real world from the story also diminishes the importance of what goes on. Fiction is only interesting because it interacts with the real world. When the protagonist, all the people she deals with, and all her problems remain fictional, there is less of an impetus and a less epic feel to the book.

Still, as with all Thursday Nexts, this book is a rollicking and entertaining read. While it may not be as well-put-together in terms of a coherent story, Fforde has found a way to reinvent his world into something that supports his wild leaps of imagination and sly digs at all sorts of writing, and constantly keeps us guessing and thinking.

The Science of Discworld

2011-06-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

The Science of Discworld is an interesting experiment. Here we have Terry Pratchett, noted fantasy author extraordinaire, and Jack Stewart and Ian Cohen, two highly educated scientists, teaming up for a book. The book consists of alternating chapters: one chapter tells a story, the next talks about the science hinted in it. The science chapters are about twice or three times as long as the story ones, though, so what you have is a book on science illustrated with wizards.

The story isn't much of one - it's more of an extended skit revolving around the wizards of Unseen University and a hastily promoted Rincewind. An accident with a thaumic reactor requires a high-powered project to drain excess magic power. Ponder Stibbons thinks this is the perfect time to look into the Roundworld Project - a pocket universe in which, oddly enough, there is no magic, no gods, and no discworlds. Instead, there seems to be a lot of space, ice, big balls of fire, big balls of rock, and no turtles anywhere. In short, Ponder has created our own universe.

The story is more compact than usual but no less hysterical - Terry has molded the wizards into an extended Monty Python sketch and he knows exactly what to do with them. He introduces the reader to notions expounded on by the science chapters by having the wizards interact with the Roundworld Project - and their intriguingly bumbling reactions to it are designed to keep your interest while the scientists have their go.

The science itself is remarkably specific. Although it touches on biology, chemistry, physics and astronomy, the main theme is history - the history of the universe, the solar system, the planet and the beings on it. There are a few digressions - such as the nature of coincidences, or the inspired term "lies-to-children" to demonstrate that a simpler, less accurate understanding is often required before a more realistic one can be reached - but this topic is the basis for the book.

Funnily enough, though, scientific history is one of the least well understood areas of science, perhaps second only to neuroscience in the number of ways it keeps contradicting itself. The fact that a second edition of the book was released a scant few years later indicates just how fast people are changing their minds about what happened long ago and what happens far away. It's like reconstructing a novel given only the bones of two of the main characters.

Cohen and Stewart also have no hesitation telling us just how depressing our universe is. Scientific history is measured in millions or billions of years; the few tens of thousands which humans have been around for is a drop in the bucket, unnoticeable and easily swept away. There is no room for art or spirituality in this yawning abyss - the authors acknowledge their existence but make no bones about their unimportance when compared to science.

The level of discourse is a bit rocky - sometimes the authors go a bit too fast with introducing new concepts or don't adequately explain them in a way a layman might understand. Other times the prose can get droning or tedious, as when they start discussing specific time periods and exactly what happened where. As scientists and not authors, they don't make any real effort to captivate the audience; they simply state what is. It's not quite as bad as reading a textbook, but it's miles away from a good yarn.

The Science of Discworld can be a hard book to read fully. You may find yourself skimming bits of the science chapters, and no wonder. The Pratchettian ones are delightful if lightweight, and the one thing the other chapters - at times ponderous and unwieldy - will certainly do is give you a much, much larger perspective on the world around us.

Note: This book is out of print in North America; trying to find it is an effort in futility. Do what I did, and order it from Amazon UK - even with shipping it's a reasonable price, especially if you buy all three Science of Discworld books at once, as I did.

Chaos Rings

2011-06-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

Chaos Rings is a world between on the iOS. On the one hand, we have mini-RPGs like Square Enix's Song Summoner and Crystal Defenders; on the other, full-blown games like Final Fantasy IV. While Chaos Rings has far more content than a time-wasting casual game, it isn't quite up to full-fledged par, either.

The game is at once ambitious and self-limiting. You play as one of four couples who have awoken in the Ark Arena, a mysterious place where the Agent, a forbidding mechanical being, decrees that the four couples will fight each other for the prize of eternal immortality and youth. You will eventually replay the game four times before you see the final boss, once for each couple.

Each playthrough takes a couple of hours and follows the same basic layout: Two two-part dungeons (with a boss after each part), an arena battle, two more dungeons, one more arena battle, final boss. Seeing the ending unlocks one more dungeon and several more bosses. Seeing the second ending for all four couples gets you to the final set of battles and a third ending.

The story is sparse but surprisingly interesting. The secret behind the Ark Arena is revealed relatively early on, but more gameplay peels away deeper layers behind it. The introduction of parallel universes allows for each playthrough to give us slightly different characterization. In addition, each couple has their own unique dynamic. Musiea hates Escher (whom she blames for committing an atrocity); Eluca is both protector and executioner of Zahmo; Olgar and Vahti are age-old lovers; and Ayuta is a stableboy who's run off with Princess Mana. There are a few shonen stereotypes like Strength Equals Worthiness or Blood Knight, but in general the strength of the story mitigates much of the repetition involved in the gameplay.

And repetition there is; as mentioned, there are only five dungeons, and you will replay all of them at least four times. If you're going for the bonus content (ten optional bosses) you'll probably visit each of them at least once more. The monotony is broken up by block puzzles that are required to continue; each couple has different puzzles to solve, but none are more than a minor challenge.

More interesting is the gameplay itself. You almost always have two party members in battles, which are randomly triggered. At the start of each turn, you choose whether to act separately or together. There are advantages and disadvantages to both; acting as a pair not only doubles your stats but also grants the passive bonuses of both characters to each other (so e.g. if your warrior randomly blocks physical attacks and your mage randomly blocks magic ones, you've got a good chance of surviving anything). The downside is that you can take only one action per turn, and in addition, any attack will hit both of you rather than one. Figuring out when to go solo and when to team up is a big part of the strategy of harder boss battles.

The other big strategic aspect is genes. Each monster type has an associated gene, and each character can equip up to three of them. Defeating more monsters of that type will unlock more abilities for their genes. Once you've mastered all of them, you'll have a large set of abilities to mix and match. What's more, genes and abilities transfer to other couples, so you don't need to relearn them.

Finally, there is "Advantage", an ill-defined but important part of battles in which the tide of the fight is turning towards one side or the other. Doing damage to the enemy will give you the advantage; as he damages you, he'll slowly turn it back towards his side. Whoever has the advantage gets a noticeable bonus to their attack damage, so in difficult battles you may have to conserve your biggest attacks for when you have the advantage.

Which leads into the very strange level of challenge in Chaos Rings. Oddly enough, the game is hardest at the very beginning, when you can't afford equipment and have few abilities; I lost my very first battle in two rounds. As you gain more genes and keep yourself equipped, you'll find random battles to be unimaginably easy. You can choose the average level of the mooks in the dungeons you enter; while early in the game you'll have tough times against enemies that are evenly matched against you, by the time you hit level 40 you'll have no problem decimating level 80 enemies. Battles can still be fairly enjoyable, if quick, but after a while the ease gets to you. (Unfortunately you can't jump to higher levels early on; for instance, you can't fight level 50 enemies on the second dungeon).

Graphically, Chaos Rings looks extremely polished. It could easily belong on the PSP with its large, well-defined models, gorgeous settings, and cool spell effects. (Be careful - the huge processing actually heated up my iPod and drained the battery faster, so take breaks.) Aurally, not so much; the music (of which there aren't many tracks) ranges from forgettable to annoying; especially disappointing given it's helmed by Noriyasu Agematsu, who wrote the best tracks for Wild ARMs 5 and Wild ARMs XF. There is no voice acting, though there is a vocal track that plays every so often.

I did have some issues with the interaction. You move by holding anywhere on the screen; the point you touch becomes the "base", and holding your finger in any direction from the base will move you. The small iPod Touch screen means that I often ran into the end of the screen and had to readjust my base; what's more, my finger tended to obscure the screen far too often to the point where I couldn't see anything at all. I was yearning for a controller. I imagine it's probably easier on the iPad.

Chaos Rings is not a groundbreaking or amazing game, but it's quite solid, especially in small servings, and shouldn't disappoint. I got it on a $3.99 sale but even the normal price is just $12.99 - a fraction of even a DS game - and there's much to recommend it. A normal playthrough (all four couples) will probably run you 12-15 hours, while completing all the bonus content for all couples should easily get you to 25.

After The Golden Age

2011-06-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

Superheroes are really, really in right now. The glut of superhero movies has sucked dry the plentiful landscape of A-list characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men and Iron Man, and is now scraping the B-list barrel with such films as Thor, Green Lantern and The Avengers. Superhero deconstructions and parodies are in full effect as well, in films like The Incredibles and books like Soon I Will Be Invincible.

After the Golden Age is another deconstruction, but a much tamer, more lifelike one. It reminded me more of Watchmen than X-Men; superheroes are a fact of life, but a very small one. And it's not the flashy, titanic fights between superhumans that form the core of the story, but normal people, some of whom just happen to have a particular talent that others don't. And in particular, it explores what happens when the good guys vs. bad guys metaphor comes up against actual human nature and the inevitable, myriad grays that color our own existence.

Celia West is the heiress to the West Corp fortune, as well as the daughter of Captain Olympus, a nigh-invulnerable, superstrong hero, and Spark, who can manipulate fire. Celia has no powers of her, own, though, unless you count auditing - she works as an accountant and has cut off all ties to her superhero upbringing.

In Celia's world, there are no more than a handful of superheroes, most of them working in a team called the Olympiad, and no supervillains at all, unless you count the Destructor, an old man dedicated to blowing things up and causing chaos. Superheroes - who are more often termed "vigilantes" - are there, but their exploits are decidedly tamer than fighting enormous monsters, robots, or powerful wizards in skintight costumes.

The meat of the narrative, in fact, is Celia's uneasy relationship with her parents, who may have extra powers but are every bit as human as she is, and her determined quest for answers. Simon Sito, the Destructor, is finally awaiting trial, and Celia finds herself thrust into the brunt of things in an unlikely capacity: her firm has been hired by the prosecution. And yet her old life keeps coming back; the book begins with Celia being kidnapped - again.

After the Golden Age unrolls at a brisk, very readable pace. Vaughn has mastered the art of balance - not spending too much time on any one thing, be it description, trains of thought, flashbacks, or action. She keeps us on our toes and her likeable, well-fleshed-out characters demand that we find out what happens next.

The story ends as it began - somewhat unpretentiously, injecting a very human touch into a kind of story that is often larger than life. It's an inspired take on the superhero genre and quite enjoyable.

We Have Met The Enemy

2011-06-13T07:26:00.000-07:00

Most non-fiction books - at least those that aren't about straight facts such as biographies or history books - follow a particular premise, almost a standard. They begin with a thesis - video games are good for you, say, or people are worried too much about things that likely won't happen. They describe the thesis and prove its existence in the first few chapters, delve into the whys and wherefores in the next few, and then argue for ways to change our lives to accommodate the thesis.

It took me about a hundred pages - a hundred confused, annoyed pages - to realize that We Are The Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess is not a normal non-fiction book.

The thesis is there. Daniel Akst argues that the biggest problems facing Western society today are not poverty, crime, accidents, or disease - they are directly caused by our own lack of self-control. These include obesity and smoking, which together are responsible for a staggering percentage of hospitalizations and death, the "now now now" obsession with treating marriage as convenient rather than a lasting covenant, and the seemingly increasing sex scandals plaguing our politicians.

However, after the first few chapters Akst strikes out on his own. He does not follow his narrow thesis - that today's problems are self-control related - but begins to touch on almost random topics related to self-control. Some chapters break down the various philosophical views of the topic; others look at self-control historically; and then there's psychology, neurology, literature, and quite a few looks at "pre-commitment", where people take Odyssean measures to ensure that they don't allow themselves to succumb to temptation.

Once I realized that the book does not follow a set argument, it was a bit easier to digest. We Have Met The Enemy does not, for the most part, try to teach us specific views or courses of action. It explores, defines, discusses, and intrigues, but has no vendetta. Taking each chapter as a separate, standalone essay is a good way to imbibe it - in bite-sized chunks. Although some later chapters assume knowledge of earlier ones, they are all tributaries rather than one big river of thought.

Akst, as a literary ingenue and with his astounding knowledge of ancient works, is sometimes impenetrable; I generally found at least one reference per chapter which went completely over my head. I was resentful at first, finding it a bit too pretentious, but eventually I got used to it.

In the final chapters, Akst does give us some strategies for helping our own self-control get, well, under control. But that isn't the goal of the book, really. Take it as it is, a meandering look at one of the most persistent weaknesses of humanity.

Kung Fu Panda 2

2011-06-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

It's a rare movie IP that can turn itself into a franchise and remain as relevant and high quality as it ever was.

This is especially true with "family" films. Take Shrek - it gave us lots of sly, parodic humor, a strong setup, and a solid storyline. However, each subsequent installment diminished the quality and wrung the characters dry of their potential. It quickly became evident that there simply wasn't much to the world it gave us.

Something similar happened with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Again, strong characters, setup and plot for the first film. The next two films, while still entertaining, were less focused and it was clear they didn't really know what to do with the characters they had.

