November Reading
Very little reading in November. I've been feeling escapist, so there's more than the usual escapism and gaming in here... not to say that games must be escapist.
Books
Best SF: 1967,
ed. by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss - I was a bit disappointed by this, honestly. A couple of the stories were good, but the collection as a whole left me cold. There is an interesting essay in the back about the politics of the science fiction community at the time, and that was pretty interesting ... doubly so once I talked to dratomic about it for a while and discovered that, indeed, the quarrels discussed in the essay were part of a larger historical shift in science fiction in the late 60s.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen: A Game of Telling Tales and Playing Roles,
by James Wallis. I was really excited when my coworker Eric Zimmerman showed me this book, because I'd only seen this game as an appendix in Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media
. The game impressed me there as a rare, cool narrativist game, but it also struck me as nearly unplayable. The game is a simple set of rules for a group of people to gather and tell each other tall tales over a few pints (or cups of tea). However, the tall tales are of a very specific sort --Baron Munchausen-like tall tales set in the early 19th cent-- and you'd really have to have the right set of people, all properly prepared and in the right mood, in order to play. This book, though, is a really fun read and could itself get you in the right mindset to play. It also has some variants that might be easier to play, and I intend to try them out soon. Summary: This is a great read, even if I never get to play the game; but I hope I do.
Games
Valdis Story, by Kyron Ramsey. Valdis Story, despite being a demo/beta and only 2/3 functional, ate an entire Saturday earlier this month. Kyron's pixel art is peerless, the visual effects are gorgeous, and the game design is really interesting. At heart, it's a sidescrolling action platformer/explorer. If you like Castlevania-type games, you'll enjoy Valdis Story-- and probably be impressed by the depth that Kyron has brought to the design. There's an alignment mechanic determined by your actions and the equipment that you use; your alignment then determines NPCs' responses and your play style. There's a broad array of weapons and combo moves available, and the game is as difficult as you could care for. On the normal mode, some of the bosses beat me mercilessly until I let myself use some of the more powerful weaponry-- which then limited my narrative choices. I can't imagine beating it on the hard setting or with my weapons of choice ... but I know that Kyron tests to make sure that everything is possible. Which is not to say that you won't need pixel-perfect performance. An amazing one-person effort.
The World Ends With You, by Square Enix + Jupiter. I wrote about TWEWY last month because I'd finished the main narrative; it's taken me another month to collect 100% of the collectibles and to finish the auxiliary narrative. Very little of that time has been punishing or much of a grind-- I've continued to enjoy the game. I have had to stop playing the game because of the repetitive stress injury that it has given me, though. One new thing to write about it-- after you finish the main story, there are two more things that you can really do. There's an 'extra chapter' which works almost exactly like the filler comics in the back of a volume of manga, recasting the characters from the story in a whimsical, self-parodic alternate universe. It's a great reward for players that have taken the game seriously enough to play through and learn the mini-game which was a sideline through most of the main game. Completing the main story also unlocks a series of sidequests back during the main story (which you can replay chapters of at will), and completing the sidequests fill in a bunch of backstory. That in itself isn't terribly new, though I am impressed at the richness of the "auxiliary" backstory. What's impressive is the way that it's worked in-- finding sidequest items gets you 'secret reports', with a canon explanation for the reports, which explain things about the chapter that you find them in, while also giving clues to the larger 'b plot'. It's immaculately structured and well-written, and was a solid reward structure for, basically, playing through most of the game a second time.
In progress: The Journey to Wild Divine, How Computer Games Help Children Learn, My Best Science Fiction Story
Is that really it? Yikes, I'm slowing down ... and playing too much TWEWY.
Books
Best SF: 1967,
ed. by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss - I was a bit disappointed by this, honestly. A couple of the stories were good, but the collection as a whole left me cold. There is an interesting essay in the back about the politics of the science fiction community at the time, and that was pretty interesting ... doubly so once I talked to dratomic about it for a while and discovered that, indeed, the quarrels discussed in the essay were part of a larger historical shift in science fiction in the late 60s.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen: A Game of Telling Tales and Playing Roles,
by James Wallis. I was really excited when my coworker Eric Zimmerman showed me this book, because I'd only seen this game as an appendix in Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media
. The game impressed me there as a rare, cool narrativist game, but it also struck me as nearly unplayable. The game is a simple set of rules for a group of people to gather and tell each other tall tales over a few pints (or cups of tea). However, the tall tales are of a very specific sort --Baron Munchausen-like tall tales set in the early 19th cent-- and you'd really have to have the right set of people, all properly prepared and in the right mood, in order to play. This book, though, is a really fun read and could itself get you in the right mindset to play. It also has some variants that might be easier to play, and I intend to try them out soon. Summary: This is a great read, even if I never get to play the game; but I hope I do.
Games
Valdis Story, by Kyron Ramsey. Valdis Story, despite being a demo/beta and only 2/3 functional, ate an entire Saturday earlier this month. Kyron's pixel art is peerless, the visual effects are gorgeous, and the game design is really interesting. At heart, it's a sidescrolling action platformer/explorer. If you like Castlevania-type games, you'll enjoy Valdis Story-- and probably be impressed by the depth that Kyron has brought to the design. There's an alignment mechanic determined by your actions and the equipment that you use; your alignment then determines NPCs' responses and your play style. There's a broad array of weapons and combo moves available, and the game is as difficult as you could care for. On the normal mode, some of the bosses beat me mercilessly until I let myself use some of the more powerful weaponry-- which then limited my narrative choices. I can't imagine beating it on the hard setting or with my weapons of choice ... but I know that Kyron tests to make sure that everything is possible. Which is not to say that you won't need pixel-perfect performance. An amazing one-person effort.
The World Ends With You, by Square Enix + Jupiter. I wrote about TWEWY last month because I'd finished the main narrative; it's taken me another month to collect 100% of the collectibles and to finish the auxiliary narrative. Very little of that time has been punishing or much of a grind-- I've continued to enjoy the game. I have had to stop playing the game because of the repetitive stress injury that it has given me, though. One new thing to write about it-- after you finish the main story, there are two more things that you can really do. There's an 'extra chapter' which works almost exactly like the filler comics in the back of a volume of manga, recasting the characters from the story in a whimsical, self-parodic alternate universe. It's a great reward for players that have taken the game seriously enough to play through and learn the mini-game which was a sideline through most of the main game. Completing the main story also unlocks a series of sidequests back during the main story (which you can replay chapters of at will), and completing the sidequests fill in a bunch of backstory. That in itself isn't terribly new, though I am impressed at the richness of the "auxiliary" backstory. What's impressive is the way that it's worked in-- finding sidequest items gets you 'secret reports', with a canon explanation for the reports, which explain things about the chapter that you find them in, while also giving clues to the larger 'b plot'. It's immaculately structured and well-written, and was a solid reward structure for, basically, playing through most of the game a second time.
In progress: The Journey to Wild Divine, How Computer Games Help Children Learn, My Best Science Fiction Story
Is that really it? Yikes, I'm slowing down ... and playing too much TWEWY.