The Expendables 3

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The Expendables is a movie series built on the gimmick of gathering up aging action stars and jamming them all on screen together. The problem with that is that after you’ve seen it once it starts to lose its punch. So they are left dragging more and more bodies off the street to keep the thrill of seeing all the stars in the same movie. So far, The Expendables has been able to keep bringing in new names. The problem then becomes giving all of these stars things to do together. That is a problem this series has never quite cracked. The bus load of new names added to this one didn’t do anything to alleviate that problem. Still, The Expendables 3 is a largely entertaining film. It is overloaded with characters, repeats a lot of plot points from the last film and is somewhat compromised by its PG-13 rating. But it is also often delightfully, ludicrously fun.

The character overload is a big problem, especially for a movie that sells itself on having all of these people in it. The movie is crowded and no one really gets a chance to shine, other than Stallone who is the one that the film revolves around. The original Expendables crew is shunted off for the bulk of the runtime, Arnold seems to champing at the bit to have more to do, and Jet Li is wasted yet again. That is just the returning stars. Banderas and Snipes bring some fun energy to the film. Banderas’s character’s enthusiasm contrasts with the tough guy characters that the rest of the crew plays, while Snipes’ comes off as more than a little crazy. The other newcomers don’t fare much better. Kelsey Grammar is fun, but he seems largely out of place and his recruiting section is overlong and saps most of the energy out of the middle of movie. After that, he’s gone. Harrison Ford seems engaged, even if all he’s asked to do is be grumpy. The kids that Stallone recruits, a group who barely get names let alone personalities, give a nice contrast to the old cast members, but don’t get enough time to distinguish themselves. Except for Ronda Rousey, who can fake fight as well as she can actually fight or just beat the crap out of a lot of dudes on set. Mel Gibson, who as ever is an entertaining performer regardless of his personal problems, does his best to make Conrad Stonebanks a memorable villain.

The plot is largely inconsequential, just a reason for the team to fight. On a mission Barney finds out their target is actually the thought dead co-founder of The Expendables. So he jettisons his crew and takes on a group of youngsters to go get him. Things go badly. The new kids in peril plot is not unlike the inciting incident from the second film, where the team is out for revenge for the death of the new kid. While the conflict between Barney and the villain is more personal than in the previous movie, the conflict plays out largely the same. Also, this time the movie is rated PG-13 rather than R. While the fight scenes are still entertaining, they are certainly not as visceral as in previous movies.

That contributes to the fun, Saturday morning cartoon vibe that the movie has going on. Banderas and Snipes play essentially cartoon characters and that final glorious fight is just straight up ridiculous. Despite being edited to never show the results of any gun shots or thrown knives, all of the fights in this film are fun. It starts with a crazy assault on a train and just gets more over the top from there. The biggest flaw in the Expendables 3 is that it doesn’t fully commit to being over the top. It flashes the craziness, but still tries to let Stallone have somber moments contemplating his mortality. Not that it isn’t possible to handle both in one movie, but The Expendables 3 doesn’t come close to managing it. The plot is predictable; they didn’t need to belabor it. Just give us viewers the violence we came to see.

The entertaining parts were entertaining enough that it is easy to forgive the less entertaining parts. I can’t say I actually liked the movie all that much, but I did leave the theater with a smile on my face. That is what is really important.

**1/2

Down on the Farm

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I am just finishing up my first year on the farm in Harvest Moon Grand Bazaar. I’m watching my Peach trees grow and getting pretty cozy with the Mayor’s daughter. The Harvest Moon series is one I have a lot or respect for. I often opine about the preponderance of violent video games. I don’t care that there are violent video games, only that there sometimes seem to only be violent video games. Not every game has to be about murder and revenge and the Harvest Moon series is proof of that. Unfortunately, it is not a series that seems to have a lot of money behind it. A new one hits handhelds every year it seems, only slightly improved from the previous year’s version. It is a problem, but one that is usually confined to uber-series like Call of Duty and sports franchises. Harvest Moon is tiny compared to those, but it does have its loyal fans. I consider myself one, though more in theory than practice, since I haven’t played most of the games in the series.

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My biggest experience with the series is with the N64 game. The original SNES game feels like something of a rough draft. It has many of the elements of later games in the series. Harvest Moon 64 seems like the ideas of that first game fully realized. I have occasionally sampled the series since then, but outside of some ambitious games in the Gamecube/PS2 era, it has mostly felt like more of the same. The bulk of them aren’t bad games by any means, but they haven’t showed much evolution from the 64 version. Still, I felt the urge to play some Harvest Moon and since it seems that Harvest Moon 64 will never be rereleased, I picked up HM Grand Bazaar, which had a largely good reputation.