Kung Fu Panda is that rare movie whose sequel is every bit as good as the first, and indicates to us that not only do these characters and settings have depth, they know what to do with it.

After the end of the first movie, Po is now the Dragon Warrior and living the dream of defending his village using the awesome powers of kung fu - hiiiiya! Then his world is shattered by the arrival of wolven bandits under the command of Lord Shen, a malevolent and petulant peacock whose speciality is fireworks and who has loads of parental issues. Even harder for Po is the evidence that he's adopted (what was your first clue? That your father is a goose?) and that Shen has some connection to his own parents.

What struck me was how the directors managed to take the movie in a completely different direction from the first, showcase different aspects of the characters and world, and yet still keep what was great about it. Po is indeed the Dragon Warrior, and both he and the Furious Five show off their considerable kung fu chops with some astoundingly choreographed fight scenes. But he's also still Po, essentially Jack Black in CGI drag, who grandstands, can't resist a snack, trips over his own feet, but refuses to give up. The dichotomy between the two sides of him makes for some pinwheeling moods; my thoughts generally went "Awesome! Funny! Awesome! Funny! Sad! Awesome!" throughout the movie.

Po's companions, especially Tigress, are given more screentime and character development, turning this into more of an ensemble film than the first, which was more of a lone journey for Po. Lord Shen manages to be frightening despite his size, and steals most of his scenes thanks to the delicious cruelty imparted by Gary Oldman.

The vivid colors of the first film are still in full effect, but have been eclipsed by the darks and reds of a fully envisioned, pagoda-filled city, and Lord Shen's factory, full of lava and metal. The traditional animation of the introduction to the first film is still here and used to much greater effect to illustrate the past of both Shen and Po.

The plot is a bit reedy at times, with two jailed masters providing little more than an excuse for Jean-Claude van Damme to give a cameo appearance, but otherwise thunders ahead like a panda chasing a dumpling. It was a great experience and I hope they continue to explore the well-realized world they've created.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages

2011-05-31T06:57:00.000-07:00

I think Tom Holt has finally done it.

In the last ten years or so, Holt has been pursuing a book that follows all of his usual conventions (beginning with weird crap, populated with lots of idiom-play and plot twists and British satire) and yet doesn't fall apart into a mess two-thirds of the way through.

With Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages, Holt has managed to keep his trademark style, throw out what doesn't work, refine what does, and end up with a frenetic, fun yarn that keeps its head and even allows for a little bit of emotion at times.

Like a few of Holt's other books (Only Human, Here Comes the Sun), there isn't one specific protagonist. Instead, the narrative jumps around from person to person, although it's clear that all of them are connected, by a real estate company whose boss, Mr. Huos, is not what he seems. For example, we have Polly, a no-nonsense but oddly endearing solicitor who finds her coffee is disappearing, and someone else is doing her work when she isn't looking. And while looking to pick up her dress from the dry cleaners, it becomes evident that the dry cleaners doesn't exist - and, in fact, never did. And someone has written in her journal, as well - but only the one word: HELP...

Dragging her jingle-composing brother Don (who finds himself the unexpected and reluctant owner of a magic pencil sharpener) into the mix, the story soon gets caught up into alternate dimensions, a missing ring, talking poultry, and sundry antics, all leading to the one all-important question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Holt has fixed much that was wrong with many of his previous books. He has dialed down the cynicism and over-the-top wordplay; both are still present, but in a way that enhances rather than distracts from the story. He has managed to give his various characters their own voices and thoughts; other offerings seemed like he could write only one character who put on different faces and clothes. He even makes a bit of an effort to make us feel for some of the characters. In particular, he gives us a viewpoint character (Mr. Gogerty, a private investigator) to introduce us to lots of cool magic stuff, while we can enjoy the ignorance and confusion of all the other normal characters.

Most importantly, he has kept a lid on the story so that the answer is not more complicated than the question.

I have a feeling that the usual Holt creative process goes something like this.

1) Several weird things happen to the protagonist. Weird things are mysterious and draw the reader's attention, trying to figure out what caused them. Weird things are good.
2) Here's an explanation for the weirdness.
3) Said explanation either doesn't explain everything, or sounds lame.
4) Either add complexity to the explanation, or add more events or more fantasy gimmicks (time travel, alternate dimensions, complex spells).
5) Now there are new plot holes, so repeat step 4 as needed.

The result of all this is generally a huge mess, with a long, complicated infodump taking place in the second-last chapter. The mysteries from the first chapter are cheapened and ground into the floor by over-explanation.

Here, though, I feel that Holt came up with the answer first, and then explored all the things that it could cause. Although there's still a bit of an infodump, the various developments are all connected and generally make sense. It's not an amazingly deep story, but it is an entertaining one, and it comes together quite nicely.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages is Tom Holt back on his game. Let's hope the trend continues.

Trails in the Sky

2011-05-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

There's a certain kind of early 32-bit RPG that was popular around the mid-nineties. It involved spunky anime characters, adventurous journeys, at least one cute animal critter, fairly boring music, and tons of tedium and frustration. Think Grandia and Lunar Silver Star Story.

Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is a callback to that time - but as far as I'm concerned, it isn't a time worth calling back to.

The main characters in this tale are Estelle and Joshua Bright. Both are bracers-in-training; "bracers" are basically what you get when you collect RPG heroes, give them badges and a guild, and tell them to keep doing what they were doing before, but to get paid for it: fight monsters, find lost kitties, deliver packages, etc. Joshua is Estelle's adopted brother; their father, Cassius, a celebrated bracer himself, has gone missing, and they set off on a journey to burnish their bracer credentials and search for him at the same time.

I can't say the story is 100% cliched; there are one or two political twists that are unexpected and a sequel hook that promises a deeper story. But for the most part, it's classic RPG mealiness. People are kidnapped; the kidnappers turn out to be bad people, or not so bad people after all due to amnesia. There is the apparently requisite gladiatorial tournament and a peculiar side tale that involves a school play. The dialogue is unusually wordy, so patience is advised. Although the main characters (of which there are a surprising amount, swapping in and out of your party as plot demands) are colorful and likeable, the NPC dialogue is almost uniformly pointless. There's a lot of houses and rooms to explore but practically nothing to do in most of them. In short, the story is adequate but nothing to write home about.

The gameplay, on the other hand, is surprisingly interesting, especially for a game with this general style. For one thing, you've got a Bracer's Notebook: a record of all the quests you've started or finished, and where you're up to in the plot. Completing quests gives you rewards, but some quests actually expire if you wait too long. (This is probably the most annoying thing about the game - there is no way to return to many places once you've passed them, and almost everything in the game is missable.) You also have a recipe book, where you can cook up HP-healing goodness in the field given the right ingredients, which are always cheaper than buying ready-made items.

Speaking of money, there are exactly two ways to earn it: completing quests, and selling "septium", materials of various elemental properties that are dropped by enemies. Selling it is usually a bad idea, though, because you can instead create quartz with it. Quartz can be equipped on your characters and will not only raise your stats or bestow effects, they will change the spells ("Arts") available to you as well. Equipping lots of high-ranked quartz of the same element will give you the most powerful Arts of that element, while changing up the elements will give you more variety. Managing quartz ends up being a surprisingly satisfying inventory puzzle.

Battles are triggered by running into an enemy; in the now-standard custom, if you run into their back you get to go first, and vice versa. It should be noted that unless you equip a quartz that allows you to sneak past enemies, it's much easier for them to get an advantage than you, because you have all your party members trailing after you.

Battles themselves take place on a 2D grid. Characters have limited movement and attack ranges, so placement is important. As you take and dish out damage, your "CP" will rise, allowing you to use skills ("Crafts"). Every character also has an "S-Craft", which allows them to instantly take a turn and dish out major damage when their CP gets high enough. Ostensibly turn-based, the game spices things up by adding bonuses that take place on particular turns. You can manipulate the turns in two ways: by casting Arts (which, due to the lag, show up as two turns instead of one) or by using S-Crafts. All this provides for a surprisingly challenging and fun battle system.

Visually and aurally, the game is nowhere much. The visuals are low-key - not stylish or fancy enough to get a second glance, but not bad enough to notice either. Characters have a nice amount of portrait expressions, though, which helps. There is no voice acting other than a few clips in battle, and the music ranges from bland to "please turn it off now!".

Trails in the Sky is largely a mediocre RPG. It is moderately challenging, with a story that is neither tedious nor exciting. It is a good deal too long and the dialogue is a bit too wordy; it requires serious patience. It comes close to being "good", even dipping its toe in now and again, but is a far way off from that distant land called "great".

Capsule Reviews

2011-05-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

A few vignettes about small things I've picked up.

Imaginary Range

This very odd little game was released with little fanfare by Square Enix for the iOS. There are two interesting things about it: One, it's not really a game, more like a graphic novel interspersed with a few mini-games and a bit of item collection. Two, it's at the low low price point of FREE.

The story is almost completely unintelligible, although the little "director's notes" that are unlocked when you finish it give it a bit more body. The basic idea seems to follow Cid and Ciela, two people stuck in a dream world in which their imagination can shape reality. They need it, because they must fight against Omega, a giant mechanical monster who's destroying Paris. The art style is pretty nice but a bunch of characters are introduced who are never given names, and there is a quite large backstory and mythos hinted at but never explained. The mini-games range from fun to frustrating. There are a few cute nods to Final Fantasy in there as well.

The whole game can be finished in an hour or so, but hey, you can't beat the price.

The Guild Graphic Novel

The Guild has moved from web series to comic books fairly easily. The comic book format allows a bit more depth in terms of showcasing the game that Codex and her friends play. The first three issues (collected into one omnibus) show how the Knights of Good first met. The comic manages to capture the feel of the series pretty well, but it's missing most of the manic energy; I hadn't realized how much of a difference the film direction and performances of the actors make to the overall effect. A cute, short read though.

Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King

Purportedly a comic fantasy, this book, written by a Canadian First Nations novelist, is all over the place. It quickly introduces six or seven discrete sets of characters, all First Nations, although it soon becomes evident that they're all related. There is the hint of some fantastical elements, along with a satirical origin myth involving Coyote. But I wasn't really getting what the book was trying to say, and most importantly, I hated the dialogue. Apparently in King's world, "dialogue" is where two people have independent conversations without even pretending to listen to what the other person has to say. As a throwaway gag it would have been funny, but after 90 pages of it I'd had enough.

Alice

2011-05-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

Alice in Wonderland seems to be part of our international consciousness. A palpably bizarre tale of a dream world in which cats talk, drinks make you grow or shrink, babies turn into pigs and chess pieces move around on their own, the book seems to continually resurface in pop culture to be rewritten and parodied over and over.

Alice, a two-part mini-series released in 2009, is a modern re-imagining of the book; it doesn't take the overall story, events or even characters, but uses them as a template for a quite serious urban fantasy story littered with garish colors, kidnapping and exploitation, fear and terror, and ghosts of the past come to haunt the present.

Unlike Tim Burton's Hollywood treatment of the Alice in Wonderland story, there are no animalistic characters at all, no reality-bending adventures, and no utterly mad characters. There are countless references to the originals, but no attempt to be them. This smooth understanding of its goal is what makes Alice a somewhat better attempt at turning the book into a serious story than Burton's mishmash.

Alice Hamilton is not the quivering girl of the famed Disney animation, nor the resolute, gliding beauty of Burton's movie. She's a karate instructor, who takes no guff and dishes out plenty of kick-ass. When her boyfriend hands her a strange-looking ring and is quickly kidnapped, Alice follows a man with a white rabbit on his lapel through a mysterious looking glass and into Wonderland.

Wonderland, again, is neither the brightly colored Disney world nor the bleak, depressing Gothic landscape of Burton, but a parody of urban living, with skyscrapers hundreds of stories high tottering above a giant ocean. Here, the Casino of Hearts, ruled by the cruel and capricious Queen of Hearts, is engaged in a busy trade kidnapping humans from the real world and using them for nefarious purposes. Alice is lucky enough to meet Hatter, a dandy with a five o'clock shadow and a Liverpudian accent, whose loyalties seem about as solid as steam, but who is frankly the only person in this world who shows any interest in genuinely helping her.

The visual style is arresting and captivating; there is enough CG to keep things fantastical, but enough real footage that we feel a connection to where they are. The various ways the show incorporates the Wonderland mythos ranges from the obvious to the amazingly clever. They've essentially managed to create a new world called Wonderland, where many things look and sound somewhat similar to this other Wonderland written a hundred and fifty years ago, but is entirely and resolutely its own country.

Caterina Scorsone plays Alice with a sort of muscular belligerence and an undercurrent of vulnerability. She's good at the fight scenes and the crying scenes, but not so good at everything in between; her pronouncements are short and sharp and sometimes lack follow-through. Andrew Lee Potts's Hatter's doggy determination and confusion comes across eloquently, and Kathy Bates's Queen of Hearts is wonderfully imperious. A few other performances fall flat, though, including Philip Winchester as a chiseled but boring hero, and Matt Frewer as the ancient White Knight, channeling Don Quixote and spewing chivalrous nonsense.

