Author: skoce

More Thor, Just the way I like it

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The second helping of the Marvel Movie Universe this year is Thor 2: The Dark World. While it is not without its flaws, Thor 2 is a slick adventure that should sit in the upper echelon of Marvel films.

As with the first Thor, the science fantasy world of Asgard remains the film’s most enthralling feature. It manages to feel alien while the inhabitants feel real. At least the named ones, anyway. The combination of fantasy and science fiction allows the film to mash up notes from Lord of the Rings along with Star Wars, resulting in a unique mix of familiar elements. One minute it’s a large scale pseudo-medieval battle, the next a dogfight with fanciful space ships. All of it is fun.

Also like the first film, the best parts feature Thor and his Asgardian allies Sif and the Warriors Three. They don’t have near enough screen time, but there short time is when the movie is at its best. That and Loki, who always delights. However, the plot hinges on Thor pining for the human Jane Foster and Jane doing the same for Thor. When Jane’s search for Thor has her uncover a long hidden Asgardian weapon, the two lovers are reunited and then a great evil strikes. The rest of the Earth based characters are charming, but feel largely superfluous, as though their parts in the movie were created so they would have parts in the movie.

The biggest flaw in the movie is the villain, Malekith. He’s played by Christopher Eccleston, which should have made for a slam dunk bad guy. Even his Dr. Who had undercurrents of menace about him. But apparently deciding that they could only afford one antagonist with personality and they already had Loki, Malekith has almost zero characterization. He wants to return the world to darkness, because that’s what he wants to do. He is a non-presence.

The other thing working against this film is just how slick Marvel Studios has become at pumping out these superhero movies. They have been doing two a year for half a decade now, they have the formula down pat. But it makes it hard for the film to differentiate themselves. Anytime Thor 2 feels like a superhero movie, mostly anytime it is on Earth, there is a sense of déjà vu. The otherworldly Asgard is new and interesting, that is where the films strength is. The more is revolves around that the better it is. Fortunately, while it works hard for the connection to Earth, to keep Thor connected to the other movies, most of the action takes place in Asgard and Thor 2 is all the better for it.

One more thing that must be noted, while there is much praise in the Marvel movies for Downey Jr’s Tony Stark, Loki is by far the best character in the universe so far. His rage and bitterness held in check just barely by his charming façade makes for the best villain. As does his familial connection to the hero Thor. Thor might be able to defeat Loki easily in a fair fight, but Loki would never let a fair fight happen and Thor has no desire to fight him. Despite his claims to the contrary in the film, it is clear that what Thor desires is his brother back and that desire colors all of his interactions with Loki.

Thor 2: The Dark World is simply great fun. It hits that perfect balance between action and comedy that made movies like Indiana Jones and Iron Man so popular. It make the slightly stale Marvel superhero formula fresh again. And unlike some other of these connected movies, the ties to other movies are completely organic. Thor 2 is easily the best superhero movie of the year and the best such sequel since X-Men 2.

Been Playing Some Television Games

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Time for another month’s worth of miscellaneous gaming thoughts. I played a lot of games in October and made some progress in clearing out my backlog. About the only thing I didn’t get to where the Halloween games I wanted to play, like RE: Revelations. To be fair, though, of the six games I beat, three only took a couple of hours and two of the others I was well into when the month began. October was a month for draining my gaming budget. Pokemon X/Y, Etrian Odyssey Untold and Ace Attorney all came out, and Zelda hit just before the end of September. Those three 3DS games are about the end of my gaming purchases for the year. I want the new Mario game and will likely buy it, but the new Zelda can wait. Maybe for Christmas, maybe until I start running out of 3DS games I’ve already purchased to play.

 

Ongoing

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages – I made very little progress on this last month, what with all the Pokemon and Ace Attorney I was playing. I hope to finish it in November

Ace Attorney 5 – I jumped on this as soon as it was available and through the first two cases I couldn’t be more pleased. It is great to have Phoenix Wright back.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 – I’ve barely gotten started with this, but it will be the console game getting the most of my time until Super Mario 3D World hits. Its … something.