After one year of game time, I am enjoying it quite a bit. I have a good handle on my farm and what I want to do. I really like that the game seems to have a completely new cast. As much as I like HM64, the games I played after it seemed to rely a little too heavily on returning characters from that game. Yes, there were always new townsfolk and the old ones were often adjusted somewhat, but it felt kind of the same. Here, the rather small village is full of new, or at least new to me, characters. I have enjoyed getting to know the inhabitants of this village. My one problem is that it does seem really small. Maybe I am misremembering what the old games were like, but it doesn’t feel like there are many characters here, as interesting as they may be.

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With one big exception, things have been both expanded and streamlined from HM64. There are more crops, more recipes and simple more things to do. Before, players were fairly constrained in what they did with their farm each season. There were few crops to choose from and only a couple of kinds of animals. Now not only are there more crops to choose from, players can also plant trees to make an orchard or grow tea. I haven’t done the math to determine which option makes the most money, but at least there are options. The big problem is this games big hook. The Bazaar from the title is new way the player has to sell their goods. In previous games, there is a delivery box to dump everything the player has to sell in. Someone comes by at the end of every day to take the contents of the box to market and the player gets their money. In Grand Bazaar, the player hordes their stuff in their initially limited storage and on the weekend runs a stall at the weekly to sell the goods. It isn’t a bad idea, except that the game doesn’t do anything interesting with it. It isn’t fun to run the stall. It doesn’t change the amount of money the player would normally get. The Bazaar merely takes something that was simple, dumping grown crops in the pick-up box, and makes it complex and time consuming. One day a week the player has to spend standing in one spot occasionally tapping the “A” button to sell turnips. It would be more useful if the Bazaar was monthly instead of weekly, but that would too greatly restrict the flow of money. The whole system is the biggest flaw of the game.

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I guess a changeup of some kind is coming to the Harvest Moon series this fall. I don’t know how it is going to shake out when all is said and done, but unless this split in the series turns into no Harvest Moon games, then it will likely be a good change. For a long time this series has been stuck in two ways. The first is that there hasn’t been much evolution on the gameplay side. I may not have played all the games from the start to now, but the ones I have played are largely the same. That is not necessarily a problem, but with a series that has seen an annual release for the better part of a decade it is tiring. I don’t know if it is lack of time, money or ambition, but the series hasn’t really evolved since it came to the DS and even that seemed to be sliding back from the somewhat more ambitious Gamecube games. The other problem the series faces is its localization. I don’t mean to slander the fine folks at Natsume, but their localizations have been flawed. I would guess that most of those problems come from lack of resources. They just don’t have the time or manpower to do as good a job as everyone would like. This fall, though, there will be essentially two Harvest Moon games, each attempting to fix at least one of these flaws. Natsume is publishing a game titled Harvest Moon. It looks to be a significant departure from the previous games in the series, most likely due to the fact that it has a different developer. It is a different game, but Natsume owns the name Harvest Moon. This new HM game looks to take some inspiration from Minecraft, attempting to make a much more player driven game. The original developer, a part of Marvelous Entertainment, is still making farming games, though. Story of Seasons is the “true” continuation to the classic series, and looks to play much like the previous releases, with localization now being handled XSeed. Xseed has proven themselves to quite adept, maybe not Atlus good but a close second. So this new could have a much more flavorful story. However this split in the series shakes out, it should be interesting for players. I hope it is a shot in the arm for this series, sparking new evolutions and advances without sacrificing the series considerable charms.

I’m Not Scared Anymore

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I’ve been playing Resident Evil 5 with my brother in short bursts the last few weeks. Though certainly enjoyable, it has quickly become clear why this game doesn’t enjoy the near universal acclaim that its predecessor does: it isn’t scary in the least. Not that Resident Evil 4 was all that scary, it wasn’t. It was, though, still nominally a horror game, albeit one straddling the line between horror and action. Resident Evil 5 has strayed far from that line. What made the Resident Evil series so enjoyable, despite being kind of clunky and constrained, was the novelty of playing essentially a schlocky horror movie. It if not created then at least popularized the Survival Horror genre. Resident Evil 5, as well made as it may be, is not a Survival Horror game.

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I am not an expert on horror or on the Resident Evil series. You can count the number of horror movies I’ve watched on one hand, even If you count horror comedies like Shaun of the Dead. I avoid horror movies like the plague. I am a big scaredy baby and I derive no joy from scaring myself with horror films. I was occasionally mocked in college for leaving the common area of my dorm suite whenever the group chose a scary movie. Oddly, I do generally enjoy horror games. I don’t play a whole terrible lot of them, but I tend to enjoy them when I do. Mostly it is because the gameplay of survival horror games is somewhat slower and more thoughtful than most action games. Resident Evil, at least in its original incarnation, exemplifies this trend. I have neither played every game in the series, nor do I obsess over the mythology, but I have some experience with the series. I fiddled around with the first game on the Playstation, and beat one path of RE2, but I never touched RE3 or Code Veronica. I did play the REmake and RE0 on the Gamecube. Then came RE4, and it shook the whole series up, being pretty much the best action game ever made while keeping one foot in the survival horror realm. Most would agree that RE4 isn’t scary; many would argue that no RE game has ever really been scary. They aren’t wrong, but recall that I am a big scaredy baby. Resident Evil 4, despite not being all that scary, managed to freak me out pretty regularly. While I greatly enjoyed that game, the vagaries of one console ownership kept from playing further in the series for the better part of a decade.

