The Colours. They speak to me.
The Void is...
Like nothing else.
I must go. I will speak more later. For now, I need more colour. And the Brothers are coming.
Tuesday 27 July 2010
In Living Colour
The Colours. They speak to me.
The Void is...
Like nothing else.
I must go. I will speak more later. For now, I need more colour. And the Brothers are coming.
Friday 23 July 2010
Review Slew
This week, I 'ave been mostly eating...
Books
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay
Starts well, quite episodic, rich setting. Initially has a lightness of touch. Gets more maudlin as it goes on, finishes badly. Still probably worthwhile for anyone with an interest in the Golden Age of Comics trappings. 7/10
A Little History of the World
An interesting curio, with an odd past. Has merit, but what others herald as a 'grandfatherly' or 'magical' tone I find condescending. But then it was originally inteded for children. 5/10
Swann's Way
First book of Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. Thought I would give it a try, after hearing magnificent things about Proust. After 70 pages of the author talking about loving his mother, I changed my mind.
Now reading: The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia
Anthromorphic insects from the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant engage in Socratic dialogues to arrive at a philosophy of games (also Life and Utopia). Brilliant, enlightening.
Audio
Sherlock Holmes
The definitive adaptation. Merrison and Williams ARE Holmes and Watson. Various highlights, a few weak points. Coules' adaptations improve whilst Doyle's interest wanes, raising the bar in places (His Last Bow and Casebook). Further Adventures are fun and pitched ever so slightly in humour, rather than poe-faced duplication.
The Signalman and Other Ghostly Tales
Dickens' ghost stories, read by John Sessions. Not really the right atmosphere for bright midsummer evenings, but ripping stuff all the same. Sessions mostly hits it out of the park, though he falters a bit on the Signalman. Sound design lifts it above commercial audiobook quality, with an original suite of music included as an isolated track at the end of the colection. Still a couple of these left to listen to. Eagerly awaiting the Poe release.
Films
Primer
Amazing. Maybe the best time-travel film ever made. Possibly that comparison isn't even applicable. This isn't really even the same genre as 12 Monkeys or Back to the Future or Time Traveller's wife. More like speculative fiction. A classic, perhaps hampered only by a touch of emotional disaffection in places, but hard to say. Often this adds to the cold feel. 10/10, probably.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mawkish and morbid. Dreary, dull, sentimental, tiresome. Overlong. Meaningless. Maybe second quarter has a good film lost in it somewhere. 4/10
Gran Torino
Feels like it should have been made in the late 80s. Tone wanders from charicature to humour to gritty drama. A bit weird. Tries to have meaning and garbles it a bit. Also, Clint Eastwood signs about a car over the end credits, which is horrifying. Not too bad, though. Just feels oddly dated. 6/10
Brazil
Aged poorly. A bit too Gilliam for its own good. Still worth a watch, but I had Gilliam-grotesquery fatigue by the end of it. Probably more impact if I had seen this before some of his others. 7/10
TV
Babylon 5
Plot runs out halfway through. Good whilst it lasts. S2 and 3 are excellent. 4 starts excellent and ends not bad, but lags in the middle. Yet to watch 5.
Games
And Yet it Moves
Subjective gravity platformer, with a really cool 'torn paper world' theme. It's high on atmosphere, and there's some really good quality platforming. It has one real flaw, which is that it lacks the feel of smooth control that makes the best platformers so immersive. It's a bit twitchy and finnicky, and you can't help but think it'd be even better if you could pull some mad jumps off. You'll forgive it this after you see the genius of the levels, though. Especially after the snake bite... It has another flaw, external to the game itself - for a game of this length (~4 hours tops, unless you really dig the time trials) its price point is way too high (I got it on offer). 8/10
Jade Empire
Refreshingly different to the usual Bioware RPG mould. All the core elements are there except the combat, but everything is pared down to its essence, and this elegance is carried over to a slick action combat system. It has flaws - some lazy port issues with the controls, a system which sometimes crosses from elegance to oversimplicity, and the plot is not as rich as some of their other titles - but still a game with a much defter touch than, say, Mass Effect.