Alice is long on vision and even execution, but also long on patience. The full length is 180 minutes, and about 60 minutes of that could have been cut for the DVD release without losing much. Despite the lags in story, though, the result is a superbly interesting and entertaining work.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

2011-05-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

It's a strange situation I find myself in. Practically everyone has heard of George Orwell's seminal work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Parts of the work have gotten into everyday language - words such as "doublethink", "thought police" or "Newspeak", and especially "Big Brother Is Watching You". But I've never actually read the full thing until now.

Nineteen Eighty-Four isn't really a novel in the strictest sense of the word. There are events and plot, but for the most part it's a keyhole into a vision of the future - a cynical, depressing vision of a dystopic, evil future - as seen through the prism of Winston Smith, the protagonist. Most of the book is simply narrating the realities of Orwell's frightening future and giving us the thoughts in Winston's head. It is equal parts narrative, political invective, biting satire and morality tale.

In the titular year, Orwell envisions a world divided into three major powers - Oceania, comprising all of the Western hemisphere and England; Eurasia, which is largely Russia and western Europe, and Eastasia, which is mainly China and parts southeast of it. All of them are constantly at war with each other, despite none of them having anything the others actually want.

As a member of Oceania's Party (there is only one), Winston is watched from "telescreens" constantly. There is almost nowhere that is free from the "Thought Police" - and "thoughtcrime", i.e. thinking anything that might be rebellious to the Party, is the worst possible crime there is. Anyone caught doing it is not only killed, but removed from existence entirely - he has, in fact, never existed at all.

Obviously the entire world of 1984 is one which no one in their right mind would ever want to live in, no matter whether they are part of the ruling Inner Party, the cowering Outer Party, or the ignorant masses of the "proles". Orwell goes into minute detail into the privation, the constant vigilance, the destruction of family life and romance, and most of all, the sheer, ignorant hatred that the citizens all have for each other and the unnamed, evil foreigners.

Central to Orwell's vision is the idea of "doublethink" - that contradicting things can be held in the mind simultaneously - and the odious practice of rewriting the past and the present. Essentially, the Party ensures that their version of events is not only true but has always been true - because once the physical evidence is gone, all that's left is in the mind of the people; and people schooled in "doublethink" can easily believe that, say, 2 + 2 = 5... if that's what the Party wishes.

The book is very difficult to get through, not only because of its subject matter but also because it's not really a novel. The paragraphs are enormous and dense, and while it isn't overly descriptive, it also doesn't have much dialogue. Orwell's ideas, scary as they are, are hammered a little too deep and often, and he probably could have shaved two or three chapters off the narrative without losing much.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was written in 1949, when Nazism was still fresh in the minds of Europeans and Communism was on the rise. The world Orwell envisions can't take place in our lifetimes, not any more. The social revolution of the 1960's and the flowering of democracy throughout the African and Asian worlds has turned the world into one where human rights are paramount over power politics. Most importantly, though, the proliferation of mass media, political spin, news parody shows and over-advertising has turned us all into skeptics. A monolithic "Big Brother" message dictated to the masses would never work nowadays. But who knows how much of that progress is due to the cautionary message Orwell wrote to the world?

Nineteen Eighty-Four as a whole may not happen. But, somewhat similarly to a quantum particle, the act of describing the thing automatically ensures it won't happen. The spread of government-run video cameras inevitably gives rise to "Big Brother" metaphors (somewhat disingenuously - the government is not looking for traitors but terrorists) - and if it gets bad enough, so do the comparisons to this grim future. The spectre of Big Brother has guaranteed that such a thing can't come to pass. Of course there are echoes of Big Brother in the censorious government of modern-day China - and I imagine Nineteen Eighty-Four isn't available there - but the spread of the Internet is slowly defeating even that overbearing anachronism.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is hard and even draining to read. It's an important book, and one that every society needs to have in its national consciousness, as a moral. It's the thing we all need to have at our beck and call, so we can use it as a mirror to our own community and ensure, at every point in time, that we are as far away from it as we possibly can be.

Big Fish

2011-05-17T06:38:00.000-07:00

Tim Burton is best known for his wacky, macabre artistry and grim tales of fantasy, death and depression. Big Fish is probably his most prosaic work - but also his most tender.

William Bloom (Billy Crudup) has always had a strained relationship with his father, Edward (Albert Finney). A consummate storyteller, Edward is the life of every party, regaling his audiences with wild tales of mythological proportions. When his father's speech at his own wedding revolves around a story involving a giant fish and a wedding ring, William has had enough.

Three years later, Edward's health is failing, and William takes his pregnant wife to his childhood home. William yearns to finally hear the truth from his father - the kernel of fact hidden in all the fantastical tales - but keeps hearing only fantasy. He struggles with trying to understand Edward under the layer of lies. Billy Crudup is somewhat nondescript in his portrayal of William, but Finney's Southern eye twinkle gives us a charmer who wants to go on charming until his very last minute.

While part of the movie shows us old Edward, most of it is told in flashback, starring a young, idealized Edward (Ewan McGregor). Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, brave, kind, innocent, determined, and handsome, young Edward epitomizes the fairy tale hero. His adventures take him from witches to giants to circuses to falling in mad, desperate love with the woman he's destined to marry. Edward takes on everything life throws his way with aplomb and a grin.

Set in a romanticized version of Alabama (William works with flat-panel monitors but his father apparently never saw a car until he was in his twenties), Tim Burton's wild imagination populates Edward's tall tales with bright colors, oblique shapes and unusual camera angles. His adventures are fun to watch but Edward's too-perfect image (which, I imagine, was supposed to be somewhat buffed up in the re-telling) makes for an imperfect protagonist who I tired of quickly.

The movie is long at 125 minutes, and overstays its welcome by a decent margin. A more streamlined, leaner film would have left me with a better taste. Still, the last fifteen minutes are heartwarming and heartbreaking simultaneously, and left me with a whirlwind of emotions and thoughts.

What's the real truth behind Edward's life? Does it really matter? Who is Edward Bloom, really, and if he's had the courage to face down giants and wolves, why doesn't he have the strength to let his family in to see his real self? Is William right in pushing him away or should he have embraced him, warts and all?

Although there are hints, there are no answers, and Burton deftly weaves a tale of tales and story of storytellers. Despite the lags in the narrative, you'll come out the better for seeing this.

First Among Sequels

2011-05-17T06:17:00.000-07:00

At the end of Something Rotten, Jasper Fforde's determined protagonist Thursday Next seemed to have come full circle, in more ways than one. The story could have ended there, but Fforde's imagination didn't.

Daringly, Fforde turns the clock forward fifteen years to 2002. Thursday has had at least one more extended adventure of which we never learn more than snippets. She now has three children, SpecOps has been disbanded, and she spends her time working at Acme Carpets.

Yeah, right.

Thursday is, in fact, just as busy as she's always been, both in the real world and in BookWorld. Thursday's all out of supervillains, but she must fight something more nebulous: the falling interest in books and increased popularity of dumb reality shows. What's more, it looks like time travel has never actually been invented - which, of course, will inevitably lead to one more apocalypse to be prevented.

Fforde spends most of his time in the BookWorld in this outing, and merrily goes on his way making his creation ever more complex and intriguing. Not quite as madcap as earlier books, this time we learn to see a book as a full, encapsulated world.

More importantly, Fforde's meta-meta-meta-discussion on fiction becomes ever more meta with the introduction of (in-universe) the Thursday Next books, based on her exploits. With biting satire and poking gentle fun at himself and his entire industry, Fforde explores the unorthodox question of what happens when a real-life person meets their fictional counterpart, and blurs the line between the real world, his own fictional world, the book world inside that, and onwards, in continuing mind-bending spirals that would make M. C. Escher go and lie down with a headache.

First Among Sequels lacks the coherence that most of his other books had in terms of a solid antagonist and goals. Thursday never really knows how she's going to do what she needs to do until nearly the end of the book, and most of the middle is just exploration and character. This doesn't make it less enjoyable, but it does make it marginally less satisfying.

With two or three frankly brilliant twists on the entire nature of storytelling, First Among Sequels is classic Fforde - entirely original and a pleasure to read.

Dollhouse

2011-05-06T06:21:00.000-07:00

OK, I know Joss Whedon is the god of television. But all his other forays into the medium (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly) are just warming up to what is apparently an experiment on just how awesome two seasons of TV can be.

There is one term and one term only that can be used to sufficiently describe Dollhouse's 26-episode run, and the family-friendly version of it can be called the "Holy Shnikey Quotient". A show's HSQ, as defined by TVTropes, is the number of times during its run you feel the urge to look in shock at your fellow viewer and shout "Holy Shnikey!" Or a reasonable fascimile of such.

Dollhouse is somewhat episodic, but there is one overarching story, and it takes over quickly. The plot moves forward at a breakneck pace, and nearly every episode bowls you over with a new twist or shocking revelation. Dollhouse's HSQ, in other words, is through the freaking roof.

The basic premise in and of itself is quite creative. It takes place "twenty minutes into the future", in a world that's pretty much ours but with one significant detail: neurological science has progressed immensely, leading to a revolutionary invention. This invention has spurred the creation of the Dollhouse.

The basic idea is as follows: the Dollhouse finds young men and women ("actives" or "dolls") who are down on their luck or out of options. They sign them up for five years, during which time their minds will be wiped completely. In place, the Dollhouse, paid by clients, "imprints" them with other personalities, delivers them to the client for an outrageous fee, and collects them 24 hours (or longer) later, to be wiped again and returned to a dreamy, childlike state until the next request comes in. When the five years are up, the active is returned to their original mind - perhaps including some enhancements, such as the removal of traumatic psychosis - and given a fortune.

The moral and ethical issues here are thought-provoking and chilling, and the show does a good job of presenting all aspects of it. On the one hand, some characters call it "slavery" and the actives "prisoners" or "prostitutes". Other characters profess an admiration for being able to give people what they need - someone genuine and perfect.

The ramifications and possible misuse of such technology aren't lost on the writers, either, and most of the second season ratchets up the suspense and danger considerably.

The main character in the series is Echo (Eliza Dushku), the most requested active on staff. Echo is a little different from her companions like Sierra (Dichen Lachmann) and Victor (Enver Gjokaj) in that we quickly find that she retains memories and flashes of previous imprints. In addition, Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett), an FBI agent, trying to find and shut down the Dollhouse, is given snippets of information related to Echo (or rather, Carolyn) - by who?

The various denizens of the Dollhouse are well realized, written and acted - particularly Topher Brink (Fran Kranz), the genius behind the technology, played with nervous tics, Buffy-like banter and lots of plaid. The head of the "house", Adele DeWitt, is played with superb aplomb by Olivia Williams and often has the best scenes, at once understated and full of bravado.

The writing and pacing is excellent and the series morphs from one tack to another without missing a beat. At the beginning it's largely episodic - Echo's "engagements" range from romantic dalliances to security detail to heist leader. Soon it begins to focus more on Ballard's quest for answers. Then it shifts to an up-and-coming politician devoted to bringing down the Dollhouse; the expansion of the plot to a second Dollhouse in Washington, D.C.; and the aforementioned escalation of danger, wherein our heroes must do their darndest to avert an apocalypse.

Every single episode in this series is strong and nail-biting. Your expectations will be shattered, your mind will be buzzing, and you will never quite know whether people are who they say they are or what will happen next - or, indeed, who's about to die. Dollhouse takes no prisoners and the result is a top-notch, entertaining, intelligent, downright awesome show.

One caveat: The 13th episode of the first season, called "Epitaph One", takes place well after the 12th episode of the second season (before the last episode). I'd actually recommend watching them in chronological order, as I felt "Epitaph One" was a bit too jarring for where it was. The very end of the series is somewhat of a downer, but that's par for the course for Whedon fans.

(The only downside is that the DVD of the show costs literally twice as much in Canada as it does in the US - what the heck, folks!)

Night Watch

2011-05-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

Night Watch is Terry Pratchett's magnum opus, a tour de force of character, quest, thought, emotion, and heart-thumping narrative. It is a triumph of the written word and a testament to the talent of its creator. It is extremely difficult to put down, and it is hands down the best thing he's ever written.

Sam Vimes is settling into his life as Lord Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. On the chase after Carcer, a career murderer and all-around bad news, a sudden freak storm (actually the one from Thief of Time) hits both of them. As it turns out, this catapults them decades into the past, where a revolution is afoot.

Of course, said revolution is only one piece of the puzzle. The other is that due to a procession of unlikely events, Sam Vimes has arrived calling himself John Keel - the name of his first sergeant as a watch constable - and looking like him as well. And as it turns out, the real John Keel is suddenly no longer available to teach young Sam Vimes the ropes of being a copper. Vimes finds himself in the practically unique position of teaching himself everything he knows...

The beauty of Night Watch is that it works on so many levels. For one thing, Sam Vimes is now utterly alone; while he has allies, he never feels comfortable with any of them. Because he's always passing through, he knows he's not going to build a relationship with them. He has no reliable companions like Carrot or Detritus. Throughout the book, whenever the narrative is with Vimes, it's all Vimes. And the commander is a truly amazing individual to spend time with. Wise, brave, sarcastic, and above all, a complete badass, Vimes is a pleasure and a treasure.

The narrative, from Vimes' perspective, is full of short, sharp, incisive sentences. Terry has beautifully captured the world-weary, knowledgeable view of a longtime copper who's had experience with everything from whore pits to the palaces of kings. Vimes knows how things work, and his excellent policing skills and ability to keep several steps ahead of everybody else are all the more intriguing to read on those occasions, in fact, they don't work.