Pokemon HeartGold – One Pokemon game wasn’t enough for me, I decided that I needed to finally beat the one set in the series I’ve never beaten.

Finished

Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble – Om paper this looks like it should have worked great, transplanting Viewtiful Joe’s stylish 2.5D brawler action to the DS. However, while everything seems to have made it pretty much intact, the whole thing feels lifeless. The level/encounter design is lacking and the touch controls require too precise motions to use effectively. Still, it’s not a bad game, just one that is no comparison to Viewtiful Joe 1 or 2.

Punch Out!! Wii – another game I’d started years ago and just now got around to finishing. It is amazing just how engrossing this game is, when it is essentially the NES game with a fresh coat of paint. It is different enough that a player can’t simply coast through on old knowledge, but it still familiar. I love the new look and the old gameplay. It is more Punch Out!!, which I’ve wanted for years. Thank you Nintendo for giving it to me.

Final Fight 3 – The Final Fight series is one that I’d missed out on back in the day. I played a lot of brawlers, Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, River City Ransom, etc., but I never encountered Final Fight. I filled that hole in my gaming knowledge with what was recommended to me as the best game in the series. I didn’t much care for it. It may have a deep combat system, but its pokey and cramped and relies too heavily on inflated lifebars for difficulty. Not for me.

Pokemon Y – For more indepth thoughts see my full post on this. I might get into competitive play. Someone kill me.

Lunar Silver Star Harmony – I love Lunar. The PS1 Lunar and its sequel are some of my favorite games. At is core, this PSP remake is the same game. I simply don’t like it as much. Every individual part of the game seems improved, but the whole is not better. It is as though the game were disassembled, each part fixed up and then put together again. However, one reassembled it doesn’t quite fit together right. It is improved, but not as good as it used to be. While this version may be less than the sum of its parts, it’s still Lunar. It’s just not the version I’ll put in when I want to replay the series.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker – I have a Second Quest on this coming soon, but that’s not really about the improvements. The swift sail changes the game significantly. Sailing is so much faster. I liked the game before and I like it even more now.

Upcoming

Super Mario 3D World – This hits near the end of the month and I am super excited about it.

Earthbound – I am determined to get to this soon.

The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask – I’ve got this on the VC and I need to get it beat for Second Quest.

 

Summer Movie Review

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Near the start of the summer I made a big list of the movies I wanted to see over the summer. Then I didn’t end up going to see most of them. I didn’t consciously avoid the cinema, I just didn’t make time to go. So instead of having enough movies seen to make a real top 10 list, I can only remember seeing 8 movies. Assume anything else I saw would rank below these movies if just because I forgot seeing it. Honestly, with a few exceptions, I found most of the movies I saw this year flawed, if enjoyable. To the countdown

8: Star Trek: Into Darkness – I liked this quite a bit coming out of the theater, but the more I thought about it the less I liked it. It doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny. It also trades a little too hard on Wrath of Khan nostalgia. Still, I didn’t hate it.

7: Oz The Great and Powerful – I don’t know, I enjoyed it, but nearly forgot about it within a month. There were definitely some really nice visuals in this that much I do remember.

6: Man of Steel – It is still a flawed take on Superman, but I can’t help but enjoy it anyway. The moments where is gets things right makes me yearn for a whole movie that gets Superman.

5: Iron Man 3 – I’ve never like the Iron Man movies as much as everyone else seems to. This was a well-made superhero movie, but there isn’t anything here you haven’t seen before. Downey, Jr is still highly entertaining and the action is passable. But it is definitely one of the lesser Marvel Superhero movies.

4: GI Joe 2 – It is dumb as hell, but highly entertaining. Bruce Willis may have phoned in his performance, but The Rock was awesome as were the ninjas. I liked it more than I should have.

3: 42 – A really solid baseball drama. I really liked Harrison Ford in this, and really the whole movie was entertaining. Just a solidly good movie.