Mass Effect
Well, now you mention it... I sunk about ten hours into it. Maybe less. At first it felt lovely and cinematic. Then the shitty AI and shitty UI and artifical difficulty and dull writing and bored voice acting cut in. Bleh. 4/10
Shatter
A revelatory update of arcade game Arkanoid (that's the one with the blocks and the paddle). You wouldn't have imagined there was this much scope, but Sidhe have polished it to a mirror shine. Pretty damned compelling. No real negatives to the game itself, only the fact its limited in its breadth. 7/10
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Not the new one, the update of the arcade/NES game. Sidescrolling platforming centred around grappling hook acrobatics. Very slick, quite a lot of depth, with a range of weapons, enemies and powerups, hidden areas, challenge rooms and some nonlinearity. Difficulty is pretty high, as it was with all games of that era. Way more than a port, the updates to this game are marvellous. Also, it's quite pretty. 8/10
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
Temporal puzzle platformer which manages to have surprisingly little in common with Braid. Hampered a little by excessive cut-rate Suess humour and a lame attempt at Britishness. Still manages to be engaging at times. Meanwhile, all other aspects tick along nicely. The silent movie trappings, visual and auditory, are a treat. The gameplay is blended close to perfection, with the platforming element not totally subsumed by the puzzles. Puzzles, meanwhile, range from easy to moderately challenging, and the curve is well paced. Quite a lot of variations on the theme are thrown up, rather than relying too heavily on any one idea. Perhaps this has been taken too far - there is room for more levels with the existing mechanics. It is quite short; the main game is probably sub-three hours if you don't get stuck too much. Still, there's a healthy dollop of extra challenge levels which should add another one or two hours. At £3, that's a steal. 8/10
Puzzle Dimension
A subjective gravity/pathfinding puzzler. It's got a good chunk of levels, a good chunk of ideas, and a good difficulty curve. It doesn't do anything surprising or new, though. Just a good, solid puzzler. 7/10
The Dig
Still playing this one. It's a Lucasarts point and click game made my Spielberg. Not as good as the Indy ones, still good.
Aquaria
Underwater Metroidvania. The usual vocabulary of abilities is rendered irrelevant by movement in all four directions. Instead, a complement of special transformations and abilities is implemented off a pleasing musical system. Another highly polished indie game, and a fine example of the genre, I'm still playing this one.
Alien Swarm
Valve's new freebie is a mash up of Left 4 Dead and Space Hulk. The fun potential is high, and I'm eager to get some friends involved.
Books
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay
Starts well, quite episodic, rich setting. Initially has a lightness of touch. Gets more maudlin as it goes on, finishes badly. Still probably worthwhile for anyone with an interest in the Golden Age of Comics trappings. 7/10
A Little History of the World
An interesting curio, with an odd past. Has merit, but what others herald as a 'grandfatherly' or 'magical' tone I find condescending. But then it was originally inteded for children. 5/10
Swann's Way
First book of Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. Thought I would give it a try, after hearing magnificent things about Proust. After 70 pages of the author talking about loving his mother, I changed my mind.
Now reading: The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia
Anthromorphic insects from the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant engage in Socratic dialogues to arrive at a philosophy of games (also Life and Utopia). Brilliant, enlightening.
Audio
Sherlock Holmes
The definitive adaptation. Merrison and Williams ARE Holmes and Watson. Various highlights, a few weak points. Coules' adaptations improve whilst Doyle's interest wanes, raising the bar in places (His Last Bow and Casebook). Further Adventures are fun and pitched ever so slightly in humour, rather than poe-faced duplication.
The Signalman and Other Ghostly Tales
Dickens' ghost stories, read by John Sessions. Not really the right atmosphere for bright midsummer evenings, but ripping stuff all the same. Sessions mostly hits it out of the park, though he falters a bit on the Signalman. Sound design lifts it above commercial audiobook quality, with an original suite of music included as an isolated track at the end of the colection. Still a couple of these left to listen to. Eagerly awaiting the Poe release.
