Other Reviews
Hey,
So here's a couple other things I've been goofing around with.
First up, the Summer Issue of Lapham's Quarterly is out. The theme this issue is Food. How we get it, how we consume it, how we relate to it and everything in between.
As always there's a wide range of interesting voices discoursing on the topic from a variety of times and places. Unfortunately, the topic as a whole doesn't grab me as much as some of the previous entries have. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love food, but it just wasn't a thriller for me this time around.
Perhaps that's because a number of pieces were things I'd already read. Consider the Lobster, The Botany of Desire, To Kill A Mockingbird and a few others made their way into the volume (as well they should) and so perhaps because not every single thing was new might have contributed to my less-than-enthusiastic reception. But, there's still a good selection of stuff and foodie friends might find it very endearing.
Next, from high culture to high-tech bang-bang. The video game company Pandemic made Mercenaries which I really enjoyed. Then they made Mercenaries 2, which I thought was really weak. Finally, they made the game Saboteur and promptly were disbanded by EA. So a few weeks ago, I picked up Pandemic's Swan Song and took it for a spin.
You play Sean, an Irish race car driver trapped in Paris at the start of WWII, you join the Resistance and promptly start setting explosive charges on everything with a swastika. The game has it's issues, but I've been having quite a bit of fun. Mostly because this game feels very much like Assassin's Creed Brotherhood but it was made two years earlier and set 500 years later than AC:B.
Seriously, you've got this city where you run around, blow up Nazi stuff, assassinate Nazi leaders, free up sections of the City one at a time, organize the Resistance and clamber all over famous Paris monuments to get a better angle on the guy you're going to peg next. You can run around and steal cars and tanks so it's got a bit of Grand Theft Auto going on, and you don't open up businesses everywhere, but otherwise it's very much like a WWII Assassin's Creed.
And that's why I loved it. I like the way Assassin's Creed is moving through time, from the Crusades, to the Renaissance, but it's sorta stalled out and I was (am) hoping that the series will have Desmond relive some past lives in other time periods -- his past life as a member of the French Resistance would've been spot on with Templar-Nazis making trouble. So this really scratched my itch in this genre.
The game isn't perfect, the camera is just-not-quite at the right angle when you drive and climbing around the rooftops of Paris is nowhere near as elegant as Assassin's Creed, but the game has been happily occupying my time for a couple weeks now and it's in the cheap-o bins so it's an easy recommendation if you like GTA or Assassin's Creed.
later
Tom
So here's a couple other things I've been goofing around with.
First up, the Summer Issue of Lapham's Quarterly is out. The theme this issue is Food. How we get it, how we consume it, how we relate to it and everything in between.
As always there's a wide range of interesting voices discoursing on the topic from a variety of times and places. Unfortunately, the topic as a whole doesn't grab me as much as some of the previous entries have. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love food, but it just wasn't a thriller for me this time around.
Perhaps that's because a number of pieces were things I'd already read. Consider the Lobster, The Botany of Desire, To Kill A Mockingbird and a few others made their way into the volume (as well they should) and so perhaps because not every single thing was new might have contributed to my less-than-enthusiastic reception. But, there's still a good selection of stuff and foodie friends might find it very endearing.
Next, from high culture to high-tech bang-bang. The video game company Pandemic made Mercenaries which I really enjoyed. Then they made Mercenaries 2, which I thought was really weak. Finally, they made the game Saboteur and promptly were disbanded by EA. So a few weeks ago, I picked up Pandemic's Swan Song and took it for a spin.
You play Sean, an Irish race car driver trapped in Paris at the start of WWII, you join the Resistance and promptly start setting explosive charges on everything with a swastika. The game has it's issues, but I've been having quite a bit of fun. Mostly because this game feels very much like Assassin's Creed Brotherhood but it was made two years earlier and set 500 years later than AC:B.
Seriously, you've got this city where you run around, blow up Nazi stuff, assassinate Nazi leaders, free up sections of the City one at a time, organize the Resistance and clamber all over famous Paris monuments to get a better angle on the guy you're going to peg next. You can run around and steal cars and tanks so it's got a bit of Grand Theft Auto going on, and you don't open up businesses everywhere, but otherwise it's very much like a WWII Assassin's Creed.
And that's why I loved it. I like the way Assassin's Creed is moving through time, from the Crusades, to the Renaissance, but it's sorta stalled out and I was (am) hoping that the series will have Desmond relive some past lives in other time periods -- his past life as a member of the French Resistance would've been spot on with Templar-Nazis making trouble. So this really scratched my itch in this genre.
The game isn't perfect, the camera is just-not-quite at the right angle when you drive and climbing around the rooftops of Paris is nowhere near as elegant as Assassin's Creed, but the game has been happily occupying my time for a couple weeks now and it's in the cheap-o bins so it's an easy recommendation if you like GTA or Assassin's Creed.
later
Tom