2: Pacific Rim – There is a significant gap between movies 2 and 3 on this list. Below this are okay movies, above are great movies. Pacific Rim is like nothing else seen in theaters this summer. It is original spectacle, something that is hard to find in this day and age. It is better than any giant robot movie should be. I loved everything about this movie. The fight scenes were great, so were the monsters and the robots. This movie, people. This movie.

1: The World’s End – This is pretty much a perfect horror comedy. I guess its horror, isn’t that where alien invasions generally fall? It is the perfect complement to the other two Cornetto movies, Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. I’m not sure I like this better than Hot Fuzz, but it is close. It is great to see Pegg be the screw up for once, while Frost is the together one. I love all the little details in the background, like how the names of the pubs tell what is going to happen in them or how the character’s names tell their roles in the group. I wish I could watch it again right now.

I missed a several movies I wanted to see. Most importantly Monsters University. Excluding Cars 2, that was the first Pixar movie I’ve missed since Finding Nemo. Also, after seeing it on Tarantino’s Top 10, I wish I would have seen the Lone Ranger. I’ll see both of them eventually.

As for the rest of the year, I plan to see Thor 2 and Hobbit 2. I will absolutely see those two. I might see Ender’s Game and Anchoman 2. These are iffy. I am considering seeing The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Frozen and 47 Ronin. These are unlikely.

If Thor and The Hobbit deliver as they should, this should still be a pretty good year for movies. Top heavy, but good.

What I Read October ‘13

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I kicked reading’s butt this month. Coming back from a series of two or three book months, I finished seven in October. I don’t think I read more than I have been, I just finished some books that I had started in previous months and read some shorter books. Only one of the books I read this month were from series or authors that I had been reading this year. I hope I can keep it up through the end of the year.

oct1

The Iron Wyrm Affair

Lilith Saintcrow

I picked this up sometime on my Kindle and arbitrarily decided to read it one weekend. It seemed like an interesting combination of fantasy, steampunk and mystery.

The setting is pretty great. It is an alternate reality Britain where all sorts of fantasy trappings are real, like some sort of steampunk Harry Potter. I did want to learn more about this world and how it works. That information is tightly guarded, presumably to keep up the mystery aspect of the story. That is all fine and good. Where this story fell apart was that it didn’t make me care at all about any of the characters. They had little chemistry with each other and they weren’t interesting on their own. That the killed the whole thing for me. I didn’t hate The Iron Wyrm Affair, but I’m not going to continue with this series.

oct2

All Yesterdays

Darren Naish, C.M. Kosemen, John Conway

This is an examination of representations of dinosaurs and how the traditional looks might not be accurate. Not that all the depictions are wrong, but in merely pointing out that there are holes in the information we use to make those pictures. Plenty of common representations of those outsides of dinosaurs are educated guesswork. All Yesterdays points out where some of these guesses are and shows alternate possibilities. It also gives us different poses and angles from the usual depictions. It is really quite thought provoking.

oct3

Sleeping Murder

Agatha Christie

Another Christie, this one much better than the last. This time, Ms Marple actually investigates and solves the mystery, instead of hiring someone else to investigate and showing up at the end with the answer despite having no evidence. There are still younger characters that do the bulk of the heavy lifting in the investigation, but Marple is involved and actually has the information to draw her conclusion

In this story, a young married woman buys a house and has flashbacks to seeing a murder in that house. She finds out that she lived there briefly as a child and that her Step-mother has been missing since about the same time. So she and her husband enlist Ms Marple to help them figure out just what happened. This story really shows why Christie is one of the giatns of the genre

The only strange part is Ms Marple’s thought that leaving the mystery unsolved is better; that they should let a sleeping murder lie. While she does have some legitimate concerns for the investigator’s safety, but that doesn’t seem to be the reason for her objection. It is not like things are worse from knowing. Still, it is just an odd note in an otherwise highly entertaining mystery.

oct4

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

Mark Kurlansky

This was a school book of my brother’s and I picked it up the other day and just read it. It is an interesting and sad look at the history of this fish. It starts out with how and why the fish was important to the history of the settlement of North America by Europeans. Then it moves to the sad ending of modernization and overfishing. Which is of course what we did.

