(no subject)
So things that have been entertaining me recently:
- Batman Arkham Asylum: I started playing this just after I finished Assassin's Creed 2. However I got about a quarter of the way through it before I missed AC2 too much and went back to play it from scratch again (seriously, AC2 is the best game I've ever played). Anywho, I'm giving BAA another shot. The detail in creating the levels is great and the characters very cool, but the levels still seem really linear and the combat isn't much more complicated than clicking the left mouse button with the occasional right mouse button click. I'll play it through and see if it improves.
- The Game by Neil Strauss: I just finished this last week. Strauss lived as a pickup artist for three years and immersed himself in a world of other professional pickup artists. I didn't know what to expect, but Strauss is pretty frank about everything and recounts the events with quite a bit of detail. The lesson I took from the book is that you need balance in your life, so definitely a meaningful read.
- Unlundun my China Mieville: I've loved Mieville's stuff so far, his spin on the fantasy genre is really creative and exciting. The last book of his I read was The City and the City, and you have to get about a quarter of the way through the book before you realize what's going on. I don't mean that in a bad way, I loved figuring it out for myself rather than being introduced to the concepts in the story. Unlundun, however, plunges you straight in it pretty quickly and is definitely more fantastical. I'm really looking forward to getting more into it.
- The Tudors: I'm pacing myself with this and watching it through iView. There's some serious stuff happening to Cardinal Wolsey (Sam Neill), which makes me a little sad since he's definitely my favourite. Every show needs the politically aspiring plotter, and Sam Neill is great at playing characters who are highly intelligent but cunning and dangerous. Anne Boleyn's (Natalie Dormer) is pretty cool but we all know what happened to her (it's not spoilers, it's history).
- The Wire: Season 2 has introduced some new characters who are developing pretty well. Apart from the general realism of the show and the well written storyline, what I'm particularly liking about this season is Stringer Bell. Stringer is the second in command to a drug kingpin and is also going to community college to learn about economics and commerce. It's cool because he's taking the lessons he's learning about handling an inferior product, elastic demand and competition and applying it to his business. When I read Freakonomics a while back they were talking about the same thing, about how the lessons learned about management and business generally applied just as well to organised crime as it did normal business. Plus it's fun to watch him try to explain elastic and inelastic demand to a bunch of street-level drug dealers.