But Sam is not the only attraction here. Terry has thrown our view of Ankh-Morpork back about thirty years and shows us how far it's come. Old Ankh-Morpork is a city of darkness and fear. Lord Winder's Unmentionables - a secret police akin to the KGB - run roughshod over the city. Winder himself is a paranoid maniac, but with reason; there are in fact plenty of people who'd like to see him dead. The bubbling turmoil slowly gets wound so tense that one pluck is all it would take to set it twanging - and one spark to set it alight. The revolution itself is at once conventionally emotional and unconventionally intelligent. While the references to Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities are evident, the story is all original.

In addition, we get to see a sort of origin story of not only the Watch but several popular Discworld characters. The shout-backs are in fact shout-forwards, and every recognition rewards longtime readers with a shiver of excitement.

The time travel aspects are given a spit-and-polished take as well. Not content with cliches, Terry shows us how, while history may go on the way it's always done, the way it gets there can easily be diverted. Vimes is constantly torn between trying to do things the way they "should" be done and trying to make things better. It never feels forced and is always entertaining.

When choosing the categories for this post, I found myself flummoxed. Discworld stories are usually comic fantasy, but while Night Watch crackles with wit, it is missing the farce from previous installments. "Urban fantasy" usually refers to stories taking place in "the real world". While Ankh-Morpork is every bit as real as our own cities, you won't find it on any map. In the end, I leave the book on its own merits - a masterpiece.

Okamiden

2011-04-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

The Nintendo DS seems to be the home for RPGs that are either average or good. It's rare to see a game that can seriously be called great - or that attempts to hit that mark by its own merits rather than cashing in on existing resources.

Okami was an astoundingly creative, evocative and breathtaking RPG for the PS2 (and later Wii). I was amazed at its artistic vision, gorgeous music, and playful but epic rendition of Japanese myths. Okamiden is part sequel, part remake. This time you play as Chibiterasu, Amaterasu's puppy (your origins aren't really explained, considering you control Amaterasu from her awakening until her leaving for the Celestial Realm in Okami and she never stops to have babies). Darkness is once more descending on Nippon and there's nothing for it but for you to chase after it again.

Anyone who's worried over the fact that Clover Studios isn't involved with the game needn't worry; Capcom has easily recaptured the feel of the original, from the cut-out look of the flames to the squeezing talky-faces and weird Simlish sounds during dialogue. The music is composed by Rei Kondoh, who also did much of the original; about half the soundtrack is slightly remixed tracks from Okami. There isn't anywhere near as much variety in the music, though; you may find yourself getting sick of some of the tracks, though they're all easy listening.

The general gameplay remains the same; Chibiterasu roams the world, fighting baddies embedded in scrolls, garnering praise from humans and creatures, and using his Celestial Brush techniques to affect the world around him. The techniques are largely recycled from the original, with only two new ones. The game is shorter and therefore faster-paced; you'll have all of the available brush strokes within the first ten hours or so.

There are really only two or three major differences here. The main one is that rather than fighting alone, Chibi nearly always teams up with a partner. He finds a range of these throughout the game, several of which have connections to other Okami characters and all of which appear to be under the age of twelve. Not only will your partner help out in battles, they are required to solve puzzles both in and out of battles; you will often need to guide your partner around while you accomplish another task. This adds a welcome layer of complexity to what is, at core, a fairly simple game.

Another welcome change is that Chibi fights outside the "battlefield" as well. Having to deal with rogue enemies makes the puzzle parts a little more challenging. And the boss battles aren't just big round arenas; you'll have to navigate the battleground and use it to your advantage in your fights. In general the bosses are far more interesting than the original Okami, though the general challenge level is pretty low, partly due to the fact that by the time enemies start getting challenging, healing items are dirt cheap. (In fact, there's not much to spend your money on near the end of the game; the techniques and items that gobbled it up in Okami are missing.)

The final change, of course, is the way you draw. It seems like a no-brainer to use the DS stylus to draw your brush strokes instead of the PS3 or Wii controller. It's certainly more natural - but for some reason I found it far more challenging, for the simple reason that my DS often skips, leaving gaps in lines and arcs. And by often I mean "about two-thirds of the time". I generally had to draw Cherry Bombs four or five times to get it to stick. And when you're faced with a story part that requires use of the stylus, missing one stroke forces you to redo the whole sequence, which can get tedious when the only reason you missed it is that the DS inserted a gap into your line for no reason. I don't know if this is my own technical glitch or it's more widespread, but it was quite frustrating.

Another frustration was my discovery that Okamiden is actually quite linear. There are a few sets of items you can collect (which yield prizes either during the game or after the ending in a New Game Plus), but all of them have pieces in places you can't revisit. In fact, a good chunk of the game is inaccessible once you're done with it. Since Okami let you go back to get almost everything, this was a bit of a letdown.

Okamiden in general is missing the playful but epic rendition of Japanese myths from the original. The new characters are colorful and fun but lack the hidden depths that most of the Okami characters and plots seemed to have. About half the areas are essentially shrunk-down versions of places we've seen already. The new areas, including an underwater tower and a thundercloud, are pretty interesting. The story tends to be much more dialogue-heavy, which is a misstep; the new characters aren't interesting enough to carry the story they're given.

Part of its draw of Okami was the feel of a truly enormous world. Many areas were absolutely huge, and the game itself stretched through so many of them that I kept being surprised when the game hadn't yet finished. Okamiden is a much smaller game; it feels like the giant playground has been shrunk to a little sandbox. There's not enough exploration and none of the mini-games or fun collections. Several of the things that made the original great are still there - the fun battle system and brush strokes, the great music and creative artistic style. But therein lies the rub; much of it is reduced, reused and recycled. It was a fun 25 hours or so - this is certainly not a bad game by any stretch - but with heavy deja vu. I got my Okami fix for now. Let's hope for a real sequel in the future.

Reality is Broken

2011-04-24T08:35:00.000-07:00

Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better And How They Can Change The World is a confusing book. Although it presents many intriguing ideas, it fails to make the case that these ideas are anything more than wishful thinking, and glosses over the one aspect in which games really could make our lives better.

Jane McGonigal is a researcher and video game designer who has done innovative, ground-breaking work both in experimental and successful commercial works. Here, she tackles the bare-bones study of what makes a game; why we play games; and how we can use these ideas to make our real lives better and to change our futures.

I found the first seven or so chapters to be the most intriguing, because they break down games into their component bits and use neurology, psychology, and sociology to examine why they do what they do so well. After that, McGonigal convincingly demonstrates that the basics of games can make our real life more productive and fun, using examples such as Chore Wars, which turns everyday household chores into a competitive game, or Quest to Learn, a public school which uses video game ideas and software to turn the entire learning process into a game, rather than using games to enhance learning.

However, once McGonigal has tickled our fancy, she turns her thesis on its head. Rather than discussing how we can use these aspects of games to make existing actions better, more fun, or more productive, she instead looks at how it's possible to make games themselves affect real life more. And here's where I started to get skeptical.

McGonigal describes over a dozen games, most of them some aspect of ARG (Alternate Reality Game), which I discussed in my review of This Is Not A Game. ARGs are essentially ways of playing a game via real-world activities, or where things you do in the game affect real life things. McGonigal uses examples such as World Without Oil and The Comfort of Strangers to demonstrate how games can be more than just entertainment.

And here is where I felt she lost the thread.

I was in academia for several years. I'm quite aware of the kind of confirmation bias that goes along with a thesis or any work that takes a long time. You're trying to prove the veracity of your hypothesis - in this case, that games can change the world - and the little, annoying bits of information that don't quite match up have a tendency to get ignored.

By the time I was finished this book, those bits had overwhelmed the narrative, and made it difficult to take any of it seriously.

The first inkling of annoyance with the message actually came early on. McGonigal uses the word "game" here to mean not only video games, but also regular sports like golf or baseball, or board games like chess or backgammon. However, depending on the chapter, she freely changes the definition to whatever it needs to be. For example, chapters 5 and 6 concentrate heavily on online games like World of Warcraft and Halo 3. McGonigal still makes sweeping statements such as "Games build stronger social bonds and lead to more active social networks." But that simply isn't true unless we assume the word "game" refers only to these online examples of the form. Similarly, the idea that games can be more "epic" only refers to big-ticket, "epic" sorts of games.

She has a similar fluidity with the term "gamer". Take me, for instance. I consider myself a gamer, if not perhaps a hardcore one. On average I play about ten or fifteen hours a week. However, I don't play multiplayer games. Not local, not online. Not ever. When I come home, I want to relax and not worry about anybody else. (The only exception to this was an attempt to play LittleBigPlanet with my wife, which died fairly quickly when we learned that neither of us were very good platformers). By McGonigal's definition, though, in many cases, I don't fall into the category of "gamers" because "gamers" are extremely social in various ways. McGonigal's statistics are sometimes suspect because of this; she may use "gamer" to mean "person who plays video games" and then extrapolate that every one of those gamers have the same social skills and desire to engage that WoW players have.

Finally, it turns out that the word "game" doesn't necessarily mean "game" but "good game". For example, the entire fourth chapter is dedicated to "fun failure", or the idea that games can make failure interesting rather than depressing. Of course, this is blatantly untrue for a wide swath of games, especially of the more punishing RPG kind. Constant failure and requirement to backtrack and redo half an hour of game time is terrible game design, but it's still fairly rampant. This confusion between terms in and of itself didn't sit well with me.

Besides which, how does one decide what a "good" game is? Is it millions of hours played? The problem with that is that only online games can track that kind of data. If we added up all the hours of people playing the resolutely offline Final Fantasy series, would we find less hours than World of Warcraft? In addition, WoW continually creates new content by the sole expediency of being multiplayer and adding expansion packs. It's not really fair to compare it to offline games that are no less enjoyable but simply have less to do. And what about critical response - is that not taken into account as to how "good" a game is? Much of McGonigal's basis was studying what makes a good game - but perhaps story, mental or physical exercise, music, graphics or artistry is just as important to keeping our attention as social aspects or instant feedback. These aspects weren't studied simply because her definition of "good game" may be based on flawed data.

I also found that the author has a tendency to fall into the unfortunate pitfall of "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Chapter 11 is dedicated to showing how important collaboration is - but she thinks of wikis, such as Wikipedia, as "games". I'd be quite surprised if people would equally spend four hours editing Wikipedia as playing Halo 3 - and even more surprised if it was the same kind of people. Not all online collaboration can be considered a game, and calling it that is disingenuous.

But it's more than that; McGonigal makes a number of unmentioned assumptions that dilute her message and can contribute to the lessening of her rosy outlook.

If a gamer is willing to spend an hour playing WoW, that gamer would equally spend the same hour on a game that has more real-life effects. McGonigal uses this assumption to e.g. say that WoW players could make however many Wikipedias every year, based on the number of hours of effort required. The problem is that, for many of us, being told that a game has real-life effect is actually somewhat disheartening; it's a goody-two-shoes problem, because these sorts of games have a real tendency to be preachy and plain old not as fun as ones designed solely to entertain.
If a gamer is willing to spend an hour playing WoW, that gamer would spend the same hour on a game that takes place, or has aspects that take place, in real life. Many of McGonigal's works are ARG's, and I'd argue plenty of game-players are perfectly happy staying at home, staring at a screen. No matter how much fun you make it, many gamers are staid, introverted types who aren't going to get out there and play things in the real world. It's why so many video game RPG players don't play D&D.
If a gamer is willing to spend an hour playing WoW, that gamer would spend the same hour on a different sort of game with a better purpose. Of course this isn't true; while McGonigal studies why WoW is such a great game, the point is simply that there are many more millions of gamers out there who don't play WoW. If WoW is the best game ever, why is that? It's because gamers want different things out of games; it's why some people play FPSes but not RPGs, while others swear by sports or fighting games but won't touch story-based ones. The assumption that each hour of game playing is transferable to a better-intentioned game won't work.

What this all boils down to is my distaste for her assertion that if we make "important" games, people will play them. It hasn't happened. It's telling that McGonigal herself has been personally involved almost every single project in the last four chapters of the book. These projects - ambitious, "change the world" type games - have typically only had participants in the hundreds or thousands: a drop in the bucket compared to the millions that buy into pure entertainment.

McGonigal spends fifteen pages giving us an overview of The Lost Ring, an ARG McGonigal invented along with McDonalds and the Olympic Committee. She goes into excruciating (and unnecessary) details, and holds it up as an example of how people can get together and do really great things. Except that, at the end of things, all that has been done is that people have spent hundreds of hours playing a game whose prize was... another game.

Even if it would have had some kind of real-life aspect, which huge corporation would sponsor such a game that wouldn't have a direct impact on their bottom line? Even though it was backed by McDonald's, the participation in The Lost Ring was still about 250,000 people. Compare that with one of the biggest ARG's, the one used to promote The Dark Knight, which topped out at hundreds of millions of participants. It's clear that people will mass together to get involved - but only with entertainment that stays firmly entertainment.

