by mildmolasses
Last year I compiled a list of games as I completed them. I played a lot of games. I imagine I will do the same this year. However, as a means of diversifying my consumed media, I've decided that for every game I finish, I must also finish a book. Thus this list will be the game, with the corresponding book in the text field, and my impressions of both
Showing 1-10 of 32 items
I'm not sure what to make of the game. I enjoyed a lot of the open world activities, but not much of the story. Eventually I kicked the game down to easy to facilitate my fucking around abilities, because often a tiger would show up an ruin everything. By the time I got to the end, I was glad I had made the change because there was nothing fun about fighting those heavies, and I never got that melee skill until right before the end, when it was almost useless to me. The book I read was Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It is a steaming pile of shit. There is not an original idea in there (many passages are just descriptions of games and movies) and everything about it leads me to believe that the author is an insufferable asshole. Supposedly they're making a movie out of this, but all the necessary licensing issues should kill that project
It seems weird to claim to have finished a game like this, but I guess I'm using my S rank to draw that conclusion. It's boggle. It's alright. The corresponding book was The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. A fascinating look at the development of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the serial killer that happened to be operating there at the same time. A tremendously well researched story that is written with great narrative flair. Highly recommended
I started this game last year when it came out and let it sit right at the end for a while. So finally I decided to plow through the last little bit and finish it. It's an interesting game, but I feel that the combat is ruined by a reliance on your pawns that prove far too often to be unreliable. I read Invisible Monsters Remix by Chuck Palahniuk. Invisible monsters is my favourite book of all time, and this is it's first hardcover edition. The odd quirk about this 'remixed' version is that it isn't arrange in sequential order. Constant flipping back and forth is required. Weird, and not really the way I'd recommend reading it. Pick up the regular version. It's a great little yarn
What I discovered while playing this game is that I really didn't need another Dead Space. Its a fantastically well-made game, but it seems so rote for the most part, completely devoid of any real tension. The odd jump scare, but that was about it. I'm not going to complain about the action-y element of it because that seems to fall quite in line with how horror/sci-fi eventually ends up. I read The Colorado Kid by Stephen King. It was bad, as most Stephen King is. I wouldn't have been so disappointed with it had it not been marketed as a pulp crime novel, but since there is no actual crime in the book, no pulp/noir elements, or even an actual resolution, I feel very lied too
Surprisingly not terrible! I became irritated with my last venture into an EB Games and vowed to never shop there again. Unfortunately I still had about $10 in credit left, so I hopped on over to their website and found this gem for $4.99! It wasn't bad. It's kind of ugly by today's standards (and probably was by 2008 standards too, but I can't really adjust my mind to think in those terms) but it had some cool moments. The gunplay was alright, and the story, while hindered by some terrible voice work, is mostly inoffensive and moves at a brisk pace. You could do a lot worse, especially at that price. I finished reading Reinventing Gravity by John W. Moffat. I'm into physics, and figured this was a nice way to read some current material on potential Grand Unified Theories. I was wrong. It was boring. Apparently gravity is not that interesting of a concept, or force, to make me want to wade through a book focused on various models as applied to the universe and their pros and cons. I'm glad its out of the way, and now I know to stick with quantum physics or astrophysics only. Don't try and pick some middle ground to bridge the two
Game is awesome! Genuinely one of my favourite experiences of this generation. Great gunplay, cool set pieces, gorgeous world and some great voice work that helped bring the people to life. I won't get into dissonance because fuck dissonance. It's a video game. You're supposed to kill shit I read Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevksy. It solidified in my mind that Tolstoy is by far the better writer. This book is the ramblings of a self-important asshole. And any time I read a book with a character so close to my own, I hate it (see: Catcher in the Rye). Supposedly this is an important book in the development of post-modern writing and existentialism, but fuck that. I loathe those to attach themselves so firmly to a philosophy that they use it as a self-identifier and this book reminds me of those types of people
This game is a mix of DMC style hack n slash, anime absurdity and truly inventive 2D platforming sections. Unfortunately it is also marred by some astonishingly awful 3D platforming, hindered by poorly chosen fixed camera angles. Come for the ridiculous spectacle. Throw your controller for the imprecision! I read the novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. It left me confused. At first, it was the multiple occurrences of the word 'moron' used in manner that has become outdated. Then I became confused at the target audience for it. There are some mentions of physics and religion and other things that young adults aren't necessarily into, yet the majority of the story seemed very much written for that age range. It's similar to how I view Something Wicked this Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
A run of the mill character action (ugh) game with one conceptually interesting boss encounter. Not worth the praise nor the slander that people seem to heap upon it. Dante always is, was and shall be a dipshit antihero. I just finished The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva. I was recommended to me a few years ago by a lady that claimed this was her favourite book. I will read almost anything, and I'm always curious about the literary tastes of people, so I gave it a go. I'm not usually a spy thriller type of guy, and I think this books exemplifies why. I have a very hard time reconciling events that place in a realistic setting against the real world. In this case, its the spy who recruits a famous model, who is also a former spy, to help him on a mission. I just can't take it seriously when they expect me to buy a cover story that expects me to believe that this woman who is on magazine covers won't get recognized for who she is when she goes undercover. There are other issues I had, but not so much that I hated it. It was a light read and helped pass the evening, and there are much worse things to be said about a book.
There isn't much I could say about this game that hasn't already been said. I think Ken Levine pulled off the greatest sleight of hand trick video games has seen since MGS 2. I read two books that I will attach to this. Not because they relate thematically, but because they were both short. The first was A Sociopath Beside Me by Junie Moon.I had assumed this would be a stirring account of discovering that your spouse has been committing unspeakable acts. Instead, its half rhetorical questions about where she failed and half story being told to you by someone as they rush out the door to catch a bus. The details that would have made this compelling are completely absent. Instead we get a brief overview of what her husband did and not much insight into her life with him. The second book was Beatrice and Dante by Yann Martel. This was an interesting story about a guy who just meets a taxidermist with a secret. I won't say what it was, but it involves the writing of a play and the books author protagonist offering helpful advice to the troubled play write.
Terrible. I already filled this one out, but something went wrong and it didn't save. All I can remember is that on the last level my character loaded in weird, and any time I went to iron sights, his head was blocking the retical. The book was Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle. It was an interesting mix of alternate history and sci-fi. The quality of the writing was spotty, and it contained one of the most poorly written female characters I can remember