All throughout the book and in a special section at the end are recipes on how to prepare cod. Many of these are historical, some are more modern. It is an odd but interesting addition. I wish I had the opportunity to try some of those recipes. It also sucked to get to the end and find out the book is 15 years old and ends with some questions about what would happen going forward. I’ll have to research and find out if the conservation efforts outlined at the end of this book worked.

oct5

A Splendid Hazard

Harold McGrath

This is supposedly an adventure novel, one that ended up on my kindle after I read A Prisoner of Zenda last year. This is occasionally well written, there are some really enthralling passages. But there is no adventure. The hero’s sole bit of action is getting punched out by the villain. The villain, other than punch, only loosed a duel with minor characters at the end.

It is about a search for lost Napoleonic treasure and a possible Napoleon descendant. But they just find and map and go get the treasure, there is little conflict. The villain may have been planning to set himself as Napoleon’s heir, but he doesn’t. This is an adventure where no adventure happens. Still, I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. I would read another McGrath, though I hope more would happen in it.

oct7

The Hanover Square Affair

Ashley Gardner

Another book that ended up on my kindle and sounded good enough.  This one turned out better than the one I started this post with.  This is mystery starring a former cavalry officer trying to find a missing girl.  This leads him to another mystery about a missing girl.

This is clearly a set up for a longer series, with characters introduced that do not have much of a role in this book, but have history and very obviously a future with the protagonist.  Still, Captain Lacey is a good character.  He is an honorable man in a world that is somewhat less honorable.  He sometimes comes off as rigid and maybe a touch self-righteous, but he is largely a sympathetic character.  His goodness strongly contrasts with how awful the criminals are.

The mystery unfolds nicely, but it is a little too obvious.  The answers are all there at the start, most of the investigation just obfuscates the obvious answers.  Still, it is a fine read even if I’m not rushing to get to the rest of the series.

oct6

Maps and Legends

Michael Chabon

Every time I read something by Chabon, I am hit with two separate impulses. The first is to all my writing stuff and throw it away because I will never be able to write this good. The second is to stop whatever it is I’m doing and just start writing, because even if I can’t match Chabon I might be able to manage something worthwhile.

This is a collection of essays about genre fiction. Some examinations of specific books, some reflections on what they mean to Chabon. It is thoroughly enthralling. There is a lot of food for thought here, and the recommended reading section of the back is going in its entirety on my to read list. This also reminded me that I bought a bunch of Chabon when his stuff on a Kindle sale. I’m an going to be powering through that shortly.

Next month I hope to finally finish The Lies of Locke Lamora and I am reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Also, during a recent flooding of my basement, I found a beaten copy of Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, so I will likely read that too.

Just When I Think I’m Out

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The Pokemon series is often criticized for its glacial evolution. In many ways the newest versions of the game are just like Red and Blue were way back in the day. This criticism is misguided at best. While the basics remain the same, every generation brings plenty of new and different things to the series. Every generation of Pokemon is more different the average releases in series like Halo or Call of Duty. X and Y may bring the biggest changes the Pokemon series has seen yet. With Pokemon, they got the core right the first time, all the changes happen on the periphery. Until this game, the graphics have largely tried to stay true to the original games, echoing them in look. But while the look and rules of combat have remained the same, the stuff under the hood changes quite frequently.

Pokemon X/Y changes are numerous and surprisingly all quite good. First of all, they’ve added a new type for the first time since the second games. The new Fairy type is a needed change. It really helps balance the overly powerful Dragon type. Dragon being so powerful may have worked when Dragons and Dragon moves were exceedingly rare, they have proliferated and are some of the most powerful Pokemon. Now there is a surefire counter to them. Plus, it goes back and changes some old Pokemon to be Fairy type. Most of them really make sense, like Clefairy and Jigglypuff. There has also been some rebalancing to the type chart, but I’ve actually learned the type chart, so I’m not sure how that went exactly.