People in general, and especially in today's generation of slacktivism, won't necessarily shy away from important results in their games; but they won't seek them out, and they aren't going to sign up in droves, unless the added work required is tiny. Free Rice and Folding@Home work because they don't require serious participation that impacts one's free time. "Future prediction games" like World Without Oil doesn't actually have gameplay per se; it's more like creative writing or artistic expression. It will appeal to a small demographic of people who are already involved and fired up over saving the world. It won't translate into millions of players.

For my two cents, McGonigal should have stuck with her initial, more practical idea: using the concepts learned from games to make real life more interesting. By instead focusing on turning the games we already play from pure entertainment to activism, she's stuck in an overly optimistic thought experiment whose results will inevitably be far less world-changing.

The Japanese Devil Fish Girl

2011-04-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

I think Robert Rankin is losing his touch.

Rankin is at his best when he idolizes the absurd. His wild and frankly ridiculous storylines are paired with inventive, hilarious dialogue that makes heavy use of juxtaposing high-faluting, biblical prose with juvenile invective.

However, I found his previous book, Retromancer, to be little more than rehashes and bombastic events. His latest, the grandiose-sounding The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions, is a mishmash of early sci-fi and adventure which sounds as if it should be poking good-natured fun without ever getting to the fun part.

The story follows George Fox, an earnest lad who, after running away from home, makes his way through life by working as the beleaguered assistant to Professor Coffin's sideshow, which consists of one dead Martian (a real one). A shocking visit with a mentalist propels George and his mentor on an adventure to seek Sayito, the Japanese Devil Fish Girl of the title, an apparently divine creature who features in all major religions, on and off Earth.

Along the way, George and the professor come across Miss Ada Lovelace, a fellow adventurer escaping the drudgery of being a brilliant genius in Victorian-era England. (Said intelligence is more of an informed ability, as other than being plucky and resourceful and sexy, Ada does little requiring any smarts.) The three of them fall afoul of aliens, flying monkeys, giant airships, laser guns, and a magical, dangerous perfume.

On paper, the book sounds great - the ideas show promise and creativity. However, Rankin seems to have lost his taste for satire and sense of fun. Where once his overblown prose would be tempered with contemporary slang and a sly wink, here it seems to be bogged down in its own importance.

Rankin has always given his absurd stories a serious bent, especially in big showdowns; although he's never managed to actually make them serious, it's clear he wants them to be. This book shows why authors shouldn't always get what they want. He's achieved a serious story, and in the process leeched all the entertainment out of it.

In past books Rankin has never managed to imbue his characters with any sort of real emotion. While we can identify with Jim Pooley or John O'Malley, we can't really feel for them. This was no problem at all while his stories were satires and drug-fueled manic adventures, but with the scaffold of humor gone, the edifice of character collapses, revealed for the paper-thin husks they always were.

There are still flashes of the old Rankin - the now-legendary transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic antimatter, for example - but overall I found the narrative to be a slog. Its embrace of outdated sci-fi ideas (Martians and Venusians, oh my) and previously-tread landscapes (Victorian England re-imagined as steampunk led by Nicola Tesla and Charles Babbage, first encountered in The Witches of Chiswick) have lost their luster; they're a joke that's gone on for far too long and ceased to be funny ages ago.

I'll still gladly buy Robert Rankin's next book in the hope he'll reclaim the spark of genius that powered his previous works, and that this is just a blip in the stream. But blip it is - a dark blot on his entertaining record.

Radiant Historia

2011-04-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Radiant Historia is that rare creature, a JRPG comfortable in its own skin but willing to experiment with the premise. It's an ambitious undertaking, with a surprisingly complex story and challenging battle system, marred by a lack of artistic vision.

Don't expect colorful anime characters here. In Radiant Historia's world, you are Stocke, the James Bond of Alistel. A top-level agent with Specint, the covert operations section of the army, Stocke runs missions critical to the ongoing war with neighboring Granorg. Both countries are fighting over meagre resources resulting from a supernatural disaster - the increasing desertification of their world. However, things quickly go south; Stocke's allies are killed, he is faced with imminent death... and suddenly he is whisked away to Historia, an Escherish world of floating staircases and shining lights.

There, he meets two mysterious children, who inform him that history is out of whack. Someone has been going back and changing events in the past, leading to the imminent destruction of the world. It's up to Stocke to right things, by using the mystical White Chronicle to revisit past events himself and fix things. What's more, an early decision by Stocke splits the timeline in two - the Standard History, where Stocke remains part of Specint, and the Alternate History, where he joins his forbidding-looking longtime friend Rosch in the military proper. There is only one path to success, but many branches leading to failure. Luckily, Stocke literally has all the time in the world.

The timeline feature is by far the most interesting aspect of the game, and the above proverb constantly intruded into my head while playing it. Each decision Stocke makes has important ramifications. Usually these results are shown immediately, leading to numerous "Bad Endings". However, almost any time there is a decision, a "node" is created in the timeline, allowing Stocke to return to it at any time. Non-node events (whether required or optional) are dutifully recorded in the Chronicle.

While the game is technically "linear" in that the storyline proper won't let you visit any place on the map whenever you like, the ability to return to the past allows you easy access to anywhere you may want to return to. If you're aiming for a particular location or character, it's not always easy to remember where to go, unless you have a great memory or are taking notes. Luckily, you can instantly skip any conversation at all, making your investigations fast and painless.

What's interesting is that the results of a decision are not always predictable. Trying to act like a usual JRPG hero (save your friends, be a do-gooder, get more powerful skills) won't always result in the correct course of action. The various bad endings showcase how every little aspect of one's life - especially one as important as Stocke - can influence events. Unlike us, though, Stocke gets as many chances as he likes to get it right.

One thing that grated on me was the idea that events in one timeline can actually affect the other. This idea isn't used often but it smacks of a deus ex machina when it is; there's no earthly reason for only some specific actions to cast a shadow into an alternate timeline.

While the story is intriguing, full of political machinations, war tactics and betrayal, the characters are less so. We don't get much information on people's pasts or motivation, and often your party members seem to just be along for the ride (or, in one case, insanely infatuated for no good reason). There's little humor in the script and it's hard to identify with Stocke's no-nonsense, somewhat dull practicality.

One thing I did like about the game is its sidequests - unlike the current trend, they open up as you go, and often you'll have to revisit previous nodes to continue them. The only downside is that short of using an FAQ, you'll have to talk to literally every NPC at every possible node to discover them. There aren't many, but it does get tedious.

There's the story in a nutshell - what about gameplay? The answer: Fairly solid. As with many modern RPGs, Stocke can see enemies wandering around inside dungeons. If he smacks them with his sword, he can knock them out, either walking past them or getting the first shot in battle if he chooses to engage. If they come up behind him, it's a surprise attack. Enemies are generally fairly easy to avoid if necessary, and I never felt under- or overleveled.

Battles are a good mix of the old and the new. The two main aspects to it are manipulating turn order and pushing enemies around a 3x3 grid (your fellas don't move, though). Essentially, you can see the next 20 or so moves on the top screen. When an ally's turn comes up, you can opt to switch with either another ally or an enemy. The latter will give the enemy an immediate turn, but will allow you to string together more ally turns. Bigger combos mean bigger damage and bigger rewards after battle. Once a character has swapped their turn, they take slightly more damage until their next action, but not significantly so.

The second gimmick is the grid that enemies sit on. An important factor in your damage potential is being able to push enemies together and attack them, allowing you to use single-square attacks to punish a whole group of enemies. More importantly, later in the game you can set traps on empty squares and push enemies into them for massive damage. This pairs off nicely with turn switching as mentioned above, because once your combo is over, enemies go back to individual squares.

The end result is a surprisingly challenging battle system. Your eight or so characters all have different abilities and therefore different roles, and deciding who will fight a given battle isn't a simple decision. Aht can set traps and heal, but will go down quickly; Raynie can fire magic spells and inflict status effects, but can't move enemies around very much; Rosch is a tank who can manipulate enemy positions but can't do much damage; etc. The addition of status effects that actually do things lead to sometimes frantic battles, even with average mooks, but rarely to the point of frustration. The only thing that did bug me is the feeling that new equipment isn't an upgrade so much as a sideways move; it's rare that a new sword will do significantly more damage, for instance, without seriously impacting defense or speed.

There's a lot of good things to be said about Radiant Historia, but somehow I still left it feeling somewhat unsettled. This is mainly because of the lacklustre visuals and music. Granted, the setting of the game is not a colorful magical land, but a more realistic continent at war - and the politics of neighboring countries plays a great role in the story. Still, the areas you visit are almost uniformly bland; you'll spend the majority of your time in cities, sewers, forts, mines, plains and deserts, several of which will be revisited so often you'll get sick of them fast. I found myself wishing for a dash of color here and there. The somewhat jerky character animations didn't help, either.

Yoko Shimomura's soundtrack is decent but not one of her best - and it's far overused, as there aren't many tracks, and they begin to get repetitive. Even the sound effects rubbed me the wrong way somehow. Considering the surprising length of the game (25-30 hours) it's a shame they couldn't have come up with something a bit more appealing to the eye and ear.

Radiant Historia is a very good game that just falls short of "great". While not the most inspiring or easy on the eyes, it has very good gameplay, an unusual and thought-provoking story, and plenty of side quests. A definite strong addition to your DS library.

Divine Misfortune

2011-04-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, so let's engage in a bit of imaginative world-building. That whole monotheism thing? Never happened. All those Greek, Egyptian, Sumerian, Norse etc. gods? Actually exist. But it's still the twenty-first century, so rather than being content with some sacrifices and incense, these gods have created their own bureaucracy, laws, sports events, and YouTube channels.

Everyone has to have a god - those without simply get left behind. So Phil and Teri finally agree to go online and find one they like. As it turns out, Luka (or, as he prefers to be called, Lucky) is a god of luck. Also, a raccoon. And the luck he gives is heavily tempered with various amounts of ill-fortune - both of the probability sort and the kind Lucky's caused by his own circumstances. Not to mention the fact that he's decided to camp out in their living room and mooch food off of them.

At the same time, a woman named Bonnie finds that no good deed goes unpunished when she suddenly finds herself saddled with Syph, a terminally depressed goddess of heartbreak who latches onto her and proceeds to make her life, and those of everyone around her, a complete misery.

Trying to put the gods in a human society isn't a new idea, but it's very difficult to pull off well. Gods simply don't make sense. Too serious and it's laughable; too light-hearted and they become pointless plot devices. An example of a slightly more serious take on them can be found in Marie Phillips' Gods Behaving Badly, while Tom Holt's Ye Gods! and Odds and Gods are absurd versions.

I enjoyed my previous sip of A. Lee Martinez, called Monster, and the idea of this book seemed like a good one. It's pretty fluffy stuff, though. The gods are capricious and frankly annoying, and most of the time they aren't funny. They come across more like ad executives than divine beings. Martinez still insists on having a godly villain of the piece, though, and the fact that he's spent all this time knocking gods down a peg means it's difficult to take him seriously. Martinez does have some inspired ideas about how this society would work, but considering it's meant to be a parody, many of them aren't fully thought-out.

The book is very easy to read, but very hard to take anything out of. It's the equivalent of a book milkshake: light on the brain, smooth to swallow, and forgotten ten minutes later.

Side Jobs

2011-04-04T07:04:00.000-07:00

Jim Butcher is a tease.

In the ending of Changes, true to its name, the situation has changed irrevocably for the affable, smart-mouthed detective-cum-wizard Harry Dresden, following one of the most epic showdowns in the series. Rather than giving us what we want, Butcher instead has published a series of vignettes showcasing the world of the Dresden Files. Rather than disappointment, it was actually quite fun to read.

Although the earlier books in the series seemed more like monster-of-the-day episodes, they quickly began to expand their focus. Now, 12 books in, Harry's world has been thrust into war between humans, vampires, elves, wizards, other sorts of vampires, other sorts of wizards, demons, and good old Harry. Politics, old grudges, evil plots, and new alliances have made the series one of the most wild and complex stories around. Although Harry remains an endearing narrative force, it's difficult to imagine returning to those simpler times.

The short stories in Side Jobs take place at various times in the series, and tend towards the lighter side. While most give us more Harry, two of them are actually from the points of view of other characters, allowing Butcher to stretch his chops a bit and write in a different voice.

The book is up to the usual Butcher quality - fast-paced dialogue and action, likeable characters, and great world-building (even taciturn Mac, the owner of the bar Harry frequents, gets some screen time). It ends with an even bigger tease - the final story, called Aftermath, takes place fifteen minutes after the end of Changes. No more need be said.

Fans of the series won't be disappointed, and for those who haven't started yet, this is a good way to get Dresden in bite-sized chunks (although beware of heavy spoilers for previous books).

Ghibli Roundup: Princess Mononoke

2011-03-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

One thing I've learned in my quest to experience all of Studio Ghibli's films is the pitfalls in declaring any one movie "the anti-Ghibli". Maybe it was Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, with its hardcore sci-fi? Or Only Yesterday, the prosaic real-life story of a woman on a trip down memory lane? Although Studio Ghibli does tend towards fantastical journeys starring plucky young girls, the stories are diverse enough to frustrate any attempt at categorizing them into a single "Ghibli tale".

However, there's one thing that I think links all of their films, and that is hope and wonder. This may be part of the theme of the story (as in Porco Rosso) or in the animation (as in Ponyo) or the innumerable flight sequences showcasing the raw talent and imagination of the directors. By that rubric, it's Princess Mononoke that bucks the trend.