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Now I’ve played RE5, and despite being largely similar to RE4 it is a lesser game. The biggest thing missing is that it isn’t scary; not in the slightest. Why not? Because the game is co-op. One of the few things that kept RE4 somewhat unsettling is that, for the most part, you are alone. Leon is alone in a village full of people that are becoming monsters. It is a scary premise. In RE5, Chris is flanked constantly by a teammate. It doesn’t greatly change how the game plays, but it does greatly change the psychology of the game. Instead of a lone survivor facing danger around every corner, you play as part of a tag team ruthlessly taking apart everything that stands in your way. It is scary to be alone, but significantly less so with a partner. Especially since, like all Resident Evil games, the scares in this game are all cheap jump scares. It is all spring loaded cats. Those things tend to lose their effect when you are not alone and already tense. In RE4, you hear that chainsaw start off screen and it freaks you out. You have to find its wielder or you will die. Resident Evil 5 is less scary because there appears to be a safety net in the form of Sheva. RE5 isn’t actually any easier, the player is no less likely to die than in its predecessor, but it seems different all the same. It all comes down to that second player.

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Otherwise, the game is pretty great. And playing co-op is a ton of fun. They smoothed off the rest of the adventure portions of the game, leaving it to be mostly shooting. There is much less inventory management and the like. The story and setting is still classic Resident Evil, evil corporations and zombie plagues. It has the same general array of weapons and enemies. Primarily, it is more Resident Evil 4 and who didn’t want that?

Essential Video Games: A Pointless List

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I probably spend too much time thinking about the history of video games. Sometimes it is because my younger brothers ask me about old games; sometimes it is just that I like old games. An idea that often comes to me is the idea of setting up a video game canon, like the western literary canon. Yes, the idea of the literary canon has faced some criticism in the last couple of decades, but it is absolutely a useful tool if not a perfect one. If someone wants to study the history of video games, having a video game canon seems like a good first step to make that easier. 1up.com did two essential games lists back in the day that would have made a good place to start, but they seem to be lost to the ether. (It has come to my attention that USGamer.net is doing a video series of Essential NES Games, which is a good starting point for that specific system.) So we need a new place to start. Not that I am in a position to make such a list; for anyone to assume that they could would be the height of arrogance. But I am going to put forth a list of fifty games, too small a number to be anywhere near complete, as a starting point.

The question is how are “essential” games determined? I think there is a difference between what is essential and what is best. Not that most of the games generally determined to be the “best games ever” don’t deserve to be on this list, only that being one of the best is only one aspect considered. Take, for instance, the Mega Man series. I would say that the series deserves to be represented on this list, but which game or games? Do you put the first one since it was the first? What about the ever ongoing argument about which game is better, Mega Man 2 or Mega Man 3? What about all the subsequent subseries? For this initial rough draft list, I’ve only put Mega Man 2 on this list. It and 3 are essentially equally good, but MM2 has the fact that it is the game that really put the series on the map. It was the hit that secured the Blue Bomber’s place in the gaming pantheon. I’ve also put Mega Man X on the list. It is a great game in its own right and it was a seismic shift in the fortunes of that series. That is an example of the thought process I had as I put together this list. TO be on the is list, a game has to be some combination of excellent, influential or popular. So a game like Mortal Kombat, which I don’t much like, is important enough to the history of video games that it makes the list. It was certainly popular and definitely influential. For someone to understand the landscape of video games in the early ’90’s, one needs to experience Mortal Kombat right alongside games like Street Fighter 2 and Super Metroid.

That being said, I know there are holes in my knowledge. I don’t play a lot of computer games, so my knowledge of them is vague at best. Also, I am largely kind of a Nintendo goon, so Sega and the Arcade are obscenely underrepresented. Lastly, I have deliberately left off everything from the last 5 years or so. Not because there are no great or important games coming out, but because it is hard to gauge a games importance without a little history to look back over. All that is fine though, the point of this list is not to be comprehensive; the point is to spark thought and discussion. Eventually may evolve into a useful tool to help people explore the games that made this medium what it is now.  The list below started out chronological,  but all fifty games didn’t come to me at once and when I finished it was close to seventy games long so I had to edit it.  Instead of going back and spending a few minutes putting it in the correct order, I figured it was good enough as is. Et Voila:

Continue reading →

Pikmin 3

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Both of the people who read my blog regularly will likely recall that I’ve had Pikmin 3 on my “to play” list for about a year. I don’t know why I’ve put it off for so long. At first it was due to a deluge of other games; games like Wind Waker HD and The Wonderful 101. Pikmin 3 was continually pushed down the list. One thing that did keep pushing it down the list is that it is best played with the wiimote and nunchuk, which means that I couldn’t play it on just the Gamepad. That made it just that much easier to skip it and go to something that I didn’t need the main TV for. Now, though, I have finally taken the time to play this game. Pikmin 3 is an amazing game; beautiful, original and with a startling attention to detail. I feel like a fool for putting it off so long.

