Month: March 2016

What I Read February 2016

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I got a lot of reading done in February, but I doubt I’ll manage a similar feat in March. It was mostly fantasy, a genre I’ve always loved but have drifted away from somewhat in the last few years. Drifted away from reading, but not so much from acquiring. I’ve ended up with quite the stack of unread fantasy doorstops, so I’ve started wading through them. Actually, most of those I read this month were either recent purchases or digital books. Still, I cut down my reading list quite a bit.

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Glamour in Glass

Mary Robinette Kowall

I read the first book in this series a couple of years ago and found I liked it better in theory than in practice. I liked the concept of a fantasy novel that is set up like a classical romance. Really, I like everything about it but that romance. Something about it didn’t ring true to me; I’m having trouble recalling at this point. I liked this sequel a lot more. It continues the story, but here I can just accept the central couple.

This is set in the 18th century (maybe early 19th) and Jane and Vincent take a trip to Europe to study Glamour, their shared passion. While there they make some progress with research about how to trap the illusion of Glamour so it can be moved. However, they are stopped when Jane becomes pregnant and can’t do Glamour any more. While that strains her relationship with Vincent, it is nothing on the encroaching return of Napoleon to France. This is not a particularly long book, but its two central characters are very well drawn. And it feels to come more naturally from the characters than the first book did. It also sets up more for the series going forward than the largely stand-alone first book did. This was a very good read.

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The Glass Magician

Charlie N Holmberg

The problem I had with the first book in this series, The Paper Magician, was that it seemed to move a little too fast to its climax. It didn’t give the reader enough time to get to know its central characters before expecting an emotional connection for the big finale. Basically, my problem was that the book was too short, which isn’t the worst problem to have. I enjoyed reading it very much even if it didn’t leave me fully satisfied. The sequel mostly fixes the first book’s problem by not having to introduce all the characters. I ended up liking this one quite a bit more than the first and I’m eager to get to the third one.

In this one, Ceony and Emery have to deal with an even greater threat than last time, this time focused on Ceony instead of Emery. While the elder magicians work to keep her safe, Ceony blunders into trouble that makes things worse. You know, basically how every Harry Potter book goes. Not that this book owes much more to that series other than the concept of a magic school, it certainly does its own thing. Ceony ends up uncovering information that could change everything people understand about magic. The Glass Magician is an improvement on its predecessor, though I would still like a bit more.

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The Bands of Mourning

Brandon Sanderson

There is a lot about this book that I like. I like how it gets out of Elendel and how it expands the Mistborn world. Unfortunately, those things happen in a book with some incredibly obvious plotting and one of the most painful supposedly comedic scenes I’ve ever encountered.

The plotting is the bigger problem. Every twist in this book isn’t so much foreshadowed as they are immediately obvious. It plays out exactly how you’d expect. I expect more from Sanderson, this book is just limp. The bad comedy scene is a bad comedy scene. It was reminiscent of his attempts to write Mat in his first book of the Wheel of Time series. That was a character known for being funny and Sanderson failed completely to get that across. Most of the character work in this book is good, but it still left me pretty disappointed. That said, I am still eager to get the final part of this trilogy. This is the first book by Sanderson that I would call a miss, but it wasn’t a bad miss.

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Striding Folly

Dorothy Sayers

This short story collection contains the last of Dorothy Sayer’s Peter Wimsey stories. There are still plenty that I haven’t read, but these are chronologically the last ones. It’s just three short stories, but they are interesting ones. The first is just the usual murder mystery, starting with the set-up and a brief investigation before Wimsey wanders in and solves the mystery. The next one is more involved, with Lord Peter leaving the hospital after the birth of his first child and he happens across a bemused police officer. He has witnessed what he thought was a murder. The two of them get drunk and he explains what he saw, which is enough information for Lord Peter to get to the bottom of things. The last story is only barely a mystery, being set several years later and it deals mostly with Lord Peter and his oldest child. There is a mystery, but it is about as low stakes as possible. Still it is an entertaining read.

The most interesting thing about this collection is that two of the three stories don’t have crimes at the center of them. This is going to spoil both stories, by the way. The first is more a prank than anything else, though a convincing one that gets a hapless police officer in trouble. The second is mostly about how Lord Peter disciplines his children.