Mononoke is different in many aspects from the usual Ghibli fare. For starters, it's very adult - copious amounts of blood, severed limbs and corpses throng the screen at various times. It also stars a male rather than female character. But more importantly, the message of hope and the sense of wonder are absent; this film is more cynical and painful than one might expect. The excellent animation is put to use bringing to life gods, demons and the harsh realities of war rather than playful spirits, steampunk ships, or magic spells.

The setting is very Japanese, a counterpoint to the more European feel of most Ghibli movies. The plot begins with Prince Ashitaka, a no-nonsense, determined young man who bears more than a little resemblance to the titular Nausicaa. In a routine patrol, Ashitaka finds himself confronting an enormous demon boar. While he manages to put it down before it destroys his village, his encounter with it puts a curse on his left arm - a curse that will eventually devour his soul and then his life.

Torn by his new fate, Ashitaka leaves his village and ends up near Irontown, a huge, furnace-belching compound ruled by the cold but lovely Lady Eboshi. It soon becomes apparent that Ashitaka is a casualty in a long war between the humans of Irontown and the spirits of the nearby forest, who resent their destruction of their home. More strange is the sight of a wild woman riding on a huge wolf - "Princess Mononoke".

Mononoke is one of the longest Ghibli films, and for the most part it consists of slow, sometimes ponderous or dreamlike sequences punctuated with frantic action and much exposition. Luckily, the characters are strong enough to keep interest (although some of the traveling does seem to take too long).

More important than the plot are the themes, though. Mononoke is a more nuanced environmental message than the earlier Nausicaa. Lady Eboshi is hardly an out-and-out villain; she has genuine compassion for those under her rule. The forest spirits aren't all fun and games, either: many are brutish, stubborn, and aggressive, and even the serene-looking Great Forest Spirit reminds us that he is a god of life and death.

The animation is of excellent quality, though without the flights of pure, unbridled imagination that mark most of the studio's works. The cute, unearthly audience of kodama provide a counterpoint to some of the more unsettling aspects of the film, but really the only things that truly stand out are the horrifying demons and war sequences. The attention to detail is constant, though - for example, a particular bit of quite small clothing damage is patched up and remains patched up throughout the movie.

The voices were very good but not up there with the best Ghibli performances (hearing Jada Pinkett Smith voicing a Caucasian-looking woman seemed out of place somehow); similarly with the music, which is used sparingly to great effect but seems like it should have done more. (I also have to say that the use of "Princess Mononoke" is said once but never explained; she is not a princess, her name is actually San, and "Mononoke" means something like "poltergeist").

The only negative thing I can really say is that the narrative is somewhat unfocused. Ashitaka has no real goals towards what he does and where he goes, and even Lady Eboshi is mysterious about her true intents, right up to the end. The refusal to take sides means that there is no side to take, and we are left with a somewhat unsettling, bittersweet ending that remains mum about the ethics and morals of the theme. It is a powerful film, to be sure, but gives no easy answers, and is definitely not something you should be showing children.

Mockingjay

2011-03-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

Spoilers ahead for The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.

The third and final book of the Hunger Games trilogy is a doozer - ambitious, heartbreaking, and almost too crushing for its own good.

We left Katniss Everdeen kidnapped by rebels at the end of the last Hunger Games and whisked to District 13, the head of the rebellion. Katniss finally sees an end ahead to the Capitol's evil regime - and it falls to her, the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion, to fire up her audience and rally the troops to their cause. Katniss would rather be fighting herself than walking around with a team of stylists and cameramen, of course. At least until she begins discovering that the rebels themselves aren't necessarily all that much better than the people they're deposing...

If there's one word to describe Mockingjay, it would have to be "relentless". The sheer amount of hurt, heartache, and tragedy that befalls Katniss continues building almost to an anticlimax; there is so little light in the book that the darkness becomes suffocating. The writing remains sharp and urgent, and the book is still a page-turner which is nevertheless almost painful to get through.

Katniss is torn by conflict, both internal and external; between Gale, her childhood friend, and Peeta, who she can't figure out as a lover or an enemy; between following orders from higher-ups she doesn't like and disagrees with, or forging her own path; fending off mind games from the diabolical President Snow and dealing with friends new and old who have been killed, maimed, or gone insane.

The game-like quality of the first two books is gone now; there are no rules, only war. Although the book's intensity is a rollercoaster of emotion, I felt something missing. The ending is bittersweet at best (far more bitter than sweet) and quite unsettling. There are no smiling faces here, not at the beginning nor at the end. When terrible things happen to people, they don't just get up and live happily ever after once the bad guy's been dispatched. Mockingjay is untiringly cynical and bleak, and destroys all expectations. It's a killer of a book - you won't be happy when you finish it, but it will scorch your soul.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

2011-03-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

It's not often that I quit a game midstream - especially a game that shows promise, which I generally enjoy, and which has, by all indications, an excellent story. It's unfortunate that the Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together for the PSP falls into this category.

First a bit of history. My first (and so far favorite) strategy RPG of all time remains Square's Final Fantasy Tactics. The SRPG formula - equip and train your party of named and generic characters, change their classes, teach them skills, and send them into battles consisting of glorified chessboards, where you make use of height, terrain, and turn order to your advantage - worked perfectly. The balance between growth and strategy, openness and linearity, choice and direction, challenge and ease, combined for an addictive and fun experience. I'm not saying FFT didn't have its Guide Dang It moments - but overall it was fun to play and replay.

Interestingly enough, FFT was not the first strategy guide made by its team. They got started with Tactics Ogre, an entry in the Ogre Battle strategy RPG series for SNES. By all accounts, FFT was essentially a more refined Tactics Ogre with some extra fantasy piled into its story and a Final Fantasy touch to the items, job classes and skills. Unfortunately, FFT's sequels for the GBA and DS were lacklustre - addictive but lacking the depth of story and challenge of the original. So it was with much joy when I heard that Tactics Ogre was being remade for the PSP.

Unfortunately, the game seems to be ragged around the edges. It has many excellent ideas, some created just for the remake, but its lack of direction in class development, added tedium, and misguided attitude towards money and equipment, piled up to a constantly frustrating experience.

Let's start with the things they did right. Recognizing that battles can easily last upwards of half an hour, and one wrong move can doom you, they implemented the innovative Chariot system. This allows you to rewind time in a battle - up to 50 moves previously - so that you can, for example, go back and revive that guest character in danger of dying rather than pushing on to try and beat another enemy knight in the meantime. Of course, one quickly realizes that this can be abused: if your attack is shield-blocked, simply rewind, go to another square, and try again. Still, it's a welcome addition to removing some of the tedium of battles.

Another interesting feature is that rather than individual characters gaining experience, their class gains experience. So if you spent four hours leveling up a knight, only for him to die permanently, just recruit a new one (or change an existing unit to knight) and voila - they're ready and waiting at the same level you just exited. The downside to this? All new classes begin at level 1, meaning that the shiny new class you just unlocked is going to be almost unusable for five or six battles until they start slowly catching up to the rest of your party - and they'll take up a valuable space in your party, too. Considering that each skill, magic spell, and even piece of equipment has a minimum level requirement, and you're in for a long, tough, frustrating haul. (Why not just start new classes at the average level of existing ones? Why must equipment have level requirements? Why?)

So why bother with individual units? Simple - skill points. Skills (including bonuses, counter attacks, and special moves) stay with units even when they switch classes, though not all skills are usable by all classes. One of my complaints about this game is that there is little indication of which classes can use which skills; even indicating which skills each class will learn is a mug's game, because new ones keep showing up only after you get up to a particular experience level. This means that there is no way to quickly see the strengths and weaknesses of various classes - we don't know what skills will be available later on in the game and therefore we don't know which long, tedious path of training we should be taking.

What about the story? Safe to say, TO:LUCT's story is one of the best points of the game. This is all politics, all the time - there are no less than four separate countries vying for dominance on the archipelago the game takes place on, and your own role depends heavily on your choices - there are several different paths to take. Luckily, after beating the game, you'll be able to return to any point in the story and take a different choice to see what would happen. This is a brilliant idea and goes a long way towards appeasing my fear of open-ended storylines endemic to Western RPG's. The script is the same poetic, brain-teasing excellence we've come to expect from Alexander O. Smith (Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII). The plot is actually so complex that many people won't be able to follow; the Warren Report gives a good rundown of characters and events but not of current political status, alliances or goals.

The music is excellent, evocative and sounds great (although it can get somewhat repetitive). Graphically, you shouldn't expect much; it's still based on an SNES game and the characters look almost comically pixellated. Still, none of that gets in the way of the story or gameplay.

There are several places where the game falls apart into extreme frustration, though, and what's more annoying is that a few minor tweaks could have saved it.

First is how the game deals with money. Unlike FFT, where the money you gained after each battle was a function of the number of defeated units and their levels, the only way you can gain money is by selling items dropped by enemies. The problem is that a) these items can actually be picked up by another enemy; b) sometimes enemies don't drop items at all, but mostly-useless tarot cards; and c) the items are entirely random, sometimes being valuable coins or equipment, but often being cheap throwaway items. I spent the majority of the game being completely broke - and none of it was my fault; I was a simple victim of the Random Number Generator god.

(NB: You can also get money by recruiting monsters and auctioning them off, or recruiting enemies and selling their equipment. I didn't do so because I had literally twice as many characters as I needed, without ever hiring a single generic character. Requiring me to recruit them just to use them as cash inflow felt so wrong to me, and smacked of such bad game design, that I refused to cave.)

Money wouldn't be as big an issue except that consumable items play an enormous role in your success. Healing spells quickly become outclassed by healing items, which can be thrown by the simple expedient of equipping a "Lobber" in one hand. Many class skills (such as Ninja and Swordmaster) also require consumable items to use. Soon you have to spend so much time buying items that you can't equip your party - and since enemies level up as you do, you are increasingly struggling against better-equipped bad guys.

Next came my issue with the skill and class system. There are simply too many classes, they open up too quickly, and they take too long to get anywhere useful. Skills are expensive to learn, and there are a ton of them and not many slots (even gaining new slots cost skill points). A good SRPG gives you space to experiment with your skills; TO:LUCT makes this so onerous that it almost requires you to read a guidebook or have prophetical knowledge to figure out which classes are worth leveling up and which are worth ignoring. Several classes seem interchangable early on and as new ones open up, it isn't clear if they're going to be worth the effort to use them. This results in desperation and lack of clarity, and was supremely annoying.

Next, we have crafting. It is possible to augment your equipment to create better versions of it. However, this process is so tedious that it is impossible to do so constantly, unless you have the patience of a snake. The actual weapon recipe only has three ingredients - but each of these ingredients have two or three ingredients, each of which must be crafted themselves. As it turns out, you can easily make a Longbow+1 from materials which are cheap and buyable from the store - but it'll take you upwards of five minutes just to get all the various combinations done. Once again, frustration and boredom interfere with the game experience.

Finally, there's the infamous escort missions, in which a guest you have to keep alive is outnumbered and out-equipped by enemies, and of course their only instinct is not to run to safety but to try to hit them with 1-HP punches. These missions require very specific and unintuitive solutions (give your fastest character no armor at all, and pray he reaches the mentally-incapacitated guest in time to shower them with items) and almost had me throwing my PSP across the room.

Midway through the third chapter, I came across a story mission that required me to "destroy all enemies" - even though the enemies included three dragons, I was outnumbered, and new enemies kept arriving. (GameFAQs wisdom said that some of the enemies wouldn't attack me if I left them alone. This turned out to be patently false, as some experimentation proved.) I knew that I could probably craft enough equipment to put me over the top, but faced with the tedium of fighting ten battles to gain enough cash to do so, followed by an hour of dealing with the ridiculous crafting system, finally made me give up the ghost.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together has promise, and possibly a great story. But in order to enjoy it, you must be insanely patient and/or insanely lucky. A great disappointment.

Good Omens

2011-03-17T08:33:00.000-07:00

Good Omens has, as its Dramatis personae states, a "cast of thousands". Really, though, we're interested in about five small groups of players, all of whom dance around each other in a macabre ballroom waltz, as the clock ticks towards Armageddon.

So we've got the demon Crowley and angel Aziraphale, working to stave off the destruction of a place they've rather come to like. There's Anathema Device, professional descendant and owner of a quite amazing book of prophecy. We have the quirky yet rage-filled Sergeant Shadwell of the Witchfinder Army and his hapless new recruit, Newton Pulsifer. A group of four children, one of whom may or may not be the Antichrist. And, of course, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who are biding their time until the big day.

Good Omens is epic in scope and extremely well-written, with a solid mixture of fantastic, sarcastic, satirical, philosophical, and plain old entertaining. The plot is meticulously planned and executed flawlessly. Several running gags (such as the usage of spelling that's "three hundred years too late") and themes come together very satisfactorily, with an ending that never fails to send chills down my spine, and a unique take on the whole Heaven/Hell thing that's bound to make you think.

The sheer inventiveness of the narrative leaps off the page; not content with description, the authors veer off into religion, mythology, history, and personality quirks that help to define each character into a three-dimensional yet cartoonish, and very funny, whole. The juxtaposition of funny and serious ensures the reader remains constantly invested with not only what'll happen next, but what's happening now.