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I never played the first two Pikmin games. They came out during the time I was largely not playing video games. I did have a Gamecube, but other than Resident Evil 4 and Smash Bros Melee I didn’t have a whole lot for the machine. The Pikmin games looked good, but I just never happened to stumble upon them. Plus, my experiences with console based RTSes, even ones that were supposedly well made, have never been good. I did pick up the New Play Control Pikmin 2 for the Wii, but my nephew borrowed it and I haven’t seen it since. So Pikmin 3 was my entry into this series.

Pikmin 3 takes a complex genre, real time strategy, and gives a patently Nintendo take on it. It is simplified in some ways, like resource management and unit types. Games like Warcraft and Command and Conquer had various resources that the player had to harvest and then allocate to expand their army. Pikmin 3 does have some resources, but there is little about them to manage. Instead of an extensive tree of unit types to build an army with, there are only a handful of Pikmin types to use. In typical Nintendo fashion, the elements of Pikmin 3 all work together. The main goal of the game, other than to reunite the three little aliens that are the game’s protagonists, is to find fruit. The protagonists convert it to juice and drink, with their mission to the planet they crash on being to find new sources of juice. While there are frequently other goals, that is the primary one. The only other resources besides fruit are flowers and enemy carcasses, both of which are used to create more Pikmin. The color of Pikmin you get from them are determined by the type of Pikmin you used to send them back to the home base.

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Solving puzzles and fighting enemies in the game is all based on the color of Pikmin. There are red, yellow and black Pikmin and they have a sort of rock/paper/scissors relationship. The red ones are immune to fire and good at fighting while the yellow are immune to electricity and, while not as good of fighters as the red are lighter and can be thrown farther. Choosing the correct Pikmin for the job is two thirds of the game. It simple in theory but difficult in practice. Especially once you get all three characters together and can split them into three distinct groups. Do you want to split your colors between each commander, or give each commander one color to lead. It hits that perfect balance of easy to play, hard to master.

Pikmin 3 is also one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen. The tiny aliens you control explore an Earth-like world, finding familiar fruits and your discoveries new names. It is cute. The same goes for all of the “alien artifacts” you find over the course of the game. Seeing these little aliens interpret various trinkets in amusing ways it highly entertaining. It all looks good, simultaneously detailed and clean. It is fun to just run around the areas of the game and just look at what there is to find.

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It is really just another great game on the WiiU, a system with a robust and varied library despite its reputation for not having any games. Nintendo may be failing to sell the system, but they are not failing to support it with excellent software. It seems likely that Pikmin 3 is the last entry we’ll see in this series, which is a shame based on how great this game it.

Castlemania

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After beating Rondo of Blood, I did two things. I downloaded Super Castlevania IV on my WiiU and played through that and I started playing the Symphony of the Night port in the PSP. That was the game I was originally trying to play in the first place. I had wanted to play the Castlevania game that most often gets called the best, and almost unanimously agreed that it is the best of the “Metroidvania” style games, the style it brought to the series. I have played all the games the sprung from this one, but by the time I was aware of it on the PS1, it was hard to find and expensive. While it has been on the PSP and Playstation Store for quite a while, I hadn’t made time to play it until now. I’m glad I’ve played it now; Symphony of the Night is excellent.

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Symphony of the Night turned the level based set up of the previous games into the series into a giant, connected, Metroid-like map. Instead of a steadily more challenging tour through Dracula’s Castle, here it is one giant map that is kind of free to explore from the start. The game doesn’t force you to go anywhere, but you are limited by what abilities Alucard has found. This means that the difficult can be uneven. It is also changed from being a straight action game to being an RPG. Alucard gains levels and has quantified stats. It is not necessarily a good change, but it is certainly not a bad one.

Symphony of the Night doesn’t feel as perfect and complete as Super Metroid, the other game that led to the made up word Metroidvania. Super Metroid is pure, distilled perfection. There is nothing extraneous in the game. All of the tools and abilities that Samus ends up decked out with are to some extent necessary. (I am of course referring only to a normal playthough, not using any of the special tricks that can almost break the game.) Symphony of the Night, on the other hand, is filled to the brim with extraneous tools and abilities. Yes, Alucard gains necessary abilities like the double jump and the bat form. But there are also elements like the weapons, which are varied and special but none of them are strictly necessary. There are the familiars, which I didn’t even realize existed until I was more than halfway through the game.