Another big change is to the presentation. The graphics are fully 3D now. And they look good. Pokemon Y is a genuinely good looking 3DS game. The Pokemon are no longer static sprites and animate in battle. Maybe the best part of the new graphics is the ability to customize the player character’s clothes. Being able to change anything other than gender of the player character is big change in and of itself. You can now play as a reasonable facsimile of yourself. Then there are the tighter integration of online features. No longer do you have to go to the Poke-Center to trade or battle, you can do it anywhere, anytime. It really helps make battling online easy. Plus, the new Wonder Trade feature, where you choose a Pokemon and trade is randomly with someone online is a lot of fun. It is a big step closer to the Pokemon MMO everyone always thinks they want. I’m not even going to go into Mega Evolutions, since I couldn’t care less about them.

Despite all these changes, Pokemon Y is still Pokemon. You still travel the country catching every new monster and fighting every other prospective master. You still collect gym badges and beat the Elite 4 and Champion. There is still and evil gang out to control or destroy the world. It is an addictive formula. Like I always do, I burned through the game as fast as possible. I fell in love with a handful of the new Pokemons, specifically Hawlucha and Pancham. It doesn’t have the draw of Pokemon White’s all new Pokedex for the main game, but it makes up for it with a staggeringly huge Pokedex. In fact, it is three Pokedexes taped together.

For Pokemon, the changes to X/Y are seismic. But I don’t think it is enough to convince people who don’t like the series. It’s still more Pokemon. The core is not going to change, not as long as the games still sell like crazy. And honestly, it doesn’t need drastic changes; it works as it is. Pokemon has always been really good, and it still is.

Unite Morph!

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Hideki Kamiya consistently directs games that I absolutely love: Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Bayonetta, etc. They are all inventive, deep games that positively revel in being video games. Instead of trying to hide their gamey-ness and present themselves as an “experience,” Kamiya’s games keep it up front and center, with visible high scores and level breaks. The Wonderful 101 is no different. It is a capital V video game. And it is amazing.

The Wonderful 101 is unique. There really aren’t any games that play like, though many of its individual elements can be found elsewhere. However, the combination of those elements is refreshingly original. Many of those elements come from previous Clover Studio/PlatinumGames games. Aesthetically, it looks a lot like Viewtiful Joe. It is mining that same Power Rangers/Super Sentai look, with lots of brightly colored heroes and gross alien monster villains. Like Joe, W101 has a ton of great characters and the story doesn’t take itself too seriously. W101’s cast is more expansive, from the serious, verbose Wonder-Red to the idiot surfer dude Wonder-Blue to the pop-star Dracula Wonder-Pink. Not all of the titular 101 are fleshed out characters, but a good dozen are. The story is a great winking Saturday Morning Cartoon. The stakes of the fight between the heroes and the alien invaders starts ridiculous and rises from there.

The game plays like a mix of Bayonetta and Okami. The general mechanics of combat are much like this teams previous action games. It features small, discrete fights and a flexible deep combat system based on switching weapons to maintain combos. It is fundamentally similar to Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. The wrinkle added to this system are the unite morphs, where the heroes team up to make giant weapons. Making these morphs is not unlike the brush powers of Okami. If you want a sword, draw a straight line, if you want a fist draw a circle, etc. While the action slows while you are drawing, trying to draw while continuing to fight makes for some tense combat. It is not an entirely intuitive system and the game’s biggest flaw is how awkwardly it eases players into a mostly new experience. Still, once it clicks there is nothing like it.