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Red Seas Under Red Skies

Scott Lynch

I really enjoyed the first book in this series, but this one does not quite live up to it. It is two different books mashed together, with the connecting tissue between them not being exactly strong. It starts well, picking up some time after the first book, The Lies of Locke Lamora, with Locke and Jean in a new city running a new con. As they painstakingly set up their heist, their past catches up with them and they are forced to work for the cities Archon against his enemies. It sets up a good struggle, with the protagonists trying to free themselves from his control while not messing up their other scheme. Then the Archon decides that he needs to send the two of them out to be pirates, despite them not being trained as seamen. What follows is a sequence with them acting as pirates. It’s not bad, but it does take Locke and Jean far away from their more interesting other plots. It all comes together for an ending that doesn’t serve either side particularly well.

I still enjoyed the book quite a bit. While it strays from the books strengths, the best new characters appear in that pirate portion. At times it is a lot of fun even if it feels pointless. And Locke and Jean remain an excellent pair of rogues. I received both this book and its sequel for Christmas and I will be getting to that sequel sooner rather than later.

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The Complete Peanuts Volume 3

Charles Schulz

This was part of a Christmas gift, where I got volumes 3 through 6. This is still early Peanuts, but it is just about perfect. It nails that Peanuts tone of somewhat mopey nostalgia; combining silly animal jokes with some dark existential fretting. It’s really good, but you know that. I don’t know how much else I have to add. I guess it’s worth noting that these collections from Fantagraphics are really nice. The books feel good and they come in nice slipcases. The outsides are as nice as the insides.

Now Playing in February 2016

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I spent a lot of time with my 3DS in February, but not so much with either of my home consoles. It looks to be the same for the next few months with the wealth of 3DS rpgs hitting now or in the near future. I am also happily surprised with myself that I am staying on top of my SNES deep dive.

Beaten

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam – see here.

The Death and Return of Superman – see here.

Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninjas – see here.

Prince of Persia –

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I initially intended to have a full post about this game, but in the end I don’t think I actually had that much to say about the game. I wanted to like it, but it has some pretty glaring flaws. Like how the story ends completely unresolved. It actually ends up being something of a shaggy dog story, albeit one that is fun to play. Fun, but far from perfect. For about the first half of the game I thought it was suffering from some bad input lag, and then I learned how the game worked. It isn’t really an action game; it is more of a rhythm game. There are only four possible actions to take and the intricate looking platforming is just recognizing which button you need to press. The game will play out that action when it is necessary, which isn’t always immediately. Until how it works clicks it can be frustrating. When things are going well it looks great, but it really isn’t that engaging to play. It just sort of goes with minimal player input. Maybe the old Prince of Persia games were the same, but this one was somehow everything I wanted and still largely unsatisfying.

Ongoing

Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright –

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I don’t want to go on too long about this game, since I am currently writing up a full blog post about it, but there are some things worth mentioning. In that post I’ll go on longer about how excellent the localization is. The fact that Treehouse’s work here has come under fire is frankly ridiculous. Nintendo excising some embarrassing otaku wankbait from their own game is not censorship, and by all reputable accounts they have done a marvelous job polishing a pretty pedestrian story. Also, there was some struggle for me to decide with version to buy, because I thought it made more sense to start with the easier game and learn this entry’s particulars than to do that with the hard one. I was always going to play both or all three, I guess. Lastly, this game is really good. The disappointing DS game seems so long ago now.

Codename STEAM – see here. This one is likely going on the shelf for a while, because my 3DS looks to be pretty busy for the next few months.

Final Fantasy Explorers –

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This has all the ingredients of something I would really like. I’m a big fan of Monster Hunter and of the Crystal Chronicles games, both of which have similarities to this. And while I didn’t play this enough to give it a fair and complete judgement, through the first three hours it just feels sloppy. The Final Fantasy nostalgia does not appear to have been applied with much though, it’s just kind of there. It’s got the names and the look, but not the feel of Final Fantasy. The gameplay is structured like MH, but it is loose and unsatisfying. The bosses don’t feel like dangerous obstacles to overcome, but inert damage sponges that just take way too long to kill. I might have more to say if I ever find more time to play this, but it has been put at the bottom of a very long list.

Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations – I played through the first two cases of this Phoenix Wright finale. It has just as much verve and energy as I remembered. I really need to go reread what I said about the first two games, but this one really starts with a bang. The first case is especially tight, introducing this game’s central players while also quickly teaching new players how to play the game. I’ve actually forgotten most of the details of these cases, so it is almost like experiencing them for the first time again. On an unrelated note, I hope a miracle occurs and we get the Sherlock Ace Attorney game. It seems unlikely, but a man can dream.

Lufia and the Fortress of Doom – The more I play this the less I feel like it was something I missed back in the day. I don’t want to damn it, especially when I am only through the first quarter or so of the game, but so far there is little here to recommend this game over any of the classic SNES JRPGs. It seems to be the very definition of a by the books jrpg, like a Dragon Quest game with the charm drained out of it. It still isn’t quite bad, but spectacularly unspectacular.

Yakuza 5 – I’ve barely scratched the surface here, but already system improvements from the previous PS3 games are evident. It also does the smart thing and starts the player as Kazuma. I like splitting the game up among a handful of protagonists, but Yakuza 4 kept Kazuma out of it for way too long. I’ve barely played this enough to get a handle on the what the game is going to be about, but this series never disappoints.

Upcoming

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD – I’ve got this on preorder, but I just played the game last year, so I might not be that quick to jump into it. Damn that amazon prime preorder discount. Still, I am pretty excited to argue with people about Zelda after this release and some games’ reputations shift. (I’ll still be repping Skyward Sword as one of the top games in the series) The WiiU has quietly become quite the Zelda playing machine. If only it had downloadable versions of the DS games.

Return to Popolocrois – Again with the Amazon Prime discount. I played through most of the PSP Popolocrois game and found it charming if dated. This one, which is a Harvest Moon Story of Seasons crossover game, looks to keep the charm and hopefully lose some of the oldness. It does have the misfortune to come out in the midst of a deluge of 3DS RPGs of sorts, having to compete with the likes of FE Fates, Bravely Second, Mario & Luigi Paper Jam and Hyrule Warriors. Not all of those are straight RPGs (and it’s probably really stretching to include Hyrule Warriors) but it does make for some pretty crowded territory for Popolocrois. I hope it finds an audience.

Fire Emblem Fates Conquest & Revelations – There are two more paths in this game. The first one already took me about 40 hours to beat; I can’t wait to spend another 80 with it. I took the easy path first, which was good because it took me a long time to grasp the changed pair up mechanic.

Mega Man Legacy Collection – I’m not intending to spend a lot of time playing this, I mostly bought to support a worthy venture. This is how more people should do classic game compilations. I am happy to have a near pixel perfect version of some of the best games ever to play on the go.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West – I picked this up on a PSN sale. It looks great. I don’t know if I’ll actually have time to get to it, but hope springs eternal.

Super Mario RPG – This is the next game for my SNES project, after I finish with Lufia. Then I’ll be forced to get into the shooters before coming back for some more RPGs. This is probably the most well-known game I’m playing for this SNES celebration, but somehow I’ve never found the time to put much time into it.

What I Watched in February 2016

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Movies

Jane Eyre – This is a good adaptation of one of my favorite classic novels. Fassbender and Wasikowski give really good performances as the lead characters and it is moody without being completely oppressive. Like all adaptations, it is missing some things from the book that I love, but it is still a very good version of this story that retains the core. ****

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – review here. **1/2

Hail, Caesar! – review here. ****1/2

Zoolander 2 – review here. **1/2

Snowpiercer – This is an amazing film. The world it presents is just so weird and awful that it is hard not to get caught up in the protagonists’ quest. It’s got some really great action scenes and Tilda Swinton is perfectly awful as the villain early in the film. You should see this movie. ****1/2

Man of Steel – I rewatched this because with Batman v Superman coming up people are letting fly remembering how shitty it was, which didn’t match my recollection. While I have some fundamental problems with this version of Superman, this is still a largely enjoyable movie. If it weren’t for the pointlessly destructive fight at the end and the worst possible Pa Kent, I would call it damn good. ***1/2