Films
Primer
Amazing. Maybe the best time-travel film ever made. Possibly that comparison isn't even applicable. This isn't really even the same genre as 12 Monkeys or Back to the Future or Time Traveller's wife. More like speculative fiction. A classic, perhaps hampered only by a touch of emotional disaffection in places, but hard to say. Often this adds to the cold feel. 10/10, probably.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mawkish and morbid. Dreary, dull, sentimental, tiresome. Overlong. Meaningless. Maybe second quarter has a good film lost in it somewhere. 4/10
Gran Torino
Feels like it should have been made in the late 80s. Tone wanders from charicature to humour to gritty drama. A bit weird. Tries to have meaning and garbles it a bit. Also, Clint Eastwood signs about a car over the end credits, which is horrifying. Not too bad, though. Just feels oddly dated. 6/10
Brazil
Aged poorly. A bit too Gilliam for its own good. Still worth a watch, but I had Gilliam-grotesquery fatigue by the end of it. Probably more impact if I had seen this before some of his others. 7/10
TV
Babylon 5
Plot runs out halfway through. Good whilst it lasts. S2 and 3 are excellent. 4 starts excellent and ends not bad, but lags in the middle. Yet to watch 5.
Games
And Yet it Moves
Subjective gravity platformer, with a really cool 'torn paper world' theme. It's high on atmosphere, and there's some really good quality platforming. It has one real flaw, which is that it lacks the feel of smooth control that makes the best platformers so immersive. It's a bit twitchy and finnicky, and you can't help but think it'd be even better if you could pull some mad jumps off. You'll forgive it this after you see the genius of the levels, though. Especially after the snake bite... It has another flaw, external to the game itself - for a game of this length (~4 hours tops, unless you really dig the time trials) its price point is way too high (I got it on offer). 8/10
Jade Empire
Refreshingly different to the usual Bioware RPG mould. All the core elements are there except the combat, but everything is pared down to its essence, and this elegance is carried over to a slick action combat system. It has flaws - some lazy port issues with the controls, a system which sometimes crosses from elegance to oversimplicity, and the plot is not as rich as some of their other titles - but still a game with a much defter touch than, say, Mass Effect.
Mass Effect
Well, now you mention it... I sunk about ten hours into it. Maybe less. At first it felt lovely and cinematic. Then the shitty AI and shitty UI and artifical difficulty and dull writing and bored voice acting cut in. Bleh. 4/10
Shatter
A revelatory update of arcade game Arkanoid (that's the one with the blocks and the paddle). You wouldn't have imagined there was this much scope, but Sidhe have polished it to a mirror shine. Pretty damned compelling. No real negatives to the game itself, only the fact its limited in its breadth. 7/10
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Not the new one, the update of the arcade/NES game. Sidescrolling platforming centred around grappling hook acrobatics. Very slick, quite a lot of depth, with a range of weapons, enemies and powerups, hidden areas, challenge rooms and some nonlinearity. Difficulty is pretty high, as it was with all games of that era. Way more than a port, the updates to this game are marvellous. Also, it's quite pretty. 8/10
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
Temporal puzzle platformer which manages to have surprisingly little in common with Braid. Hampered a little by excessive cut-rate Suess humour and a lame attempt at Britishness. Still manages to be engaging at times. Meanwhile, all other aspects tick along nicely. The silent movie trappings, visual and auditory, are a treat. The gameplay is blended close to perfection, with the platforming element not totally subsumed by the puzzles. Puzzles, meanwhile, range from easy to moderately challenging, and the curve is well paced. Quite a lot of variations on the theme are thrown up, rather than relying too heavily on any one idea. Perhaps this has been taken too far - there is room for more levels with the existing mechanics. It is quite short; the main game is probably sub-three hours if you don't get stuck too much. Still, there's a healthy dollop of extra challenge levels which should add another one or two hours. At £3, that's a steal. 8/10
Puzzle Dimension
A subjective gravity/pathfinding puzzler. It's got a good chunk of levels, a good chunk of ideas, and a good difficulty curve. It doesn't do anything surprising or new, though. Just a good, solid puzzler. 7/10
The Dig
Still playing this one. It's a Lucasarts point and click game made my Spielberg. Not as good as the Indy ones, still good.
Aquaria
Underwater Metroidvania. The usual vocabulary of abilities is rendered irrelevant by movement in all four directions. Instead, a complement of special transformations and abilities is implemented off a pleasing musical system. Another highly polished indie game, and a fine example of the genre, I'm still playing this one.
Alien Swarm
Valve's new freebie is a mash up of Left 4 Dead and Space Hulk. The fun potential is high, and I'm eager to get some friends involved.
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