Where the Wonderful 101 shines is in how it keeps things moving. One minute you are exploring a lost city in the jungle, the next you are piloting a giant robot and having a Punch-Out!! style fight inside an erupting volcano and then you are shrinking down to fight viruses inside the body of your rival and then you are being aided by an even more giant robot to fight and entire armada of aliens in a shooter level. It never stops giving you something new to do. All the craziness would be distracting if the base game wasn’t so excellent. It all just meshes together so perfectly. The Wonderful 101 is at its heart a celebration of video games. Going over all the references to other games, but from Kamiya and Nintendo’s game could be a series of posts in itself. Some are little gameplay bits, like the Punch-Out!! fight, some are names, like the Lost Kingdom of Lowrule, but it adds something special to the game

The Wonderful 101 is the best game of the year so far and one of my favorite games, ever. From the look to the gameplay to how much it just loves being a video game, it seems made just for me. If you even remotely like video games, you owe it to yourself to buy this game.

2nd Quest: A Link to the Past

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My attempt to beat all Zelda games last year, my 2nd Quest I called it, stalled out after about five games.  I burned out playing Majora’s Mask and writing about Link to the Past.  Well, lately I’ve been playing Wind Waker HD and Oracle of Ages and they’ve got me wanting to complete this replay.  So 2nd Quest is back with a long delayed look at A Link to the Past.

A Link to the Past is the game that really codified what a Zelda game is.  Every game after it, both 2D and 3D, has used a similar framework to LttP.  It is the original game on steroids.  It does all the good thing the first game does, but better and without many of the warts.

One thing A Link to the Past doesn’t do is waste the players time.  Some people, foolishly, judge Zelda games on how long it takes to get the sword.  By this incredibly flawed measure, LttP fares well.  The game gets the player from waking up in the rain to grabbing a sword and rescuing the Princess remarkably fast.  A first time player might take some time to find their way underneath the castle, but replays take no time at all.  Once you get past the intro part, the game lets you go free.  There are tons of things to do on the overworld and the next dungeon is rarely more than a couple minutes away.  The game is just snappy and while environmental hazards bar your path, there are no arbitrary barriers.  

As far as the gameplay goes, it is great.  Familiar to fans of the NES Legend of Zelda, but the small flaws in that game are sanded off.  Now bombable walls are hinted at, no more bombing everywhere to find secrets.  There are more buttons to equip weapons and tools.  It’s just a lot smoother than the somewhat stilted first game.  There is more structure to the dungeon set up. There are the first three dungeons, which allow Link to get the Mastersword. Much like nearly every game after that, the first three dungeons are an intro to the game. They are not necessarily too easy, but they are all about teaching players the rules as they go, without tutorials. After that the game gets serious, and dungeons are out to beat the player. It never gets too hard, but the series has rarely approached this level of difficulty since. The world of Hyrule is much more realized in this game. It is not just a hazard filled wasteland like it was in the first game. It is also not the RPG approximation that was Zelda II. There are forests and deserts and mountains and even a town, but present in that same top down view of the first game. It is magical and unforgettable.

A Link to the Past is widely considered one of the best games of all time. It definitely deserves to be in that conversation. This game hammers home to me not only just how great this series is, but how few games there are that try to out and out copy them. There are tons of platformers cribbing off Mario, but surprisingly few Zelda-clones. The only games I can think of to compare Zelda games to are other Zelda games (and Okami). The series could do with some clones, I think. Especially if they brought something new to the table or challenged Nintendo.

What I Read in September ‘13

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At this point I am just having a down year for reading. September was another 2 book month. I don’t know why I’m just not reading at the pace I normally do, but I’m just not. Let’s get on with it.

Lord Peter Views the Body

Dorothy Sayers

This one is a collection of Wimsey shorts. Some are good, some were not as good. Some had serious, high stakes; others were jokey and inconsequential. Mostly they were good. The first is another one of these with an absolutely gruesome conclusion. It’s hard to write much about any of these stories without giving the mystery away. Many of them are so short there isn’t much there beside the set up and conclusion.

Wimsey is still an interesting character, even if he is largely beside the point in many of these stories. He shows up and solves the mystery, but the stories are about the mystery, not the characters. It is a nice change of pace from the full length mysteries.