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That is what makes Symphony of the Night great. Super Metroid may be neat and polished; Symphony of the Night is messy. It is filled to the brim with stuff to find and toys to play with. The fact that most of these elements add to the game rather than detract from it is amazing. The player doesn’t really lose anything by not using familiars, but they add something to the game. If the player doesn’t want to deal with messing with their equipment, they can use the short sword that the player is almost required to get. While it uses a similar set up to Metroid, it ends up being quite different. Every time you play Super Metroid it is largely the same. Symphony of the night changes with each attempt, depending on what items enemies happen to drop and which tools you choose to emphasize. Those tools are fun to use. There are tons of weapons to choose from, many with unique special properties. The experience of the game can change drastically with some equipment choices. While not exactly the strongest weapon in the game, the Shield Rod has special abilities when paired with certain shields. Some weapons have greater range or swing faster. The leveling system can also be manipulated into making the game harder or easier depending on how you approach the game.

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One of the most interesting things about Symphony of the Night is that while it seemed an offshoot, a strange experiment for the series, it ended up being the true continuation of the series. It is the game that kept the Castlevania series limping along for a decade when most 16-bit franchises not owned by Nintendo fell by the wayside. The series went 3D like everyone else, with about an average amount of success; which means that the games were bad, but not completely terrible. It wasn’t the smashing success of Ocarina of Time or Mario 64, but neither was it Bubsy 3D. The 3D side of the series muddled on, but those aren’t the game people remember. The ones that people love are Symphony’s progeny, the Metroidvanias that Konami produced for the GBA and DS. People remember Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow, they don’t tend to recall Lament of Innocence.

None of the later games ever surpassed Symphony of the Night, though. They often came close, but never quite reached the peak. The rough edges that made Symphony special were never really sanded off, they were usually just moved to a new area. Whether from a lack of care, money or time (or a combination of all three) none of the handheld games showed the same attention to detail that this game did. This one was a masterpiece, a one of a kind game that deserves its reputation for being one of the greatest games of all time.

Guardians of the Galaxy Review

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These Marvel reviews are starting to get old. Guardians of the Galaxy is another home run for the Marvel movie team. In fact, it may be their best film yet. While GotG is based on a comic book, it is based on one with much less history and with fewer (some might say no) classic stories than the likes of Captain America or Iron Man. That gives the team a little more freedom than with previous movies. This is not at all just another superhero movie; this is Star Wars through the Marvel movie lens. It is amazing, just a blast from start to finish.

One thing Guardians of the Galaxy takes from Star Wars that many of its imitators miss is the comedy. Star Wars had plenty of humor, mostly thanks to the Droids and Han Solo. Even the prequel movies lost that for the most part. I would go so far as to say that this is Marvel’s first comedy. While it has the requisite action and adventure, as well as one of the most fun sci-fi universes I’ve seen in a while, the humor is the part that stick out the most. Luckily, it is very funny.

Chris Pratt takes a star turn as Peter “Star-Lord” Quill, a man who was abducted from Earth as a child and makes his way in the Galaxy a kind of space-Indiana Jones, the fortune and glory version from Temple of Doom. He is eventually joined by the very Solo/Chewbacca team of Rocket Racoon (he’s a raccoon) and Groot (a sentient tree-man), the green skinned assassin Gamora and the hugely muscled and overly literal Drax the Destroyer. They band together first to sell a very valuable artifact Quill has found before eventually deciding to save the Galaxy from the power mad Ronan the Accuser.

The humor works to ease the viewer in to the plethora of sci-fi concepts the movie throws at them. There is Thanos in the craggy purple flesh, the Kree Empire, Nova Corps and planet that is a giant head. The whole thing would not fly if they tried to make it as dour and joyless as say, Man of Steel. But as a comedy it works. It is just pure fun from start to finish. What is amazing is how much it gets you to care about this group of wackadoos. Before they can come together as a team, they are completely broken down. Star-Lord is stuck in a state of retarded adolescence, having not really matured from when he was taken as a child. He has to face that. Drax has to finally accept the loss of his family and let go of his anger. Yes, it is the same kind of small growth that is endemic to superhero origin stories, since this one is already set in space it starts out with action.

There are just so many excellent set pieces. There is breakout from space jail, the three-way fight in the crowded street over the macguffin that drives the plot and the aforementioned giant head planet. Each of these scenes is excellent. Guardians of the Galaxy captures the imagination and joy that Star Wars did, that The Avenger did. It also is the least dependent on the greater Marvel Universe. They may have gone out of their way to lead into this movie with nods to what was coming in The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy stands alone. It stands alone the best film produced by Marvel Studios yet. More like this, please.

What I Read in July ‘14

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I got my usual four books in this month, but I am already blowing by that for next month. I’ve got one finished and one near done for August already. The four books in July were some really good ones, and a wide mix. I’ve got some adventure, some mystery, some fantasy, some magic realism; tons of stuff for just four books.