I've read this book at least fifteen times, and it never gets old. Two masters have come together and produced, well, a masterpiece.

Eternal Sonata

2011-03-03T07:14:00.000-08:00

Eternal Sonata is a game that has an unusual premise, a somewhat solid battle system, an awful, unoriginal story, and so many flaws that it drowns in them. Yes, I am a fan of JRPG's, but sometimes they just make me sick.

The rather ambitious tagline of the game is that you are playing as Frederic Chopin, famed composer. The night before he dies, Chopin dives into a feverish dream in which he visits a fantasy land where everything is named after musical instruments and concepts, and the evil Count Waltz is taxing the citizens of Forte to death while threatening war against neighboring Baroque.

Let's critique the story first. This will take a while. There is, quite frankly, almost nothing redeemable about it. Chopin himself is a cipher; he is content to basically watch everything that goes on, while periodically making sure everybody remembers they're just characters in his dream. Of the first four characters, two (Polka and Beat) are some of the most annoying I've ever encountered; their voices drive me insane and they are just plain dumb, needing the simplest concepts explained to them over and over again. In fact, I can't say I actually like any character at all; the best I can come is avoiding active dislike for Allegretto, Viola, Salsa and the members of Andantino.

The fantasy story is a mess of cliches and long, ponderous cutscenes in which nothing of any intelligence is ever said. Seriously, these scenes go on for so long (with huge pauses) and so little happens in them that I actually began skipping some of them out of sheer boredom. (One death scene for a particular character took at least ten minutes - far longer than that character's entire screen time to that point.) Character interaction is limited to a tiny bit of banter that tries too hard, two unbelievably obvious attempts at romance which fall flatter than a really thin crepe, and lots of waffling on about how war is a bad thing. There is no gray in the actors here; Count Waltz and his minions are irredeemably and illogically evil, while all of the good guys are gosh-darn-it good.

The framing device of Chopin's death has little to do with the actual plot besides one or two ruminations on his dead sister Emilia. There are a few scenes in his bedroom where we are shown two women whom we know nothing about, and a doctor who apparently considers someone on his deathbed as "going on a journey" (you don't think he knows he's in an RPG, do you?). Every so often we are subjected to vignettes about Chopin's life and work, set to one of his piano pieces and a series of still architectural photographs. Because one can go back and read this separately after the fact, they serve no purpose except to further raise the boredom factor.

The entire idea of the world being Chopin's dream is laughable - none of the characters or events bear more than a passing resemblance to Chopin's life. They had an opportunity here to give allegory and symbolism a good run, instead choosing a bland, lifeless JRPG story with no real connection to their unique premise.

On to the gameplay. Here the game does a somewhat better job - in general it was fairly satisfying to play, though still with some frustrations. You run into enemies to begin battle with them. The battles have a real-time component, which becomes more and more emphasized as you progress through the game (the game slowly takes away the time you get to look around and figure out what you'll be doing before acting).

Combos are the name of the game here. Every time you land a hit, the number of "echoes" will go up, and your special attacks will be exponentially more powerful when you use them (at which point the echoes go back down to zero). This gives an element of strategy, because healing is also considered a "special attack"; in later battles, I found myself having to make use of echoes earlier than I wanted, because I had to heal every third turn, which destroyed my chain.

Also important is the light-dark dichotomy. Each character has two "light" and "dark" skills, which can be used in different parts of the battlefield; for example, "light" skills in sunlight, "dark" skills in the shade. In general this is an interesting twist, except in some places, especially near the endgame, where it's extremely difficult to tell which parts of the battlefield are which.

More important is the tried-and-true "timed defense" technique popularized in Super Mario RPG. When an enemy attacks, a little icon appears above your character; hit O at the right time and the attack power will be cut to a quarter. Later in the game you can also hit X to counterattack as well. However, this is by far the most frustrating part of the battle system. Because attack animations are all different, that little icon is the only thing that can tell you when to hit the button, and sometimes the time frame is literally a split-second. Missing it can often mean the difference between life and death, as a large attack that isn't defended can easily wipe out a character immediately, even in middle chapters. Conspiring against you are the camera, which often places the character at the edge of the screen so the icon is barely visible, and the fact that if you aren't facing towards your attacker, you can't defend at all.

Oh, and counterattacking? Forget it. A different icon randomly comes up, and you need superhuman reflexes to realize you've got a counterattack chance and to take it, all in the split-second that the icon appears. Press X when you should have press O and you forfeit everything. This whole thing was a decent idea but terribly implemented.

One last thing about the battle system - in every dungeon, you will almost never see more than two kinds of enemies, meaning you'll be fighting the same battle over and over and over again. And of course many of those enemies are palette swaps of earlier enemies. Go originality.

You begin the game with two characters and by the end of the game you have an impressive array of them. The problem is that the ones you aren't using level up at half the speed of the ones you are, meaning that you can't possibly use everybody without proceeding ridiculously slowly. Moreover, equipment (especially in late game) is so expensive, and enemies drop so little money, that you couldn't afford to kit everybody out anyway. (You can take pictures with Beat that can be sold in stores, but I was never able to get one that sold for more than about 50 gold.) In the end, I stuck with the same three characters for the last half of the game, which ruins the whole point of having such a variety of characters in the first place.

The last thing I should mention is a sort of mini-game involving "score pieces". You collect them, and random passerby will ask to play a "session" with you. This is a classic and annoying bit of trial-and-error. Those who can't read musical notes won't be able to match the scores up and will end up trying every single one of them until they get the right one. Even those who are musically inclined may be frustrated; some of the combinations sounded pretty good to me, but still gave me Rank F. Moreover, if you happen not to have the correct score piece yet, when you come back with it, you'll have no way of remembering which ones you've already tried and have to do them all again.

Eternal Sonata takes about 30 hours to play through including cutscenes. It's an extremely linear game - disappointingly so, as there are paths that promise travel in the future but which are never visited. It commits a cardinal sin, though, in that some content is only available on a second playthrough. In my opinion this doesn't enhance replay value, it merely increases frustration that I wasn't given the whole experience first time through. In addition, the replay makes everything harder - and given that the game as is straddles the line between challenging and frustrating, I have no intention of trying it again. (I found it odd that the story would be so juvenile - perhaps aimed at children - while the challenge in the game itself was so high.)

Probably the best part of the game is its visuals - Eternal Sonata can be quite beautiful at times, with bright splashes of colorful forest, gorgeous architecture, arresting vistas. This isn't true all the time, though: many dungeons and areas are fairly bland. It also doesn't extend to character models, which try to be cartoony and real at the same time and fail on both accounts, especially as regards shading (most obvious with Viola). The music can be quite nice as well, some of Motoi Sakuraba's best - but that's not saying much, and it's easily forgettable.

Eternal Sonata is one of the most frustrating games I've played in the last while - not because it's hopelessly bad but because it shows flashes of promise and drowns it all in annoyance, boredom and irritation. If the question of a game's quality is how much one enjoys it, this one gets a failing mark - I didn't.

Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear

2011-03-02T11:20:00.000-08:00

Dan Gardner, journalist and lecturer, wants you to stop being afraid.

Our lives are better now than ever before, he tells us. Our children are less likely to die; our life expectancy is higher; our quality of life is better than our parents' were. And yet, for some reason, our society is more afraid than ever - of terrorism, climate change, environmental disaster, cancer, pedophiles stalking our families... why is it that the safer we are, the less safe we feel?

Gardner explores the science of risk - what it means, and what it means to us. He touches on neuroscience, psychology, sociology, history, politics, media studies, economics, and good old business sense to slap us upside the noggin and get us to think seriously about the actual probabilities of bad things happening to us.

The best parts of the book are the first third, in which the author explores the psychology of risk - why we think the way we do. He concentrates on the fact that we have two "systems" of thought in our minds. Gut is all emotion and urgency, instinctual and automatic. Head is analytical, intellectual, and logical. While both are necessary, Gut is often the one who gets the upper hand, while Head is the one that's usually right.

Gardner cites study after study in giving us this amazing insight into how our brain works. He sets out several common "rules" that dictate how Gut interprets information in ways that don't necessarily reflect reality, and uses it to explain how what we see or hear in the media or from friends can so drastically alter our perception of risk. Gardner's work is meticulously researched and rigorously selected, and I can guarantee you won't think about how you think the same way again.

Once Gardner leaves the world of science and enters the softer field of politics, media, and business, the book begins to get weightier and less fulfilling. The first six chapters are over in 140 pages, while the last six take over 200. Gardner writes in enormous, dense paragraphs, and if there isn't something arresting happening in those paragraphs, it begins to get difficult to follow.

Not helping is the fact that the information in these latter chapters are both more obvious and more repetitive. It's pretty simple to understand why the media chase after big blaring headlines rather than writing stories such as "Child Cancer Rates Down Again This Year". Not content to make his argument with a single example, Gardner presents case after case hammering in the same point. While still a correct argument, it begins getting long in the tooth.

Another issue I have with the politics is the simple fact that Gardner parrots past risk as an indication for future risk. While this makes eminent sense when talking about diseases, accidents or natural disasters, it's less convincing to say that since terrorism hasn't killed many people in the last several years, the likelihood is slim that it will in the future. Unrest, technology, charismatic leaders, border disputes, increasing multiculturalism and radicalism... these are variables that no study can balance for.

One element that bugged me was Gardner's continued reference to his calculations that over 1,500 people died in car accidents in 2002 due to their aversion to riding airplanes after September 11. If every lost airfare would mean an additional car trip this might be the case, but how many people didn't fly or drive, but just put their vacations on hold?

Moreover, some of his arguments are less than decisive. He continually tells us that getting into car accidents is a much greater risk than most of the things we're particularly concerned about - but having already told us in the first few chapters why that is (for one thing, car accidents aren't rare or unusual, and lack a "story"), why is it so hard to believe that we might be worried about other things more? He never actually tackles the subject of how high he thinks a probability should be for us to actually be worried about it.

Risk is an important book, and the first third of it is full of mind-boggling studies and fascinating insights into how our mind works. The rest of it is still important but less mind-boggling, and somewhat of a slog. Gardner could have trimmed fifty pages (and made more paragraph and chapter breaks) to keep it running more smoothly. But the end result is still a seminal work and an important lesson for us to correct our thinking and stop hiding under the bed.

Ghostopolis

2011-02-25T06:57:00.000-08:00

I've always known that Doug TenNapel has a twisted mind. The genius behind such bizarrities as Earthworm Jim and The NeverHoOd, TenNapel has in recent years been churning out graphic novels with no discernible audience; the story and gags seem comfortably ten-year-old, while some of the content would seriously turn off parents.

Most of his works have been relatively short, black-and-white affairs, though. The plot or setting often feels patchy and woven together. With Ghostopolis, TenNapel gives us over 270 full-color pages of pure unadulterated fun.

The premise takes a familiar concept and puts a spin on it. Frank Gallows is a ghost hunter - a member of an elite team who tracks down ghosts who find their way to the living world and sends them back to where they came from. Things go awry, though, when Frank accidentally sends a fifth grade student named Garth back with a skeletal horse. While Frank tries to find a way to go into the ghost world to rescue him, Garth deals with the freaky and frightening ghost world - in which we discover that ghosts are, after all, just people.

TenNapel's character designs are top notch. The art is appealing and very expressive, and characters can say much with just the looks on their faces. The dialogue is snappy and the story proceeds at a pace that neither drags nor rushes. The architecture of the titular Ghostopolis is sprawling and evocative. TenNapel gives us a world that really feels well-thought-out: a mythos that oozes promise and potential. The plot itself is mostly dumb (if fun) action, but there are many points that show surprising tenderness and emotion.

With Ghostopolis, Doug TenNapel has finally given his imagination the freedom and resources it deserves, and has penned his best work yet.

PROTIP: TenNapel has just started a new webcomic, RatFist - a silly superhero-themed comic a la Earthworm Jim. So far we've got a half-rat half-human with a tail that talks too much (yes, you heard that right). It's super, stupid fun.

Catching Fire

2011-02-16T06:09:00.000-08:00

Warning: Spoilers for The Hunger Games ahead.

I always find it somewhat tough to write about sequels that maintain the same quality of the originals. Yes, they're few and far between, but when faced with them, I'm often at a loss about what to say that hasn't already been said.

The Hunger Games caught me by surprise with its take-no-prisoners dystopia, its hard-edged, loyal, desperate protagonist Katniss Everdeen, its heart and emotion, and most of all its rubber-band plot filled with plot twists that blindside you.

Catching Fire is largely more of the same, which is the highest praise.

We last left Katniss and Peeta back in District Twelve after their improbable feat of winning the Hunger Games with two victors. Katniss assumes her life and that of her friends and family would be just a little easier now - aside from the nightmares. However, she hasn't taken into account just how far her little act of rebellion at the end of the Games has gone. Unrest and revolution hover just beneath the surface in other districts, and Katniss is faced with a terrible choice - to run or to fight against impossible odds?

Collins's writing style remains burning and emphatic. Katniss speaks to us in short sentences, each infused with direction or emotion. Katniss's feelings about Peeta and her hunting partner, Gale, rock her back and forth. Like most things in this series, there are no good answers and often no answers at all.