4:50 From Paddington

Agatha Christie

I thought this was my first full length Christie, but then I remember that The Mysterious Affair at Styles was not a short. So it is my second Christie and my first Marple. I’m not familiar with Mrs. Marple, but her role in this story seemed strange to me. Her friend thinks she sees a murder while on the train, but the police don’t believe her. So she goes to Mrs. Marple, who does believe her and does some investigating. She finds the spot where the murder was likely to have occurred, then hires a woman to work as a housekeeper at the nearby home. That woman, Miss Eyelesbarrow, then takes over as the primary character. She investigates at the manor, meets the family all of whom are suspects and uncovers tons of red herrings. Then just at the end, Marple swoops in with the conclusion.

I didn’t love this book. The mystery doesn’t cheat, but the conclusion kind of comes out of nowhere. I get that a mystery’s goal is generally to mislead the reader so they don’t figure it out, but in this case the conclusion was not satisfactory. It really feels like the least interesting choice was made for the killer. His plan was just bad. I’ve been told that 4:50 From Paddington is not one of Christie’s best, and I believe it. This was moldy entertaining, but I wouldn’t call it good.

Next month: I am sure I will have read more than 2, but probably not enough to have any hope of hitting my yearly goal.

What I Read in August ’13

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August continued my trend this year of not really getting any reading done. I read only two books in the month. Both of them were quite good, but the high quality doesn’t quite make up for the continuing lack of quantity. August was also the month that I finally ran out of new Jasper Fforde books to read. I truly was a sad day when I finished The Woman Who Died a Lot and realized that I didn’t have another like to immediately start in on. Hopefully Mr. Fforde has something coming soon. Maybe I should start rereading the Thursday Next books from the start. Decisions, decisions.

Gaudy Night
Dorothy Sayers
This is ostensibly a continuation of Sayers’ Peter Wimsey mystery series, but he is very much not the protagonist of this novel. That would his love interest Harriet Vane, the mystery writer first introduced in Strong Poison. She gets involved investigating some harassment happening at her Alma Mater, Shrewsbury College.
While there is definitely a mystery to be solved, Gaudy NIght isn’t so much a mystery as it is an examination of the changing roles of women in society at the time it was written. It is about Harriet’s relationship to Lord Peter and whether marriage, both in their case specifically and in general, is desirable or even worthwhile. It looks at the role of women in a world where the idea of separate spheres for the gender’s is crumbling. Harriet attends her class reunion and sees women who have taken all sorts of paths in life. Some married high, some married low, some gave up their studies to marry, some gave up marrying to study and very few that managed to have it all. She must face, after the end of her longtime relationship with a fellow writer, what path she wants to take. No one choice is shown to be absolutely right or wrong, she must decide what is best for her. It is fitting that culprit is someone upset about a woman supposedly usurping the rightful place of a man in academia.
Gaudy Night works as both a mystery and a feminist examination. While many of the problems are not particularly relevant here some seventy years later, a surprising number of them are. It is nice to read a mystery not wholly bound by it genre.

The Woman Who Died a Lot
Jasper Fforde
Yet another Thursday Next book, one I take as proof that while Thursday’s adventure’s may be coming to a close, though I hope not, Fforde is far from out of ingenious ideas. In a big change, this entry in the series almost totally ignores the BookWorld that has been such a big part. Instead, it features the return of the giant, evil Goliath Corporation as immediate villains. It also finally deals with the continuing Jenny situation.
The biggest thing The Woman Who Died a Lot does is hammer home that fact that Thursday is getting old. While that has been a running plot thread in the second series, it is really front and center here. The only way she knows that she’s been replaced by a synthetic duplicate is that they are in much better shape than she is. She solves a mystery dealing with stolen duplicates, the last gasp of the ChronoGuard and the final ramifications of the stupidity surplus. Most importantly, at least to me, is that she finally deals with Aornis Hades and her fictional daughter Jenny.
Shocking no one, I loved this book. It isn’t my favorite Fforde, that’s still Shades of Grey, but I would put this one in the upper half of the Thursday Next series. I eagerly await whatever Mr. Fforde has coming next.

Now Playing

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Since I don’t have the time, or really the inclination, to expound in depth on all the games’ I’ve been playing recently, I am just going to do a monthly rundown of what I’ve been playing like the ones I do for what I read.