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The Thief

Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

This is just pure adventure. This time, Isaac Bell is helping out a man who has found a way to shoot talking motion pictures, while working against a German man trying to get the invention back for the Kaiser. This time Isaac’s fiancée Marion takes a larger role than before, since the case deals with her line of work.

There is very little outstanding about the Thief, other than it more ridiculous than usual plot. It is an excellently executed adventure. While the clients invention of a talking picture would be a big deal, the villain, a German called the Acrobat thanks to his athletic abilities, want it so he can use propaganda to make sure the United States is on Germany’s side should they go to war with France and Britain. It is a flimsy plot, but one that makes for some fun scenes and set pieces. It is slightly less ridiculous for Isaac to display the prowess he does here than in The Race, when he immediately picks up how to fly a plane as well as the expert pilots in the race. Here he just works as a stunt man on film sets, which fits him perfectly. Really, this is just a might fun adventure.

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The Final Solution

Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon is great, and this book doesn’t change that. It is a bit different, being essentially Sherlock Holmes fan faction. Of course, the old detective in this book is never directly named as Sherlock, but it is clear who he is. It is also better thought out than calling it fan fiction would suggest. As the title would suggest, while it is a mystery it is also about the Holocaust. A young boy has lost his parrot, plus a man has been murdered, and an elderly Sherlock Holmes decides to help track down the bird, which will likely lead to the killer. The boy, a young Jewish kid who was traumatized by what he saw before he fled Germany, is unable to speak, but Sherlock is still able to help him. It is an excellent novella, a satisfying mystery with plenty extra to chew on as well. Like everything else by Chabon, I highly recommend this.

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Written in My Own Hearts Blood

Diana Gabaldon

This is the eighth book in Gabaldon’s Outlander series and it continues to be enjoyable. Though I could swear I’ve read book seven, An Echo in the Bone, I can’t for the life of me recall most of what happened in it. So that made some of the early chapters in this one kind of frustrating. After I found my footing, it was a great ride. Somehow this book is almost a thousand pages long, yet still left me wanting more. It also somehow felt uneventful for a book of this length. Part of that is the problem with a long running series like this. After eight books, this series is populated with a host of interesting and intriguing characters and there just aren’t enough pages to go around. That is a problem that plagued the middle part of my favorite book series, the Wheel of Time. Here it is less pronounced, but still extant. Another problem it shares with that series is that that this book feels less like a complete piece and more of a chapter in a larger Saga. In the first half of this series, each book was complete, though they all left hooks for further stories. Outlander is the story of how Claire came to be in the past and with Jamie. Dragonfly in Amber is the story of how that all fell apart. Voyager brings them back together and ends with another fresh start. The two books previous to Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, while the definitely contain complete stories, don’t feel as complete as the previous ones. They are as enjoyable on a page to page basis, but not as cohesive a whole. Of course, I may just be misremembering them, since I can’t really recall book seven all that well.

Heart’s Blood takes Jamie and Claire, and all their friends, through the Battle of Monmouth and finally back to their home in North Carolina. Plenty of time is spent hobnobbing with historical figures like George Washington and Benedict Arnold, one of the big draws of the series for me, as well as balancing the conflict of being friends and relatives with people on the other side of the conflict. There is also the aftermath of Jamie’s son William finding out that he is the bastard son of a Scottish traitor. This book has the younger players really growing up. Ian finds love, William takes some adult responsibilities and even young Germaine starts to become a man. In a section that kind of doesn’t work, Roger ends up mucking about in the history of this series, revisiting things that have long since been dead while Brianna deals with some sort of kidnapping plot. Having those two in the future makes it hard to incorporate them in the story, though I think that problem has been resolved. The real problem is with William’s portion of the story. While he does show growth, the book ends with almost none of his questions being answered. Not only about him and his father, though that part of the story does have a least some sort of closure, but also about his search for his possibly dead cousin and/or his cousin’s wife/widow and child. Speculation about him and her is present from the very start, but it is not at all resolved by the end of the book. I assume there are answers to come in the coming volumes of this series, but that means years of waiting and a significant portion of this book used to essentially tread water on this story.

Still, it is another fine entry in this series. I can’t recommend anyone start with this book, but it is a fine continuation of this series.

tgatj

The Golem and the Jinni

Helene Wecker

This one was certainly interesting. It follows two magical beings as immigrants in early 20th century America: a Golem created for a man to be his wife, though he died on the crossing passage so she is alone and masterless, and a Jinni who had been trapped for centuries but unleashed by a tinsmith. While situations as virtual immigrants are similar, their points of view and natures are not. The Jinni want’s nothing more than to be free of the spell that traps him in human form. He acts just as would if he were still a still free in the desert, with no concern or regard for anyone else. The Golem, however, is intimately aware of everyone’s feelings, being able to sense people’s thoughts, and desire’s nothing more than to fulfill her purpose and help them. They both have to deal with being immigrants in America, along with trying to conceal and master their natures.