Collins hasn't lost her touch for the shocking twist, either, as about halfway through the book she gives us a sucker punch to the gut, thrusting Katniss into an horrific situation which nevertheless she is best equipped to handle.

The feel of the book is slightly different. In the first book, Katniss thinks mainly of herself and her family - she is concentrating only on survival. Here, she is forced to consider the bigger picture - not only her district, but all of them, and whether by her life or death she can make the biggest impact on defeating the brutal regime which holds them all prisoner.

The book ends on yet another cliffhanger, and the only thing stopping me from reading the third book right now is that I have others that need to go back to the library. Once you pick this book up, you need superhuman effort to put it down, and that's the mark of the expert storyteller.

Monster

2011-02-15T07:32:00.000-08:00

Monster is twenty episodes of taut, psychological thriller, full of murder, mayhem, and heart-breaking tragedy. It asks intriguing questions and gives unsettling answers.

Unfortunately, the actual series is seventy-four episodes long.

The titular monster is Johann Liebert, a boy who's found with a bullet in his head, next to the bodies of his parents, dead by gunshots. A genius and dedicated neurosurgeon, Dr. Kenzo Tenma, barely manages to save Johann's life.

As it turns out, though, Johann isn't the innocent he appears to be. Ten years later, Tenma meets Johann again - and comes to the horrific realization that the life he saved is that of a serial killer and sociopath. After seeing one of his own patients gunned down in front of his eyes, Tenma resolves to find Johann and put an end to the situation he feels responsible for.

The story at its best touches on all aspects of the human condition and probes us deeply. Is Johann really the monster of the title? Or perhaps it's Eva Heinemann, the spoiled socialite who dumps her fiance Dr. Tenma as soon as his rising star begins to plummet? Maybe it's her father, the director of the hospital, who cares more about prestige and funding than saving people's lives. Or Inspector Lunge, a robotic, relentless detective convinced of Dr. Tenma's guilt? Or maybe it's Dr. Tenma himself, who allows Johann to slowly turn him from a doctor dedicated to saving lives into a vigilante dedicated to snuffing them out.

As an anime it's almost unique in its mundaneness, lacking any kind of fantastical element. It mostly takes place in Germany and Czechoslovakia, giving us a different society than the usual Japanese urban settings. It's also quite adult in subject matter; most anime don't deal seriously with prostitution or patricide.

While the first dozen or so episodes are quite strong and left me hooked, the remainder of the series lost steam quickly. There are dozens of characters who are introduced, and while most have a relatively strong role, there are side trips that seem completely pointless, and some of the "secrets" are vague and mundane when uncovered. Johann himself is rarely seen in the show, which is a smart move when the action moves at a decent pace, but eventually backfires. Johann is the crux of the entire plot, so when we haven't seen him do anything of note in thirty episodes, the impetus implodes.

Most importantly, though, the pace is severely plodding. Dialogue is slow and stilted; episodes take ages to get anywhere. Mysteries are set up slowly and resolved even more slowly. Part of my problem, I think, is the dub; the performances are fine enough (especially the tortured Dr. Tenma) but I quickly realized the English script was second-rate at best, and at that point I was too invested in the English voices to go back to the Japanese audio.

While Monster is a daring and unusual series, its excellent premise is drowned by the overpowering flaws of its execution.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

2011-02-11T06:48:00.000-08:00

Rarely have I come across a game - or an experience of any kind - which captivates me, grabs me by the brain cells, and refuses to let me go for its entire run. There's usually something - a boring or annoying bit, a plot twist that bugs me, badly done special effects... but something. This is it.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is the latest brainchild of Shu Takumi, creator of the Ace Attorney games. Although relatively short (the game can be finished in about ten hours) the innovative gameplay, amazing visuals and stellar story make it addictive and leave you yearning for more.

The premise is simple: You're dead. When the game begins, you've just woken up and seen your corpse. You remember nothing - not your name, not how you died, not who you were. A helpful desk lamp begins schooling you in your situation: as a ghost, you have special powers (or "ghost tricks"). The major ones are being able to possess inanimate objects and manipulate them gently; being able to travel through phone lines; and, when faced with a corpse, the ability to turn back time to just before that person's death, and attempt to avert it. Oh, and one last thing - you're going to disappear at dawn. You have about 11 hours to discover everything about yourself.

Your three abilities form the core of the gameplay. You can stop time at will and go into "ghost mode". Here, you can move back and forth between specific objects. The main challenge here is that you have only a limited range; much of the puzzles consist of manipulating objects to form a "path" for you to get where you need to be; so you might possess a tire, then roll it down a few feet so you can jump into a lamppost. In order to manipulate objects, you need to go back into real time. In later chapters, you will have to jump in and out of ghost mode quickly to get the timing exactly right to jump between objects.

The game is surprisingly linear. Essentially it's a group of "set puzzles" - you have specific, clear objectives, and often a time limit to do it. Objects and people are moving around the room while you try to manipulate things, and often they'll react to your own actions in various ways. It's a good thing you'll never see a Game Over screen - generally you have to try various ways of doing things before hitting on the correct set of actions. I have to say the puzzles were meticulously designed - they are consistently challenging without being frustrating, and only once I was I confused enough to have to consult the Internet (I'd neglected to open an umbrella, if you must know). Because the puzzles are set up using real world objects and their generally predictable uses, they are intuitive and very satisfying.

The music is decent - it does the job of creating suspense or excitement - but nothing to write home about. The visuals, however, are shockingly excellent. You can't tell from looking at still pictures, though: it's all about the animation. People move amazingly fluidly. The sheer amount of detail that must have gone into these poses and movements boggles the mind. It's a delight to watch.

But all this would be just window dressing - a fun time-waster - if it weren't for the story. Suffice to say, Ghost Trick's story is astounding. It's mystery with enigma sauce and a juicy twisty centre. Every time you learn something new and answer one question, more open up - and unlike many mysteries, where the answers are either so mundane as to cheapen them or so wild they smack of desperation, the continual unraveling of your past and those around you is consistently satisfying and leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat, dying to learn more. Little things tip you off about what's coming but never enough to actually guess them ahead of time, leaving you excited about learning the significance of previous events and words. It's not only one of the best video game stories I've seen - it's one of the best I've ever experienced, period.

There's only one downside to the game: the ending is so beautifully done that it's impossible to imagine a direct sequel. Still, considering they added "Phantom Detective" as a subtitle, like they did with Ace Attorney, it's just possible they're trying to turn this into a series. One can only hope.

If you own a Nintendo DS and you have a modicum of curiosity in your soul, you owe it to yourself to pick up this gem of a game.

The Secret History of Moscow

2011-02-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

When one reads a good book - powerful, suspenseful, imaginative - it's only natural that one try other offerings by the same author to try and recapture that sense of satisfaction. Often one is rewarded. Sometimes, though, it appears as if the author had that one good idea, that one perfect execution, and wasn't able to recapture it before or since. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is one example of this sad phenomenon - while most of the other books of his I've read were good, none of them were great. Unfortunately, I just may have to add Ekaterina Sedia to the list.

Sedia's The Alchemy of Stone was an excellent, thoughtful story that featured a strong protagonist and an inventive world for her to inhabit. The plot was well-paced and kept my interest. The world was well conceived and fun to explore in the mind of the heroine.

Unfortunately, one can't say the same about The Secret Life of Moscow, Sedia's first foray into fiction. There are numerous reasons why I disliked the book; some are perhaps indicative that I was simply the wrong audience for it.

In general, I don't like "literature". I like books. Literature, to me, speaks of long descriptive paragraphs; overly obtuse prose; rampant symbolism; minutiae of life which have no bearing on an action-based story; and hours of tedium. While The Alchemy of Stone was a great book, The Secret Life of Moscow pretends to literature.

There are three protagonists to this story. Galina is a quiet, odd young woman who has suffered from visions and voices all her life, problems which landed her in a mental institution. Yakov is a no-nonsense policeman, a good man in a bad society. Fyodor is a wanderer and wastrel, who feels that he fits in nowhere. All three of them come together after a rash of disappearances - as it turns out, people aren't disappearing at all: they're turning into birds. Galina's sister does so right in front of her eyes, and her quest to find her takes her and the two men into the "underground" - a place below Moscow where the dead, the misfits, and various Russian mythological and legendary creatures reside.

Neil Gaiman, in a quote shown on the front cover, compares Secret Life with his own Neverwhere, and says it does for Moscow what his book did for London. Nothing could be further from the truth. In Neverwhere, it was quite obvious that Gaiman had an overwhelming love for London. His painstaking miniature history lessons punctuated a cracking story brimming with action and creativity. Sedia has no love for Moscow. Everything in the city - including all the characters, real or legendary - is decrepit, decaying, depressed, or depraved. (This is the second review in a short time in which I severely disagreed with Gaiman - his merits as an author don't seem to inform his ability as a reviewer.)

Part of the problem is that while Gaiman created a new mythos for his story, Sedia relies on existing Russian myths and historical events. Sedia doesn't bother explaining most of them or go into much detail; she simply introduces scads of characters, many of whom appear for a few pages and then are forgotten about or recede into the background. Russian myths seem to be more metaphysical than the goblins and gremlins of English or Asian background - such as Koschey the Deathless, who "hides his death" somewhere, which make them difficult to envision and deal with as actual characters.

Sedia goes into a backstory for nearly every major character she presents to us, and while each would be individually interesting if presented as a novella, they don't contribute to a coherent storyline. There's actually precious little plot in the novel, up until the last few chapters - which introduces the villain at last, then gets him out of the way quickly.

It's a rare book that sounds promising to me but which I actually begin skipping through paragraphs, selecting keywords to figure out what goes on but with zero interest in experiencing it fully. I will still keep a lookout for Ekaterina Sedia, based on her much better sophomore offering, but there's little to enjoy in her freshman endeavour.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

2011-02-04T06:41:00.000-08:00

My ideal RPG is a dying creature.

Back in the heyday of the SNES and PS1, many RPG's were churned out that had the perfect mix of the things I enjoyed the most - an engaging story, a lot of exploration and treasure chest collection, snappy battles, puzzle solving, equipment upgrading, and oodles of individual side quests that revolved around new areas to explore rather than re-treading already-seen areas.

Slowly, these aspects started to die down. In recent memory, only Shadow Hearts and Wild ARMs seemed to fill the void. Other games tended to be well-meaning but have fatal flaws - overly complex "systems" which interfered with the simplicity of leveling up or learning skills; frustrating difficulty or tedium; intentionally low-res graphics to evoke a "retro" feel; mission-based gameplay or genre-changing side quests; action or strategy elements that overwhelm the basic gameplay... it's hard to find a nice solid game.

So it's a pleasure to play a throwback to those good ol' days which deliver all the gameplay goodness with new shiny graphics.

The original Golden Sun games were released for the Game Boy Advance in 2001 and 2003 - the first ended on a cliffhanger which led directly into the second. Both games were nigh-identical, starring a mute protagonist and his three plucky friends in a quest to beat bad guys. All the players are always Adepts - magic users who can harness the power of the four elements.

This magic - or Psynergy - is, in fact, the heart and soul of the game and the thing that makes it so darn fun. Unlike other games, Psynergy doubles as your attack spells and your puzzle-solving tools - so you have spells to light things on fire or put them out, summon a whirlwind, move objects from a distance, etc. These yielded some extremely satisfying and challenging puzzles which are well integrated into the general gameplay.

Another aspect to the game are the Djinns, which can be found throughout the game. Each Djinn is related to one of the four elements, and equipping them is the key to unlocking new spells, statistics and abilities. In battle, you can use Djinn as special moves (e.g. attacking or raising defense for allies), as well as using them to summon huge creatures.

Story-wise, the games were no great shakes - the characters were colorful but the dialogue was inane and went on far too long, with much head-shaking and little emotional face popups. The plot itself was nothing to write home about, involving elemental lighthouses and saving the world (yet again).

The reason I'm talking so much about the previous games is simple - Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is exactly the same as the other two.

Rarely have I seen such a successful transition from a 2D to 3D format. The characters remain colorful and well-animated, and the camera view is nearly always top-down - but the addition of 3D areas and models means some much cooler effects and makes exploration easier to see. The addition of the second screen gives us a mini-map which is incredibly useful as well.

Pretty much everything else - Psynergy, the Djinn, summons, equipment, even the little sound effects - are exactly the same as their 2D predecessors. Frankly, it's been so long since the last one that I have no problem whatsoever with this. The game remains fun and enjoyable, the story is still cliche-ridden and silly, and I had a blast. The game is surprisingly long, too, especially for a DS game - even a normal playthrough easily lasts 30 hours.

I have only three niggles about the game. First, they changed the equipment, item and Psynergy menus so that they are a line rather than a square, meaning you can see less at once and sometimes have to scroll through everything to find what you want. Second, I found the puzzles to be a good deal easier than previous games (though the addition of a skill that indicates which Psynergy can be used on which objects may have added to that). Finally, I was upset to find that there are many points of no return; once you've seen an area, you often can't go back. Part of the fun of the first games was learning new Psynergy and returning to previous places to use it in previously impassable areas to gain new loot.

Niggles aside, bottom line - Golden Sun is a great romp with enjoyable gameplay, great graphics, music, and lots of fun. The game ends on a cliffhanger like the first game, so here's hoping we'll get the sequel soon!