Ongoing:

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD – I’ve just started playing this remake of one of my favorite Zelda games. I’ve made it to Dragon’s Roost and I’m loving it. It looks even better than before. I’ll be playing this for a while.

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages – I started this way back when the two Oracle games were released on 3DS, but lost track of it around the fifth dungeon. With no game being currently played in my 3DS, I figured I’d try to beat it before Pokemon X/Y hits. I’ve made it through the fifth dungeon now and should make it.

Lunar Silver Star Harmony – With a new PSP and a stack of games to play on it, my sudden cravings for the anime stylings of the Lunar series was serendipitous. I don’t know if I like this version better than the PlayStation one, despite it being objectively better in several ways. I just have a lot of nostalgia for the first remake and nostalgia is Lunar’s biggest selling point. It’s still Lunar though, so I’m having fun.

Finished:

Bit.Trip Saga – I picked this up on the cheap from the eshop and have had my fun with it. I beat Beat and Void, both of which I greatly enjoyed. I was completely stymied by Core and gave up and I still absolutely detest Runner. The other two I didn’t play enough to from much of an opinion on them. It’s on my 3DS permanently and all of them are the sort of game that work great just randomly playing on occasion. I will probably do so for a long time.

Toki Tori 2 – Another game I started months ago and just now got around to finishing. I did right as they released a patch, making it Toki Tori 2+, so I only got to experience the fixes right at the end. It is a terrific little puzzle platformer. You are a bird who can tweet and stomp and you must solve some pretty dastardly puzzles with those few abilities. For such a cutesy game, it does almost no hand holding. Loads of fun.

Valkyria Chronicles II – The first game I tried out in my new PSP. It should be right up my alley; a strategy game with a focus on getting to know your army. That is formula Fire Emblem rode right into my heart. But in VCII, you army is a group of unlikable imbeciles. The gameplay is excellent, it is that gaggle of braindead “characters” that killed my interest in this game. Not a single one of them does anything but grate on my nerves. I might come back to this later, but I’m done with it for now.

Attack of the Friday Monsters – This is a charming little adventure game, set in a town used to shoot monster a monster TV show in the ’70s. As the young boy protagonist, you make friends with neighborhood kids, play card games and run errands. There really isn’t much game here. That doesn’t stop Attack from being wonderfully charming all the way through. I’m not sure there is a better way to spend three hours.

The Wonderful 101 – I will have a full review of this at some point. This is another game from genius game director Hideki Kamiya, the man behind classics like Viewtiful Joe, Okami and Bayonetta. It is just as excellent as his previous offerings (I know it is disingenuous to suggest that a video game is the product of one man, but the games this man directs are uniformly awesome). It looks like Viewtiful Joe and plays like Bayonetta with a little dash of Pikmin. I am in love with this game. I will likely keep playing it after I finish with Wind Waker. It is probably the best game released all year. Buy it. I don’t care if you even have a WiiU, you should buy this game.

On the Horizon:

Pokemon X/Y – I am inordinately pumped for a new Pokemon game, even though we got new ones each of the last two years. I am ready to catch them all again

Ace Attorney 5 – No matter how pumped I may be for Pokemon, it pales in comparison to how pumped I am to return to the world of Phoenix Wright. I had all but given up hope of seeing more from this series, but it is coming and soon.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 – I enjoyed FFXIII more than most and have had the sequel sitting on my shelf for more than a year. With the third part of this trilogy coming soon, I feel the need to play this game. I am at least certain it will be pretty. Maybe I’ll get started once I finish a Zelda.

Earthbound – I was so excited when this came out on the VC, but I only played it for an hour or two before promptly just leaving it sit on the WiiU. I really need to play it, it has been too long since I’ve done so

Resident Evil: Revelations – This will go in my 3DS around the end of the month; it seems like a good Halloween game. Or course, that is only if I am done with AA5 and/or Pokemon. Still, I will at least pop it in for the holiday.