The first three quarters of the book are excellent. It slowly reveals the characters and their problems. Soon the two protagonists meet and help each other grow. Unfortunately, the ending is a real let down. The slow building cracks in the two’s facades of humanity start to crack naturally as they become more involved with people, but the novel doesn’t allow this to come to fruition. The last part of the book does not deal with the very human problems of these inhuman characters, it becomes all about the magic of how they came to be. The struggles that each character has been facing aren’t really dealt with, merely pushed aside to have a big magical ending. Not that their problems are solved by any means, merely that a completely different kind of struggle takes over the last quarter of the book. It was much less compelling than what came before it. Still, The Golem and The Jinni is an enthralling read, just one that has a somewhat suspect ending. There are some really well drawn characters here, very human whether they are human or not.

Now Playing in July ‘14

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I spent a lot of July beating a lot of the games I’ve downloaded to my 3DS and WiiU. I also learned to love classic Castlevania and beat two Zelda games. It was a good month, though nothing I played this month was as out and out amazing as Shovel Knight or 1001 Spikes. Still, there was a lot of good stuff I played this last month.

Beaten:

Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition:

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Wow! This game is amazing. It has the whole Metroidvania thing going on, along with an interesting Mexican Lucha Libre/Dia de Muertos theme and an excellent combat system. It really nails the pace exploring, getting a new ability and exploring more. I didn’t quite 100% it, but I might. It is just a lot of fun. It is more skill based than most games of this ilk. It is not an RPG, where you can grind to make your numbers bigger; to really conquer this game you must master using all of Juan’s special moves. Plus, you can play as a wrestling mummy. Everything about this game is great. I don’t know what else to say about it.

Final Fantasy Tactics: wrote about it here.

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: find my thoughts here.

Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass: wrote about it here.

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood: ditto.

Super Castlevania 4: I didn’t love this game quite as much as Rondo of Blood, but I still enjoyed it a lot more than I did in my first attempt to play it. It lacks some of Rondo’s improvements to Belmont’s move set, but it also features some additions that that game lacks. Like a separate button for subweapons and the ability to swing the whip around however you want. Super Castlevania 4 is a great game, but at times it feels more like a showcase for all the new things that Konami could do with the SNES than actually making a game. Not that it is a bad game by any means, but SC4 clearly wants to wow the player with technological tricks that simply don’t have the impact in 2014 that they would have had in 1991 (92?). Luckily, there is still a fine game underneath all mode 7 tricks.

Kung Fu Rabbit: A cheap little downloadable platformer that is surprisingly addictive. It is simple, but solid. It is a little like a light version of some of those “masocore” games that are all about difficulty. This game is a series of small levels filled with traps, like 1001 Spikes they are more puzzles than levels, though this game lacks that game exactness.  Much of the difficulty is based on the slight floatiness of the controls.  It is enough to be annoying, but not enough to ruin the experience.

Toki Tori: This game is simple. You have a very limited set of tools and abilities and must use them to navigate some tricky puzzle rooms. It isn’t flashy, it isn’t complicated. It is a near perfect puzzle platformer that pushes its tool set to the limits without breaking everything apart. For 1.99 there is no reason that everyone shouldn’t already own this game. It is excellent.

Armillo: This game is so close to being great. It has all the ingredients, but there is just something slightly off. Mostly the problems are in the controls. The player character rolls into a ball to move and the rolling feels slightly imprecise. Otherwise, it is a varied and interesting 3D platformer. It clearly has aspiration to be Super Mario Galaxy, but it just can’t reach that plateau.  Good, but not great.

Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D:

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I played the Wii version of this game and loved it. The 3DS version doesn’t look quite as good, but the difficulty has been lessened as well, which a good change. This is a great game. It is hard, but excluding the rocket barrel stages is fair. I got it as my Platinum Reward from Club Nintendo. Everything I’ve heard from the internet has been complaining about how the games are a poor substitute to some crappy physical rewards. I don’t get it. If there wasn’t a game in the list of rewards that appeal to you, what are you doing playing games? I guess I can understand being upset it you already owned them all, but I doubt that many people actually bought all of those games.

Ongoing:

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Shadow Wars: This is a perfectly excellent strategy RPG. Not perfectly balanced, but still a ton of fun. Really, Banshee just tears the middle part of this game to shreds. The story line is equal parts ridiculous and prescient. This game came out before the current troubles in Ukraine started, but does feature a Russian invasion of the country. I should be finishing this shortly.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: I’m not going to say too much, because I have a full post ready to go as soon as I beat this, which should be in the next couple of day. I’ll just here that this game really deserves its reputation. This is a game that a lot of care went into making and it shows. I wish there had been a Castlevania to get the care and attention that this game did since its release.