Deadpool – review here. **1/2

The Wolverine – This movie oscillates between being a somewhat thoughtful, interesting superhero adventure and the goddamned dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. It comes really close to being the Wolverine solo movie that everyone has wanted since the first X-Men movie, but the last big action scene is just painfully bad and stupid. The rest is too somber for a the campy action movie it is and too stupid for the mournful action drama it wants to be. I might be tickled to see Wolverine give himself open heart surgery while people swordfight on top of him, but it is really, really dumb. ***

The Punisher (2004) – It is a bloody, violent cartoon. It is set up much like a call back to revenge movies of the 70s and 80s, but it also has a lot of Western overtones. But it is just too stupid to really pull it off. The darkness of it is constantly offset by stupid one liners and clownish characters. Not much to recommend here. *1/2

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny – see review here.  ***

TV

Marco Polo – This show has a lot going for it, from a great concept to really high production levels, but it just isn’t that good. The protagonist doesn’t quite sell the emotion and the show takes way too long to establish its characters. It sort of meanders through some vaguely interesting scenarios without ever really giving anything any personal stakes. I think Netflix renewed it for a second season, I hope they work out some of the kinks.

Mad Men S7 Part 2 – If I didn’t know that everything I would want to write about this show has already been written I would try to examine this show in depth. It is worth it, but it has also been done and by better writers than me. This last batch of episodes is an odd yet oddly perfect ending to the show. It gives the characters an ending without actually making it an ending because life goes on. I like to think that Don has found some peace by the end of the series, after spending the whole show avoiding the lie that has defined his life. Great, great stuff.

Poirot S7-9 – This show gets a lot stronger when the episode length gets trimmed by about ten minutes here. It just feels snappier. I don’t know that I have much more to say about this show. Its good.

Broadchurch S1 – It plays out its mystery slowly, really letting the viewer come to know each character and formulate theories about who the killer is. Broadchurch succeeds more on the quality of its performers than anything else, though. It probably didn’t help my enjoyment that I saw the somewhat mediocre American remake first, but I liked this well enough that I’ll be back for what I’ve heard is the disappointing second series.

Fuller House – Terrible, corny schmaltz. It isn’t even on the level of the original series, which was never good but did occasionally provide some corny entertainment. This is incredibly badly, lazily written. The bones are here for a moderately good show and all the adult stars are capable, but the material and the children really let them down. Those with fond memories of the show should likely check out the first episode, but know that miserable half hour is the pinnacle of the series.

Supergirl – This show isn’t quite Flash good, but it is charming and Melissa Benoist is amazing. The first episode after the initial 13 order felt like a little bit of a realignment, which I think this show needs. It has a few too many characters that aren’t really connected.

The Flash – Hoo boy, this months’ worth of episodes were something else. While the Zoom story in this season is turning out to be an inferior retread of last season’s Reverse Flash, the individual episodes have been largely very good. Take the most recent one, where the Flash faced off with King Shark. It was amazing to see King Shark on TV, but it was also just another monster of the week episode. The Earth 2 episodes, though, were great. I can’t wait to see this one come down the home stretch.

Arrow – This is turning into a bounce back season after the disappointing last season, but it still isn’t on the level of The Flash. The Vixen episode was pretty good, but the quality of this season is going to hinge on how well the central arc with Damian Darhk is tied up by the end. I do have to say that the flashbacks have become incredibly pointless and disconnected from everything else. I hope they drop them entirely next season.

Agent Carter – I missed the last two episodes, but the rest of this mini-series has been excellent. I don’t know that I like it as much as Supergirl, but it is more focused and it is certainly better than Agents of SHIELD.

DC Legends of Tomorrow – This show is not good in any real sense. It provides remarkable action on a TV show budget and has a handful of performers who are just a blast to watch, but it doesn’t really feel like doing anything with all of its characters. It has lots of action and brings in an absolutely absurd number of great concepts, but a lot of the plotting feels like unfocused wheel spinning. Really, it is the TV equivalent of a middle of the road crossover event. While I acknowledge its flaws, I am still enjoying the crap out of this show. It is some great cheesey entertainment.