Ittle Dew: I’ve just started this Zelda clone. It is charming and enjoyable, but I do have a problem with the length of the protagonists sword swing. It is just so short that I end up getting hit trying to get into position to hit something. I’m sure I’ll get used to it as I play, but it is a great annoyance at the start.

Pikmin 3:

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I finally got started on this. It is great. I am having some trouble picking a control scheme. Stylus and Gamepad controls seem like the best option, but they are emphatically not for lefties. So I have had to revert to wiimote and nunchuk controls. Still, it is a lot of fun. I think I am already nearing the end of the game, but it has been well worth it so far.

Pushmo World: I am still hacking my way through these puzzles. There are a lot of them, but I’m in no hurry to get through this. I love Pushmo and I am savoring this WiiU version, at least until some new games start coming out.

Resident Evil 5: My brother and I are playing this co-op, but finding time has been a struggle. We’ve only cleared the first two chapters. It’s not RE4 so far, but it is still good.

Resident Evil Revelations: The big problem I have with this game is that I am a giant baby and putting even the slightly scary stuff from RE about 3 inches from my face it too much for me. I am about halfway through the game, but it is slow going. It is just too much for me.

Persona: I’m done with this for now. I am kind of starting to hate this game, so I am going to put it down and play something else for now. Maybe I’ll come back to once I finish some other SMT games.

Strange Journey: Progress is slow, but it is happening. I am still enjoying this game, despite how hostile it is becoming in the second half. I keep putting it off by playing other games on my 3DS, but this one is never far from my mind.

Baldur’s Gate:

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This game is great; easily my favorite PC RPG. I’ve never beaten it, though. I have made it right to the city of Baldur’s Gate, but crashing computers and the like have kept me from going further. I got the Enhanced Edition from Steam and rolled a new character to try to finally see this game to the end. This time I am playing what will be a Fighter/Cleric. According to the research I did, it should be a solid build. So far I’ve only made it Nashkel, but I am still playing.

Suikoden 2: check here.


Upcoming:

Double Dragon Neon: I want this game to be great, being both Wayforward and a beat-em-up. So far it looks really hard.

Earthbound: I need to get back to this.

Zelda 4 Swords Adventures: I didn’t get to it last month, but it is still on my radar

Yakuza 4: It is time.

Hercules Review

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herc

I can’t in good conscience call Hercules a good movie. It is not. It has many glaring faults. However, I can’t say that I did not greatly enjoy watching it. This film is much like its star. Dwayne Johnson is almost always entertaining; affable and watchable even when the material he is working with isn’t worth your time. Hercules is generally charming and enjoyable, but large parts of it are simply poorly made.

While the film tries to portray the overtly mythological elements of Hercules and his origins as too ridiculous to believe, merely legends created by his nephew Iolaus to scare his enemies, the feats it does show him complete are just as ridiculous. Plus, there is the fact that there is nothing that seems unbelievable with Dwayne Johnson in the title role. If the movie tells me he can wrestle a lion the size of an elephant, then I believe The Rock can do it. Johnson’s Hercules is great. He is larger than life; that perfect combination of heart and menace. The supporting cast is largely good as well. Hercules’s gang is given just enough characterization that they feel like a group of old friends.

It also features some very well constructed action scenes. They are patently ridiculous, but enjoyable. Sure, Herc spends a lot of time training some farmers to form a phalanx, but when battle comes, he and his friends stand outside and fight on their own. Still, the action is reasonably stylish and perfectly comprehensible. It is fun to watch. To go with the ridiculous nature of the fights, there is also a heaping dose of humor. Aside from Hercules himself, the rest of the characters seem to recognize the ridiculousness of the scenarios in which they find themselves. The humor mostly lands.

The big problems are numerous and obvious. There are instances of lack of continuity from shot to shot. In one scene Hercules enters without his weapon, a fearsome looking club, but a few shots later it is there. It makes no sense for it to be there unless Hercules brought it and the viewer clearly saw it didn’t. The premise of a late heel turn simply doesn’t work with what came before it. It isn’t surprising, you almost have to see it coming, and it is just nonsensical. There are plenty of twists like that heel turn, twists that are both obvious and unearned. Then there is the supposed mystery about whether or not Hercules killed his family, as in the actual myths. There is no way that anyone could believe the Hercules portrayed in this movie is at all capable of such a thing.

Hercules is fun to watch, easy to enjoy and severely flawed. You have to fight the urge to mock the more obvious and blatant head scratching moments. Still, despite staring right into these flaws, I found myself having a lot of fun. Anyone going to see this movie wants to see Dwayne Johnson perform legendary feats as Hercules, and that the film delivers. You see him kill a half-dozen men with one blow, Use one giant wolf to batter another giant wolf to death and throw a charging horse. It is amazing. I can’t say Hercules is good, I can’t even recommend anyone watch it at all, but I definitely enjoyed it.